Chapter X: Book I (4)

Dendera stands on the edge of a small, but fruitful plain; the wheat was thirteen inches high, now at Christmas; their harvest is in the end of March. The valley is not above five miles wide, from mountain to mountain. Here we first saw the Doom-tree in great profusion growing among the palms, from which it scarcely is distinguishable at a distance. It is the [113]Palma Thebaica Cuciofera. Its stone is like that of a peach covered with a black bitter pulp, which resembles a walnut over ripe.

A little before we came to Dendera we saw the first crocodile, and afterwards hundreds, lying upon every island, like large flocks of cattle, yet the inhabitants of Dendera drive their beasts of every kind into the river, and they stand there for hours. The girls and women too, that come to fetch water in jars, stand up to their knees in the water for a considerable time; and if we guess by what happens, their danger is full as little as their fear, for none of them, that ever I heard of, had been bit by a crocodile. However, if the Denderites were as keen and expert hunters of Crocodiles, as some [114]historians tell us they were formerly, there is surely no part in the Nile where they would have better sport than here, immediately before their own city.

Having made some little acknowledgment to those who had conducted me through the ruins in great safety, I returned to the Canja, or rather to my tent, which I placed in the first firm ground. I saw, at some distance, a well-dressed man, with a white turban, and yellow shawl covering it, and a number of ill-looking people about him. As I thought this was some quarrel among the natives, I took no notice of it, but went to my tent, in order to rectify my quadrant for observation.

As soon as our Rais saw me enter my tent, he came with expressions of very great indignation. “What signifies it, said he, that you are a friend to the Bey, have letters to every body, and are at the door of Furshout, if yet here is a man that will take your boat away from you?”

“Softly, softly, I answered, Hassan, he may be in the right. If Ali Bey, Shekh Hamam, or any body want a boat for public service, I must yield mine. Let us hear.”

“Shekh Hamam and Ali Bey! says he; why it is a fool, an idiot, and an ass; a fellow that goes begging about, and says he is a saint; but he is a natural fool, full as much knave as fool however; he is a thief, I know him to be a thief.”

“If he is a saint, said I, Hagi Hassan, as you are another, known to be so all the world over, I don’t see why I should interfere; saint against saint is a fair battle.”--“It is the Cadi, replies he, and no one else.”

“Come away with me, said I, Hassan, and let us see this cadi; if it is the cadi, it is not the fool, it may be the knave.”

He was sitting upon the ground on a carpet, moving his head backwards and forwards, and saying prayers with beads in his hand. I had no good opinion of him from his first appearance, but said, _Salam alicum_, boldly; this seemed to offend him, as he looked at me with great contempt, and gave me no answer, though he appeared a little disconcerted by my confidence.

“Are you the _Cafr_, said he, to whom that boat belongs?”

“No, Sir, said I, it belongs to Hagi Hassan.”

“Do you think, says he, I call Hagi Hassan, who is a Sherriffe, _Cafr_?”

“That depends upon the measure of your prudence, said I, of which as yet I have no proof that can enable me to judge or decide.”

“Are you the _Christian_ that was at the ruins in the morning? says he.”

“I was at the ruins in the morning, replied I, and _I am a Christian_. Ali Bey calls that denomination of people _Nazarani_, that is the Arabic of Cairo and Constantinople, and I understand no other.”

“I am, said he, going to Girgé, and this holy saint is with me, and there is no boat but your’s bound that way, for which reason I have promised to take him with me.”

By this time the _saint_ had got into the boat, and sat forward; he was an ill-favoured, low, sick-like man, and seemed to be almost blind.

You should not make rash promises, said I to the cadi, for this one you made you never can perform; I am not going to Girgé. Ali Bey, _whose slave you are_, gave me this boat, but told me, I was not to ship either saints or cadies. There is my boat, go a-board if you dare; and you, Hagi Hassan, let me see you lift an oar, or loose a sail, either for the cadi or the saint, if I am not with them.

I went to my tent, and the Rais followed me. “Hagi Hassan, said I, there is a proverb in my country, It is better to flatter fools than to fight them: Cannot you go to the fool, and give him half-a-crown? will he take it, do you think, and abandon his journey to Girgé? afterwards leave me to settle with the cadi for his voyage thither.”

“He will take it with all his heart, he will kiss your hand for half-a-crown, says Hassan.”

“Let him have half-a-crown from me, said I, and desire him to go about his business, and intimate that I give him it in charity, at same time expect compliance with the condition.”

In the interim, a Christian Copht came into the tent: “Sir, said he, you don’t know what you are doing; the cadi is a great man, give him his present, and have done with him.”

“When he behaves better, it will be time enough for that, said I?--If you are a friend of his, advise him to be quiet, before an order comes from Cairo by a Serach, and carries him thither. Your countryman Risk would not give me the advice you do?”

Risk! says he; Do you know Risk? Is not that Risk’s writing, said I, shewing him a letter from the Bey? Wallah! (by God) it is, says he, and away he went without speaking a word farther.

The saint had taken his half-crown, and had gone away singing, it being now near dark.--The cadi went away, and the mob dispersed, and we directed a Moor to cry, That all people should, in the night-time, keep away from the tent, or they would be fired at; a stone or two were afterwards thrown, but did not reach us.

I finished my observation, and ascertained the latitude of Dendera, then packed up my instruments, and sent them on board.

Mr Norden seems greatly to have mistaken the position of this town, which, conspicuous and celebrated as it is by ancient authors, and justly a principal point of attention to modern travellers, he does not so much as describe; and, in his map, he places Dendera twenty or thirty miles to the southward of Badjoura; whereas it is about nine miles to the northward. For Badjoura is in lat. 26° 3´, and Dendera is in 26° 10´.

It is a great pity, that he who had a taste for this very remarkable kind of architecture, should have passed it, both in going up and coming down; as it is, beyond comparison, a place that would have given more satisfaction than all Upper Egypt.

While we were striking our tent, a great mob came down, but without the cadi. As I ordered all my people to take their arms in their hands, they kept at a very considerable distance; but the fool, or saint, got into the boat with a yellow flag in his hand, and sat down at the foot of the main-mast, saying, with an idiot smile, That we should fire, for he was out of the reach of the shot; some stones were thrown, but did not reach us.

I ordered two of my servants with large brass ship-blunderbusses, very bright and glittering, to get upon the top of the cabbin. I then pointed a wide-mouthed Swedish blunderbuss from one of the windows, and cried out, Have a care;--the next stone that is thrown I fire my cannon amongst you, which will sweep away 300 of you instantly from the face of the earth; though I believe there were not above two hundred then present.

I ordered Hagi Hassan to cast off his cord immediately, and, as soon as the blunderbuss appeared, away ran every one of them, and, before they could collect themselves to return, our vessel was in the middle of the stream. The wind was fair, though not very fresh, on which we set both our sails, and made great way.

The saint, who had been singing all the time we were disputing, began now to shew some apprehensions for his own safety: He asked Hagi Hassan, if this was the way to Girgé? and had for answer, “Yes, it is the fool’s way to Girgé.”

We carried him about a mile, or more, up the river; then a convenient landing-place offering, I asked him whether he got my money, or not, last night? He said, he had for yesterday, but he had got none for to-day.--“Now, the next thing I have to ask you, said I, is, Will you go ashore of your own accord, or will you be thrown into the Nile? He answered with great confidence, Do you know, that, at my word, I can fix your boat to the bottom of the Nile, and make it grow a tree there for ever?” “Aye, says Hagi Hassan, and make oranges and lemons grow on it likewise, can’t you? You are a cheat.” “Come, Sirs, said I, lose no time, put him out.” I thought he had been blind and weak; and the boat was not within three feet of the shore, when placing one foot upon the gunnel, he leaped clean upon land.

We slacked our vessel down the stream a few yards, filling our sails, and stretching away. Upon seeing this, our saint fell into a desperate passion, cursing, blaspheming, and stamping with his feet, at every word crying “Shar Ullah!” _i. e._ may God send, and do justice. Our people began to taunt and gibe him, asking him if he would have a pipe of tobacco to warm him, as the morning was very cold; but I bade them be content. It was curious to see him, as far as we could discern, sometimes sitting down, sometimes jumping and skipping about, and waving his flag, then running about a hundred yards, as if it were after us; but always returning, though at a slower pace.

None of the rest followed. He was indeed apparently the tool of that rascal the cadi, and, after his designs were frustrated, nobody cared what became of him. He was left in the lurch, as those of his character generally are, after serving the purpose of _knaves_.

CHAP. VI.

_Arrive at Furshout--Adventure of Friar Christopher--Visit
Thebes--Luxor and Carnac--Large Ruins at Edfu and Esné--Proceed
on our Voyage._

We arrived happily at Furshout that same forenoon, and went to the convent of Italian Friars, who, like those of Achmim, are of the order of the reformed Franciscans, of whose mission I shall speak at large in the sequel.

We were received more kindly here than at Achmim; but Padre Antonio, superior of that last convent, upon which this of Furshout also depends, following us, our good reception suffered a small abatement. In short, the good Friars would not let us _buy_ meat, because they said it would be a _shame_ and _reproach_ to them; and they would not _give_ us any, for fear that should be a reproach to them likewise, if it was told in Europe they _lived well_.

After some time I took the liberty of providing for myself, to which they submitted with christian patience. Yet these convents were founded expressly with a view, and from a necessity of providing for travellers between Egypt and Ethiopia, and we were strictly intitled to that entertainment. Indeed there is very little use for this institution in Upper Egypt, as long as rich Arabs are there, much more charitable and humane to stranger Christians than the Monks.

Furshout is in a large and cultivated plain. It is nine miles over to the foot of the mountains, all sown with wheat. There are, likewise, plantations of sugar canes. The town, as they said, contains above 10,000 people, but I have no doubt this computation is rather exaggerated.

We waited upon the Shekh Hamam; who was a big, tall, handsome man; I apprehend not far from sixty. He was dressed in a large fox-skin pelisse over the rest of his cloaths, and had a yellow India shawl wrapt about his head, like a turban. He received me with great politeness and condescension, made me sit down by him, and asked me more about Cairo than about Europe.

The Rais had told him our adventure with the saint, at which he laughed very heartily, saying, I was a wise man and a man of conduct. To me he only said, “they are bad people at Dendera;” to which I answered, “there were very few places in the world in which there were not some bad.” He replied, “Your observation is true, but there they are all bad; rest yourselves however here, it is a quiet place; though there are still some even in this place not quite so good as they _ought_ to be.”

The Shekh was a man of immense riches, and, little by little, had united in his own person, all the separate districts of Upper Egypt, each of which formerly had its particular prince. But his interest was great at Constantinople, where he applied directly for what he wanted, insomuch as to give a jealousy to the Beys of Cairo. He had in farm from the Grand Signior almost the whole country, between Siout and Syene, or Assouan. I believe this is the Shekh of Upper Egypt, whom Mr Irvine speaks of so gratefully. He was betrayed, and murdered some time after, by one of the Beys whom he had protected in his own country.

While we were at Furshout, there happened a very extraordinary phænomenon. It rained the whole night, and till about nine o’clock next morning; and the people began to be very apprehensive least the whole town should be destroyed. It is a perfect prodigy to see rain here; and the prophets said it portended a dissolution of government, which was justly verified soon afterwards, and at that time indeed was extremely probable.

Furshout is in lat 26° 3´30´´; above that, to the southward, on the same plain, is another large village, belonging to Shekh Ismael, a nephew of Shekh Hamam. It is _a large town_, built with clay like Furshout, and surrounded with groves of palm trees, and very large plantations of sugar canes. Here they make sugar.

Shekh Ismael was a very pleasant and agreeable man, but in bad health, having a violent asthma, and sometimes pleuretic complaints, to be removed by bleeding only. He had given these friars a house for a convent in Badjoura; but as they had not yet taken possession of it, he desired me to come and stay there.

Friar Christopher, whom I understood to have been a Milanese barber, was his physician, but he had not the science of an English barber in surgery. He could not bleed, but with a sort of instrument resembling that which is used in cupping, only that it had but a single lancet; with this he had been lucky enough as yet to escape laming his patients. This bleeding instrument they call the Tabange, or the Pistol, as they do the cupping instrument likewise. I never could help shuddering at seeing the confidence with which this man placed a small brass box upon all sorts of arms, and drew the trigger for the point to go where fortune pleased.

Shekh Ismael was very fond of this surgeon, and the surgeon of his patron; all would have gone well, had not friar Christopher aimed likewise at being an Astronomer. Above all he gloried in being a violent enemy to the Copernican system, which unluckily he had mistaken for a heresy in the church; and partly from his own slight ideas and stock of knowledge, partly from some Milanese almanacs he had got, he attempted, the weather being cloudy, to foretel the time when the moon was to change, it being that of the month Ramadan, when the Mahometans’ lent, or fasting, was to begin.

It happened that the Badjoura people, and their Shekh Ismael, were upon indifferent terms with Hamam, and his men of Furshout, and being desirous to get a triumph over their neighbours by the help of their friar Christopher, they continued to eat, drink, and smoke, two days after the conjunction.

The moon had been seen the second night, by a Fakir[115], in the desert, who had sent word to Shekh Hamam, and he had begun his fast. But Ismael, assured by friar Christopher that it was impossible, had continued eating.

The people of Furshout, meeting their neighbours singing and dancing, and with pipes of tobacco in their mouths, _all cried out_ with astonishment, and asked, “Whether they had abjured their religion or not?”--From words they came to blows; seven or eight were wounded on each side, luckily none of them mortally.--Hamam next day came to inquire at his nephew Shekh Ismael, what had been the occasion of all this, and to consult what was to be done, for the two villages had declared one another infidels.

I was then with my servants in Badjoura, in great quiet and tranquillity, under the protection, and very much in the confidence of Ismael; but hearing the hooping, and noise in the streets, I had barricadoed my outer-doors. A high wall surrounded the house and court-yard, and there I kept quiet, satisfied with being in perfect safety.

In the interim, I heard it was a quarrel about the keeping of Ramadan, and, as I had provisions, water, and employment enough in the house, I resolved to stay at home till they fought it out; being very little interested which of them should be victorious.--About noon, I was sent for to Ismael’s house, and found his uncle Hamam with him.

He told me, there were several wounded in a quarrel about the Ramadan, and recommended them to my care. “About Ramadan, said I! what, your principal fast! have you not settled that yet?”--Without answering me as to this, he asked, “When does the moon change?” As I knew nothing of friar Christopher’s operations, I answered, in hours, minutes, and seconds, as I found them in the ephemerides.

“Look you there, says Hamam, this is fine work!” and, directing his discourse to me, “When shall we see it?” Sir, said I, that is impossible for me to tell, as it depends on the state of the heavens; but, if the sky is clear, you must see her to-night; if you had looked for her, probably you would have seen her last night low in the horizon, thin like a thread; she is now three days old.--He started at this, then told me friar Christopher’s operation, and the consequences of it.

Ismael was ashamed, cursed him, and threatened revenge. It was too late to retract, the moon appeared, and spoke for herself; and the unfortunate friar was disgraced, and banished from Badjoura. Luckily the pleuretic stitch came again, and I was called to bleed him, which I did with a lancet; but he was so terrified at its brightness, at the ceremony of the towel and the bason, and at my preparation, that it did not please him, and therefore he was obliged to be reconciled to Christopher and his tabange.--Badjoura is in lat. 26° 3´ 16´´; and is situated on the western shore of the Nile, as Furshout is likewise.

We left Furshout the 7th of January 1769, early in the morning. We had not hired our boat farther than Furshout; but the good terms which subsisted between me and the saint, my Rais, made an accommodation very easy to carry us farther. He now agreed for L. 4 to carry us to Syene and down again; but, if he behaved well, he expected a trifling premium. “And, if you behave ill, Hassan, said I, what do you think you deserve?”--“To be hanged, said he, I deserve, and desire no better.”

Our wind at first was but scant. The Rais said, that he thought his boat did not go as it used to do, and that it was growing into a tree. The wind, however, freshened up towards noon, and eased him of his fears. We passed a large town called How, on the west side of the Nile. About four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at El Gourni, a small village, a quarter of a mile distant from the Nile. It has in it a temple of old Egyptian architecture. I think that this, and the two adjoining heaps of ruins, which are at the same distance from the Nile, probably might have been part of the ancient Thebes.

Shaamy and Taamy are two colossal statues in a sitting posture covered with hieroglyphics. The southmost is of one stone, and perfectly entire. The northmost is a good deal more mutilated. It was probably broken by Cambyses; and they have since endeavoured to repair it. The other has a very remarkable head-dress, which can be compared to nothing but a tye-wig, such as worn in the present day. These two, situated in a very fertile spot belonging to Thebes, were apparently the Nilometers of that town, as the marks which the water has left upon the bases sufficiently shew. The bases of both of them are bare, and uncovered, to the bottom of the plinth, or lowest member of their pedestal; so that there is not the eighth of an inch of the lowest part of them covered with mud, though they stand in the middle of a plain, and have stood there certainly above 3000 years; since which time, if the fanciful rise of the land of Egypt by the Nile had been true, the earth should have been raised so as fully to conceal half of them both.

These statues are covered with inscriptions of Greek and Latin; the import of which seems to be, that there were certain travellers, or particular people, who heard Memnon’s statue utter the sound it was said to do, upon being struck with the rays of the sun.

It may be very reasonably expected, that I should here say something of the building and fall of the first Thebes; but as this would carry me to very early ages, and interrupt for a long time my voyage upon the Nile; as this is, besides, connected with the history of several nations which I am about to describe, and more proper for the work of an historian, than the cursory descriptions of a traveller, I shall defer saying any thing upon the subject, till I come to treat of it in the first of these characters, and more especially till I shall speak of the origin of the _Shepherds_, and the calamities brought upon Egypt by that powerful nation, a people often mentioned by different writers, but whose history hitherto has been but imperfectly known.

Nothing remains of the ancient Thebes but four prodigious temples, all of them in appearance more ancient, but neither so entire, nor so magnificent, as those of Dendera. The temples at Medinet Tabu are the most elegant of these. The hieroglyphics are cut to the depth of half-a-foot, in some places, but we have still the same figures, or rather a less variety, than at Dendera.

The hieroglyphics are of four sorts; first, such as have only the contour marked, and, as it were, scratched only in the stone. The second are hollowed; and in the middle of that space rises the figure in relief, so that the prominent part of the figure is equal to the flat, unwrought surface of the stone, and seems to have a frame round it, designed to defend the hieroglyphic from mutilation. The third sort is in relief, or basso relievo, as it is called, where the figure is left bare and exposed, without being sunk in, or defended, by any compartment cut round it in the stone. The fourth are those mentioned in the beginning of this description, the outlines of the figure being cut very deep in the stone.

All the hieroglyphics, but the last mentioned, which do not admit it, are painted red, blue, and green, as at Dendera, and with no other colours.

Notwithstanding all this variety in the manner of executing the hieroglyphical figures, and the prodigious multitude which I have seen in the several buildings, I never could make the number of different hieroglyphics amount to more than five hundred and fourteen, and of these there were certainly many, which were not really different, but from the ill execution of the sculpture only appeared so. From this I conclude, certainly, that it can be no entire language which hieroglyphics are meant to contain, for no language could be comprehended in five hundred words, and it is probable that these hieroglyphics are not _alphabetical_, or _single letters_ only; for five hundred letters would make _too large_ an alphabet. The Chinese indeed have many more letters in use, but have no alphabet, but _who is it that understands the Chinese_?

There are three different characters which, I observe, have been in use at the same time in Egypt, Hieroglyphics, the Mummy character, and the Ethiopic. These are all three found, as I have seen, on the same mummy, and therefore were certainly used at the same time. The last only I believe was a _language_.

The mountains immediately above or behind Thebes, are hollowed out into numberless caverns, the first habitations of the Ethiopian colony which built the city. I imagine they continued long in these habitations, for I do not think the temples were ever intended but for _public_ and _solemn_ uses, and in none of these ancient cities did I ever see a wall or foundation, or any thing like a private house; all are temples and tombs, if temples and tombs in those times were not the same thing. But vestiges of houses there are none, whatever[116] Diodorus Siculus may say, building with stone was too expensive for individuals; the houses probably were all of clay, thatched with palm branches, as they are at this day. This is one reason why so few ruins of the immense number of cities we hear of remain.

Thebes, according to Homer, had a _hundred gates_. We cannot, however, discover yet the foundation of any wall that it had; and as for the horsemen and chariots it is said to have sent out, all the Thebaid sown with wheat would not have maintained _one-half_ of them.

Thebes, at least the ruins of the temples, called Medinet Tabu, are built in a long stretch of about a mile broad, most parsimoniously chosen at the sandy foot of the mountains. The Horti[117] Pensiles, or hanging gardens, were surely formed upon the sides of these hills, then supplied with water by mechanical devices. The utmost is done to spare the plain, and with great reason; for all the space of ground this ancient city has had to maintain its myriads of horses and men, is a plain of three quarters of a mile broad, between the town and the river, upon which plain the water rises to the height of four, and five feet, as we may judge by the marks on the statues Shaamy and Taamy. All this pretended populousness of ancient Thebes I therefore believe fabulous.

It is a circumstance very remarkable, in building the first temples, that, where the side-walls are solid, that is, not supported by pillars, some of these have their angles and faces perpendicular, others inclined in a very considerable angle to the horizon. Those temples, whose walls are inclined, you may judge by the many hieroglyphics and ornaments, are of the first ages, or the greatest antiquity. From which, I am disposed to think, that singular construction was a remnant of the partiality of the builders for their first domiciles; an imitation of the slope[118], or inclination of the sides of mountains, and that this inclination of flat surfaces to each other in building, gave afterwards the first idea of Pyramids[119].

A number of robbers, who much resemble our gypsies, live in the holes of the mountains above Thebes. They are all out-laws, punished with death if elsewhere found. Osman Bey, an ancient governor of Girgé, unable to suffer any longer the disorders committed by these people, ordered a quantity of dried faggots to be brought together, and, with his soldiers, took, possession of the face of the mountain, where the greatest number of these wretches were: He then ordered all their caves to be filled with this dry brushwood, to which he set fire, so that most of them were destroyed; but they have since recruited their numbers, without changing their manners.

About half a mile north of El Gourni, are the magnificent, stupendous sepulchres, of Thebes. The mountains of the Thebaid come close behind the town; they are not run in upon one another like ridges, but stand insulated upon their bases; so that you can get round each of them. A hundred of these, it is said, are excavated into sepulchral, and a variety of other apartments. I went through seven of them with a great deal of fatigue. It is a solitary place; and my guides, either from a natural impatience and distaste that these people have at such employments, or, that their fears of the banditti that live in the caverns of the mountains were real, importuned me to return to the boat, even before I had begun my search, or got into the mountains where are the many large apartments of which I was in quest.

In the first one of these I entered is the prodigious sarcophagus, some say of Menes, others of Osimandyas; possibly of neither. It is sixteen feet high, ten long, and six broad, of one piece of red-granite; and, as such, is, I suppose, the finest vase in the world. Its cover is still upon it, (broken on one side,) and it has a figure in relief on the outside. It is not probably the tomb of Osimandyas, because, Diodorus[120] says, that it was ten stadia from the tomb of the kings; whereas this is one among them.

There have been some ornaments at the outer-pillars, or outer-entry, which have been broken and thrown down. Thence you descend through an inclined passage, I suppose, about twenty feet broad; I speak only by guess, for I did not measure. The side-walls, as well as the roof of this passage, are covered with a coat of stucco, of a finer and more equal grain, or surface, than any I ever saw in Europe. I found my black-lead pencil little more worn by it than by writing upon paper.

Upon the left-hand side is the crocodile seizing upon the apis, and plunging him into the water. On the right-hand is the [121]scarabæus thebaicus, or the thebaic beetle, the first animal that is seen alive after the Nile retires from the land; and therefore thought to be an emblem of the resurrection. My own conjecture is, that the apis was the emblem of the arable land of Egypt; the crocodile, the typhon, or cacodæmon, the type of an over-abundant Nile; that the scarabæus was the land which had been overflowed, and from which the water had soon retired, and has nothing to do with the resurrection or immortality, neither of which at that time were in contemplation.

Farther forward on the right-hand of the entry, the pannels, or compartments, were still formed in stucco, but, in place of figures in relief, they were painted in fresco. I dare say this was the case on the left-hand of the passage, as well as the right. But the first discovery was so unexpected, and I had flattered myself that I should be so far master of my own time, as to see the whole at my leisure, that I was rivetted, as it were, to the spot by the first sight of these paintings, and I could proceed no further.

In one pannel were several musical instruments strowed upon the ground, chiefly of the hautboy kind, with a mouth-piece of reed. There were also some simple pipes or flutes. With them were several jars apparently of potter-ware, which, having their mouths covered with parchment or skin, and being braced on their sides like a drum, were probably the instrument called the _tabor_, or[122]_tabret_, beat upon by the hands, coupled in earliest ages with the harp, and preserved still in Abyssinia, though its companion, the last-mentioned instrument, is no longer known _there_.

In three following pannels were painted, in fresco, three harps, which merited the utmost attention, whether we consider the elegance of these instruments in their form, and the detail of their parts as they are here clearly expressed, or confine ourselves to the reflection that necessarily follows, to how great perfection music must have arrived, before an artist could have produced so complete an instrument as either of these.

As the first harp seemed to be the most perfect, and least spoiled, I immediately attached myself to this, and desired my clerk to take upon him the charge of the second. In this way, by sketching exactly, and loosely, I hoped to have made myself master of all the paintings in that cave, perhaps to have extended my researches to others, though, in the sequel, I found myself miserably deceived.

My first drawing was that of a man playing upon a harp; he was standing, and the instrument being broad, and flat at the base, probably for that purpose, supported itself easily with a very little inclination upon his arm; his head is close shaved, his eye-brows black, without beard or mustachoes. He has on him a loose shirt, like what they wear at this day in Nubia (only it is not blue) with loose sleeves, and arms and neck bare. It seemed to be thick muslin, or cotton cloth, and long-ways through it is a crimson stripe about one-eighth of an inch broad; a proof, if this is Egyptian manufacture, that they understood at that time how to dye cotton, crimson, an art found out in Britain only a very few years ago. If this is the fabric of India, still it proves the antiquity of the commerce between the two countries, and the introduction of Indian manufactures into Egypt.

_London Publish’d Dec^{r}. 1^{st}. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

It reached down to his ancle; his feet are without sandals; he seems to be a corpulent man, of about sixty years of age, and of a complexion rather dark for an Egyptian. To guess by the detail of the figure, the painter seems to have had the same degree of merit with a good sign-painter in Europe, at this day.--If we allow this harper’s stature to be five feet ten inches, then we may compute the harp, in its extreme length, to be something less than six feet and a half.

This instrument is of a much more advantageous form than the triangular Grecian harp. It has thirteen strings, but wants the forepiece of the frame opposite to the longest string. The back part is the sounding-board, composed of four thin pieces of wood, joined together in form of a cone, that is, growing wider towards the bottom; so that, as the length of the string increases, the square of the corresponding space in the sounding-board, in which the sound was to undulate, always increases in proportion. The whole principles, on which this harp is constructed, are rational and ingenious, and the ornamented parts are executed in the very best manner.

The bottom and sides of the frame seem to be fineered, and inlaid, probably with ivory, tortoise-shell, and mother-of-pearl, the ordinary produce of the neighbouring seas and deserts. It would be even now impossible, either to construct or to finish a harp of any form with more taste and elegance. Besides the proportions of its outward form, we must observe likewise how near it approached to a perfect instrument, for it wanted only two strings of having two complete octaves; that these were purposely omitted, not from defect of taste or science, must appear beyond contradiction, when we consider the harp that follows.

I had no sooner finished the harp which I had taken in hand, than I went to my assistant, to see what progress he had made in the drawing in which he was engaged. I found, to my very great surprise, that this harp differed essentially, in form and distribution of its parts, from the one I had drawn, without having lost any of its elegance; on the contrary, that it was finished with full more attention than the other. It seemed to be fineered with the same materials, ivory and tortoise-shell, but the strings were differently disposed, the ends of the three longest, where they joined to the sounding-board below, were defaced by a hole dug in the wall. Several of the strings in different parts had been scraped as with a knife, for the rest, it was very perfect. It had eighteen strings. A man, who seemed to be still older than the former, but in habit perfectly the same, bare-footed, close shaved, and of the same complexion with him, stood playing with both his hands near the middle of the harp, in a manner seemingly less agitated than in the other.

_Publish’d Dec^r. 1^{st}. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._]

I went back to my first harp, verified, and examined my drawing in all its parts; it is with great pleasure I now give a figure of this second harp to the reader, it was mislaid among a multitude of other papers, at the time when I was solicited to communicate the former drawing to a gentleman then writing the History of Music, which he has already submitted to the public; it is very lately and unexpectedly this last harp has been found; I am only sorry this accident has deprived the public of Dr Burney’s remarks upon it. I hope he will yet favour us with them, and therefore abstain from anticipating his reflections, as I consider this as his province; I never knew any one so capable of affording the public, new, and at the same time just lights on this subject.

There still remained a third harp of ten strings, its precise form I do not well remember, for I had seen it but once when I first entered the cave, and was now preparing to copy that likewise. I do not recollect that there was any man playing upon this one, I think it was rather resting upon a wall, with some kind of drapery upon one end of it, and was the smallest of the three. But I am not at all so certain of particulars concerning this, as to venture any description of it; what I have said of the other two may be absolutely depended upon.

I look upon these harps then as the Theban harps in use in the time of Sesostris, who did not rebuild, but decorate ancient Thebes; I consider them as affording an incontestible proof, were they the only monuments remaining, that every art necessary to the construction, ornament, and use of this instrument, was in the highest perfection, and if so, all the others must have probably attained to the same degree.

We see in particular the ancients then possessed an art relative to architecture, that of hewing the hardest stones with the greatest ease, of which we are at this day utterly ignorant and incapable. We have no instrument that could do it, no composition that could make tools of temper sufficient to cut bass reliefs in granite or porphyry so readily; and our ignorance in this is the more completely shewn, in that we have all the reasons to believe, the cutting instrument with which they did these surprising feats was composed of brass; a metal of which, after a thousand experiments, no tool has ever been made that could serve the purpose of a common knife, though we are at the same time certain, it was of brass the ancients made their razors.

These harps, in my opinion, overturn all the accounts hitherto given of the earliest state of music and musical instruments in the east; and are altogether in their form, ornaments, and compass, an incontestible proof, stronger than a thousand Greek quotations, that geometry, drawing, mechanics, and music, were at the greatest perfection when this instrument was made, and that the period from which we date the invention of these arts, was only the beginning of the æra of their restoration. This was the sentiment of Solomon, a writer who lived at the time when this harp was painted. “Is there (says Solomon) any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new! it hath been already of old time which was before us[123].”

We find, in these very countries, how a later calamity, of the same public nature, the conquest of the Saracens, occasioned a similar downfal of literature, by the burning the Alexandrian library under the fanatical caliph Omar. We see how soon after, they flourished, planted by the same hands that before had rooted them out.

The effects of a revolution occasioned, at the period I am now speaking of, by the universal inundation of the _Shepherds_, were the destruction of Thebes, the ruin of architecture, and the downfal of astronomy in Egypt. Still a remnant was left in the colonies and correspondents of Thebes, though fallen. Ezekiel[124] celebrates Tyre as being, from her beginning, famous for the tabret and harp, and it is probably to Tyre the taste for music fled from the contempt and persecution of the barbarous Shepherds; who, though a numerous nation, to this day never have yet possessed any species of music, or any kind of musical instruments capable of improvement.

Although it is a curious subject for reflection, it should not surprise us to find here the harp, in such variety of form. Old Thebes, as we presently shall see, had been destroyed, and was soon after decorated and adorned, but not rebuilt by Sesostris. It was some time between the reign of Menes, the first king of the Thebaid, and the first general war of the Shepherds, that these decorations and paintings were made. This gives it a prodigious antiquity; but supposing it was a favourite instrument, consequently well understood at the building of Tyre[125] in the year 1320 before Christ, and Sesostris had lived in the time of Solomon, as Sir Isaac Newton imagines; still there were 320 years since that instrument had already attained to great perfection, a sufficient time to have varied it into every form.

Upon seeing the preparations I was making to proceed farther in my researches, my conductors lost all sort of subordination. They were afraid my intention was to sit in this cave all night, (as it really was,) and to visit the others next morning. With great clamour and marks of discontent, they dashed their torches against the largest harp, and made the best of their way out of the cave, leaving me and my people in the dark; and all the way as they went, they made dreadful denunciations of tragical events that were immediately to follow, upon their departure from the cave.

There was no possibility of doing more. I offered them money, much beyond the utmost of their expectations; but the fear of the Troglodytes, above Medinet Tabu, had fallen upon them; and seeing at last this was real, I was not myself without apprehensions, for they were banditti, and outlaws, and no reparation was to be expected, whatever they should do to hurt us.

Very much vexed, I mounted my horse to return to the boat. The road lay through a very narrow valley, the sides of which were covered with bare loose stones. I had no sooner got down to the bottom, than I heard a great deal of loud speaking on both sides of the valley; and, in an instant, a number of large stones were rolled down upon me, which, though I heard in motion, I could not see, on account of the darkness; this increased my terror.

Finding, by the impatience of the horse, that several of these stones had come near him, and that it probably was the noise of his feet which guided those that threw them, I dismounted, and ordered the Moor to get on horseback; which he did, and in a moment galloped out of danger. This, if I had been wise, I certainly might have done before him, but my mind was occupied by the paintings. Nevertheless, I was resolved upon revenge before leaving these banditti, and listened till I heard voices, on the right side of the hill. I accordingly levelled my gun as near as possible, by the ear, and fired one barrel among them. A moment’s silence ensued, and then a loud howl, which seemed to have come from thirty or forty persons. I took my servant’s blunderbuss, and discharged it where I heard the howl, and a violent confusion of tongues followed, but no more stones. As I found this was the time to escape, I kept along the dark side of the hill, as expeditiously as possible, till I came to the mouth of the plain, when we reloaded our firelocks, expecting some interruption before we reached the boat; and then we made the best of our way to the river.

We found our Rais full of fears for us. He had been told, that, as soon as day light should appear, the whole Troglodytes were to come down to the river, in order to plunder and destroy our boat.

This night expedition at the mountains was but partial, the general attack was reserved for next day. Upon holding council, we were unanimous in opinion, as indeed we had been during the whole course of this voyage. We thought, since our enemy had left us to-night, it would be our fault if they found us in the morning. Therefore, without noise, we cast off our rope that fastened us, and let ourselves over to the other side. About twelve at night a gentle breeze began to blow, which wafted us up to Luxor, where there was a governor, for whom I had letters.

From being convinced by the sight of Thebes, which had not the appearance of ever having had walls, that the fable of the hundred gates, mentioned by Homer, was mere invention, I was led to conjecture what could be the origin of that fable.

That the old inhabitants of Thebes lived in caves in the mountains, is, I think, without doubt, and that the hundred mountains I have spoken of, excavated, and adorned, were the greatest wonders at that time, seems equally probable. Now, the name of these to this day is Beeban el Meluke, the ports or gates of the kings, and hence, perhaps, come the hundred gates of Thebes upon which the Greeks have dwelt so much. Homer never saw Thebes, it was demolished before the days of any profane writer, either in prose or verse. What he added to its history must have been from imagination.

All that is said of Thebes, by poets or historians, after the days of Homer, is meant of Diospolis; which was built by the Greeks long after Thebes was destroyed, as its name testifies; though Diodorus[126] says it was built by Busiris. It was on the east side of the Nile, whereas ancient Thebes was on the west, though both are considered as one city; and [127]Strabo says, that the river[128] runs through the middle of Thebes, by which he means between old Thebes and Diospolis, or Luxor and Medinet Tabu.

While in the boat, I could not help regretting the time I had spent in the morning, in looking for the place in the narrow valley where the mark of the famous golden circle was visible, which Norden says he saw, but I could discern no traces of it any where, and indeed it does not follow that the mark left was that of a circle. This magnificent instrument was probably fixed perpendicular to the horizon in the plane of the meridian; so that the appearance of the place where it stood, would very probably not partake of the circular form at all, or any precise shape whereby to know it. Besides, as I have before said, it was not among these tombs or excavated mountains, but ten stades from them, so the vestiges of this famous instrument[129] could not be found here. Indeed, being omitted in the latest edition of Norden, it would seem that traveller himself was not perfectly well allured of its existence.

We were well received by the governor of Luxor, who was also a believer in judicial astrology. Having made him a small present, he furnished us with provisions, and, among several other articles, some brown sugar; and as we had seen limes and lemons in great perfection at Thebes, we were resolved to refresh ourselves with some punch, in remembrance of Old England. But, after what had happened the night before, none of our people chose to run the risk of meeting the Troglodytes. We therefore procured a servant of the governor’s of the town, to mount upon his goat-skin filled with wind, and float down the stream from Luxor to El Gournie, to bring us a supply of these, which he soon after did.

He informed us, that the people in the caves had, early in the morning, made a descent upon the townsmen, with a view to plunder our boat; that several of them had been wounded the night before, and they threatened to pursue us to Syene. The servant did all he could to frighten them, by saying that his master’s intention was to pass over with troops, and exterminate them, as Osman Bey of Girgé had before done, and _we_ were to assist him with our fire-arms.--After this we heard no more of them.

Luxor, and Carnac, which is a mile and a quarter below it, are by far the largest and most magnificent scenes of ruins in Egypt, much more extensive and stupendous than those of Thebes and Dendera put together.

There are two obelisks here of great beauty, and in good preservation, they are less than those at Rome, but not at all mutilated. The pavement, which is made to receive the shadow, is to this day so horizontal, that it might still be used in observation. The top of the obelisk is semicircular, an experiment, I suppose, made at the instance of the observer, by varying the shape of the point of the obelisk, to get rid of the penumbra.

At Carnac we saw the remains of two vast rows of sphinxes, one on the right-hand, the other on the left, (their heads were mostly broken) and, a little lower, a number of termini as it should seem. They were composed of basaltes, with a dog or lion’s head, of Egyptian sculpture. They stood in lines likewise, as if to conduct or serve as an avenue to some principal building.

They had been covered with earth, till very lately a [130]Venetian physician and antiquary bought one of them at a very considerable price, as he said, for the king of Sardinia. This has caused several others to be uncovered, though no purchaser hath yet offered.

Upon the outside of the walls at Carnac and Luxor there seems to be an historical engraving instead of hieroglyphics; this we had not met with before. It is a representation of men, horses, chariots, and battles; some of the attitudes are freely and well drawn, they are rudely scratched upon the surface of the stone, as some of the hieroglyphics at Thebes are. The weapons the men make use of are short javelins, such as are common at this day among the inhabitants of Egypt, only they have feathered wings like arrows. There is also distinguished among the rest, the figure of a man on horseback, with a lion fighting furiously by him, and Diodorus[131] says, Osimandyas was so represented at Thebes. This whole composition merits great attention.

I have said, that Luxor is Diospolis, and should think, that that place, and Carnac together, made the Jovis Civitas Magna of Ptolemy, though there is 9´ difference of the latitude by my observation compared with his. But as mine was made on the south of Luxor, if his was made on the north of Carnac, the difference will be greatly diminished.