Chapter XXXIII: Letter XXXI

UPON THE RED SEA, BETWEEN GEBEL ZEIT AND TÔR. _Good Friday, March 21, 1845._

Our ship lies motionless on the water, in sight of the distant coast of Tôr, which we hoped to have reached last night. I take pen and paper in hand, to quiet the most dreadful impatience, which is caused by an unbearable calm under a hot sun, in a vessel only intended for packages.

On the 20th of February we crossed from Thebes from the west to the east shore from Qurna to Karnak. Here we settled ourselves in some of the rooms of the great temple; as I hoped, however, to travel, if possible, to the peninsula of Sinai, so I restricted myself to the most necessary examination of the monuments, in order to arrange the work during my absence.

On the 3rd of March I set off. The younger Weidenbach accompanied me, to assist me in the necessary drawings; besides him I took with me our interpreter Jussuf, the _khawass_, Ibrahîm Aga, Gabre Máriam, and two more servants. We sailed down the Nile as far as Qeneh. When it became dark and the stars appeared, the till then lively conversation flagged, and, lying on the deck, I watched the star Isis and the sparkling Sothis (Sirius), those pole-stars of Egyptian chronology, as they gradually passed over our heads. Our two boatmen were only inclined to be too musical, and shouted out their whole treasury of songs, with an eternal repetition, only interrupted occasionally by the short call, _sherk_, _gharb_ (east, west), which was answered by the obedient, soft, boy’s voice of our little steersman. Half waking, half dreaming, we glided down the stream till toward midnight; even the Arabian din ceased, the stroke of the oars became weaker, and at last our boat was left entirely to the waves. The rising of the moon’s last quarter, and the grey dawn of day, first roused us to fresh exertion.

We arrived in good time at Qeneh, where we were most hospitably received at the house of the illustrious Seid Hussên. This is the important personage through whom we send and receive all our letters, and who has rendered himself highly esteemed by us on this account. He and his two sons were highly serviceable to us, by the innumerable preparations which were necessary for our hasty departure into the desert. In the meantime, I was delighted by the patriarchal customs which governed this most worthy family. All business was carried on here in the open air, as it is in all Eastern countries, and mostly in the streets. Before each house is a long divan, another in the room, friends come, salute shortly, seat themselves almost unnoticed, and the business continues. To important guests coffee is served, or the long pipe is presented; slaves stand round ready on the slightest sign. Humble acquaintances kiss the hand of the master of the house, even if they only pass by, all serious and quiet without pathos, but with the usual sometimes long murmured salutations. Should there be no more room on the divan, or should it be occupied by more important persons, the new comers crouch down on the ground beside it. Every one gets up and goes when he likes, and what particularly struck us, without taking leave in any way, notwithstanding the forms of salutation are so long. The master of the house will also leave his guests without the slightest notice, if it be not a noble visitor, which, when such happens, binds you often for a long time to the uniform, and generally empty conversation. This domestic life in the streets, which the old Greeks and Romans used in a greater or less extent, and which is so different from our office-and-room life, agrees with the whole Oriental character. The appearance of each is always proper, attentive to everything that happens, complaisant and obliging. In good families, like this, there is, beside, a beautiful and real principle and example of family piety. The old Hussên is above seventy, tall, with a white beard; yet, notwithstanding his age, is an active participator in all that is passing, and most friendly to everybody. The two sons are nearly fifty, and carry on the business. They treat the old man with the greatest respect. Both are great smokers, but they never smoke in the presence of their father, this would be looked upon as a want of the proper respect due to him; they lay the pipe down as soon as he enters. In the evening, after supper, when the want of the pipe would be too great a punishment, they seat themselves outside the door to smoke; whilst we, as guests, sit with the old man in the room, and they only take part in the conversation through the door.

On the evening before our departure, we visited a factory of the celebrated _qullehs_ (cooling-vessels) of which every year 200,000 are made, and also the field whence the clay is taken used in their formation. It is only one _feddan_ (160 square rods) in size.

On the 6th of March we left Qeneh with fifteen camels, after two days’ stay. The first day we only rode three hours, as far as the charming well Bir Ambar, lying among the palms, which has been supplied by Ibrahim Pasha with a domed building, for the caravans. The second encampment at the station Leqêta, was soon reached on the following day. The old road to Kossêr from Koptos, the present Quft, the hills of which we saw to the right in the distance, leads first to the mountains El Qorn, (the horns). In their vicinity we first came down into the broad road-way of Kossêr, and reached Leqêta after a sixteen hours’ march, when the roads from Qeneh, Quft, (Koptos), Qûs (the ancient , or _Apollinopolis parva_), and a fourth, leading directly from Luqsor, all unite. Five wells give tolerable water there; two half-formed buildings are destined for the reception of travellers.

Here I observed a trait of Arab hospitality which I must mention. At the parting meal in Qeneh, a fresh draught of the well-tasted Nile-water was handed me in a gilt goblet, elegantly ornamented with pious passages from the Koran. The simple yet pleasing form of the segment of a ball pleased me, and I told old Hussên so without expecting the answer: “The goblet is thine.” As I had nothing with me to give in return, I passed over the politeness, repeatedly declining the gift, and letting the cup remain without further remark. When I went to rest at night, I found it at my bedside, but gave express orders not to pack it up the next morning. We departed, and I did not open my travelling-bag until we reached Leqêta. How astonished was I, when my first glance again fell upon the carefully-packed goblet. Gabre Máriam had closed my luggage, and he confessed, on my angry question as to how the cup had come there against my order, that he had placed it there at the particular desire of old Seid Hussên. Now I was finally beaten, and had to think of some gift for my return.

We set out the same night from Leqêta, and rode three hours forward to an old, now little used, and waterless station at the Gebel Maáuad. Our Arabs of the Ag’aïze tribe, are not so animated as the Abâbde or Bisharūn, and their camels are worse.

Beyond Gebel Maáuad, we entered the hilly sand-plain Qsûr el Benat, and then again behind another pass, the plain Reshrashi. At the end of them to the left, rises the Gebel Abu Gûeh, on which we turned our backs, and passed round the corner of a rock, on the sandstone walls of which I found the cartouches of the sun-worshipper Amenophis IV. and his queen, with the shining sun[103] sculptured over them. Their names were partly erased as everywhere else, although the king had not then assumed the name of Bech-en-aten. Toward noon we entered the mountain, and in three quarters of an hour we arrived at the well Hamamât.

Here there seems to have been an ancient Koptic colony, and the broad wall built down to the depth of nearly eighty feet, in which a winding stair leads to the bottom, is still ascribed by the Arabs to the Nazâra, the Christians. The ancient quarries, our next goal, were distant about half an hour from the well.

In a spacious grotto, covered with Greek and Roman inscriptions, I established my principal quarters; as a cursory view amply demonstrated that we had several days’ work before us. The ancient Egyptians, who were great admirers and excellent connoisseurs of the different sorts of stone, had here found a layer of precious green breccia, and beside that, fine dark-coloured veins of granite, which had already been exhausted under the sixth dynasty in the beginning of the thirtieth century B.C. Since that time, numerous inscriptions have been found on the surrounding rocks. Among these some of the Persian rule are particularly worthy of note. The hieroglyphical cartouches of Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, are almost solely known from hence, and a royal high architect of the dynasty of the Psammetici has given his family-tree in no less than twenty-three generations, who, without a single exception, all occupied the same important post, and partly in connection with considerable sacerdotal offices. At the top of the long list is an ancestress, who must have lived seven hundred years before the last link of the chain. A great number of Greek proscynemata also lead us to the conclusion that the quarries were used even in the Greek and Roman time. We were engaged for five days from an early hour till late in the evening in these impressions and copies, to the great astonishment of the small caravans that passed almost every day, as the great pilgrim-road from Upper Egypt, and a great part of the Sudan leads through this valley to Kossêr and Mekka.

My purpose had originally been to have gone from Qeneh to Kossêr, and thence embark for Tôr. But as the passage takes a long time, I was very glad to learn at Qeneh, that there is also a way from Hamamât through the midst of the mountains to Gebel Zeït, opposite Tôr. I therefore determined to pursue this difficult, but more interesting and shorter way. At the same time I sent a courier on to Kossêr, to send a ship immediately to Gebel Zeït, to wait our arrival.

In Hamamât I had still to stand a heavy row with the Arabs, who had suddenly taken a decided dislike to the little-known and almost waterless route, and who would rather have conducted us along the shore by way of Kossêr. But as it was important for me to visit certain ancient quarries in the depth of the mountains, I threatened to write to the Pasha if they did not keep their word, and made them answerable for all mischances. In this way I brought my plan to bear, after much hesitation. But it was nearly wrecked; for by the negligence of our cook, who had left vinegar standing in copper pots, we were almost poisoned the evening before our departure. However after a wretched night, we got over it, and went off from Hamamât on the 13th of March.

We had taken six full water-pots with us for Qeneh; the camel-drivers were worse off, and were obliged to thirst a great deal. Besides our old trustworthy leader Selâm, I had brought another guide Selîm from Qeneh, who was said to know the mountainous region between Hamamât and Gebel Zeït very well, although he had only gone once over the ground twelve years before. Under his guidance we arrived in two days at Gebel Fatîreh. After much trouble and a great deal of seeking, we found the remains of the ancient colony, who had here worked a fine black and white granite. Hence, however, the conductor’s ignorance became apparent in many ways. We arrived on the evening of the 15th of March at a high ridge, on the rocky ground of which we were obliged to pass the night, as no tent could be erected. The next day, Palm Sunday, we suddenly came early to a steep precipice, which sinks down to the depth of 800 feet between the two chains of the Munfîeh mountains. It seemed impossible to cross the precipitous and dangerous path with a caravan. The Arabs protested in a body against every attempt to do so, and broke out into the most violent imprecations against Selîm. He was now in a critical position. He was evidently unacquainted with the difficulties of the way; the passable roads lead, of course, at a great distance, either by Nech êl Delfe to the east, or by Shaib el Benât to the west. To have taken one of these two routes would have cost us at least two more days, and as we had lost much time at Gebel Fatîreh, we should have come into the greater danger of a want of water, as our provision had been very scantily reckoned, and we had only one well to expect between Hamamât and Gebel Zeït, which was said to be by Gebel Dochân. I therefore gave orders and (notwithstanding the most violent opposition) succeeded in having all the camels unladen at the top, and the whole of the baggage carried down on the shoulders of the Arabs. My own attendants had to set the example, and we all of us joined in the work. All the boxes and packages were transported singly from one rock to the other; this was most difficult to do with the great water-vessels, which could only be moved by three or four men at a time. Then the unloaded animals were carefully led down, and lo, the daring attempt succeeded without any misfortune or injury, under loud and hearty invocations of the holy camel-saint Abd el Qader. After three laborious hours everything was completed and the animals were reloaded.

Soon, however, we were to run into a far greater danger. I rode, as usually, before the caravan with Maximilian[104] and some attendants, and left the company to follow in my donkey’s track in the sand. Toward noon we saw to our left, the Gebel Dochân, “the smoke mountain,” rising dark blue behind the Munfîeh chain; and after some hours, when we emerged from the higher mountains into a hilly but more open district, we perceived, for the first time, beyond the wide plain and the sea behind it, the far-distant mountains of Tôr, lying in a third quarter of the world, which we should soon enter upon.

After three o’clock we came to two Bedouin huts, made of mats, in which we found a woman and a bright-eyed brown-complexioned boy, who gave us some milk. The boy, on my question as to whether there were any old walls in the neighbourhood, led me to a solitary granite rock, surrounded by a rough but well-laid wall ten feet in height, about an hour distant. The square, of which the rock formed the Acropolis, was seventy paces long and sixty broad; the entrance from the south had two round half-towers, the same at the four corners, and in the middle of the three other sides. Within spaces were divided off, in the centre was a well of burnt bricks, but it was now filled up.[105]

According to the account of our guide, we were now in the neighbourhood of the water, which was understood to be only half a day’s journey from our last encampment. The sun, however, set without our having attained the desired goal. By the sparing light of a young moon, we at last entered a high pass, which Selîm assured us would conduct us to the well. We ascended for a long time between naked cliffs of granite; the moon set, no wells were to be seen, and the guide confessed that he had missed the right valley. We were obliged to return. The same occurred in a second and third valley, to which the evidently confused guide had directed our steps, after several changes in our route. He excused himself on account of the uncertain light of the moon, and was certain that he should find the proper road at the dawn of day. Thus there was nothing for us to do but to lie down on the hard ground in our light and airy clothes, and seek to obtain a fitful slumber, without food, without water, for our bottles were long since empty, and the little store of four biscuits per man had long been eaten. Our only defence against the cold north wind consisted of a few camel-saddles. Thus we comforted ourselves, with the stars above us and the stones beneath.

As the morning dawned we mounted again. My donkey, who had drank his last spare draught of water twenty-four hours before, and who did not understand how to abstain like the camels, refused to proceed. Selîm, however, was in good spirits, and expected soon to be in the right path again. We discovered camel-tracks in great numbers. “But a little while,” exclaimed the guide, “and we shall be on the spot!” Our hopes were again animated.

Pretty variegated granite and porphyry blocks, which I perceived in the sand, were joyful tokens of the proximity of the _Mons porphyrites_. In the mean time the broad valley, into which we had turned, got narrower and narrower, and divided into two arms, the right one of which we took. But this again divided, and the whole neighbourhood, according to former descriptions, showed us that we were again on a wrong track. To give our wearied animals some rest, I halted, and sent out the guide alone to find the right way. We encamped under the shadow of a cliff, hungry, and eager for a draught of water.

Our position grew critical. I began to doubt that our guide would succeed in discovering the well in these uniform desolate mountain passes. And where was our caravan? Had it found its way to the water? If they had followed the traces of our donkey as before, they must also have lost their way. We waited impatiently for Selîm; he could at any rate bring us back to the Arab huts, which we had seen the previous day. But one hour followed another; Selîm came not. The sun rose higher, and robbed of the slight shade of the rock where we had taken refuge, we sat silently on the burning stones. We dared not leave the spot, for fear of missing Selîm. Had he met with an accident, or had he so forgotten himself as only to think of his own safety, and to leave us to our fate, as had happened some years before to three Turks, who were never seen again, in the same wilderness! Or was Selîm too weak to return to us? He had almost always gone on foot, and must have been much more exhausted than ourselves.

From time to time we mounted the adjacent heights and fired our muskets,--all in vain! At last we were obliged to resign ourselves to the melancholy certainty that we should not see our guide again. Noon had arrived after four hours of waiting, and also the time for departure, if the hope of reaching the Arab huts, about six hours distant from us, was to be accomplished. For it would have been fool-hardy to seek any longer for the well, as Selîm himself had not found it. Gebel Zeït, where our ship was lying, was three and a half days’ journey from us; the Nile on the other side of the mountain, five days’ journey; the camels had drunk nothing for four days, and the donkey was thoroughly weakened.

We therefore set out. My companion had done everything I had proposed; but never have I felt my responsibility for others, whose lives, together with my own, were in jeopardy, so heavily as in that hesitating resolve. It seemed foolhardy to travel in this totally uninhabited highland, already confused and even more put out of the way by our nocturnal windings without a guide, according to the stars; and yet there was nothing else to be done.

We determined, after much consultation, to ride back into the principal valley, which we had entered in the morning with such hope. But the infinite variety of the naked craggy mountains, and the sand and rubbish-filled valley, treeless and bushless, make so wholly uniform impressions, that no one of us would have recognised the principal valley as the right, if the direction and general distance of it had not told us that it was the right one. At the end of the valley we had again to enter the region of the hills, between which it seemed possible to find the Arab huts towards the south, as I had taken the bearing of the principal peak of the Dochân from the neighbouring hill-fort. The huts were of course so hidden, that one could ride by them at the distance of a few minutes, and not observe them; perhaps, too, the mats were set up in another place. Thus we were lost in the wide burning desert without a guide, gnawed with hunger, and parched with thirst, and, as far as man could see, quite abandoned to chance. In silence we journeyed on, each occupied with his own thoughts, in the glowing noon heat, when suddenly--the moment will never be forgotten by me!--two men came forth from behind the rock. They rushed to us, embraced our knees, offered us water from their jugs, and kept continually repeating expressions of joy and greetings, with the greatest delight.

“El hamdu l’illah”--Praised be God! resounded on all sides. We were saved!

Our caravan, whence the two Arabs came, had as usual followed our track, and therefore like ourselves had lost their way, but Ibrahim Aga, soon perceiving our confusion, halted sooner, had fires, lighted in the night on all the hills, with difficulty gathered fuel, and had almost used up the powder. But the wind set the opposite way, and we heard none of the signals of our distressed comrades. Next morning they had proceeded, and by dint of the wonderful memory of Sheikh Selâm, who had once been here five-and-twenty years ago, had got on the right way to the well. Yet Ibrahim Aga encamped at an hour’s distance from it, as every trace of us was lost, and sent in great trouble concerning our fate, Arab patrols into the mountains to find us.

How strange it was, that we should enter the great valley just in time to meet such a post! As we had come into the side valley over the mountain, no trace of our animals--who, of course, besides this could not be tracked on the stones--could lead into it; had we therefore started a few minutes later, they would certainly have passed before we were in sight, and had we come down the valley earlier, we should have turned to the right towards the huts, and gone away from the caravan far to the left.

About two o’clock, we arrived in the camp, which we entered amid shouts of joy from all present. The greatest astonishment was expressed at not finding Selîm with us; he was given up by every one. I did not, however, allow the camp to be broken up, but had the camels led to the well alone. The Arabs were again sent into the mountains to search for Selîm, and I remained quietly in my tent for the rest of the day.

Towards evening some Arabs returned from the well, and with them, loaded on a camel, Selîm. They had found him lying speechless, with open mouth, and his body swollen from intemperate draughts of water, by the edge of the well. How he had come thither, we did not immediately learn, as he answered to none of our questions. He must, however, have found his way by chance out of the mountains, or by the wonderful innate power of tracing the way peculiar to the Arab. Now he was probably speechless more by the fear of the serious consequences of the miserable trick he had played us. When he perceived that we regarded him with some pity, he soon recovered. But I did not keep him about me any more; for the remainder of the journey I took the old trustworthy Sheikh Selâm, as a guide for our advanced party, and left the other with the caravan.

Gebel Dochân, the Porphyry mountain, which had been our actual reason for coming this way, and had caused the whole undertaking, was, however, found to be far behind us. We had, as I had suspected, notwithstanding Selîm’s assurances to the contrary, ridden by its foot for several hours, as we erroneously thought the well was near it. None of the caravan had seen the old quarries, and the remains of the ancient colony. Notwithstanding this, I determined to make a second attempt on the ensuing day; and in this I succeeded.

With the dawn, I set forth with Max, the Sheikh Selâm, and a young sturdy Arab. The huts had not been observed by the caravan, and lay much too far to the east for us. We therefore rode straight for the highest peak of the Dochân group. Chance decreed that we should, when in the vicinity of the ruins, meet an Abdi from those huts with some camels, for which he was seeking a grazing-place. With his assistance we arrived at our destination.

We first found the great mouth of a well, built up of rude stones, measuring twelve feet in diameter, but it was now ruined and filled up. On the western side, were five pillars of a hall, seemingly covered at an earlier period, a sixth was destroyed. Three hundred paces further up the valley, on a granite rock, projecting from the left side, a temple was built, but which was now in ruins. The walls had been piled upon rude stones, but the finer architectural portions well chiselled out of red granite. A stair of twenty steps led from the north, on the paved court, surrounded by a wall, in the centre of which a rude altar of granite stood. Four cells adjoined this court on the left, the most southern of which, however, had now partially fallen down, together with the rock foundation; to this, as there was space on the rock, a still smaller chamber had been added, in which a larger, but also uninscribed altar stood. Before these spaces in the middle of the court, there stood, at an elevation of some feet, and grounded with sharp blocks of granite, an Ionian portico, consisting of four monolithic pillars, slender and swelling, the bases and capitals of which, together with the cornice and architrave, lay around in pieces. The long dedicatory inscription informed us that the temple was dedicated, in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, to Zeus Helios Sarapis, by the Eparch Rammius Martialis. To the left of the wall, the ruins of the town lie on an eminence. It was four-cornered, and, as usual, defended by towers. In the middle there was again a well, the principal requirement of every station, built of burnt brick, and stuccoed. Eight rude thin granite pillars formed the entrance to the well.

An old steep roadway leads up the adjacent mountains, and conducts to the porphyry quarries, which, hard under the top of the mountain, gave the beautiful dark red porphyry in which so many of the monuments of the Imperial time were hewn. Its broad veins lay between another blue-white sprinkled, and an almost brick-red stone, and were worked to a considerable depth. We found five or six quarries by each other, the largest forty square paces in extent. I could nowhere find chisel holes for splitting; for the blue-stone lying next to the quarry, rubbed almost as fine as sand, seemed to indicate the employment of fire. By the town, too, I found considerable heaps of ashes.

From the quarries I climbed to the height of the mountain, which gave a splendid view of the neighbouring mountains, in the steeply-descending, first hilly, and then sandy plain, towards the sea, and beyond the blue mirror to the opposite high chain of Tôr, After taking a number of observations I descended, and was back in our camp near the Moie Messâid, after sunset.

On the 19th of March we crossed the plain to the Enned Mountains, running along the seacoast, and passing them by a cross valley. A rich fountain was here, the running water of which accompanied us for a long distance. I should take it to be the _Fons Tadmos_ of Pliny, as its water has only become salt and undrinkable by the natron layer of the surface. The ruins of Abu Shâr, the ancient _Myos hormos_, or _Philoteras portus_, we left to the right, and encamped on the peninsula of Gimsheh, called by the Arabs Kibrît, from the quantity of sulphur which is found there.

Yesterday morning we rode between the Enned Mountains and the sea-shore to the Gulf of Gebel Zeït. The ridges of Tôr, which floated milky-blue upon the watered mirror before sunrise, contrasted delicately with the heavens; first with the rising sun were its outlines lost.

After dinner we arrived at Gebel Zeït, “the oil mountain.” Our ships, sent for from Kossêr, had made the passage in six days, and already awaited our arrival four days. The camels were dismissed here, and went back the same evening.

A quarter north of our anchorage lay the Zeïtieh; so are the five or six pits called which are excavated in the shore-sand or rock, and are filled with black-brown syrup-like earth oil. Some years ago investigations were commenced here by Em Bey, who hoped to find coals in the depths, without however, up to this time, arriving at such a result.

Last evening was calm. In the first night there arose a slight wind from the north, which we immediately used for departure. With a favourable wind we might have made the passage in a single night; but now the day is again closing, and the haven is not yet reached. The long oars, too, which are now brought into employment, scarcely bring the loaded vessel on.

The sailors of the sea are very different from those of the Nile. Their manner is far more equable, less false and less creeping. Their songs, beginning with the first stroke of the oar, consists of short broken lines, given out one by one and taken up by others, while the rest make short tones at equal intervals. The rais, on a higher seat, also rows. He is a negro, like several others among the sailors, but one of the handsomest and most powerful blacks that I have ever seen--a real Othello, when, with his athletic movements, he rolls his yellow-white eyes, shows his gleaming white teeth, and commences the song with a piercing, yelling, but practised voice, leading it for some time.