Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ men are right in saying that the Philistines⁴ were of the race expelled from Thebes, they had, by the time this temple was built, settled themselves under the Lebanon and along the southern Syrian coasts, whence they were to be driven out when Moses should be in his grave. If, as some poets tell, Egyptus and Cadmus were among the Shepherd intruders driven out from the Thebaid, the fifty nieces of the one had by this time murdered his sons, their husbands, and the dragon's teeth of the other had sprung up into armed men. It is worth while to mention such fables as these last under their assigned dates; because we learn thereby to value as we ought the tangible and reliable records we meet in the Egyptian monuments, in contrast with the dim traditions of later born nations. We may also gather useful hints on the history and philosophy of art and science, from the mythi and the monuments together. There is writing on this temple: there is writing on the much older Pyramids: and it was only at the time of the erection of this temple that letters were carried into Greece. Here is a pillar which is believed to have suggested, in a subsequent age, the Doric column; the oldest of Greek pillars. Here it stands, remarkable for its many-sided form. It was to us now the oldest we had ever seen: but we afterwards saw some, more precisely what is called Doric, in the tombs of Benee Hasan. The columns of this temple are little more than bases. They are nearly all of the same height: some like mere heaps of stone; others bearing uninjured inscriptions. They are small remains: but long may they last! They are the ultimate record of their kind on the ordinary route of Nile travellers, and usually the first subject to their examination.

      Our ride to the rock of Abooseer occupied an hour and a half. Thanks to the cool north wind, we highly enjoyed it. Our way lay through a complete desert, over sand-hills, and among stony tracts, where scarcely a trace of vegetation is to be seen. In such places the coloquintus is a welcome object, with its thick, milky leaves and stalks, and its velvet blossom. The creeping, thorny coloquintida, too, with its bitter apples, is a handsome plant: or it looked so to us, in the absence of others. Here and there amidst the dreary expanse, or half-hidden in some sandy dell, lay the bleached skeleton of a camel. The only living things seen were a brood of partridges and a jerboa – a graceful and most agile little creature, whose long, extended tail, with its tufted end, gave it a most distinctive appearance. Some of our people started off in pursuit, and would not give up for a long time, making extreme efforts to keep the little creature in view, and drive it in one another's way; but it baffled them at last, and got back to its hole.

      We rode to the foot of the rock of Abooseer, and then ascended it – in rather heavy spirits, knowing that this was to be our last look southwards. The summit was breezy and charming. I looked down the precipice on which I stood, and saw a sheer descent to the Nile of two hundred feet. The waters were gushing past the foot of this almost perpendicular crag: and from holes in its strata flew out flocks of pigeons, blue in the sunshine. The scene all round under that wide heaven was wild beyond description. There was no moving creature visible but ourselves and the pigeons; and no trace of human habitation but the ruins of two mud huts, and of a white building on the Arabian shore. The whole scene was composed of desert, river, and black basaltic rocks. Round to the north, from the south-west, there is actually nothing to be seen but blackish, sand-streaked rocks near at hand, and sandy desert further off. To the north-east, the river winds away, blue and full, between sands. Two white sails were on it at the moment. From the river, a level sand extended to the soft tinted Arabian hills, whose varied forms and broken lights and shadows were on the horizon nearly from the north round to the south-east. These level sands then give place to a black rugged surface, which extends to where two summits – to-day of a bright amethyst hue – close the circuit of vision. These summits are at a considerable distance on the way to Dongola. The river is hidden among the black rocks to the south, and its course is not traceable till it peeps out, blue and bright, in two or three places, and hides itself again among the islets. It makes a great bend while thus hidden, and reappears much more to the east. It has now reached the part properly called the Second Cataract; and it comes sweeping down towards the rock on which we stood, dashing and driving among its thousand islets, and then gathering its thousand currents into one, to proceed calmly on its course. Its waters were turbid in the rapids, and looked as muddy where they poured down from shelf or boulder as in the Delta itself: but in all its calm reaches it reflected the sky in a blue so deep as it would not do to paint. The islets were of fantastic forms – worn by the cataracts of ages; but still, the outlines were angular, and the black ledges were graduated by the action of the waters, as if they had been soft sand. On one or two islands I saw what I at first took for millet-patches: but they were only coarse grass and reeds. A sombre brownish tamarisk, or dwarfed mimosa, put up its melancholy head here and there; and this was all the vegetation apparent within that wide horizon. – I doubt whether a more striking scene than this, to English eyes, can be anywhere found. It is thoroughly African, thoroughly tropical, very beautiful – most majestic, and most desolate. Something of the impression might be owing to the circumstances of leave-taking under which we looked abroad from our station: but still, if I saw this scene in an unknown land in a dream, I am sure I should be powerfully moved by it. This day, it certainly interested me more than the First Cataract.

      I was tempted by the invitation of a sort of cairn on the top of a hill not far inland, to go there; and thence I obtained another glimpse of the Libyan Desert, and saw two more purple peaks rising westwards, soft and clear.

      There is a host of names carved on the accessible side of Abooseer. We looked with interest on Belzoni's and some few others. We cut ours with a nail and hammer. Here, and here only, I left my name. On this wild rock, and at the limit of our range of travel, it seemed not only natural but right to some who may come after us. Our names will not be found in any temple or tomb. If we ever do such a thing, may our names be publicly held up to shame, as I am disposed to publish those of the carvers and scribblers who have forfeited their right to privacy by inscribing their names where they can never be effaced!

      The time arrived when we must go. It was with a heavy heart that I quitted the rock, turned my back on the south, and rode away.

      We found our boat prepared in the usual manner for the descent of the river; the mainmast removed, and laid along overhead, to support the awning; the kitchen shifted and turned; and the planks of the decks taken up to form seats for the rowers, so as sadly to restrict our small space. – One of our dishes at dinner was an excellent omelette, made of part of the contents of an ostrich's egg. Two of these eggs were bought for six piastres (1 s. 2 d.). The contents were obtained by boring a hole with a gimlet. The contents of this egg were found to be equal to twenty-nine of the small hen's eggs of this part of the country.

      We began our return voyage about 6 P.M., floating, sometimes broadside down, and sometimes in towards the bank, when it became the business of the rowers to bring us out again into the middle of the stream. The wind was hostile, cold, and strong enough to be incessantly shoving us aside. Our progress was very slow. The first night we moored at six miles only from Wadee Halfa.

      The next evening (January 6th) we were within half an hour of Aboo-Simbil, when duty ordered me to my cabin. When I left the deck, the moon had risen, the rocks were closing in, and the river was like a placid lake.

      In the morning we were to enter upon a new kind of life, as travellers. We were to begin our course of study of the Monuments.

      IX. Historical Sketch, from Menes to the Roman Occupation of Egypt

      Before entering upon the study of the Monuments, it seems necessary to obtain something like an orderly view of the state of the country before and during their erection. At best, our conceptions must be obscure enough; but we can form none unless we arrange in our minds what we know of the history of Egypt, of which these monuments are at once the chief evidence and the eternal illustration.

      The early history of Egypt differs from that of every other explored country in the nature of its records. Elsewhere, we derive all our knowledge from popular legends, which embody the main ideas to be preserved in forms which are not, and were never meant to be, historically СКАЧАТЬ