Chapter XXVI: Letter XXIV

DONGOLA. _June 15, 1844._

Before our departure from Barkal, I undertook an excursion up the Nile into the district of the cataracts, which we had cut off in our desert journey. I also wished to learn the character of this part of the country, the only portion of the valley of the Nile which we had not traversed with the caravan. We went by water to Kasinqar, and remained there the night. From here arise wild masses of granite, which form numerous islands in the rivers, and stop the navigation.

With much trouble we arrived the next day, before the camels were ready, at the island of Ishishi, surrounded by violent and dangerous eddies. We here found ruins of walls and buildings of brick, sometimes of stone, both hewn and unhewn, which leads us to the conclusion that they must have served as fortifications to the island at different times; yet there were no inscriptions, excepting one in a few unintelligible signs. We did not mount our camels at Kasinqar until after nine o’clock, and rode along the right hand shore, between the granite rocks, which leave but very little room for a scanty vegetation. The eye is relieved almost wholly in the numerous, and generally smaller islands, by green clumps of trees and cultivated spots multifariously intersected by the black crags. There is scarcely room for larger villages among these rocks; few, indeed, could find sustenance among them. The villages consist of single and small rows of houses stretching along at a great distance, yet, bearing the same name, however, to a certain extent. The plain of Kasinqar ended with a beautiful group of palms. Then we entered the district of Kû’eh, followed by the long tract of Hamdab, to which belongs the island of Mérui or Méroe, more than a quarter of an hour in length. Here, too, the name is explained by the situation. It is very high, sometimes forty feet above the water-level; the one now among the larger islands is wholly barren and uninhabited, and excepting the black crags periodically washed by the waters, it is completely white. This is occasioned principally by the dazzling sand-drifts which cover it; but strangely enough, the rocks jutting out of the sand are also white, either from the broad veins of quartz, in the same manner as another peculiar white rock which I had seen in the province of Robatât, lying on the way, and which was called by the camel-drivers Hager Mérui, or because the weather-beaten granite here has contracted this colour. The name of the village of Méraui, near Barkal, has, perhaps, the same origin; here the white precipices, running from Méraui to the river, and which attracted my attention on our departure, have suggested the name by their colour.

On the opposite shore the Gebel Kongêli, comes near to the river, also called Gebel Mérui; from the island as well as the rushing cataract a little above the island, which has received the name of Shellâl Mérui.

At four o’clock we arrived at the ruin Hellet el Bib, which from a distance has quite the appearance of a castle of the middle ages. It rises on low rocks, the ridge of which traverses the court and the building itself, so that a part of it appears like an upper story. The whole edifice is built of unburnt, but good and carefully-formed bricks, cemented with a small quantity of mortar, and covered with a coating of the same. Within are various large and small rooms, some with half-round niches in them and arched doorways. The walls of the west side were fifteen feet high. The outer wall of the court of unhewn stone, but carefully built up to about five to eight feet, enclosed a tolerably regular square, the side of which was about sixty-five paces long.

This small castle, but still respectable for the neighbourhood, reminds one, by its niches and arched doors, of the Christian architecture of former centuries, but it does not appear to have been destined for any religious purpose. Perhaps in its prime it belonged to the powerful and warlike tribes of the Shaiqîeh, which, according to tradition, immigrated from Arabia into this neighbourhood some centuries ago. At the time of the Egyptian conquest the country was under the dominion of three Shaiqîeh princes; probably one of them resided here. The surrounding country was also more favoured by nature, the shore flatter, beset with bushes, here and there bordered by a fertile piece of land.

After I had sketched the plan of the building, we set off at nine o’clock in the evening, by the light of a full moon, on our way back, which we shortened considerably by taking the road from the island of Saffi through the desert, where we passed the night, on an open sand plain, in the great granite field. About five o’clock, between moonshine and morning dawn, we were again on our way, and by nine o’clock we had reached our ship at Kasinqar.

Near this place I met with a tree quite new to me, in a little Wadi, which led to the river. It was called Bân, and does not grow anywhere but in this Wadi, which is called Chôr el Bân from it, and in another, near Méraui.[89] A strong white-barked stem, not unlike that of our walnut-tree, with some more stems round it, and short white branches, grew short and knotty out of the ground. The branches were now almost naked, a few only had leaves, if we can call the great bunches of switches by that name. The fruit is a long, round fluted ball, which splits into three pieces, when the five to ten black-shelled nuts (of about the size of a hazel-nut) which it contains, are ripe; the white sweet, though rather sharp, oily kernel is not unpleasant; but it is mostly used by the inhabitants to press oil from. The bloom of the tree is yellow, and grows in bunches.

At noon the Sheikh of Nuri came to our boat, from whom I obtained some more information as to the cataract country. There are in the province of Shaiqîeh and the adjoining one of Monassir eight especial cataracts: the first, Shelâl Gerêndid, near the island Ishishi; Shelâl Terâi, near Kû’eh; Shelâl Mérui; Shelâl Dabák, near the island Uli; Shelâl el Edermîeh, e’Kabenât, e Tanarâi, and Om Derás. From hence a rocky district stretches to El Kâb, whence the stream flows to Shelâl Mogrât, in the great reach to Berber.

There is nothing now spoken in this whole neighbourhood but Arabic; but there is still a recollection of the former Nubian population, as there are yet a number of villages distinguished from the others as Nuba villages. Above the province Dongola, the following were pointed out to me as such:--Gebel Maqál and Zûma on the right shore, and near the island Massaui, which also bears the Nubian name of Abranârti; then on the left hand Belled e’ Nûba, between Debbe and Abu Dôm, Haluf or Nuri, and Bellel, opposite Gerf e’ Sheikh and Kasinqar. Then the account springs over to Chôsh e’ Gurûf, a little below the island of Mogrât, and towards Salame and Darmali, two villages between Mechêref and Dârmer; and finally, there is a Belled e’ Nûba, north of Gôs Burri, in the province Metamme.

At last, on the 4th of June, we quitted Barkal, after we had loaded the Ram and the other heavy monuments in two transport vessels.

We remained the first night in Abu Dôm on the left shore. I had heard of a Fakir, belonging to this place, who was said to possess manuscript notes on the tribe of Shaiqîeh Arabs. He was an intelligent, and for this country, a learned man, and I found him quite ready, not to give me the original of the few sheets he possessed, but to set to work immediately and copy them for me.

The next morning we landed first in Tanqássi, about the distance of an hour and a half from Abu Dôm, where we were to find ruins. The Fakir Daha, who belonged to the Korêsh, the tribe of the Prophet, accompanied us to the now inconsiderable mounds of bricks. We passed by his hereditary tomb, a little cupola building erected by his grandfather, which already had not only received him, but also his father and several other relations. From hence I espied some hills in the distance, which the Fakir declared to be natural. Nevertheless we rode up to them, and found, at about half an hour’s distance from the river, more than twenty tolerably large pyramids, now apparently formed of nothing but black mud, but originally built of Nile bricks. Single stones lay round about, and on the east side, at some distance, there were always two little heaps of stones, which appeared to have belonged to a kind of ante-chamber, and perhaps were connected with the pyramid by brick walls. Nowhere, however, were there any hewn stones or inscriptions to be found. On the opposite shore, near Kurru, we also found a field of pyramids, but very few ruins of towns were to be discovered. The largest of the two most considerable pyramids, named Quntûr, was about thirty-five feet high, and towards the south-east were the remains of an antechamber. Around these two were grouped twenty-one smaller ones, of which four, like the largest pyramid, were built entirely of sandstone, but are now mostly in ruins; others consisted only of black basalt. Finally, westward of all the ground plan of a large apparently quite massive and consequently completely ruined pyramid was to be seen, whose foundation was in the rock. It appears also that this pyramid, which by its solid architecture was distinguished from all the surrounding ones, belonged to a royal dynasty of Napata; thus it was easier to account for the want of city ruins here than on the opposite side.

Three quarters of an hour down the stream on the right, lies the little village of Zûma. Near it, towards the mountains, rises an old fortress, with towers of defence, called Kárat Négil, the outer walls of which were ruined and destroyed about fifty or sixty years ago, when the present inhabitants of Zûma settled here. The name is derived from that of an old king of the country, called Négil, in whose time the surrounding land, which is now barren, was still reached and fertilized by the Nile.

The first discovery on the road to the fortress was another number of pyramids, of which eight were yet about twenty feet high; including the ruined ones, which seemed to have been as usual the most massive, there were altogether thirty; to the south-west the old quarries are yet to be seen, which had furnished the materials for the pyramids.

Whilst these three pyramid fields, Tanqassi, Kurru, and Zûma, or Kárat Négil, lying so near to each other, and whose situation has been carefully paced off and marked by Erbkam, show that the neighbourhood had a numerous and flourishing population in the heathen times, we discovered in the adjoining country and more or less through the whole province of Dongala, the remains of Christian churches.

On the 7th of June we visited the three pyramids, at a little distance from each other, all on the right hand shore of the river. Two hours and a half distant from Zûma, Bachît is situated. Here the rock-wall of the desert extends to the river, and bears upon it a fortress, without doubt belonging to Christian times, with eighteen semi-circular projecting towers of defence. In the interior, under heaps of rubbish, were the ruins of a church, which appeared to have marked the centre of the fortress; it was here only sixty-three feet long, and the whole nave rested on four columns and two wall pillars, nevertheless the plan completely answered to the universal type.

The church of Magál, which is only half an hour further, must have been much larger, as we found among the ruins granite monolithic columns thirteen feet and a half high up to the divided capital of a foot and a half, and two feet in diameter; it appeared to have had five naves.

From here we arrived in an hour at Gebel Dêqa. Strong, massive walls here also surrounded a Christian fortress, which stood upon the projecting sandstone rock, and within it the ruins of several large buildings, among which was a small church with three naves, similar to that at Bachît.

This is the boundary of the province of Shaiqîeh towards Dongola, the last place to the south whose inhabitants speak Arabic. Formerly the boundary of the Nubian population and speech extended without doubt as far as the cataracts above Barkâl. This appears to have caused the numerous fortresses in this neighbourhood, and also the strong fortification of the island of Ishishi.

The Nubians, to whom already, in the sixth century, Christianity had penetrated by way of Abyssinia, were then a powerful people, till their Christian priest-kings, in the fourteenth century, turned to Islamism. At this time the building of the numerous churches, whose ruins we found scattered through the whole province northwards from Wadi Gâzâl, must have taken place.

We went the same day to Ambukôl, at the point of the western reach of the Nile, and remained there the night. The following day we reached Tifâr, and again visited the ruins of a fortress, with the remains of a church.

On the way we met Hassan Pasha’s boat, which was going to Méraui. We fired salutes, and ran alongside each other. The Pasha inquired earnestly about the treasures which he supposed would be in the pyramids of Barkal, and with the greatest complaisance promised us anything we desired in furtherance of our journey and object. After he had immediately returned our visit, we parted, firing fresh salutes.

On the 10th of June we reached Old Dongola, the former capital of this Christian kingdom. The immense ruins of the town show little more at present than its former great extent. Upon a mountain, near which commands a delightful prospect all round, stands a mosque. An Arabic inscription, on marble, shows that this was opened on the 20th Rabî el anel, in the year 717 (1st June, 1317), after the victory of Safeddin Abdallah e’ Nâsir over the infidels.

As we had discovered so few monumental remains since our departure from Barkal, to employ the leisure time which we had in our boat, I busied myself with making every possible research into and comparison with the present language and the Nubian. It offers very remarkable points in the science of language, but does not show the least similarity to the Egyptian. I consider that the whole race must have come at a late period out of the south-west into the valley of the Nile. We have now a servant from Derr, the capital of Lower Nubia, who speaks tolerably good Italian; he is alert and intelligent, and is of great service to me on account of his knowledge of the Mahass dialects. I have sometimes tormented him with questions for five or six hours in a day in the boat, as it is no small trouble to either of us to understand each other upon the forms and changes of grammar. He has, at any rate, acquired more respect for his own language, which everywhere here, when compared with the Arabic, is reckoned bad and vulgar, and people are ashamed of being obliged to speak it.

When we arrived yesterday, after three days’ journey from Old Dongola here, in New Dongola, generally called El Orde (the camp) by the Arabs, we had the great pleasure of receiving the large packet of letters, of which we had already been informed by Hassan Pasha on the road. Since then we look forward with fresh courage to the last difficult part of our journey to the south, as we must here, alas! leave our boats, and mount the far more uncomfortable ship of the desert. The cataract district, now lying before us, is only to be navigated at high water, and then not without danger. Our richly-laden stone boat we were obliged to submit to the dangerous trial, as land-carriage for the Ram and the other monuments was naturally not to be thought of.

We shall not be able to set out from here so immediately, on account of the general reform which must take place in our preparations for the journey of the next five or six weeks. From our boat with the packages we must, however, separate ourselves, as it must seize upon the right moment of the high water, which will not be for some weeks.