Chapter XXIII: Letter XXI

KELI, OPPOSITE MEROE. _April 29, 1844._

Franke did not return from his expedition at Ben Naga until the 23rd. He brought the altar hither in sixteen blocks, on a bark. The stones which we shall have to take hence, a wearisome journey of six or seven days through the wilderness, are a load for about twenty camels, so that our train will be considerably greater than before. Unfortunately, we have been unable to bring away anything from Naga, in the desert, on account of the difficulty of transportation, except the already mentioned Roman inscription, and another large peculiarly carved work. There are on it some particularly curious representations; among others, a sitting figure in front, a nimbus round the hair, the left arm raised in a right angle, and the first and middle fingers of the hand pointing upward, as the old Byzantine figures of Christ are represented. The right hand holds a long staff resting on the ground, like that of John the Baptist. This figure is wholly strange to the Egyptian representation, and is doubtlessly derived from another source, as also another often-represented deity, also represented in full front, with a richly curling beard, which one would be inclined to compare with a Jupiter or Serapis in posture and appearance. The mixture of religions at that evidently late era had obtained exceedingly, and I should not be astonished if later researches were to show that the Ethiopian kings included Christ and Jupiter among their widely different classes of gods. The god with the three or four lions’ heads is probably not of ancient origin, but taken from somewhere else.

On the 24th, we crossed the Nile in our bark, in order to take our way to Gebel Barkal by the desert. Camels again seemed to be difficult to procure, but the threat that I should not call the Sheîkh, but the government to account, by virtue of my firman, if he would not manage to obtain the necessary animals, worked so fast, that we could already depart to the desert from Gôs Burri with eighty camels.

Here, at Keli, I had again opportunity to witness a funeral, this time for a deceased Fellah, at which nearly two hundred people were assembled, the men parted from the women. The men sat down opposite each other in pairs, embraced each other, laid their heads on their shoulders, raised them again, beat themselves, clapped their hands, and cried as much as they could. The women lamented, sang songs of misery, strewed themselves with ashes, went about in procession, and threw themselves on the ground, in a similar way to Wed Médineh, only their dance resembled rather the violent motions of the derwishes. The rest of the inhabitants of Keli sat around in groups, under the shadow of the trees, their heads down, sighing and complaining.

While we were obliged to wait for the camels, I crossed to Begerauîeh again, to seek some ruins, said to lie more to the north. From El Guês, I got to the two villages of Marûga, lying not very far from one another, in three-quarters of an hour. A great number of grave mounds lie to the east of the first of these, on the low heights, looking like a group of pyramids in the distance. The elevation runs along in a crescent-like form, and is covered with these round hillocks of black desert-stones, which were fifty-six in number, on my counting them from a large one in the centre.

Five minutes farther into the desert is a second group of similar hillocks, twenty-one in number; but many others are scattered around on small single plateaux. Still lower down and nearly by the bushes, I found to the south of both groups, another, consisting of forty graves, of which some still clearly showed their original four-cornered shape. The best grave had fifteen to eighteen feet on each side; it had been, like several others, dug up in the middle, and had filled itself with pluvial earth, in which a tree was growing; at another there was still a great four-cornered circumvallation of twenty-four paces to be seen; the undermost foundations were built of little black stones; and a tumulus seems to have been erected inside the enclosure, though not in the middle. Another well-preserved stronger circumvallation had a little less extent, but seemed to have been quite filled up by a pyramid. Of an actual casing there was nothing to be seen anywhere. The hillocks went farther south into the bushes, and altogether they might be estimated at two hundred in number. Perhaps they continued to stretch along toward Meroe, at the edge of the desert, whither I should have ridden, had I not sent the boat, which I had now to find in a hurry, too far down the river. It seems from this that here was the actual burial place of Meroë, and that pyramidal, or when flat sides were wanted, tumular hillocks of stone were the usual form of the graves of private persons also at that period.