The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

On March 13 we reached the territory of Mahass, and at the castle of Tinareh I visited the camp of Mohammed Kashefs, a Mamelouk chief who had captured the castle from a rebel cousin of the Mahass king. He behaved like a madman, got very drunk on palm wine, and threatened to cut off my head on suspicion of my being an agent of the pasha of Egypt, who was the enemy of the Mamelouks. Had it not been for the arrival of the nephew of the governor of Sukkot, the threat would in all probability have been carried into execution.

II.—Discoveries in Egyptian Temples

On March 15 my guide and I escaped from the Mamelouk's camp, and at Kolbé crossed to the west side of the river by swimming at the tail of our camels, each beast having an inflated goatskin tied to its neck. I thought it wise to return down the Nile to Assouan, and we pushed on as hard as our camels could proceed. Passing the cataracts at Wady Samme and Wady Halfa, we came to Wady Fereyg, where there is a mountain on both sides of the Nile. At the bottom of that, on the west side, is a hitherto undiscovered temple named Ebsambal. The temple stands about twenty feet above the surface of the water, entirely cut out of the almost perpendicular rocky side of the mountain, and is in complete preservation. In front of the entrance are six erect colossal figures representing juvenile persons, three on each side of the entrance, in narrow recesses. Their height from the ground to the knee is about 6½ feet. The spaces of the smooth rock between the niches are covered with hieroglyphics, as are also the walls of the interior. The statues represent Osiris, Isis, and a youth, and each has small figures beside it four feet high.

I was about to climb the mountain to rejoin my guide and the camels, when I fell in with what is yet visible of four immense colossal statues cut out of the rock at a distance of 200 yards from the temple. They stand in a deep recess excavated in the mountain, and are almost entirely buried beneath the sands, which are blown down here in torrents. The entire head and part of the breast and arms of one of the statues are yet above the surface. The head has a most expressive youthful countenance, approaching nearer to the Grecian model of beauty than that of any ancient Egyptian figure I have seen. Indeed, were it not for a thin, oblong beard, it would pass for a head of Pallas. This statue measures seven yards across the shoulders, and could not, if in an upright posture, be less than sixty-five or seventy feet in height. The ear is one yard and four inches in length.

On the wall of the rock in the centre of the four statues is a figure of the hawk-headed Osiris, surmounted by a globe; beyond which, I suspect, could the sand be cleared away, a vast temple would be discovered, to the entrance of which the colossal figures serve as ornaments. I should pronounce these works to belong to the finest period of Egyptian sculpture, and that the hieroglyphics are of the same age as those on the temple of Derr.

I continued my journey along the west bank of the Nile, and in the course of several days inspected the ruins of all the known ancient temples and early Greek churches. Summing up my impressions of the temples, I would say that we find in Nubia specimens of all the different eras of Egyptian architecture and history, which indeed can only be traced in Nubia; for all the remaining temples in Egypt, that of Gorne, perhaps, excepted, appear to have been erected in an age when the science of architecture had nearly attained to perfection.

III.—Across the Nubian Desert

I reached Assouan on March 30, after an absence of thirty-five days, having travelled at the rate of ten hours each day. On April 9, I proceeded to Esné, which I had made my headquarters in Upper Egypt.

I remained at Esné till the spring of 1814, waiting for an opportunity to start with a caravan of slave-traders towards the interior parts of Nubia in a more easterly direction than I had been in my journey towards Dongola. At the end of February I heard that a caravan was on the point of starting from Daraou, three days' journey north of Esné, for the confines of Sennaar, and I determined to accompany it and try my fortune on this new route without any servant and in the garb of a poor trader.

The start was made on March 2, 1814, and from the first day of our departure my companions treated me with neglect, and even with contempt. Although they had no idea I was a Frank, they imagined that I was of Turkish origin, an opinion sufficient to excite the ill-treatment of Arabs, who bear the most inveterate hatred to the Osmanli. From the small quantity of merchandise I had, they considered I was a trader running away from my creditors, but I succeeded in convincing them that I was travelling in search of a lost cousin who had made an expedition to Darfour and Sennaar in Nubia, in which the whole of my property was engaged.