Chapter II: Early Records

Travellers’ Names inscribed on the Monuments — Poncet passes through Kharga _en route_ for Ethiopia — Browne — Cailliaud’s Extensive Researches — Drovetti — Sir Archibald Edmonstone, Bart., discovers Dakhla Oasis — Hoskins — Exaggerated Opinions of Ancients regarding the Oases — Names of Explorers on the Walls of Hibis — Rohlfs’ Expedition — Zittel’s Geological Work — The words ‘Oasis,’ ‘Wah,’ ‘Otu,’ and ‘Set-ament’ — A Theban Myth — Dr. Schweinfurth — Brugsch Bey — Captain H. G. Lyons — Government Survey of the Oases — Dr. John Ball.

Inscribed on the walls of the ancient monuments in the oasis one frequently comes across the names of travellers who visited the same scenes fifty, a hundred, or even two hundred years ago. Many of these explorers wrote descriptions of their travels and experiences, and such early records are naturally of the greatest interest and importance; unfortunately they are now out of print and somewhat difficult to procure, so that I make no apology for briefly referring to those which I have been able to examine. Most of these early records are extremely quaint, and although they are chiefly descriptive of the personal experiences and impressions of the writers, in some cases numerous observations are recorded in a sufficiently exact manner to be of permanent scientific value.

A French physician, Monsieur Poncet, who passed through Kharga in 1698, _en route_ for Abyssinia, appears to have been the only traveller who left any written records of the Great Oasis between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. A translation of the account of his travels was published in English in 1709 (‘A Voyage to Æthiopia’). Accompanied by one Hagi Ali, an officer of the Abyssinian Emperor, and by a Jesuit missionary, Father Charles Francis Xaverius de Brevedent, Poncet set out from the town of Manfalut in the Nile Valley, and travelled along the Derb el Arbaîn, the well-known caravan route to the south. His description of this portion of the journey is as follows:

“We set forward on the 2d of October early in the Morning, and from that very Day we enter’d a frightful Desart. These Desarts are extremely dangerous, because the Sands being moving are rais’d by the least Wind which darken the Air, and falling afterwards in Clouds, Passingers are often buried in them, or at least lose the Route, which they ought to keep.”

Poncet refers to the oasis as ‘Helaoue,’ but although his caravan rested there four days, before proceeding to Dongola, via Shebb and Selîma, he makes no reference to the antiquities; in fact, his remarks on this region are extremely meagre. To quote his own words: “We Arriv’d on the 6th of October at Helaoue; ’Tis a pretty large Borough, and the last that is under the Grand Signior’ Jurisdiction. There is a Garrison in it of 500 Janisaries and 300 Spahi’s under the Command of an Officer whom in that Country they call Kachif. Helaoue is very pleasant, and answers fully its Name, which signifies a Country of Sweetness. Here are to be seen a great Number of Gardens water’d with Brooks, and a World of Palm-trees, which preserve a continual Verdure, Coloquintida is to be found there, and all the Fields are fill’d with Senna, which grows upon a Shrub, about three Foot High. This Drug which is so esteem’d in Europe, is of no use in the Country hereabouts. The Inhabitants of Helaoue in their Illnesses, make only Use of the Root of Ezula, which for a whole Night they infuse in Milk, and take the day after, having first Strain’d it thro’ a Sieve. This Medicine is very Violent, but ’tis what they like and commend very much. The Ezula is a thick Tree, the Blossom of which is blue; it grows into a sort of Ball, of an Oval Figure, full of Cotton, of which the People of that Country make pretty fine Cloth.”

Referring to the deserts which surround the oases, Poncet remarks: “Those vast Wildernesses, where there is neither to be found Bird, nor wild Beast, nor Herbs, no nor so much as a little Fly, and where nothing is to be seen but Mountains of Sand, and the Carcasses, and Bones of Camels, Imprint a certain horrour in the Mind, which makes this Voyage very tedious and disagreeable. It wou’d be a hard matter, to Cross those frightful Desarts without the Assistance of Camels. These Animals will continue six or seven Days, without either eating or drinking, which I cou’d never have believ’d, if I had not observ’d it very particularly.” Poncet further relates that he was assured by a venerable old gentleman of his caravan that camels had been known to cover a desert journey of forty days and nights without either food or water. Although it is to be feared that the ‘ship of the desert’ at the present day is scarcely so abstemious as formerly, we must admit that Poncet’s description of the sterility of the Libyan Desert is little, if at all, exaggerated. One may, indeed, travel for hours without seeing bird, beast, or herb; and even ‘the little fly,’ which seldom fails to make known its presence for some time after leaving the inhabited districts, generally forsakes one before the caravan has proceeded far into the depths of the desert.

W. G. Browne traversed the same route nearly a hundred years later, passing through the oasis in June, 1793. He relates how he entered the depression at the northern extremity, at the pass known as El Ramlia, and camped at Ain Dizé (probably in the neighbourhood of the modern Ain el Qasr), eight hours’ march from Kharga. Browne passed through the depression from north to south, visiting Kharga, Bulaq, Beris, and Maks, whence he followed the usual route to Shebb and Selîma. Like his predecessor, he makes no mention of the antiquities.

Cailliaud, a young French mineralogist, explored Kharga in 1818, and to him we owe the earliest published detailed descriptions and illustrations of the chief antiquities of the oasis. As the existence of important monuments in the oasis was at that time quite unsuspected, Cailliaud’s work attracted considerable attention, and his drawings and descriptions were purchased and published by the French Government and dedicated to the King. Cailliaud set out from Esna in the Nile Valley and crossed the Libyan plateau to the village of Jaja. After visiting the most southerly villages of Dush and Beris, he journeyed northwards to Kharga, then, as now, the chief village, whence, on the completion of his researches, he returned to Farshut on the Nile, via Dêr el Ghennîma and the Wadi Samhûd. Cailliaud’s observations are almost entirely confined to the archæology of the oasis, and his writings yield little information regarding the villages, wells, and cultivated lands.

The Chevalier Drovetti, French Consul-General in Egypt, visited Kharga the same year as Monsieur Cailliaud. He started from Beniâdi, following the Derb el Arbaîn caravan route southwards, and entered the depression at the northern extremity. Drovetti traversed the oasis from north to south, and proceeded thence to Dongola. Later, on his return journey, he crossed the depression in the opposite direction, eventually returning to the Nile Valley by way of the oasis of Dakhla and the Derb el Tawîl.

In 1820 Cailliaud again passed through Kharga. He had explored the oasis of Siwa the previous year, whence he travelled, via Baharia and Farafra, to Dakhla, and thence past Ain Amûr to Kharga village. On this occasion no further researches were undertaken in the depression.

Sir Archibald Edmonstone, Bart., accompanied by two friends, visited Dakhla and Kharga in 1819, and constructed a rough but fairly accurate map, showing the relative position of the two oases, with their bounding escarpments and principal villages. Their situation in the Libyan Desert, with regard to the Nile Valley, is, however, greatly in error, being shown fully a degree too far west and nearly half a degree too far north. Edmonstone followed the Derb el Tawîl route from Beniâdi in the Nile Valley to the village of Belat in Dakhla, returning by the Ain Amûr road to Kharga, and thence to Farshut. The major portion of the account of his travels refers to Dakhla, of which oasis he must, indeed, be regarded as the modern discoverer.

Hoskins explored Kharga in 1835, and published a most valuable and engaging account of his travels a couple of years later. This work, entitled ‘Visit to the Great Oasis of the Libyan Desert,’ contains a number of illustrations depicting the scenery, the chief monuments and their hieroglyphics, etc., made from original drawings and paper casts. Many of the inscriptions are given in full, both in the original and translated into English, and the work of all previous writers and explorers is carefully summarized. In some cases I have verified the accuracy of Hoskins’ drawings by comparing them with photographs taken from the same points, and have been much struck with the insignificant amount of decay which some of the buildings have undergone during the course of over seventy years.

Rizagat, near Thebes, was Hoskins’ starting-point, and he entered the depression by the Bulaq pass, crossing the oasis-floor to the eminence known as El Gorn el Gennâh. Surveying the oasis from this point of vantage, Hoskins remarks that the attractions of the cultivated portions of the depression, those

“Tufted isles that verdant rise amid the Libyan waste,”

are apt to be exaggerated, owing to their great contrast to the surrounding deserts. “The fair appearance then of this oasis is in a great measure fictitious; and has chiefly its origin in the relief afforded to the mind, wearied by the monotony and dreariness of the surrounding wastes. It seems to me therefore, that the only rational way of accounting for the exaggerated epithets which the ancient writers and some modern travellers have applied to this district, is to attribute them to their surprise, at finding in such a fearful region any verdure, any habitable spot, and to the exhilarating effect on the spirits of this agreeable contrast to the dreary deserts which they have just crossed. But comfortless as was my journey through the wilderness, and beautiful as the woods of palm-trees, doums, and acacias in the Oasis certainly are, still the vivid recollection of the superior loveliness of the banks of the Nile, prevents my consenting to call these regions ‘the Gardens of the Hesperides’; and sadly must the oasis have diminished in beauty, if it ever merited the praise which Herodotus bestowed upon the place, in calling it ‘the Island of the Blessed.’”

Hoskins, who was accompanied by two other Englishmen, made splendid use of the fortnight spent in the oasis, although unfortunately, just before the termination of his visit, he sustained a violent attack of fever. Their departure is thus described: “After ascending the mountain which bounds the Oasis, we lingered some time at the summit, to take, I may certainly say, our last view of the place; for having, as the Arabs say, got all its antiquities on paper, and having providentially once escaped its pestilential atmosphere, we shall never, I think, by any possibility, have the slightest inclination to revisit such a baneful region.”

Most of these early explorers found time to cut their names on the walls of the temple of Hibis, and Cailliaud must have spent hours in this occupation, as he has left a long and neatly executed inscription recording himself as the original and genuine discoverer of that noble edifice. The names of these explorers, who in some cases suffered considerable hardships in visiting the oases, are, however, quite overshadowed by the numberless scrawls made in recent years by a host of otherwise unknown petty officials of the Government, who have had to take their turn of duty and banishment in the greatly dreaded desert. The dated names cut in the walls of the temple are of some value, as an examination of them frequently yields reliable evidence of the rate of weathering of the stone since the time at which they were inscribed.

It was not until after the winter of 1873-74, when the great German expedition, under the leadership of Rohlfs, with Zittel, Jordan, and Ascherson as geologist, topographer, and botanist respectively, visited all the chief oases of the eastern portion of the Libyan Desert, that any connected scientific observations of importance, other than those dealing with archæology, were published. The Rohlfs expedition astronomically determined the positions of selected points in each oasis, and produced a map on which the principal villages and the approximate limits of the depressions were correctly shown. Zittel at the same time worked out the general relations of the different geological formations found in the country, described their main divisions, and indicated approximately the areas occupied by them. So thoroughly, indeed, did this expedition accomplish its mission that its results have formed a sound basis for all later scientific work in this part of Egypt.

As the voluminous memoirs recording the observations of the members of the Rohlfs expedition are easily obtainable at the present day, it is unnecessary here to do more than briefly refer to a few of their more general remarks on the oasis of Kharga. In his ‘Three Months in the Libyan Desert,’ Gerhard Rohlfs states that he and his companions travelled from Dakhla Oasis by the Ain Amûr road, and were greeted at Kharga village by Schweinfurth, who was for the time being residing in a disused alum factory. Rohlfs spent only two or three days in the neighbourhood of Kharga, and remarks that the expedition did not undertake detailed work on the antiquities, as the latter had already been so competently described by Hoskins and other previous explorers; a few corrections and amendments of published accounts of the temple were, however, made. The splendid preservation of the Christian necropolis, with its mausolea of unburnt brick, is remarked upon, and Rohlfs adds that, in beauty and ingenious arrangement, this burial-ground can only be excelled by the necropolis of Cyrene.

Rohlfs describes Kharga village as being pretty from a distance, but remarks that the narrow dirty alleys are the pictures of laziness and poverty; the streets are covered in for protection against the rays of the sun, a common practice throughout the Sahara.

The word ‘oasis’ is old Egyptian, as also is the Arabic ‘wah,’ the latter word being also found in Coptic, and signifying an inhabited place; nevertheless, the word ‘wah’ was never used by the ancient Egyptians to designate the oases. These they called ‘otu,’ which means a place where bodies are embalmed. ‘Otu’ has its origin in the Theban myth, according to which Seth, the murderer of Osiris, was pursued by Horus to Koptos, where he was captured and thrown into a dungeon. His corpse was afterwards found by his friends, and taken to the oases for burial.[1] The inscriptions on the temple of Hibis in Kharga refer to the oases under the comprehensive name ‘Set-ament,’ the ‘Western Lands.’

About the same time Dr. Schweinfurth, whose services to Egypt in so many branches of science stand pre-eminent, published important contributions on some of the archæological remains. Two or three years later Brugsch Bey brought out an account of the antiquities of the oasis, with translations of a number of the inscriptions on the temples of Nadûra and Hibis. The antiquities will be briefly referred to in my account of the history of the oasis under the Persians and the Romans, and for fuller details the reader is referred to the publications of Cailliaud, Hoskins, Schweinfurth, Brugsch, and some still later writers.

In 1893-94 Captain H. G. Lyons, R.E., in the course of a military patrol, undertaken in order to ascertain the measures necessary to protect the inhabitants of the oasis from possible Dervish raids, made valuable geological observations on the Eocene and Cretaceous systems, especially in relation to the connection of folding and water-supply. These he discussed in a paper read before the Geological Society of London in 1894, and it was mainly due to the interest it aroused, and to his initiative in pointing out to the Egyptian authorities the importance of having a comprehensive examination of the country carried out, that the Geological Survey of Egypt was established in 1896.

The detailed survey of the Libyan Desert was taken up in October, 1897, and completed in June of the following year, the four oases being mapped on the scale of 1 to 50,000 by plane-table triangulation, checked and adjusted by numerous astronomical observations. Direct measurements by measuring-wheel were also employed to a considerable extent. Baharia Oasis was the first to be taken in hand, Mr. Leonard Gorringe and I taking the western side, and my colleagues, Messrs. Ball and Vuta, the eastern. This plan of splitting up an oasis-depression between two surveying parties was not, however, found satisfactory, and on the completion of Baharia it was decided that Ball should take up the oasis of Kharga, while Farafra and Dakhla fell to my lot. The results of this survey are published in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Egypt.

During the last three years I have been fortunate in having had opportunities of studying in some detail the topography, geology, and water-supply of the oasis of Kharga. This detailed examination has enabled me to revise and amplify pioneer work, and has, in certain instances, forced me to differ from the opinions expressed by my predecessors in the same field, views which, in the light of the evidence available at the time, were doubtless well justified. In the same way may future research necessitate the modification or alteration of the conclusions herein expressed, and for many years to come the region of the oases will offer a vast field for further scientific work.

Before concluding this brief account of the literature on the oasis of Kharga, I should like to take the opportunity of expressing my high appreciation of the energy and purpose of my former colleague, Dr. John Ball, who, in spite of the many hardships and difficulties inseparable from scientific work in the Libyan Desert, in such a short time accomplished so much.