Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai
Date: 2026-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

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Title: Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai

Author: Richard Lepsius

Translator: Joanna B. Horner

Leonora Horner

Release date: June 27, 2026 [eBook #78968]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, 1853

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78968

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS FROM EGYPT, ETHIOPIA, AND THE PENINSULA OF SINAI ***

Transcriber’s Note

This book contains text in Greek (λεύκη), Coptic (ⲙⲁⲧ) and Egyptian hieroglyphs (𓅐𓐴𓏏). You may need to install additional fonts to properly render those languages. Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs is recommended.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, and Greek text has been corrected by comparison with the German edition from which this work was translated.

Accents and diacritical marks have been standardised throughout, where it was clear that the same word or name was intended; the original typesetting appears not to have supported accented small capitals consistently.

Inconsistencies between index entries and the main text have been silently corrected where the intended reference was unmistakable.

Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia,
and the peninsula of Sinai

MOUNT BARKAL.

Hinchliff.

LETTERS
FROM
EGYPT, ETHIOPIA, AND THE
PENINSULA OF SINAI.

BY
DR. RICHARD LEPSIUS.

WITH EXTRACTS FROM HIS
CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIANS,
WITH REFERENCE TO THE EXODUS OF THE ISRAELITES.

REVISED BY THE AUTHOR.

TRANSLATED BY
LEONORA AND JOANNA B. HORNER.

LONDON:
HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
MDCCCLIII.

TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE.

The first part of this volume consists of Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai, published in 1852. In addition to the Map of the Nile, published in the German edition, and the view of Mount Barkal, we have been enabled, through the kindness of Dr. Lepsius, to give a Map of the Peninsula of Sinai, from an unpublished pamphlet, printed at Berlin in 1846 (Reise des Prof. Lepsius von Theben nach der Halbinsel des Sinai, vom 4 März bis zum 14 April, 1845), which will be found to contribute much to the elucidation of the interesting Letter on Mount Sinai.

In the Appendix we have inserted a geological paper, by Mr. Horner, from the “Edinburgh Philosophical Journal” for July, 1850, in which some doubts are thrown upon the theory of Dr. Lepsius concerning a supposed excavation of the bed of the Nile within the historical period. We have done this at the request of Dr. Lepsius, who is desirous to call more particular attention to the subject.

The Letters are succeeded by extracts (chiefly relating to the Hebrew Chronology) from Dr. Lepsius’s larger work (of which only one volume has yet been published), Die Chronologie der Ægypter, in which he states his conclusions respecting the date of the Exodus. We have also obtained permission from Chevalier Bunsen to add a note (p. 475), pointing out how far he differs from Dr. Lepsius respecting the period when the Israelites entered Egypt. It has been thought desirable to omit those sections which enter into the subject more minutely than would interest the general reader.

The whole of this portion of the translation has been revised by the author, and throughout the volume, whatever alterations or additions have been suggested by him, are placed between brackets.

A Table of the Egyptian Dynasties, drawn up by Mr. Horner, has been added, and, at his request, revised by Dr. Lepsius, who has inserted the results of his latest investigations concerning the dates of the different Dynasties.

Wherever measurements by feet are mentioned, French feet are to be understood, unless it is otherwise specified.

August, 1853.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE LETTERS.

The object of the Scientific Expedition which the King of Prussia sent to Egypt in the year 1842, was to investigate and collect, with an historical and antiquarian view, the ancient Egyptian monuments in the Nile valley, and upon the Peninsula of Sinai. It was fitted out and maintained for more than three years by the munificence of the King, and enjoyed uninterruptedly his gracious favour and sympathy, as well as the most active and kind attention from Alexander v. Humboldt, and by a rare union of fortunate circumstances, it attained the purposes they had in view, as completely as could be expected. A “Preliminary Account of the Expedition, its Results, and their Publication” (Berlin, 1849; 4to), was issued at the same time with the first portion of the great work upon the Monuments, which will be published by desire of his Majesty, in a style corresponding with the magnificence of the treasures we brought away with us, and which will contain a concise survey of the principal results of the Expedition.

In the work upon “the Monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia,” here announced, which will comprise more than 800 folio plates, half of which are already completed, and 240 published, these results will be fully displayed, as far as regards Sculpture, Topography, and Architecture, and they will be considered more accurately in the accompanying text.

Independently, however, of our strictly scientific labours, it appeared right to offer a picture to a larger circle of interested readers of the external features of the Expedition, the personal co-operation of the different members belonging to it, the obstacles, or the fortunate circumstances of the journey, the condition of the countries that we traversed, and the influence they exercised on the immediate objects of our undertaking; finally, a series of remarks on the individual sites of the monuments in that most historical of all countries, with all the meaning and completeness in which they appear to those travellers who, by their study of that most ancient history, are peculiarly prepared to understand them, but which may also excite an increased sympathy in others who have acknowledged the great importance of this newly-established science. If it should directly further a correct criticism of the scientific labours which have resulted from this journey, and which are being gradually published, to consult the circumstances under which the materials were collected, I believe that no farther justification is necessary for the publication of the following Letters, however little pretension they may have on the one side to the completeness and the literary charm of a regular account of travels, or, on the other side, to the value of a strictly scientific work.

The Letters have remained almost throughout in their original form; some are respectfully addressed to his Majesty the King, some to his Excellency Eichhorn, at that time Minister of Public Instruction, or to other distinguished patrons and honoured men, such as A. v. Humboldt, Bunsen, v. Olfers, Ehrenberg, and lastly, some to my father, who constantly preserved the liveliest interest in all that concerned me. Several letters, immediately upon their arrival in Europe, were printed in the newspapers, especially in the Prussian Gazette, and from that were received into other papers. The immaterial alterations in some of the details are, for the most part, only made for publication. All additions or expansions are put in the form of notes. To this class belong the more detailed notes and the proofs given concerning the true position of Sinai, which, I believe, is pointed out for the first time by me; this has since been criticised from different quarters, and has been condemned by some, while it has met with approbation from others. The subject of the 36th Letter on the decoration of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin is certainly very different from the rest; but as an exception it may be justified, since the point there considered is not only of local interest in Berlin, but is valuable in all cases of observation, where there are similar requirements, and where the subject treated about is a method of adjustment between ancient Egyptian and modern Art.

Berlin, 2nd June, 1852.

CONTENTS.

| PAGE
Preliminary Account of the Expedition and its Results | 12
Letter I.—On board the Oriental Steamer, 5th September, 1842 | 35
Voyage to Alexandria. |
Letter II.—Alexandria, 23rd September, 1842 | 38
Malta—Gobat—Isenberg—Krapf—Alexandria—Mohammed Ali. |
Letter III.—Cairo, 16th October, 1842 | 41

Alexandria—Pompey’s Pillar—Cleopatra’s Needle—Werne’s Collection of Natural History—Departure from Alexandria—Sais—Naharieh—Cairo—Heliopolis—The Celebration of the King’s Birthday at the Pyramids—Panoramic View from the Pyramid of Cheops.

Letter IV.—At the foot of the largest Pyramid, 2nd January, 1843 | 51
Pyramids of Gizeh—Tombs of Private Individuals—Sphinx—A Deluge of Rain—Celebration of Christmas—Life in the Camp. |
Letter V.—Pyramids of Gizeh, 17th January, 1843 | 56
The Hieroglyphic Memorial tablet on the Pyramid of Cheops—What we gained in a Historical point of View. |
Letter VI.—Pyramids of Gizeh, 28th January, 1843 | 59

The most ancient Royal Dynasties—Tomb of Prince Merhet—Tombs of Private Individuals—Ravages committed by the Arabs—Most ancient Obelisk.

Letter VII.—Saqâra, 18th March, 1843 | 64
Pyramids of Meidûm—The Structure of Pyramids—The Enigma of the Sphinx—Locusts—Comet. |
Letter VIII.—Saqâra, 13th April, 1843 | 69

Prince Albert of Prussia—Festivities in Cairo—Entrance of Pilgrims—Mulid e’ Nebbi—Doseh—Visit of the Prince to the Pyramids—Most ancient Application of the Pointed Arch in Cairo—The most ancient Round Arch in Egypt—Attack by Night in Saqâra—Day of Trial.

Letter IX.—Cairo, 22nd April, 1843 | 79
Plan of the Site of the Pyramid Fields—Cairo. |
Letter X.—Ruins of the Labyrinth, 31st May, 1843 | 81
Departure for the Faiûm—Camels and Dromedaries—Lischt—Meidûm—Illahûn—Labyrinth—Arabic Song—Bedouins—Turkish Kawass. |
Letter XI.—The Labyrinth, 25th June, 1843 | 89
The Ruins of the Labyrinth—Its First Builder—Its Pyramid—Lake Mœris. |
Letter XII.—The Labyrinth, 18th July, 1843 | 94
Journey round the Faiûm—The Dams of Mœris—Birket-el-Qorn—Diméh—Qasr Qerûn. |
Letter XIII.—Cairo, 14th August, 1843 | 98
Departure of Frey—Ethiopian Manuscripts. |
Letter XIV.—Thebes, 13th October, 1843 | 100

Voyage on the Nile to Upper Egypt—Rock-Grotto of Surarieh—Tombs of the Sixth Dynasty, in Central Egypt; of the Twelfth, in Benihassan, Siut, Berscheh—Arrival in Thebes—Climate—Journey onwards.

Letter XV.—Korusko, 20th November, 1843 | 105

Greek Inscriptions—Benihassan—Berscheh—Tombs of the Sixth Dynasty—El Amarna—Siut—Alabaster Quarries of El Bosra—Echmim (Chemmis)—Thebes—El Kab (Eileithyia)—Edfu—Ombos—Egyptian Canon of Proportions—Assuan—Philæ—Hieroglyphic-Demotic Inscriptions—Succession of the Ptolemies—Entrance into Lower Nubia—Debôt—Gertassi—Kalabscheh (Talmis)—Dendûr—Dakkeh (Pselchis)—Korte—Hierasykaminos—Mehendi—Sebûa—Korusko—Nubian Language.

Letter XVI.—Korusko, 5th January, 1844 | 130
Scarcity of Camels—Excursion to Wadi Haifa—Achmed Pascha Menekle and the newly-named Pascha of the Sudan. |
Letter XVII.—E’ Dâmer, 24th January, 1844 | 133

Nubian Desert—Roft Mountain Range—Wadi E’ Sufr—Wadi Murhad—Ababde Arabs—Abu Hammed—The Province of Berber—El Mechêref—Mogrân or Atbara (Astaboras)—E’ Dâmer—Mandera.

Letter XVIII.—On the Blue River, Province of Sennâr, 13° N. Lat., 2nd March, 1844 | 148

The borders of a Tropical Climate—Kawass—Hagi Ibrahim—Meröe—Begerauîeh—Pyramids—Ferlini—The Age of the Monuments—Schendi—Ben Naga—Naga in the Desert—Mesaurât e’ Sofra—Tamaniât—Chartûm—Bahr el Abiat (the White River)—Dinka and Schilluk—Soba—Kamlîn—Bauer—Inscription on Marble—Baobab—Abu Harras—Rahad—Character of the Country—Dender—Dilêb Palms—Sennâr—Abdîn—Româli—Sero—Return towards the North—Wed Médineh—Sorîba—Sultâna Nasr—Gabre Máriam—Rebâbi—Funeral Ceremony—The Military—Emin Pascha—Tâiba—Messelemîeh—Kamlîn—Soba—Vase with an Inscription.

Letter XIX.—Chartûm, 21st March, 1844 | 190
Military Revolt at Wed Médineh—Insurrection of the Slaves. |
Letter XX.—The Pyramids of Meröe, 22nd April, 1844 | 193

Tamaniât—Qirre Mountain Range—Meröe—Return of the Turkish Army from Taka—Osman Bey—Prisoners from Taka—Language of the Bischâri from Taka—Customs in the South—Pyramids of Meröe—Ethiopian Inscriptions—Name of Meröe.

Letter XXI.—Keli, 29th April, 1844 | 210
Departure from Meröe—Groups of Tombs north of Meröe. |
Letter XXII.—Barkal, 9th May, 1844 | 213

The Desert of Gilif—Gôs Burri—Wadi Gaqedûl—Mágeqa—Trees of the Desert—Wadi Abu Dôm—Wadi Gazâl—Coptic Churches—Greek Inscriptions—Pyramids of Nuri—Arrival at Barkal.

Letter XXIII.—Mount Barkal, 28th May, 1844 | 222
Ethiopian Kings—Temple of Ramses II.—Napata—Méraui—Climate. |
Letter XXIV.—Dongola, 15th June, 1844 | 225

Excursion into the Cataract Country—Bân—Departure from Barkal—Pyramids of Tangassi, Kurru, and Zûma—Churches and Fortifications of Bachît, Magal, Gebel Dêqa—Old Dongola—Nubian Language.

Letter XXV.—Dongola, 23rd June, 1844 | 233
Island of Argo—Kermân and Defûfa—Tombos—Inscriptions of Tuthmosis I.—Languages of Darfur. |
Letter XXVI.—Korusko, 17th August, 1844 | 235

Fakir Fenti—Sêse—Soleb—Gebel Dosche—Sedeïnga—Amara—Island of Sai—Sulphur Spring Of Okmeh—Semneh—Heights of the Nile in the Reign of Amenemha-Mœris—Abu Simbel—Greek Inscription in the Reign of Psammeticus I.—Ibrîm (Primis) Anîbe—Korusko.

Letter XXVII.—Philæ, 1st September, 1844 | 241
Wadi Kenûs—Bega Language of the Bischâri—Talmis—Philæ—Meroitic-Ethiopian Inscriptions. |
Letter XXVIII.—Thebes—Qurna, 24th November, 1844 | 243

Excavations in the Temple and in the Rock-Tombs of Ramses II.—Languages of the Sudan—History and Civilisation of Ethiopia.

Letter XXIX.—Thebes—Qurna, 8th January, 1845 | 245
Monuments and Plaster Casts we took away with us. |
Letter XXX.—Thebes, 25th February, 1845 | 246

Description of Thebes—The Temple of Karnac, and its History—Luqsor—El Asasif—Statue of Memnon—The Memnonium—Temple of Ramses II.—Medînet Hâbu—The Royal Tombs—Tombs of Private Individuals from the Time of Psammeticus—Imperial Time—Coptic Convents and Churches—Copts of the present Day—Revenge for bloodshed among the Arabs—Our dwelling in Abd-el-Qurna—Visit from Travellers.

Letter XXXI.—On the Red Sea, 21st March, 1845 | 274

Change of abode from Qurna to Karnac—Departure to the Peninsula of Sinai—Qenneh—Seïd Hussên—Stone-Quarries and Inscriptions of Hamamât—Gebel Fatireh—Losing our Way—Porphyry Quarries at Gebel Dochân—Gebel Zeït.

Letter XXXII.—Convent of Sinai, 24th March, 1845 | 290
Landing at Tôr—Gebel Hammâm—Wadi Hebrân—Convent—Gebel Mûsa—Gebel Sefsâf. |
Letter XXXIII.—On the Red Sea, 6th April, 1845 | 293

Departure from the Convent—Wadi e’ Scheikh—Ascent of Serbâl—Wadi Firân—Wadi Mokatteb—Copper Mines of Wadi Maghâra—Rock-Inscriptions of the Fourth Dynasty—Sarbut el Châdem—Mounds of Dross—Wadi Nasb—Harbour of Abu Zelîmeh—The true Position of Sinai—Tradition of the Monks—Local and Historical Conditions—Elim at Abu Zelîmeh—Mara in Wadi Gharandel—The Desert of Sin—Sinai, the Mount of Sin—The Mount of God—Subsistence of the Israelites—Raphidîm at Pharan—Sinai-Choreb at Raphidîm—Review of the Question upon Sinai.

Letter XXXIV.—Thebes—Karnac, 4th May, 1845 | 321
Return to Thebes—Revenge for bloodshed. |
Letter XXXV.—Cairo, 10th July, 1845 | 322
Dendera—El Amarna—Dr. Bethmann—Removal of the Sepulchral Chambers at the Pyramids. |
Letter XXXVI.—Cairo, 11th July, 1845 | 323
The Egyptian Museum in Berlin—Pictures on the Walls. |
Letter XXXVII.—Jaffa, 7th October, 1845 | 332
Journey across the Delta—San (Tanis)—Arrival in Jaffa. |
Letter XXXVIII.—Nazareth, 9th November, 1845 | 333
Jerusalem—Nablus (Sichem)—Tabor—Nazareth—Lake of Tiberias. |
Letter XXXIX.—Smyrna, 7th December, 1845 | 336

Carmel—Libanon—Berut—Departure to Damascus—Zachleh—Tomb of Noah—Bárada—Tomb of Abel—Inscriptions at Bárada—Tomb of Seth—Bâlbeck—Ibrahim—Cedars of Libanon—Egyptian and Assyrian Rock-Inscriptions at Nahr el Kelb.

PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT
OF THE
EXPEDITION AND ITS RESULTS.

In the year 1842, in accordance with the proposal of Eichhorn, at that time Minister of Instruction, and at the recommendation of MM. Alexander v. Humboldt and Bunsen, his Majesty King Frederic William IV. of Prussia determined to send a scientific expedition to investigate the remains of ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian civilisation still in preservation in the Nile valley and the adjacent countries. The direction of the undertaking was entrusted to me, after the detailed plans of the proposed expedition had been minutely examined by the Royal Academy of Sciences, and in all points graciously approved by the King.

The land-surveyor, G. Erbkam, from Berlin, and the draughtsmen and painters, Ernest and Max Weidenbach, from Naumburg, and J. Frey, from Basle, were appointed to make the drawings and coloured representations, as well as those architectonic plans, which had to be executed on the spot. When J. Frey was obliged to return to Europe from Lower Egypt, on account of the injurious climate, he was replaced by the painter O. Georgi, from Leipzig. Two English artists, also, J. Bonomi, who, from the interest he took in the journey, became attached to our party while we were in London, and the architect J. Wild, who joined us of his own accord, took an active part in the expedition as long as it remained in Lower Egypt. Lastly, during nearly the whole of the journey, we enjoyed the society of the present Counsellor of Legation, H. Abeken, who accompanied us voluntarily and on an independent footing, and who in various ways promoted the antiquarian objects of the journey. We were also provided with the means of obtaining plaster casts of those representations that were best qualified for the purpose, by the addition of Franke the moulder.

The different members of the expedition arriving by various roads, met in Alexandria, on the 18th September, 1842. On the 9th November we encamped near the great Pyramids of Gizeh. What we obtained on that spot, as well as from the adjoining Pyramid fields of Abusir, Saqâra, and Daschûr, which are situated to the south, occupied us exclusively and uninterruptedly for more than six months. The inexhaustible number of important and instructive monuments and representations, which we met with in these Necropoli, the most ancient that have existed in any country, surpassed every expectation we had been entitled to hold concerning them, and accounts for our long abode in this part of the country, which is the first approached and visited, but has, notwithstanding, been very little investigated. If we except the celebrated and well-known examination of the Pyramids in the year 1837, by Colonel Howard Vyse, assisted by the accomplished architect Perring, little had been done to promote a more minute investigation of this remarkable spot; the French-Tuscan expedition, in particular, did little more than pass through it. Nevertheless, the innumerable tombs of private individuals grouped about those royal Pyramids, partly constructed of massive square blocks, partly hewn into the living rock, contain, almost exclusively, representations belonging to the old Egyptian Monarchy, which terminated between two and three thousand years before Christ; indeed, most of them belong to the fourth and fifth Manethonic Dynasties, therefore between three and four thousand years before Christ. The wonderful age of those Pyramids, and of the surrounding tombs, is no longer generally denied by intelligent inquirers, and in the first volume of my “Egyptian Chronology,”[1] which has lately appeared, I have endeavoured to furnish a critical proof of the certain foundations we possess for a more special determination of time as far back as that period. But were any one only to believe in the lowest acceptation of modern scholars concerning the age of the first Egyptian Dynasties, he would still be compelled to yield priority to those monuments before any other Egyptian remains of art, and generally before all artistic remains belonging to the whole race of man, to which we can historically refer. It is only to this that we can attribute the wonderful growth in the interest which we attach, partly to the monuments themselves, as proofs of the earliest activity shown in art, partly to the various representations of the manner of living in those primitive times.

On the western border of the Desert, which stretches from the most northerly groups of Pyramids at Abu Roasch, past the ruins of the old capital of Memphis, to the Oasis-peninsula of the “Faiûm,” we discovered the remains of sixty-seven Pyramids, which, with a few exceptions, were only destined for kings, and in the neighbourhood of the principal groups we investigated, still more minutely, 130 tombs of private individuals, which deserved to be more particularly recorded. A great many of these sepulchral chambers, richly adorned with representations and inscriptions, could only be reached by excavations. Most of them belonged to the highest functionaries of those flourishing Dynasties, among whom there were also thirteen royal princes and seven princesses.

After we had taken the most careful topographical plans of all the fields of Pyramids, and had noted down the architectonic ground plans, and sections of the most important tombs, and after we had, in the most complete manner, drawn or taken paper impressions of their pictures and inscriptions, as far as they were accessible to us, we had accomplished more completely than we ever hoped to do, the first and most important task of our journey, since we had acquired a basis for our knowledge concerning the monuments of the oldest Egyptian monarchy.

On the 19th May, 1843, we proceeded still farther, and encamped on the 23rd in the Faiûm, upon the ruins of the Labyrinth. Its true position was long ago conjectured; and our first view dissipated all our doubts concerning it. The interesting discovery of the actual site of the ancient Lake Mœris was made about the same time, by the distinguished French architect Linant, which we had the opportunity of confirming on the spot. This greatly facilitated the means of comprehending the topographical and historical conditions of this province, so remarkable in all its features. The magnificent schemes which converted this originally desolate Oasis into one of the most productive parts of Egypt, were intimately connected with each other, and must have belonged, if not to a single king, still to one epoch of time. The most important result we obtained by our investigations of the Labyrinth and of the adjoining Pyramids, was the determination of the historical position of the original founder; this we obtained by excavations, which occupied a considerable time. We discovered that the king, who was erroneously called Mœris by the Greeks, from Lake Mere—i. e. from the Lake of the Nile inundation—lived at the end of the 12th Manethonic Dynasty, shortly before the invasion of the Hyksos, and was called Amenemhe by Manetho Ἀμενέμης, the third of his name. His predecessors in the same Dynasty had already founded the town of Crocodilopolis, in the centre of the Faiûm, which is proved by some ruins that still exist belonging to that period; and they probably conducted the Nile Canal, Bahr-Jusef, which branches off from Derut-Scherif, into the basin of the Desert. That part of the basin which is most advanced, and situated highest, terminated in a lake formed by means of gigantic dams, many of which still exist; and the connection of the canal was regulated by sluices in such a manner, that in the dry season the reserved water could flow back again into the valley of the Nile, and irrigate the country round the capital long after the Nile had retreated within its banks. Amenemhe built his Pyramid on the shore of the lake, and a splendid temple in front of it. It afterwards formed the centre of the Labyrinth, whose many hundred chambers, forming three regular masses of buildings, surrounded the oldest portion, and, according to Herodotus, were destined by the Dodecarchs for the general Diets. The ruins of the Labyrinth had never yet been correctly represented, not even in their general arrangement. An Arabian canal, which was carried through it at a later period, had drawn away the attention of passing travellers from that portion of the chambers which was in best preservation. We have made the most exact ground plan, accompanied by sections and views. A journey round the province, as far as Birqet-el-Qorn, and beyond it, to the ruins of Diméh and Qasr Qerûn, induced us to remain several months in this neighbourhood.

On the 23rd August we embarked at Beni-suef, visited a small rock-temple of King Sethôs I. at Surarieh, on the eastern shore, and farther on, the remains of later monuments in the neighbourhood of Tehneh. At Kûm-Ahmar, a little to the south of Zauiet-el-meitîn, we examined a series of nineteen rock-tombs belonging to the 6th Manethonic Dynasty. The groups of tombs which are scattered about a few days’ journey to the south, at Schech-Said, El-Harib, Wadi-Selin, and still farther on, at Qasr-e’-Saiât, also belonged to this period, which, in point of age, was immediately connected with the flourishing time of the great builder of the Pyramids. If we judge by the remains now extant, it appears that there were, at that early period especially, in this portion of Central Egypt, a number of flourishing cities. Royal kindred are frequently met with among the ancient possessors of the tombs, but no sons or daughters of the king, because there was no royal residence in that neighbourhood. But we found the last flourishing period of the Old Monarchy—the 12th Manethonic Dynasty—represented in this part of Egypt by the most beautiful and most considerable remains. The rock-tombs of Beni Hassan, so remarkable for their architecture, as well as for the various paintings on their walls, peculiarly belong to this period. The town to which they appertained, the residence of a governor of the eastern province of the country, has entirely disappeared, all except the name, which is preserved in the inscriptions. It appears that it only flourished a short time during this dynasty, and again declined at the invasion of the Hyksos. In the neighbouring Berscheh also, and farther on, among the Lybian rocks, behind the town of Siut, which was as important 4000 years ago as it is at present, we again found the same plans of tombs on as magnificent a scale, whose period of erection might be recognised even at a distance.

It is a singular fact, that in point of age the greater proportion of the remains of the Egyptian monuments become more modern the higher we ascend the Nile valley, the reverse of what might have been expected from a large view of the subject; according to which the Egyptian civilisation of the Nile valley extended from south to north. While the Pyramids of Lower Egypt, with the monuments around them, had displayed the oldest civilisation of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Dynasties in such wonderful abundance, we found the 6th Dynasty, and the most flourishing period of the 12th, the last of the Old Monarchy, especially represented in Central Egypt. Thebes was the brilliant capital of the New Monarchy, especially of their first Dynasties, surpassing all other places in the number of its wonderful monuments; and even now it offers us a reflection of the splendour of Egypt in her greatest times. Art, which still created magnificent things even in its decline, under the Ptolemies and the Roman emperors, has left considerable monuments behind it, consisting of a series of stately temples in Dendera, Erment, Esneh, Edfu, Kûm-Ombo, Debôd, Kalabscheh, Dendûr, Dakkeh, which are all, with the exception of Dendera, in the southern part of the Thebaid, or in Lower Nubia. Lastly, those monuments of the Nile valley which are situated most to the south, especially those of the “Island” of Meröe, are the latest of all, and most of them belong to the centuries after the Christian era.

We hastened immediately from the monuments of the Old Monarchy in Central Egypt to Thebes, and deferred till our return the examination of the well-preserved, but modern temple of Dendera, the ruins of Abydos, and several other places. But of Thebes, also, we took but a preliminary survey, for we only remained there twelve days, from the 6th to the 18th of October.

We were impatient to commence immediately our second fresh task, which consisted in the investigation of the Ethiopian countries, situated higher up the river. The French-Tuscan expedition did not go beyond Wadi Halfa; Wilkinson’s careful description of the Nile land and its monuments, which contains so much information, only extends a little higher up, as far as Semneh. The most various conjectures were still entertained concerning the monuments of Gebel Barkal and Meröe, with reference to their age and their signification. It was necessary to obtain a general view of the true relation between the History and Civilisation of Egypt and Ethiopia, founded upon a complete examination of the remains which are still extant.

Therefore, after a cursory visit to the temple ruins, as far up as Wadi Halfa, we returned to Korusko, from which place we started on the 8th of January, 1844, through the Great Desert to Abu-Hammed, and the Upper Nile countries. On the 16th of January we arrived at Abu-Hammed, on the other side of the desert; on the 28th, at Beg´erauîeh, near to which the Pyramids of Meröe are situated. From Schendi, which lies more to the south, we visited the temple ruins of Naga and Wadi e’ Sofra, far on in the interior of the eastern desert. On the 5th of February we reached Chartûm, at the confluence of the White and the Blue Nile. From this place, accompanied by Abeken, I descended the Blue River, passed the ruins of Soba and Sennâr, as far as the 13° of N. lat.; whilst the other members of the expedition returned from Chartûm to the Pyramids of Meröe. The tropical countries of the Nile, when contrasted with those northern ones, devoid of rain, extending south as far as the 17°; and the plants and animals now almost exclusively confined to South Ethiopia, when compared with individual representations of the ancient Egyptian monuments, were rendered still more interesting by the discovery of some monuments, with inscriptions upon them, near Soba, by which we obtained traces of the ancient vernacular language of those districts in a written character resembling the Coptic.

I also made use of our residence in these districts to be instructed by the natives of the adjacent countries in the grammar and vocabulary of their languages.

On the 5th of April I returned with Abeken to the other members of the expedition at Beg´erauîeh. After drawings had been made of all that still existed which peculiarly represented the state of civilisation in Ethiopia, and after we had taken the most exact plans of the localities, we proceeded in six days, by the desert Gilif, to Gebel Barkal, where we arrived on the 6th of May. Here was the more northern, the more ancient, and, to judge by the remains, also the more important capital of the State of Meröe. At the foot of this single mass of rock, which rises in an imposing manner, and is called there, in the hieroglyphical inscriptions, “The Sacred Mountains,” is situated Napata. The history of this place, which we may still derive from its ruins, gives us at once a key to the relations which subsisted in general between Ethiopia and Egypt, as regards the history of their civilisation. We find that the most ancient epoch of art in Ethiopia was purely Egyptian. It is as early as the period of the great Ramses, who, of all the Pharaohs, extended his power farthest, not only towards the north, but also towards the south, and testified this by monuments. At an early period he built a great temple here. The second epoch begins with King Tahraka, also known as the ruler of Egypt, the Thirhaka of the Bible. This spot was adorned with several magnificent monuments by him and his immediate successors, and though they were built in a style now employed by native kings, it is, nevertheless, only a faithful copy of the Egyptian style. Lastly, the third epoch is that of the kings of Meröe, whose dominion extended as far as Philæ, and was manifested also at Gebel Barkal by numerous monuments. On an intermediate journey into the Cataract country, situated farther up the river, which we had cut off by the Desert journey, I found only Middle-Age, but no ancient, Ethiopian remains of buildings.

The fertile and extensive province of Dongola, on the northern frontier, which we traversed on the 4th of June, after our departure from Barkal, afforded us but few remarkable ancient remains; we may, however, mention among these the island of Argo, with its monuments, from the 13th Manethonic Dynasty. They became still more numerous in the northern borders of Dongola, from which a nearly continuous Cataract country extends as far as Wadi Halfa. Near Tombos we found traces of the Egyptian dominion under the Pharaohs of the 17th and 18th Dynasties, rock-tablets with the shields of the two first Thutmosis and of the third Amenophis. Farther on, at Sesebi, there were the remains of temples of the first Sethôs of the 19th Dynasty. The great Temple of Soleb, built by Amenophis III. and IV., detained us five days. The ruins of the Temple of Sedeïnga, and those upon the island of Sai, belonged to the 18th and 19th Dynasties. Opposite this island stood the remarkable Temple of Amara, which was built by the Kings of Meröe and Naga, and is still an important proof of the extent of their dominion.

Semneh was the next point we reached. The Nile is here compressed within a breadth of only about 1150 feet between high rocky shores. On both sides there are ruins of old temples of the 18th Dynasty. But these were not the earliest buildings which were erected here. We found a considerable number of inscriptions from the 12th and 13th Manethonic Dynasties, especially on the large foundations of the Temple of Kummeh, situated lower down, opposite Semneh on the eastern bank, as well as on the scattered rocks on both banks in the neighbourhood of that temple. Many of them were intended to indicate the highest risings of the Nile during a series of years, especially in the reigns of the Kings Amenemhe III. and Sebekhotep I., and by comparing them, we obtained the remarkable result, that about 4000 years ago the Nile used to rise at that point, on an average, twenty-two feet higher than it does at present. This, therefore, which we saw before us was the most ancient Nilometer; and the earliest statements of the heights, and their greatest number, were recorded during the reign of the same king, the Mœris of the Greeks, with whom we had already become acquainted in the Faiûm, as the great hydraulic architect. The strong fortifications on both banks of that narrow part of the river convinced us at once that, during the early times of the 12th Dynasty, this remarkable point served as the boundary of the Egyptian dominion, against the Ethiopian nations who dwelt more to the south.

At Wadi Halfa, on the 30th of July, we again left the Cataract country, remained from the 2nd to the 11th of August in Abu Simbel, examined until the end of the month the ruins of Ibrîm, Anîbe, Derr, Amada, Sebûa, Dakkeh, Kubán, Gerf-Hussên, Sabagûra, Dendûr, Kalabscheh, Debôt, and spent the whole of the following month in examining the monuments of the Island of Philæ, and the islands of Bigeh, Konosso, Sehêl, and Elephantine, surrounding it, and of the stone quarries between Philæ and Assuan. October was spent visiting Ombos, the two Silsilis, Edfu, the desert Temple of Redesíeh, El-Kâb, Esneh, Tôd, and Erment.

On the 2nd of November we again arrived on Theban ground, and first visited the rock-tombs of Qurnah, on the west side, where we remained nearly four months, till the 20th of February, 1845, when we encamped for three more months at Karnak. The number of monuments of all kinds, both above and below ground, at Thebes, is so great that they may be truly called inexhaustible, even for a combined power like ours, and for the limited portion of time which we were able to devote to their investigation. But the age of the monuments at Thebes is almost exclusively limited to the New Monarchy; and the most ancient we discovered, such as one might generally expect to find, are not earlier than the 11th Manethonic Dynasty, the last but one of the Old Monarchy; for this simple reason, because it was in this Dynasty that Thebes first became a royal residence, and hence the focus of Egyptian splendour. The great break in the succession at the end of the 12th Dynasty, caused by the invasion of the Hyksos, and their dominion, which lasted many centuries, first drove the Egyptian power back into Ethiopia, and at length entirely destroyed it, till the powerful Pharaohs of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Dynasties again advanced from the south, drove back the Semitic intruders, and raised the power of the Egyptian empire to its summit. The greater proportion of Theban monuments date also from this period. As we may suppose they have been the principal object of investigation to all travellers, therefore our work here had been for the most part anticipated.

Nevertheless it was necessary to re-examine the whole ground most carefully, partly to complete the deficiencies left by our predecessors, partly to make a proper selection of those monuments which were of most importance for our particular purpose, and which we were anxious to insert among our collections, either in the shape of a drawing, or an impression upon paper, or even in the original itself. We directed our principal attention during the whole journey, and especially here, to taking the most exact architectonic plans of all the buildings and other localities which appeared to us to be of any consequence; and for this purpose we did not hesitate to make extensive excavations. By this means we succeeded, amongst other things, in discovering, and recording for the first time, a perfect plan of the most beautiful of all the temple buildings, namely, the Ammon Temple, built by Ramses II., which is described by Diodorus under the name of the sepulchre of Osymandyas. We made several excavations also in the valleys of the royal tombs, and opened, for instance, the rock-tomb of the same Ramses II., one of the largest of those which have hitherto been accessible. Unfortunately, the interior chambers were so much destroyed by the dirt and rubbish that had fallen in, that we could make out little more from the representation upon the walls than the proprietor of the tomb.

Accompanied by the artist Max Weidenbach, I made an intermediate journey from Karnak to the peninsula of Sinai. We went thither by the old road from Koptos to Aennum (Philotera), now leading from Qeneh to Kossêr, which conducted us first to the remarkable stone quarries of Hammamât, already worked out during the Old Monarchy. The numerous rock-inscriptions, which date as far back as the 6th Dynasty, occupied us here for five whole days. From this place we passed through the Arabian chain of mountains to the north, as far as Gebel Zeït, where we embarked for Tôr, situated opposite. We ascended through Wadi Hebrân to the convent, and from thence through Wadi e’ Scheikh, Wadi Firân, W. Mokatteb, W. Maghâra, by Sarbut el Châdem, down again to Abu Zelîmeh, where we got into our vessel, to return to Kossêr and Thebes.

As early as the 4th Manethonic Dynasty, between three and four thousand years before Christ, this Desert Peninsula was subject to Egypt, and was principally colonised by the Egyptians on account of the Copper mines, which are there met with on the limits of the primitive mountain range, and the surrounding sandstone mountains. Upon several rock-tablets of Wadi Maghâra, the kings of those oldest Dynasties were represented fighting with the Semitic aborigines, and the inscriptions of Sarbut el Châdem were at least as early as the 12th Dynasty. We did not, also, lose sight of the great interest which is attached to these localities of the peninsula in connection with the Old Testament. More especially, I believe, that I have succeeded for the first time (not excepting Burckhardt) in determining the correct position of Sinai, since, contrary to the tradition of the convent, hitherto accepted, I did not recognise it in one of the southern mountains, but in Serbâl, which is situated several days’ journey more to the north, at whose base lies the only fertile oasis of the whole peninsula. This opinion which has been already published in a preliminary account of the journey, addressed to the King of Prussia, has met with frequent oppositions, but has also latterly received much approbation, I believe, in a special treatise upon the question, by W. Hogg, printed in the last half of the “Transactions for the Royal Society of Literature” (1848). I have not hitherto been able to discover any material counter-arguments in the discussions which have been held upon the subject, but, on the other hand, much stronger evidence that, contrary to the later Byzantine tradition, the more ancient Christian, and probably the Egyptian tradition itself, considered Serbâl, at whose foot the oldest convent was situated, to be the true Sinai.

On the 14th of April we returned to Thebes, and finally left it on the 16th of May. On our way back to Lower Egypt, we re-examined more minutely the monuments of Schenhur, Dendera, Hou, Abydos, Echmim, El Bosra, Tel el Amarna, and El Hibe, and on the 27th of June, our party, which had been increased at the last stage by the addition of Dr. Bethmann, again entered Cairo.

I was detained there myself some months longer than the other members of the expedition, in order to direct the transportation of several sepulchral chambers in the neighbourhood of the Great Pyramids, and to superintend the embarkation of the valuable blocks of stone, together with the other monuments, which we brought with us from Upper Egypt and Ethiopia, and which the Viceroy Mohammed Ali sent as a present to his Majesty the King of Prussia. In this troublesome as well as important affair, for the practical performance of which four experienced workmen had been expressly sent from Berlin to Egypt, I had only the kind assistance of Dr. Bethmann, who accompanied me on an independent footing during the remainder of the journey back.

After a final visit to Alexandria, we embarked on the 25th of September at Cairo for Damietta, but on the way visited the ruins of Samanúd, Behbét, and the Ramses-Temple of San (Tanis), and left Egypt on the 1st of October, in a vessel which took us to Jaffa. After we had traversed the whole length of Palestine, and from Jerusalem had visited the Dead Sea, and from Beyrout, Damascus, and Baalbec, at the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, the ancient Lykos, we came upon the last Egyptian monuments in the north, namely, those celebrated memorial-tablets, which the great Ramses II. engraved beside the old military road, as a recollection of his warlike and victorious Asiatic campaigns in the fourteenth century before Christ. After a period of more than 3000 years, neither the form, nor even the Name-Shield of the powerful Pharaoh, at whose court Moses was educated, had been destroyed by the destructive sea-air. On one tablet, indeed, I was able to distinguish the date of the fourth, on another that of the second year of his reign.

According to the testimony of Herodotus, similar monuments of Sesostris are also found in Ionia, and some time ago, one which he describes as being there, was re-discovered. But an excursion from Smyrna to that spot soon convinced us that the rock-picture of Karabel was produced by an Asiatic and not by an Egyptian chisel.

Lastly, we saw in the Hippodrome, at Constantinople, the obelisk of the third Tuthmosis, but, like others, sought in vain for the second, which earlier travellers would have us believe that they had seen. On the 24th December, I left Constantinople, and landed on the 5th January, 1846, in Trieste.

The whole journey, of which this is a very hasty sketch, was one of the most fortunate expeditions which has ever been undertaken for a similar purpose. None who participated in it suffered from the climate or the accidental casualties of a journey. We travelled under the powerful and, in every way efficient protection of the Viceroy. We had an explicit and written permission to make excavations, wherever we should consider it desirable, and we employed it, to acquire a number of interesting monuments for the Royal Museum at Berlin, which would either have remained in Egypt as rubbish under the sand-hills, or exposed, like so many others, to be destroyed, for all kinds of material purposes.

The scientific results of the expedition have, in almost all respects, surpassed our own expectations. In confirmation of this it will be sufficient briefly to survey these results, which I shall do in the following pages, according to their principal objects, and by entering into some of the details.

The plan of the journey, as a whole, and in its individual parts, was founded principally with a Historical purpose in view. The French-Tuscan expedition, compared with ours was a Journey of Discovery, with all the advantages, but also with all the disadvantages, connected with such an undertaking. We were able from the commencement to aspire after a certain completeness, within the wide limits that were assigned us, not however failing in making new discoveries, which were as important as they were unexpected. The investigation of the most ancient Egyptian times, namely, the epoch of the first Pharaonic Monarchy, from about 3900 to 1700 before Christ, extending the history of the world almost two thousand years farther back, was left entirely unfathomed by Champollion. He only ascended the Nile valley as far as the second Cataract, beyond which there existed a great number of Egyptian monuments of all kinds, wholly unexamined, in which we must seek for an explanation of all those Ethiopian antiquities which are inseparable from the Egyptian.

The most important results we obtained, therefore, were in Chronology and History. The Pyramid-fields of Memphis gave us a notion of the Civilisation of Egypt in those primitive times, which is pictorially presented to us in 400 large drawings, and will be considered in future as the first section in that portion of the history of man, capable of investigation, and must be regarded with the greatest interest. Those earliest Dynasties of Egyptian dominion, now afford us more than a barren series of empty, lost, and doubtful names. They are not only free from every real doubt and arranged in the Order and the Epochs of time, which have been determined by a critical examination, but by showing us the flourishing condition of the people in those times, both in the affairs of the State, Civil affairs, and in the Arts, they have received an intellectual and frequently a very individual historical reality. We have already mentioned the discovery of five different burial-places of the 6th Dynasty in Central Egypt, and what we obtained from them. The prosperous times of the New Monarchy, namely, the period of splendour in the Thebaid, as well as the Dynasties which followed, were necessarily more or less completed and verified. Even the Ptolemies, with whom we appeared to be perfectly acquainted in the clear narratives of Grecian history, have come forward in a new light through the Egyptian representations and inscriptions, and their deficiencies have been filled up by persons who were hitherto considered doubtful, and were hardly mentioned by the Greeks. Lastly, on the Egyptian monuments we beheld the Roman emperors in still greater and almost unbroken series, in their capacity of Egyptian governors, and they have been carried down since Caracalla, who had hitherto been considered as the last name written in hieroglyphics, through two additional later emperors, as far as Decius, by which means the whole Egyptian monumental history has been extended for a series of years in the other direction.

Egyptian Philology has also made considerable progress by this journey. The lexicon has been increased by our becoming acquainted with several hundred signs, or groups, and the grammar has received a great many corrections. Such copious materials have also been acquired for these purposes, especially by the numerous paper impressions of the most important inscriptions, that Egyptian Philology must be essentially furthered by their being gradually adopted. For owing to the strict accuracy of these impressions, they are almost as valuable, in many investigations, as an equally large collection of original monuments. In addition to this, the history of the Egyptian language, which by the great age attributed to the earliest written monuments, embraces a period of time between five or six thousand years, becomes now of much greater importance in the universal history of the human language and writing. Among the individual discoveries we made, the one which attracted most attention, was that of the two decrees on the Island of Philæ, which were bilingual, namely, written in hieroglyphics, and in the demotic character,—one of which contains the decree belonging to the Rosetta inscription, referring to the wife of Epiphanes.

In spite of numerous writings upon Egyptian Mythology, it has nevertheless been hitherto deficient in a fixed monumental basis. In the Temple at Thebes we beheld a series of representations whose meaning had not hitherto been recognised, and which seem to me to afford entirely new conclusions for the correct comprehension and development of Egyptian mythology. The series of the first arrangement of the gods mentioned by Herodotus and Manetho, which in modern investigations has been differently arranged in its details by all scholars, is at length placed beyond all doubt, and certainly differs in all essential points from what has been hitherto everywhere adopted. I will briefly allude here to another fact, important both in the history of mythology as well as in a purely historical point of view, and which was elicited by an attentive investigation of the monuments. The direct succession of the reigning royal family was interrupted, towards the end of the 18th Dynasty. Through the monuments we became acquainted with several kings of this period, who were not afterwards admitted in the legitimate lists, but were regarded as unauthorised cotemporary or intermediate kings. Among these Amenophis IV. is to be particularly noted, who, during a very active reign of twelve years, endeavoured to accomplish a complete reformation of all secular and spiritual institutions. He built a royal capital for himself in Central Egypt, near the present Tel-el-Amarna, introduced new offices and usages, and aimed at no less a thing than to abolish the whole religious system of the Egyptians, which had hitherto subsisted, and to place in its stead the single worship of the Sun. In all the inscriptions composed during his reign, there is not one Egyptian god mentioned except the Sun; even in other words the sacred symbols were avoided, e. g. the word mut, mother, Coptic ⲙⲁⲧ, was no longer written as usual with the hawk 𓅐𓐴𓏏, the symbol of the goddess Mut, but 𓐝𓐰𓏏, mt, with the universal phonetic signs. Indeed, the former gods and their worship were persecuted to such an extent by this king, that he erased all the gods’ names, with the single exception of the Sun-god Ra, from every monument that was accessible throughout the country, and because his own name, Amenophis, contained the name of Ammon, he changed it into Bech-en-aten, “Worshipper of the Sun’s disk.” Therefore the fact, which has often been previously remarked, that at one particular period the name of Ammon was intentionally destroyed, forms only part of an event which had a much wider influence, and which unexpectedly reveals to us the religious movements of those times.

The History of Art has never yet been considered in the point of view from which Egypt, and all that concerns it, is now regarded. This necessarily formed a particular object of our expedition, and most directly gained by the increased chronological knowledge we obtained concerning the monuments. For the first time we were able to pursue all its branches during the old Egyptian Monarchy, previous to the invasion of the Hyksos, and accordingly to extend both it and the history of Egypt about sixteen centuries farther back, and some tens of years lower down in time. The different epochs of Egyptian art now first appeared clear and distinct, each marked by its peculiar character, intimately connected with the general development of the people. They had so frequently been misunderstood, that no one believed in their existence; they were lost in the general uniformity. I must mention, as one of the most important facts connected with this, that we found innumerable instances on unfinished monuments of three different canons of proportions of the human body; one belonging to the most ancient Pharaonic Monarchy, another later than the 12th Dynasty, when Thebes first began to flourish; a third, which appears at first in the time of the Psammetichi, with an entire alteration in the Principle of the division, and which remained unaltered till the time of the Roman emperors. The last is the same which Diodorus expressly mentions in his first book. Among the separate branches of Egyptian art, Architecture, which was almost unnoticed by the French-Tuscan expedition, was with us peculiarly attended to, by the extremely careful and circumspect labours of our architect Erbkam. This was befitting the important position occupied by this particular branch, in which grandeur, that element of art, peculiarly belonging to the Egyptian beyond all other nations, was capable of being developed, and has developed itself to the utmost. The study of the sculpture and paintings devolved upon the other artists who accompanied us, and the ability and fidelity with which they fulfilled their task must be recognised by every one. The Egyptian style associated with the limited views characteristic of the infancy of art, nevertheless possesses a highly-cultivated ideal element, which must be acknowledged by every one. The genius of Greece could never have bestowed on art such a marked character, indicative of a period of prosperous liberty, if it had not received it as a severe, chaste, and carefully nurtured child from the Egyptians. The principal task of the history of Egyptian art is to point out wherein consisted this cultivation of art, peculiar to the Egyptians, above all the primitive nations of Asia.

In the next place, Egyptian archæology, in the widest sense of the word, claimed a large portion of our time and attention: an extensive field, already examined, both successfully and diligently, by Wilkinson and Rosellini, which they were enabled to do by means of the inexhaustible number of separate objects belonging to every-day life, still in preservation, and by the representations of them, which are found in all directions, far surpassing any other ancient remains.

On that account it was still more necessary to make a stricter investigation, and to regard it from a higher point of view, rather than accumulate a greater number of individual things, that notwithstanding obtruded themselves on all sides, and which, besides, we collected in large quantities, as material to work upon.

Lastly, Geography and Chorography, which travellers are especially expected to promote, required to be more peculiarly prosecuted. We must particularly mention here, that besides the peculiar investigation of the Pyramid fields at Memphis, and in the Faiûm, which have been already alluded to, our records of the ruins of towns, and ancient monuments in the Nile country, as far up as Sennâr, are more perfect and exact than any hitherto made. With regard to the modern geographical names, which must always be viewed in comparison with the ancient, I have been most particular in obtaining the Arabic names—at least, throughout the district we traversed—in order to counteract, as far as lay in my power, the insufferable confusion in the names which are marked down. During the journey, I made special maps for the individual portions of the eastern mountains of Egypt and the peninsula of Sinai, and I collected geographical accounts from travellers concerning some remote districts, which we did not enter, and which are but little known; and I had geographical drawings made of them. Our investigations of the historical places in the peninsula of Sinai have been already alluded to. The discovery, mentioned above, of the most ancient Nilometer at Semneh, has added, in a remarkable degree, also to the history of the physical condition of the Nile valley; since it is quite evident, from the water just above the second Cataract, standing at that time twenty-two feet higher than at present, and the height of the water in the Thebaid being contemporaneously twelve to fifteen feet lower, that the fall of the Nile in the intermediate country was thirty-five feet greater in those times than it is now. But this gradual levelling of the bed of the river must have had the most decided influence on the history of the cultivation of the valley, and of the whole population; because the soil on the banks of the river in the district of Nubia, more especially owing to the considerable sinking of the water, being inaccessible to the natural overflowings, was laid dry, and could only be irrigated with great difficulty, and imperfectly, by means of artificial water-wheels.

Considerable progress was made in the knowledge of the African languages, by the investigation which I was principally enabled to make in the southern part of our journey. I inquired into and noted down as much of the grammar and vocabulary of three languages, as would enable me to give a distinct idea of them. First, Kongára, spoken at Dar-Fûr and the adjacent countries, a Central African-Negro language. Secondly, the Nuba language, which is spoken in two chief dialects, in one part of the Nubian-Nile valley and in the neighbouring countries situated to the south-west, and also appears to be derived from the interior of Africa. It had hitherto never been a written language, and I collected together for the first time a piece of written Nubian literature, for I made a Nubian Sheikh, who was perfectly familiar with the Arabic language and writing, translate the Fables of Locman, a portion of the Thousand and One Nights, and the Gospel of St. Mark, from the Arabian into the Nubian tongue, and write down besides nineteen Nubian songs, some of them in rhyme, some only rhythmical, and translate them into Arabic. Unfortunately, these precious packets, all but the Nubian gospel, were lost in Europe, with little hope of recovery. The third language investigated by me was the Beg´a, which is spoken by the Bischâri nation, who dwell between the Red Sea and the Nubian Nile. This language occupies an important position with reference to philology, since it seems to be a branch of the original Asiatic stock, of which the African offsets may be comprehended under the name of the Hamitic languages; and is, besides, particularly interesting in our study of the monuments, because, most probably, it was once the key to decipher the ancient Ethiopian inscriptions, numbers of which were discovered by us upon the Island of Meröe, and from that place, in the Nile valley, as far down as Philæ. These inscriptions are written in simple characters, from right to left, and derive their origin from the powerful nation of the Meröitic Ethiopians, whose direct descendants we behold in the present Beg´a nations. By comparing those languages with the other languages of Africa, which are already better known, I think I shall be able to separate, according to fixed principles, these “Hamitic languages” of north and north-east Africa (which may still be referred to their native home in Asia) from the numerous other languages of this enigmatical continent; and I am now engaged in preparing these philological investigations for special publication.

I must finally mention, among the results of our journey, two collections of inscriptions. In the first place, all the Greek inscriptions in the countries we travelled through were carefully sought out, and impressions of them were taken upon paper; by which Græco-Egyptian archæology, and more particularly the learned collections of inscriptions which have lately excited such lively interest, will probably be completed, confirmed, or justified in a satisfactory manner. Secondly, in the peninsula of Sinai we made as perfect a collection as was possible of the so-called Sinaitic Inscriptions, which are found engraved on the rocks in different districts of the peninsula, but principally in the neighbourhood of the old town of Faran, at the foot of the mountain range of Serbâl, and at a resting-place of the caravans in Wadi Mokatteb, situated farther north, which is named after them.

We were only able casually to turn our attention to objects of Natural Science; nevertheless, I did not however neglect, especially during remote mountainous journeys, to collect specimens of stone and earth from the more remarkable localities. We not only visited the celebrated stone quarries in the chalk mountains of Tura, in the sandstone range of Selseleh, in the granite rocks of Assuan, and others situated in the Nile valley, but also those alabaster quarries of El Bosra, opposite Siut, which were discovered a few years ago by the Bedouins, in which last we found a rock-inscription from the commencement of the 17th Dynasty. They resemble those quarries of granite and brecciaverde at Hammamât, upon the road leading from Qeneh to the Red Sea, which have been worked from the earliest times, and also the porphyry and granite quarries at Gebel Fatireh (Mons Claudianus), and at Gebel Dochân (Mons Porphyrites), in the Arabian chain of mountains, celebrated in the Roman period. I also had an opportunity of purchasing an interesting Ethnographical and Natural History collection in Alexandria, obtained by H. Werne during Mohammed Ali’s second expedition up the Nile, which penetrated as far as the 4° N. lat., of which an account was published; and I received a valuable collection of Egyptian fishes for the Anatomical Museum in Berlin, from the celebrated French physician Clot Bey.

LETTERS
FROM
EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.
DEDICATED,
WITH THE PROFOUNDEST VENERATION AND GRATITUDE,
TO
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

LETTER I.

On board the Oriental Steamer, the 5th of September, 1842.

All our efforts were taxed to enable us to depart on the 1st September; the delay of one day would have cost us a whole month, so it was necessary to be doubly active. A visit to Paris was indispensable, and I reached it in thirty-one hours from London; but two days were all that could be spared to procure what was requisite in the way of purchases, letters, and notes. I returned richly laden from this city, ever rich to me in interest, information, and various proofs of kindness. In London, I acquired two additional excellent travelling companions—Bonomi and Wild, who had lately determined to share in the expedition on an independent footing. The former, already well known as a traveller in Egypt and Ethiopia, not only has a thorough practical acquaintance with the mode of life in those parts, but also possesses a critical knowledge of Egyptian art, and is a master in Egyptian drawing; the latter, a young architect, full of genius, seeks with enthusiasm in the East a new field for the exercise of the rich and various gifts with which he is endowed. At length, everything was purchased, provided, and packed, and we had bid farewell to our friends. Bunsen alone, with his usual kindness, and unwearied friendship, accompanied us as far as Southampton, the place of our embarkation, where we spent the evening together.

As at other times, when landing from a stormy sea after days of rough tossing, we suddenly enjoy an almost inconceivable degree of repose in the quiet harbour, although for a long time we still feel the ground tottering beneath us, and fancy we hear the sound of the breakers, so on this occasion I experienced the same, though the case was reversed; when, after the whirl of the last days and weeks, and coming from the immense metropolis of the world, I reached the harbour, and entered the narrow, quickly traversed and surveyed, wooden house of the monotonous wilderness of the ocean. All at once there was nothing more to provide and to hasten; the long row of more than thirty chests of our baggage had vanished piece by piece into the dark hold of the ship; our cabins required no arrangement, for they could scarcely contain more than our own persons. The absence of disturbance for some time caused a new and undefined kind of disturbance: anxiety, without anything to be anxious about.

Among the passengers, I will only mention the missionary Lieder, a German by birth, returning with his English wife to Cairo. Commissioned by the English Missionary Society, he has founded and conducted a boys’ and girls’ school there, which is now to be restricted exclusively to the children of the Coptic Christians. Lieder has introduced instruction in the Coptic language into this school, and has thus restored to an honourable position that remarkable and most ancient language of the country, which, for many centuries past, has been entirely supplanted among the people by the Arabic tongue. It is true that the Holy Scriptures still exist in the country in the Coptic tongue, and are even used in public worship, but they are only chanted as psalms, and are no longer understood.

We started from Southampton on the 1st September, about ten o’clock in the morning. The wind was against us, and therefore we did not reach Falmouth till twenty-four hours afterwards, where our ship waited for the London mail, to take in the letters. We remained several hours at anchor there, in a charming bay; an old castle is situated at the entrance on either side, while in the background the town forms an extremely picturesque group. About three o’clock we again put to sea, and as there was a side-wind, it caused much sea-sickness among our party. I consider myself fortunate, that even on the most stormy voyages I have never been in this disagreeable condition, which nevertheless has something comic in it for those who are not suffering. It is a curious circumstance that the same motion which rocks the child into a sweet slumber, or which invites us to a pleasure-sail in the tossing boat, on shipboard owing to the slower time of the wide-swinging pendulum, becomes intolerable suffering, and prostrates the strongest heroes, without, however, being accompanied by any serious danger.

The following day we reached the Bay of Biscay, and with difficulty cut through the long and deep waves, which rolled out from the distant coast. On the morning of the 4th instant, Sunday, very few appeared at breakfast. About eleven o’clock, in spite of the violent motion, we assembled for divine service. The English flag, as the most sacred cloth in the ship, was spread over the pulpit desk; Herr Lieder preached, simply and well. About four o’clock we saw the Spanish coast for the first time, in faint, misty outline. The nearer we approached it, the waves gradually fell, for the wind blew off shore. Air, sky, and sea were incomparably beautiful. Cape Finisterre, and the adjoining head-lands, became more clear. We descried several small sailing-vessels along the coast; and all kinds of sea-fowl swarmed round the ship. By degrees, the whole company, even the ladies, collected on deck. The sea became as smooth as the clearest mirror, and we kept the Spanish coast in sight the whole afternoon. The sun descended magnificently into the sea; the evening star was soon followed by the whole host of the heavenly stars, and a glorious night wrapt around us.

But now the most splendid spectacle presented itself that I have ever seen at sea. The ocean began to lighten up, all the crests of the breaking waves glowed with an emerald-green fire, and a brilliant greenish-white waterfall fell from the paddle-wheels of the vessel, which left in its long wake a broad, light streak in the dark sea. The sides of the vessel, and our downward gazing faces, were lighted up as bright as moonlight, and I was able to read print without any difficulty by this water-fire. When the illuminating matter, which, according to Ehrenberg’s researches, proceeds from infusorial animalculæ, was most intense, we saw flames dancing over the sea, as far as the coast, so that it seemed as if we were sailing through a more richly-starred sky than that which was above us. I have frequently observed this illumination of the sea on the Mediterranean also, but never with such extraordinary brilliancy as on this occasion. The spectacle was quite like enchantment.

Suddenly I observed between the waves new living streaks of fire, which radiated from the vessel like two gigantic serpents, and, judging by the proportions of the ship, were at least from sixty to eighty feet long; they moved in a deceptive manner, in large windings beside the vessel, crossed the waves, dipped into the foam of the paddle-wheels, reappeared, retreated, hurried forward, and finally vanished in the distance. For a long time I could not explain this phenomenon. I thought of the old tales, so frequently repeated, of the huge sea-serpents which have been seen from time to time. Nothing could more closely resemble what was here before us. At length it occurred to me that it might however only be fishes running a race with the vessel, and, by their rapid movements, brushing the surface of the luminous sea, they might produce the long streaks of light behind them. Nevertheless, the ocular demonstration remained as deceptive as before; I could discover nothing of the dark fishes, nor determine their size; but I at length consoled myself by my own conjecture.

LETTER II.

Alexandria, the 23rd of September, 1842.

I put my last letter into the post in Gibraltar, on the 7th September, where we employed the few hours which were granted us in viewing the citadel. The African continent lay before us, a light streak on the horizon. Beneath me, apes were clambering on the rocks, the only ones in Europe which live in a wild state, and on that account they are left unmolested. In Malta, which we reached on the 11th September, we found the painter Frey, from Basle, whom I had known at Rome. He told me first, by word of mouth, that he desired to join in the expedition, and had arrived some days before from Naples. We were compelled to wait nearly three days for the post from Marseilles. This gave us at least an opportunity to visit the wonders of the island; namely, the gigantic buildings discovered, a few years back, near La Valetta, and to make some purchases. Through Lieder, I became acquainted with Gobat, who has hitherto managed the Maltese station of the English Missionary Society, but is now waiting for a new destination, as pecuniary circumstances compel the society to give up this station entirely. It gave me great pleasure to make the acquaintance of this distinguished person.[2]

From Malta we were accompanied by the missionary Isenberg, who, like Gobat, had lived for a long time in Abyssinia, and is also well known to linguists by his grammar of the Amharic language. A young girl from Basle was under his protection—Rosina Dietrich, the bride of the missionary Krapf, who has married her here, and is now going to return with her and his colleagues, Isenberg and Mühleisen, to the English missionary station in Schoa, by the next Indian steamer. He was married in the English chapel, and I was present as a witness at the ceremony, which was performed with simplicity and feeling.

On our arrival, on the 18th September, we found Erbkam, Ernest Weidenbach, and Franke, already here. They had been waiting for us several days.

Mohammed Ali had put to sea with the fleet, as he was impatiently expecting the arrival of Sami Bey, who was to bring him intelligence of the desired reduction of tribute; in place of which, he had received the appointment of Grand Vizier.

The Swedish Consul-General, d’Anastasi, who as the representative of our Consul-General Von Wagner, still absent, manages the affairs of Prussia, and who enters with zeal into all our interests, presented us to-day to the Viceroy, and we have just returned from the audience. He expressed himself much pleased with the vases, which I delivered to the Pascha in the name of our Sovereign, and he felt himself still more honoured by the King’s letter, of which he immediately ordered a written translation to be made, and perused it with great attention in our presence, and desired that I should be informed that he would give me the answer when we should again leave the country. We were received, and dismissed standing; coffee was handed to us, and he showed us other attentions, some of which were afterwards carefully explained to me by d’Anastasi. Boghos Bey, his confidential minister, was the only one present, and remained standing all the time. Mohammed Ali appeared to be cheerful, and youthful in his actions and conversation; no debility was visible in the features and flashing eye of the old man of seventy-three. He spoke with interest of his expeditions up the Nile, and assured us he intended to repeat them, till he should have found the sources of the White River. On my inquiring about his Museum in Cairo, he replied, that it certainly had not hitherto been very successful, but that frequently, when rapid progress was expected in his enterprises, unjust claims were made on him relative to these matters in Europe; since he was compelled first to obtain a basis and foundation, which, with us, had long been prepared. I only cursorily alluded to our excavations; and in the course of conversation assumed that he had granted us permission to make them; this I am soon to receive in due form.[3]

EGYPT, NUBIA AND THE UPPER NILE
to illustrate the
LETTERS OF DR. LEPSIUS.

LETTER III.

Cairo, the 16th October, 1842.

We were detained almost fourteen days in Alexandria. The whole time was spent in preparations for our farther journey. I saw the Pascha several times again, and found him always favourably inclined towards our expedition. But we had gained little in a scientific point of view. We visited Pompey’s Pillar, which has nevertheless no connection with Pompey, but, as we learn by the Greek inscription on the base, was placed there by the Prefect Publius, in honour of the Emperor Diocletian. The blocks of the foundation are partly fragments of older buildings; the Royal Ring of the second Psammeticus could still be recognised upon one of them.

The two obelisks, of which the one still standing is called Cleopatra’s Needle, are very much destroyed on the sides which are exposed to the weather, and in part have become totally illegible. They were erected by Thutmosis III., in the sixteenth century before Christ; at a later period Ramses Miamun has inscribed his name, and still later, on the outermost borders of the four sides, another king, who proved to be hitherto wholly unknown, and was therefore gladly greeted by me. I must also mention an interesting collection of objects of every sort connected with ethnography and natural history, which was made by Werne, a native of Prussia, during the second expedition of the Pascha up the Nile, as far as the White River, in lands till then unknown, and which a few months previously had been conveyed to Alexandria.[4] It appeared to me of such value, and to be so unique in its kind, that I have purchased it for our Museums. While we were still there, it was packed up, ready to be despatched. I think it will be welcome in Berlin.

At length the Bujurldis (Firman) of the Pascha was ready, and we hastened to quit Alexandria. We embarked the same day that I received it (the 30th September), on the Mahmudieh canal. Darkness surprised us before we had accomplished this first difficult departure. It was nine o’clock before we drove off from our hotel, on the extensive and beautiful Frank-square, in two carriages belonging to M. d’Anastasi, preceded by the customary runners with torches. The gate was opened at the watchword that had been given to us; our baggage had already been conveyed to the boat some hours previously on camels, so that we were able to depart very soon after our entrance into the roomy vessel, which I had hired in the morning. The Nile, which we entered at Atfeh, had tolerably high waves, as the wind was strong and unfavourable. The usual mode of navigation here, is with two pointed sails, which rise upwards like the wings of a bee; these are easily beaten down, by every violent gust of wind, not without danger, especially in the dark. I therefore granted the sailors permission to stop every stormy night.

The following day, the 2nd of October, we landed at Sa el Hager to visit the ruins of ancient Sais, the city of the Psammetici, famous by its temple to Minerva. The circular walls of the town, built of bricks of Nile earth, and the deserted ruins of the houses, are alone extant; there are no remains of stone buildings with inscriptions. We paced the circumference of the city, and made a simple plan of the locality. The Acropolis was situated to the north-west of the town, which is even now marked by tolerably high mounds of rubbish. We spent the night at Nekleh. I have got the great maps of the “Description de l’Egypte” beside me, on which we were able to trace almost every step of our excursions. We have hitherto found it almost everywhere to be depended upon.

The 3rd of October we landed on the western bank, to inspect the remains of the old Rosetta canal, and spent almost the whole afternoon till sunset in examining the ruins of an old town near Naharieh. No walls are now visible, only mounds of rubbish, yet we found in the houses of the modern town several stones with inscriptions, chiefly built into door-sills, which had originally belonged to a temple of King Psammeticus I. and Apries (Hophre). The next night we stopped on the western bank at Teirieh, and landed there the following morning to search for some ruins, an hour distant from the bank, but from which we obtained nothing. The Libyan desert here for the first time advances quite close to the Nile, and presented us with a new and deeply impressive sight.

On the following morning, we first saw the Great Pyramids of Memphis, rising above the horizon; I could not for a long time take my eyes off them. We still continued to sail on the Rosetta arm; about mid-day we reached the so-called Cowsbelly, where the Nile divides into its two principal arms. Now for the first time we were able to survey the noble, wonderful river in its whole magnitude, which with its fertilising and sweet-tasting water, influences the life and manners of the inhabitants on its banks like no other river in the world. It usually attains its greatest height about the beginning of October. But this year an inundation has occurred, such as has not been remembered for generations past. A breach in the dams is dreaded, which after the great murrain, that is said to have carried off up to the last week forty thousand head of cattle, would cause Egypt to be afflicted a second time this year.

About five o’clock in the evening we arrived at Bulaq, the harbour of Cairo. We rode at once from the harbour to the town, and made arrangements for a considerable stay. By-the-by, when we say Cairo, and the French La Caire, it proceeds from a pure error in language. The town is never called anything by the Arabs now, but Masr, and the country the same; that is the old Semetic name, which is more easily pronounced by us in the dual termination Mis’raim. It was only in the tenth century, when the present city was founded, that the modern Masr, by the addition El Qahireh, that is “the victorious,” was distinguished from the earlier Masr el Atiqeh, the present Old Cairo. The Italians then omitted the h, which they could not pronounce, mistook the Arabic article el for their masculine il, and thus by its termination also, stamped the whole word as masculine.

It was just the commencement of the Musulmans’ holy fasting month, the Ramadan, during which they neither take food, nor “drink smoke or water” the whole day, and receive no visits, but only begin the whole business of life after sunset; thus completely changing day and night, which, on account of our Arabian servants, causes us much inconvenience. Our Kawass (the Pascha’s guard of honour that had been given us), which had missed the time of our departure from Alexandria, established itself here. As our Prussian vice-consul is out of health, I applied to the Austrian consul, M. Champion, to whom I had been warmly recommended by Ehrenberg, with respect to our being presented to the representatives of the Pascha at this place. He received us with the greatest politeness and anxiety to serve us, and has obtained for us everywhere a good reception. On my official visits, which, on account of the Ramadan, were necessarily made about eight o’clock in the evening, I was usually accompanied by Erbkam and Bonomi. Our torch-bearers ran before us, then followed on asses, first the Dragoman of the consul, and our Pascha’s Kawass, then we ourselves, in stately procession. We rode almost across the whole town to the Citadel, through the narrow streets, which were filled with Arabs, and picturesquely illuminated by our torches, there we first paid a visit to Abbas Pascha,[5] a grandson of Mehemet Ali. He is governor of Cairo, but rarely there. From him we went to Scherif Pascha, his representative, and then to the minister of war, Ahmet Pascha. We were everywhere received with great courtesy.

On the day after our arrival, I received a diploma as honorary member of the older Egyptian Society, from which the younger one, which had already forwarded to London the same invitation to me, has separated. Both held meetings during the first days after our arrival, but I was only able to attend one of them, in which an interesting paper was read by Krapf, on certain nations in Central Africa. The accounts were given him by a native of the country of Enarea, who had travelled into the country of the Doko on mercantile business, and describes the people there very much as Herodotus describes the Libyan dwarf nation, according to the account of the Nasamonians, namely, as composed entirely of little people, about the size of children from ten to twelve years old. We might almost imagine that they were speaking of apes. As the geographical notices of the hitherto wholly unknown land of the Doko are also interesting, I had the whole paper copied, in order to send it along with the small map which belongs to it, to our venerated Ritter.[6]

On the 13th of October we made our first excursion from this place to the ruins of Heliopolis, the biblical On, whence Joseph took his wife Asnath, the daughter of a priest. Nothing remains of this highly-praised city, which prided itself in possessing, next to Thebes, the most learned body of priests, but the walls, which now resemble great ramparts of earth, and an obelisk still erect, and perhaps in its original site. The peculiar interest of this obelisk is, that it was erected by King Sesurtesen I. in the Old Monarchy, about B.C. 2300, and is by far the most ancient of all known obelisks; for the broken one in the Fayoum at Crocodilopolis, which bears the name of the same king, is rather a lengthened stele, or tablet, in the form of an obelisk. Boghos Bey has received a present of the ground on which the obelisk stands, and has laid out a garden round it. The flowers of the garden have attracted a multitude of bees, and they have been unable to find a more commodious habitation than in the deep and sharply-cut hieroglyphics of the obelisk. Within the space of a twelvemonth, they have covered the inscriptions of the four sides to such a degree, that a great portion of them have now become quite illegible. They had been, however, previously published, and we had little difficulty in our examination, because three sides bear the same inscription, and that on the fourth, also, differs but little.

Yesterday, the 15th October, was our king’s birthday, and I had selected this day for the first visit to the Great Pyramids. We would there, with a few friends, commemorate our King and our Fatherland in a joyous festival. We invited the Austrian consul, Champion; the Prussian consul, Bokty; our learned countryman, Dr. Pruner, and Messrs. Lieder, Isenberg, Mühleisen, and Krapf to join our party, some of whom however, were to our regret, prevented from attending.

The morning was beautiful beyond description, fresh and festive. We rode in a long procession through the yet quiet city, and through the green avenues and gardens which are now laid out before it. Wherever, almost, that we met with new and well carried out works, Ibrahim Pascha was named to us as their originator. He seems to be doing much in all parts of Egypt for the embellishment and improvement of the country.

It is impossible to describe the scene that met our view when we emerged from the avenues of date-trees and acacias; the sun rose on the left behind the Moqattam hills, and illuminated the summits of the Pyramids in front, which lay before us in the plain like gigantic rock crystals. All were overpowered, and felt the solemn influence of the splendour and grandeur of this morning scene. At Old Cairo we were transported across the Nile to the village of Gizeh, from which the largest Pyramids are called Haram el Gizeh. From this spot, in the dry season, one may ride over to the Pyramids, by a straight road, in an hour, or little more. But as the inundation now stands at its highest point, we were compelled to make a great circuit on long dams; we came nearly as far up as Saqâra, and only reached the foot of the greatest Pyramid at the end of five hours and a half.

The unexpected length of the ride gave us an appetite for the simple breakfast which, in order to strengthen us for the ascent of the greatest Pyramid, we partook forthwith in one of the old sepulchral chambers; these had been here hewn in the rock, somewhere about five thousand years ago, and are now inhabited by some Bedouins. Meantime, a spacious tent, with decorations of various colours, which I hired in Cairo, had arrived. I had it pitched on the northern side of the Pyramid, and the great Prussian royal standard, the black eagle with the golden sceptre, the crown and the blue sword on a white ground, which our artists had themselves, during the last few days, sketched, stitched, and fastened to a high pole, was planted before the door of the tent.

About thirty Bedouins had, in the meanwhile, gathered around us, and waited for the moment when we should ascend the Pyramids, in order to raise us, with their strong brown arms, up the steps, which are between three and four feet high. Scarcely had the signal for departure been given, than immediately each of us was surrounded by several Bedouins, who dragged us up the rough, steep path to the summit, as in a whirlwind. A few minutes later, and our flag was unfurled on the summit of the oldest and highest of human works that is known, and we greeted the Prussian eagle with three joyous cheers to our king. Flying towards the south, the eagle turned his crowned head towards our home in the north, from which a refreshing wind blew, and diverted the hot rays of the mid-day sun from off us. We also looked homewards, and each one thought aloud, or silently in his heart, of those who loving, and beloved, he had left behind.

The panoramic view of the landscape spread out at our feet next riveted our attention. On the one side the Nile valley, a wide sea of overflowed waters, intersected by long serpentine dams; here and there broken by villages rising above its surface like islands, and by cultivated promontories filling the whole plain of the valley that extended to the opposite Moqattam hills, on whose most northerly point the citadel of Cairo rises above the town stretched out at their base. On the other side, the Libyan desert, a still more wonderful sea of sandy plains and barren rocky hills, boundless, colourless, noiseless, enlivened by no creature, no plants, no trace of the presence of man, not even by tombs; and between both, the ruined Necropolis, whose general position and simple outline lay spread out clearly and distinctly as on a map.

What a spectacle, and what recollections did it call forth! When Abraham came to Egypt for the first time, he saw these very Pyramids, which had been already built many centuries before his coming. In the plain before us lay ancient Memphis, the residence of the kings on whose tombs we were then standing; there dwelt Joseph, and ruled the land under one of the most powerful and wisest Pharaohs of the newly restored Monarchy. Farther away, to the left of the Moqattam hills, where the fruitful low ground extends on the eastern arm of the Nile, beyond Heliopolis, distinguished by its Obelisk, begins the blest region of Goshen, out of which Moses led his people to the Syrian desert. It would not, indeed, be difficult from our position to recognise that ancient fig-tree on the road to Heliopolis, at Matarîeh, under whose shade, according to the tradition of the country, Mary rested with the infant Christ. How many thousand pilgrims of all nations have since visited these wonders of the world down to ourselves, who, the youngest in time, are yet but the predecessors of many other thousands who will succeed us, ascend these Pyramids, and contemplate them with astonishment. I will not describe any further the thoughts and feelings which agitated me during these moments. There, at the goal of the wishes of many years, and at the same time at the commencement of our expedition; there, at the summit of the Cheops-Pyramid, to which the first link of our whole monumental historical inquiry—not merely for the history of Egypt, but for that of the world—is immoveably attached; there, where I looked down upon the wonderful field of tombs, from which the Moses’-wand of science now calls forth the shadows of the ancient dead, and causes them to pass before the mirror of history, in the order of their time and rank, with their names and titles, and with all their peculiarities, customs, and surrounding accompaniments.

After I had taken an exact survey of the neighbouring tombs, with a view to select some points for future excavations, we once more descended to the entrance of the Pyramid, and, providing ourselves with lights, entered, like miners, the steeply sloping shaft with some guides, and reached the gallery, and so-called King’s Chamber, by paths already familiar to me by drawings. We admired the infinitely fine seams of the enormous blocks, and examined the quality of the stones of the passages and chambers. In the spacious hall, whose floor, walls, and ceiling, are entirely built of granite, and, therefore, return a metallic-sounding echo, we sang our Prussian hymn, which sounded so powerful and so solemn that our guides afterwards told the remaining Bedouins that we had selected the innermost part of the Pyramid to perform divine service and utter a loud general prayer. We now visited also the so-called Chamber of the Queen, and then quitted the Pyramid, reserving the view of the chambers which were more difficult of access for a future and longer visit.

Meantime, our orientally-ornamented tent had been arranged, and a dinner was prepared within it, seasoned by the importance of the festival, of which only Prussians partook, with the exception of our two English companions. It need hardly be told that our first toast on this occasion, also, was to the king and his household, and it required no great eloquence to inspire all hearts.

The remainder of the day passed in cheerful, festive, and tender reminiscences and conversation, till the time for our departure had arrived. We were still obliged to wait a quarter of an hour after sunset to give our servants, our mule-drivers, and other Arabian attendants, time to eat their frugal meal, as, on account of the Ramadan, in spite of the heat and labours of the day, they had not yet tasted anything. Then the clear, full moon guided us in the cool and silent night across the sea of sand and waters, through villages and palm-groves back to the city, which we did not reach before midnight.

LETTER IV.

At the foot of the largest Pyramid, the 2nd Jan., 1843.

Still always here! in full activity since the 9th November, and perhaps for several weeks longer in the new year. But yet, how could I suspect from the accounts that have hitherto been given by travellers what a harvest we had to gather on this spot; here, on the oldest scene of all determinable chronological human history. It is strange how little this spot has been examined, though it has been the most frequently visited in Egypt. I will not, however, quarrel with our predecessors, as we reap the fruits of their neglect. I have rather been compelled to restrain our desire to see more of this land of wonders, as we shall perhaps have to discharge half of our whole task on this spot. Two tombs, besides the Pyramids, are conspicuously marked on the best of the earlier maps. Rosellini has only accurately examined one tomb; and Champollion says, in his letters: “Il y a peu à faire ici, et lorsqu’on aura copié des scènes de la vie domestique, sculptées dans un tombeau, je regagnerai nos embarcations.” We have given forty-five tombs on our accurate topographical plan of the whole necropolis, whose occupants have become known to me by their inscriptions, and altogether I have recorded eighty-two, which seemed worthy of notice, by their inscriptions or by other peculiarities.[7] Few of them belong to later times; almost all of them were built during, or shortly after, the erection of the great Pyramids, and therefore afford us an invaluable series of dates for the knowledge of the oldest determinable civilisation of the human race. The architecture of that period, about which I formerly could only offer conjectures,[8] is now clearly developed before me. We have thus early presented to us almost all the different component parts of architecture; sculptures of entire figures, of all sizes, in alto-relievo and basso-relievo, are presented in astonishing numbers. The style is very marked, and beautifully executed, but it is evident that the Egyptians of that time did not yet possess that canon of proportions which we find prevailing at a later period.[9]

The painting on a very fine coating of lime is often beautiful beyond conception, and is sometimes preserved as fresh and perfect as if it had been done yesterday. The representations on the walls chiefly contain scenes from the life of the deceased, and appear especially intended to place before the eyes of the spectator his wealth in cattle, fish, game, boats, domestics, &c. We thus become familiar with all the details of his private life. The numerous inscriptions describe or designate these scenes, or they exhibit the often widely-branching family of the deceased, and all his titles and offices, so that I could almost compose a court and state calendar of King Cheops, or Chephren. The most splendid tombs or rock-sepulchres belonged principally to the princes, their relatives, or the highest official persons under the kings beside whose Pyramids they are laid; and not unfrequently, I have found the tombs of father, son, and grandson, even great grandson, so that whole pedigrees of those distinguished families, who, above 5000 years ago, formed the nobility of the land, are brought to light. The most beautiful of the tombs, which, with many others, I myself discovered beneath the sand, which here buries all things, belongs to a prince of the family of King Cheops.

I am now employing daily from forty to sixty people in excavations and similar works. I have also made them dig in front of the great Sphinx, to disclose the small temple which is situated between its paws, and to expose the colossal stele of a single block of granite, eleven feet high and seven feet broad, which forms the back wall of the little temple, and which is still covered up with sand to nearly its entire height. It is one of the few monuments here from the times of the great Pharaohs of the New Monarchy, after the expulsion of the Hyksos; I have had a plaster cast taken of it.

The Egyptian winter is not always so spring-like as is sometimes imagined in Europe. About sunrise, when all hasten to their work, we have already had it +5° R. (43¼ Fahr.), so that the sketchers could hardly use their fingers.

The winter season began here with a scene which will always be vividly remembered by me. I had ridden out to the excavations, when seeing a large black cloud approaching, I sent a servant to the tents, to take care of them, but as it began to rain slightly, I soon rode after him myself. Shortly after my arrival a storm of wind began; I therefore ordered the cords of the tents to be secured, but soon a violent shower of rain came in addition, which alarmed all our Arabs, and drove them into the rock-tomb, in which is our kitchen. Erbkam and Franke were the only ones of our own party here. Suddenly the storm became a regular hurricane, such as I had never witnessed in Europe, and a hailstorm came down on us, which almost turned the day into night. I had the greatest trouble to drive our Arabs out of the grotto, that they might bring our things to the rock-tombs, where it was dry, as every moment we might expect the overthrow of the tents. And it was not long before first our common tent fell down, and when I had hastened from that into my own, in order to hold it from the inside, this also broke down above me. After I had crawled out, I found that my things were tolerably well covered by the tent, so that for the present I might leave them alone, to prevent a still greater danger. Our tents, protected from the worst winds, the north and west, lay in a depression of the valley, towards which the plateau of the Pyramids inclines. From that place I suddenly saw a rapid mountain torrent precipitating, like a gigantic serpent on its certain prey, upon our encampment, already half destroyed and beaten into the sand. The principal stream first dashed towards the great tent; another arm threatened mine, but did not however quite reach it. Everything, however, which had been floated out of our tents by the heavy rain was carried off by both streams, which united below the tents, and was borne a hundred steps farther into a deep hollow behind the Sphinx, where a great lake, which fortunately had no outlet, formed itself in a moment.

Now picture to yourself this scene! Our tents shattered to the ground by the storms of rain and hail, between two mountain torrents, which at once dug out a channel for themselves in the sandy ground, in several places six feet deep, and carried down with them into the muddy, foam-covered, slimy lake, our books, drawings, sketches, linen, instruments of all kinds, even our levers and iron crows, in short everything they laid hold on. In addition to this, we ourselves, with dripping clothes, without hats, securing the heavier articles, pursuing the lighter ones, wading up to the waist in the stream or lake, to fish out what the sand had not yet swallowed, and all this the work of a quarter of an hour, at whose expiration the sun forthwith shone again, and proclaimed the end of this deluge scene by a splendid and brilliant rainbow.

It was difficult to see at once what we had lost, and where we had to begin, to bring things again into some order. Both the Weidenbachs and Frey had gazed, from the tombs where they were working, upon the whole scene, as a magnificent natural spectacle, not suspecting what we had experienced here, till I sent for them to assist us immediately in preparing for the approaching night. For several days we continued to fish and dig for our things. Many were lost, much had become useless; the greater part of what was not enclosed in chests and trunks bore more or less traces of this flood. After all, however, nothing essential was destroyed. I had first placed in safety the great portfolios, with my manuscripts and books; in short, a few days afterwards, the whole affair only seemed to me a remarkable picture, which I should be sorry to forget, without leaving any disagreeable consequences behind it.

Since then, we have often had to suffer from violent winds, which sometimes fill the air for several days together with sand, to such a degree, as to be annoying to the lungs; it entirely prevents painting with colours, and covers the drawing and writing-paper incessantly with a most disagreeable and constantly renewed coat of dust. This fine sand penetrates all our clothes, enters every box, even those which close most perfectly, fills nose, ears, and hair, and is the unavoidable ingredient of all food, solid and liquid.

5th January.—On the evening of the first Christmas holiday, I surprised my companions by a great fire, which I had caused to be lighted on the summit of the highest Pyramid. The flame illuminated both the other Pyramids splendidly, as well as the whole field of tombs, and shone quite across the valley as far as Cairo. That was indeed a Christmas Pyramid! I only let Abeken into the secret, who, with his constantly cheerful temper, and his intellectual and instructive conversation, had happily joined us on the 10th December. With his assistance I then prepared a special Christmas-tree for the following day, in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. We planted a young palm-tree in the sarcophagus of the ancient king, and adorned it with lights, and small presents, which I had ordered from the town for us children of the desert. St. Sylvester must have his share of honours also. At twelve o’clock on New-year’s Eve immense flames rose simultaneously at midnight from the three great Pyramids, and proclaimed the changes of the Christian year, far and wide, to the Islamite provinces at their base.

I consider it to be a useful mental regimen to our party that their tedious and monotonous labours, more especially those of our artists, should be relieved not by the weekly holiday of Sunday only, but also as often as there are opportunities, by cheerful festivities and agreeable diversions. Nor has the slightest discord hitherto disturbed the happy disposition and the good-humour of our confederation, which daily acquires fresh elasticity, both from the abundance of new impressions that we receive, and from the mutual reciprocation of the different natures and talents, as by overcoming the manifold difficulties and hardships of this Bedouin life itself.

You may judge of the variety of the elements of which our assembled party is composed, by the Babel of languages in which we continually move; the English language is competently represented by our companions, Wild and Bonomi; French and Italian serve for our intercourse with the authorities, with strangers and Levantine interpreters. We give orders, eat, and travel, in Arabic, and we reflect, talk, sing, and live, in good German. But during the day we usually all live separate, and uninterruptedly each at his own work. We take our coffee before sunrise, and our dinner after sunset; and breakfast during work. Thus our draughtsmen have already been enabled to supply our swelling portfolios with a hundred great folio sheets, cleanly executed, partly in pencil, partly in colours.

LETTER V.

The Pyramids of Gizeh, 17th January, 1843.

The inscription which was composed in celebration of the king’s birthday has now become a stone monumental tablet, in the fashion of the old steles and Proskynemata,[10] and its contents are as follows; the nearer, indeed, it approaches the manner of the Egyptians, the less appropriate is it in German:

“Thus speak the servants of the King, whose name is the Sun and Rock of Prussia, Lepsius the scribe, Erbkam the architect, the Brothers Weidenbach the painters, Frey the painter, Franke the moulder, Bonomi the sculptor, Wild the architect: All hail to the Eagle, The Protector of The Cross, to the King the Sun and Rock of Prussia, to the Son of the Sun,[11] who freed his Fatherland, Frederick William the Fourth, the Philopator, the Father of his Country, the Gracious One, the Favourite of Wisdom and History, the Guardian of the Rhine, whom Germany has chosen, the Dispenser of Life. May the Most high God grant the King, and his Consort, the Queen Elizabeth, the Rich in Life, the Philometor, the Mother of her Country, the Gracious One, an ever new and long life on Earth, and a blessed habitation in Heaven through all Eternity. In the year of our Saviour, 1842, in the tenth month, on the fifteenth day, on the forty-seventh Birthday of his Majesty, on the Pyramid of King Cheops; in the third year, in the fifth month, on the ninth day of the reign of his Majesty; in the year 3164 from the commencement of the Sothis period under the King Menepthes.”

We left behind us the hieroglyphic inscription engraved on stone and painted with oil colour, occupying a space five feet broad and four feet high. The stone, specially polished and prepared for the purpose, is placed at a considerable height near the entrance into the Pyramid of Cheops.

It seemed to me fitting, that while the members of the Prussian expedition dedicated this tablet to the much-honoured Prince by whom they were sent hither, they should at the same time, for the sake of future travellers, leave behind them some traces of their activity on this field of Pyramids, where it was reserved for them to gather together the rich materials for the first chapter of the Scientific History of Nations.

Do not, however, believe that these are the important works which detain us here so long. Our journey has this advantage over previous ones—that spots like this are entitled to occupy us until they have been thoroughly ransacked. We already know that even the gigantic and magnificent ruins of the Theban plain can reveal nothing which can equal in interest the Memphitic times of the Old Monarchy.

We must, indeed, one day depart; but it will even then be with the conviction that we leave an infinite amount of interesting materials behind, which might still be obtained. I had already resolved on our departure several days ago, when suddenly a series of tombs, different in architecture, and in the style of the figures and hieroglyphics, with other titles, and besides, as was to be expected, with other kings’ names, again disclosed a new epoch.

It is still by no means conclusive how much has been gained in an historical point of view, or, at any rate, it is but dimly discerned, I was, however, in the right when, even in Europe, I proposed to reconstruct the 3rd Dynasty from the monuments. I have not yet found a single Shield which could be safely placed before the 4th Dynasty. It appears that the builders of the great Pyramids desired to assert their rights, to having formed the commencement of monumental history, although it is as clear as day that they were not the first to build and to inscribe their monuments. We have even now found many kings’ names hitherto unknown, and variations of other names; thus:

𓍹𓐼𓂓𓂓𓇋𓐽𓍺 KEKA.

𓍹𓐼𓅃𓇋𓐱𓂓𓅱𓐽𓍺 HERAKU.

𓍹𓐼𓅱𓄊𓐱𓋴𓂓𓆑𓐽𓍺 USESKEF.

𓍹𓐼𓆛𓈖𓇋𓐽𓍺 ANA.

The name which I had hitherto read Amchura, in the detailed and painted inscriptions, which throw no inconsiderable light on the figurative meaning of the hieroglyphical images, exhibits a decidedly different sign from the well-known group 𓇋𓌳𓄪𓐰𓐍𓅱 Amchu, namely about the pronunciation of which I am still in the dark.

There is nothing to alter with respect to the assignment of the great Pyramids. It cannot be doubted, after our researches, that the second Pyramid really belongs to Schafra (more correctly Chafra, the Chephyren of Herodotus), as the first does to Chufu (Cheops), and the third to Menkera (Mykerinos, Mencherinos). I think I have now discovered the pathway up from the valley to the second Pyramid; it led directly to its temple, past the Sphinx, but it was probably destroyed at an early period. The number also of the Pyramids continues to increase. I have found three, in Abu Roasch, in place of one hitherto known, and two fields of tombs. Two Pyramids once stood also at Zauiet el Arrian, a village which has now almost disappeared, and there is a great field of ruins adjoining to it. The careful researches, measurements, and notes of Perring, in his beautiful work on the Pyramids, save us much time and trouble. We are thus the more able to direct our attention to the private tombs, and their hieroglyphical representations, such as are wholly wanting in the Pyramids. But nothing is yet determined, nothing is ripe for definitive arrangement, though wide prospects open before us. Our portfolios swell; many things have been cast in plaster, and among them the great stele between the paws of the colossal Sphinx from the first year of Tuthmosis IV.

LETTER VI.

The Pyramids of Gizeh, 17th January, 1843.

I have ordered ten camels to be here to-morrow evening, that we may start for Cairo the day after to-morrow, before sunrise, with the original monuments and plaster casts, of which we have already collected a considerable number, and we shall deposit them there, till our return from the South. This will be the commencement of our departure for Saqâra. A series of tombs, only recently discovered, belonging to the Dynasties which immediately succeed that of Cheops, has already delayed our departure once. The 5th Dynasty, which in Africanus appears as the Elephantine Collateral Dynasty, and as such was not to be expected here, now lies complete before us, and in substance such as I already had constructed it in Europe. The gaps have been filled up with three kings, whose names were hitherto unknown. At the same time, several kings, who had hitherto been merely visionary, were added to the 7th and 8th Dynasties, from which we had hitherto obtained no monumental names. The reference to the 5th Dynasty as the immediate successor of the 4th, is of invaluable importance, and would in itself alone richly repay us for our residence of many months in this place. We are still always occupied with buildings, sculptures, and inscriptions, which by the Royal Rings being more exactly defined, will be placed in a flourishing epoch of civilisation, between three and four thousand years before Christ. These numbers, hitherto so incredible, cannot be too frequently called to the remembrance of ourselves and others; the more criticism is thereby challenged, and compelled to make earnest researches on the subject, so much the better for the cause. Conviction will immediately follow in the steps of stimulated criticism, and we shall then at length approach the results which are connected with it in all branches of antiquarian research.

A roll of papers will be sent to you along with this letter, which contains several drawings, that we have taken from the sepulchral chambers in this place. They are excellent samples of the oldest Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting which the history of art can produce, and the most beautiful and best preserved that we have found on the whole field of tombs. I hope that we shall one day see these sepulchral chambers arranged in perfect order in the New Museum in Berlin. That indeed would be the fairest trophy that we could carry out of Egypt. Their transport will certainly be attended with some difficulties, for you will easily see by their dimensions that ordinary means would not in this case be sufficient. I have, therefore, as a preliminary step, written a letter direct to his Majesty the King, and inquired whether it would not be possible to send a vessel here expressly for this purpose, either next year, or at the conclusion of our expedition, with workmen and implements, to take these monuments to pieces in a more skilful manner than we are capable of doing, and to bring them, with the other collections, to Berlin.

Six of the subjoined sheets contain drawings of a sepulchral chamber, which I myself discovered beneath the sand, and whose colours are preserved almost as fresh and perfect as you see them in the drawing.[12] It belongs to a Prince Merhet, and as he was a priest of Chufu (Cheops), and as he had called one of his sons Chufu-mer-nuteru, and possessed eight villages, the names of which are combined with that of Chufu, and as the situation of the tomb is on the western side of the Pyramid of Chufu, and the style of the representations are in perfect keeping with it, it is more than probable that Merhet was a son of Chufu, from which circumstance all the representations become still more interesting. This prince was at the same time superintendent of all the royal buildings, therefore he filled the office of “Chief of the Board of Works” (Oberhofbaurath), a high and important position at that period of most magnificent buildings, which we have frequently seen occupied by princes and royal relatives. We may therefore conjecture, that he also himself superintended the building of the largest Pyramid. Is not this alone sufficient to justify the attempt to transfer the beautifully-constructed sepulchral chamber of this princely architect to Berlin, which otherwise will, sooner or later, be destroyed by the Arabs, and be used to build their ovens, or be burnt in their lime-kilns? There, it would at least be preserved, and be accessible to the admiration or the study of those who are eager after knowledge, so long as European art and science teach us to value such monuments. To reconstruct it, a space must be left perfectly free of 6 m. 30, (19 feet 8 inches) in breadth, 4 m. 60, (15 feet) in height, and 3 m. 80, (12 feet 5½ inches) in depth, and this might surely be reserved for it in the New Museum.[13]

I observe, that such chambers form only a small portion of the entire structure of the tomb, and were not intended for the reception of the mummy. The tomb of Prince Merhet is above 70 feet long, 45 broad, and 15 high. It is solidly constructed of great square stones, with slanting outer surfaces. The chamber is alone left vacant, and one, or, as in this instance, two square shafts, leads from the flat roof through the building down to the living rock; at the bottom of which, about 60 feet deep, rock-chambers open at the side, in which the sarcophagi were deposited. I have carefully preserved the venerable remains of the skull of the ancient prince of the house of Cheops, which I found in his mummy chamber. We found, alas! little more, as this tomb also, like most of the others, had been long ago broken open. The entrance originally was closed by a slab of stone. The chamber above ground alone remained accessible at all times, and was therefore ornamented with representations and inscriptions. Here the sacrifices offered to the dead were brought to the occupant of the tomb. It was generally dedicated to the worship of the deceased, and so far corresponded to the temple that was erected before every pyramid belonging to a king, for his worship. Like those temples, these chambers have also their entrance always from the east. The shafts, like the Pyramids, lie behind, to the west, because the deceased was believed to be in the west, whither he had gone with the setting sun, to the Osiris of Amente.

The seventh sheet finally, contains two pillars, and their architrave, from the tomb of a royal relative, who was at the same time the prophet of four kings, and whose name was Ptah-nefru-be-u. The tomb was constructed later than that of Prince Merhet, in the fifth Manethonic Dynasty. It belongs to an entire group of tombs, whose architectonic plan and connection with one another is very remarkable, and which I have, therefore, completely divested of sand, and brought to the light of day, while previously neither the entrance, nor anything but the extreme summit of the outermost encircling walls, were visible.

I also send you the whole plan of this tomb, besides one of those contiguous to it, but I think I shall only bring away with me the architrave, and the beautifully painted pillars of the most southern chamber, which can be easily removed. On the architrave appears the name and titles of the deceased, who is also represented at full length on the four lateral faces of the pillars. Ami, the father of the deceased, appears on the front sides of the northern pillars; Aseskef-anch, his grandfather, on that of the southern. The pillars are twelve feet high, slender, and as usual, without capitals, but with the abacus.

I have entirely isolated the whole chamber at the tomb of Prince Merhet; but for the present I have relinquished the idea of taking it to pieces, as this is not the most favourable season for its removal. I have therefore caused this tomb, as well as the other, to be refilled with sand; and when I arrive at Cairo to-morrow, I shall obtain an order, to prevent any of the tombs that have been opened by us, from being robbed of their stones. It is really revolting to see how long lines of camels from the neighbouring villages come here daily, and march off again, loaded with building stones. Fortunately—for is not everything for the best—the accommodating Fellahs are more attracted by the Psammetic tombs, than by those belonging to the most ancient Dynasties, in which the great blocks are not sufficiently manageable. I begin, however, to have more serious fears for the tombs of the 5th and 7th Dynasties, which have been built with stones of a more moderate size. Yesterday a beautiful standing pillar, covered with inscriptions, which was just going to be sketched, was overturned by the robbers behind our backs. They do not seem to have succeeded in breaking it to pieces. The people here are so degenerate that their strength is quite insufficient, with all their assiduity, to destroy what their great predecessors have erected.

A few days ago, we found a small obelisk erect, in its original position, in a tomb from the commencement of the 7th Dynasty. It is only a few feet high, but in good preservation, and with the name of the occupant of the tomb inscribed upon it. This form of monument, which is first conspicuous in the New Monarchy, is thus removed several Dynasties farther back in the Old Monarchy, even than the Obelisk of Heliopolis.

LETTER VII.

Saqâra, the 18th March, 1843.

A short time ago, I made an excursion with Abeken and Bonomi to the more distant Pyramids of Lischt and Meidûm. The last especially interested me extremely, as it has solved in a general manner some enigmas in the structure of the Pyramids, which had long occupied my mind.[14] As an exception to the general rule, it lies almost in the lower plain, in the immediate neighbourhood of Bahr Jussuf, and is only just removed out of reach of the inundation; but it rises up so high and stately from the flat surface of the surrounding country, that it attracts notice even from a great distance. Its square, sharp-angled tower-like centre, which diminishes slightly at the summit, namely, at an angle of 74°, rises from an envelopment of rubbish, which surrounds it almost half-way up, to the height of 120 feet. Another hundred feet higher, there succeeds a platform, from which rises a more slender tower of moderate height, in the same angle, which again, in the centre of its flat upper surface, bears the remains of a third elevation. The walls of the principal tower are for the most part smoothly polished, but have stripes at intervals that have been left rough, the cause of which are first appeared almost inexplicable; but on more minute examination, I also found in the interior of the half-destroyed building which surrounds the base, some rising walls that were smooth, and having the same angle as the tower; in front of these, again lay other walls, which followed one upon another like scales. At length it occurred to me that the whole building had proceeded from a small Pyramid, which had been erected in stages of about forty feet high, and then first increased and heightened simultaneously on all sides, by superimposed coverings of stone, from fifteen to twenty feet in breadth, till at length the great steps were filled up so as to form one common flat side, giving the usual pyramidal form to the whole.

This gradual growth explains the enormous magnitude of particular Pyramids, beside so many other smaller ones. Each king began the building of his Pyramid as soon as he ascended the throne; he only designed a small one, to ensure himself a complete tomb, even were he destined to be but a few years upon the throne. But with the advancing years of his reign, he increased it by successive layers, till he thought that he was near the termination of his life. If he died during the erection, then the external covering was alone completed, and the monument of death finally remained proportionate to the duration of the life of the king. If, in the course of centuries, all the other conditions which determine our calculations had equally remained, then, as by the rings of a tree, we might even now have been able to calculate the years in the reigns of particular kings, by the coatings of the Pyramids.

On the other hand, the great enigma of the bearded giant Sphinx still remains unsolved! When, and by whom, was the colossal statue erected, and what was its signification? We must leave the reply to more fortunate successors. It is almost half-covered up with sand, and the granite stele, above eleven feet high, which stands between the paws, and which in itself forms the back wall of a small temple, which is here inserted, was totally invisible. Even the immense excavations made by Caviglia, in the year 1818, had long disappeared, so as not to leave a trace behind. By means of between sixty to eighty persons labouring for whole days together, we almost reached the base of the stele, a drawing of which I caused immediately to be made, as well as an impression on paper, and also a plaster cast, in order to set it up one day in Berlin. This stele, on which the Sphinx is itself represented, was erected by Tuthmosis IV., and dates from the first year of his reign. Thus, he must have found the Colossus already there. We are accustomed to regard the Sphinx, in Egypt, as a portrait of the king, and generally indeed, for that of a particular king, whose features it is said to represent; therefore, with the single exception, as far as I am aware, of one female sphinx, which represents the wife of King Horus, they are always andro-sphinxes. In the hieroglyphic written character, the Sphinx is called Neb (the Lord), and forms e. g. the middle syllable in the name of the King Nectanebus.

But what king does our Colossus represent? He stands in front of the second Pyramid, that of Schafra (Chephren), not exactly in the axis, yet parallel with the sides of the temple, which stands before it, and in such a manner, as if the rock beside the Sphinx on the northern side was intended as its counterpart. Sphinxes, rams, statues, and obelisks, used besides always to stand in former times in pairs before the entrances of the temples. But what a powerful impression would have been made on the approaching worshipper by two such giant watchmen, between which the ancient pathway led up to the Temple of Chephren. They would have been worthy of that period of vast colossal monuments, and in due proportion with the Pyramid which rises up behind. I cannot deny that this connexion would be most satisfactory to me. What other motive would have induced the Theban kings of the 18th Dynasty, who are alone to be thought of in the New Monarchy, to adorn the Memphitic Field of Death with such a wonder of the world, if entirely unconnected with what surrounds it. In addition to this, upon the steles of Tuthmosis, the name of King Chephren is inscribed in a line, which farther on is almost entirely broken away; a portion of his Name-Shield, unfortunately quite isolated, has been still preserved, therefore undoubtedly it had some sort of reference to the builder of the Pyramid which is situated behind it.

On the other hand, indeed, the question arises: If King Chephren was represented here, why does not the image bear his name? It is rather designated as Harem-chu (Horus in the Horizon), that is, as the image of the Sun-god, the emblem of all kings, and also Harmachis in one of the Greek inscriptions which have been found in front of the Sphinx. It does not appear to me altogether improbable that Pliny’s fable is founded on this, who makes a King Amasis (Armasis) be buried in the Sphinx;[15] for we surely cannot suppose it was a real sepulchre. Another consideration to be borne in mind is that I have not in general met with the image of the Sphinx in that oldest period of the builders of the Pyramids; yet too much stress need not be laid on this; the form of the Sphinx is not often found, even in inscriptions or representations, in the New Monarchy. In short, the true Œdipus is still wanting for this king of all sphinxes. He who can clear away the inexhaustible sand-flood which is again burying that very field of tombs, and who can expose to view the base of the Sphinx, the ancient pathway to the temple, and the surrounding hills, might soon venture to decide this question.

The enigmas of history are in this land associated with many enigmas and wonders in nature, which I must not leave wholly unnoticed. I must at least describe to you the most recent.

I had descended into a mummy-pit with Abeken, that we might open some sarcophagi we had discovered, and I was not a little astonished, on stepping out, to find myself in an actual snow-storm of locusts, which almost darkening the sky, moved above our heads in hundreds of thousands from the desert in the south-west towards the valley. I fancied it was a single flight, and in haste called the others out of the tombs, that they might witness the Egyptian wonder before it had passed away. But the flight continued, indeed the workmen said, it had even begun an hour previously. We now observed for the first time, that the whole country, far and wide, was covered with locusts. I sent a servant into the desert to find out the breadth of the flight. He ran for about a quarter of an hour, then returned, and said that still as far as he had been able to see, he could discover no termination. I rode home, still in the midst of the storm of locusts. They fell down in heaps on the border of the fruitful plain; and so it lasted the whole day through, till evening, and so on the next, from morning till night, to the third, indeed to the sixth day, and even longer, but in less numerous flights. The day before yesterday, a storm of rain seems for the first time to have beaten down the rear-guard, and destroyed them in the desert. The Arabs make great smoking fires in their fields, they rattle and scream all day long to protect their crops from the unexpected invasion. But it will avail them little. These millions of graminivorous winged insects cover even the adjacent sandy plain like a new living vegetation, to such a degree, that scarcely anything is to be seen of the ground; and when they swarm up from any point, they fall down again on whatever is in the immediate neighbourhood; exhausted by their long journey, in their eagerness they fill their hollow stomachs, and, as if conscious of their enormous numbers, they appear to have lost even all fear of their natural enemies, man, animals, smoke, and noise. But what is most wonderful to me, is their origin from the naked desert, and the instinct which has led them from some oasis across the inhospitable sandy sea, to the rich pastures of the Nile valley. The last time that this land-plague of Egypt exhibited itself to a similar extent was above fourteen years ago. The people say that it is sent by the comet which we have observed in the south-west for the last twelve days, and which now, in the hours of evening, since it is no longer outshone by the moon, again stretches its magnificent tail of fire across the heavens. The zodiacal light, which is so rarely seen in the north, has also been visible of late almost every evening.

I have only now been enabled completely to conclude my account with Gizeh, and to combine the historical results. I have every reason to rejoice over it; the 4th and 5th Dynasties are completed, with the exception of one king. I have just received the somewhat illegible drawing of a stone which has been built into a wall in the village of Abusir, representing a series of kings of the 4th and 5th Dynasties upon their thrones, and, as it appears, in chronological order. I intend to ride there myself to see the original.

LETTER VIII.

Saqâra, the 13th April, 1843.

I hasten to communicate to you an event which I should not like you to hear for the first time from other quarters, perhaps with alterations and exaggerations. Our camp, a few days ago, was attacked and plundered during the night by an armed band; yet none of our party were seriously injured, and nothing that is irreparable was lost. The affair therefore, is over, and the consequences may only prove a useful lesson to us. But I must first go back several days in my journal.

On the 3rd of April, his R.H. Prince Albert (of Prussia) returned to Cairo from Upper Egypt. The following day I visited the city, and laid before the prince a portion of our labours, in which he especially took a lively interest as he had already seen more of this land of wonders than we ourselves, and the field of Pyramids alone he had still left unvisited. On his first arrival in Cairo, I was absent on an excursion of several days to the Faiûm, with Abeken and Bonomi. The prince returned at the very time of the celebration of some of the chief festivals of the Mahometans, which, had he not been there, I should probably have neglected to attend. On the 6th, the entrance of the returning caravan of pilgrims from Mecca was welcomed by a solemn festival, and, some days later, the birthday of the Prophet, “Mulid e’ Nebbi,” was celebrated, one of the most original feasts of the entire East. The principal actors in it are dervishes, who spend the day in processions, and perform their horribly extatic dances, called sikrs, in the evening, in tents illuminated by coloured lamps, which are erected in the avenues of the Ezbekîeh. Between thirty and forty of this religious sect place themselves in a circle, and, keeping time, begin first slowly, then gradually more vehemently, to throw the upper part of their bodies, which are naked, backwards and forwards into the most violent distortions, like people who are possessed. At the same time, they ejaculate in a rhythm, with a loud screaming voice, their Prophet’s saying, La ilaha ill’ Allah (“There is no God but Allah”), which, gradually stammered out lower and more feebly, is finally almost rattled in the throat, till at length, their strength being entirely exhausted, some fall down, others withdraw reeling, and the broken circle is, after a short pause, replaced by another.

What a fearful, barbarous worship, which the astonished multitude, great and small, people of condition and those of inferior rank, contemplate with seriousness or in stupid veneration, and in which they themselves not unfrequently take an active part. The god who is appealed to is evidently much less the object of adoration than the appealing, raptured saints themselves; for the crazy and the simple, or men and women who are physically disordered in other ways, are very generally held sacred by the Mahometans, and are treated with great reverence. It is the demoniacal force in nature, acting without being comprehended, and therefore regarded with fear, which is worshipped by the natural man wherever he perceives it, because he feels that it is connected with, yet not under the control of his mental faculties; first, in the mighty elements, then in the wonderful instincts of animals—to us dark, yet subject to a law; finally, in the still more exciting, extatic, or generally abnormal psychological conditions of his own race. We must indeed, regard the Egyptian worship of animals—in as far as it was not merely a symbolic embodiment of deeper and more refined ideas—as resting on the same basis of a universal worship of nature; and the adoration paid to men with disordered intellects, which appears occasionally in other nations also, may be considered as a remarkable offset from that tendency. Whether such conditions really exist at the present time, or whether, as among the dervishes, it is produced artificially, and is intentionally cherished, will not be detected by the multitude; and besides, for the individual case, it is indifferent. An uncomfortable feeling of fear creeps over us in such a neighbourhood, and we feel it necessary to avoid uttering any expressions, or even to give a sign of disgust, or to betray that we see through it, lest we should direct the brutal outbursts on ourselves.

The festival, which lasts nine days, closes with a peculiar ceremony called Doseh, the Trampling, but which I could not bear to look at. The sheikh of the Saadîeh dervishes rides to the chief sheikh of all the dervishes in Egypt, El Bekri. On the way thither, a great number of these holy people, and others who do not consider themselves inferior to them in piety, throw themselves flat on the ground, face downwards, and in such a manner that the feet of one always lies close to the head of another. The sheikh then rides over this living carpet of human bodies, and his horse is obliged to be led on each side by a servant, to compel it to make this march, unnatural even to the animal. Each body receives two treads from the horse; the greater number spring up again unhurt, but whoever comes away seriously, or, as sometimes occurs, mortally injured, has, besides, this disgrace, that it is believed that on the previous day he had either misunderstood or neglected to say the proper prayers and charm-formularies, which were alone able to protect him.

On the 7th April, Erbkam and I accompanied the prince to the Pyramids, first of all to those of Gizeh. The Pyramid of Cheops was ascended, and the interior was visited. In order to exhibit the beautiful tomb of Prince Merhet, I caused it to be re-opened. We next proceeded to our camp at Saqâra.

Here we heard that during the previous night a daring robbery had been committed in Abeken’s tent. He was sleeping in it, on his return from Cairo, beside a burning light, when his full portmanteau, pistols, and other objects lying near, were purloined. It was only while the thief was making his retreat that a noise was heard by the slumbering guards, composing the night-watch, immediately behind the tent; the darkness, however, hindered all pursuit.

After the prince had also seen the most beautiful tomb of Saqâra, we rode across the plain to Mitrahinneh, to visit the mounds of ruins at Memphis, and the half-buried colossal granite statue of Ramses Miamun (Sesostris)[16], the face of which is still preserved almost without a blemish. It was late in the evening before we again reached Cairo, after a day’s journey of sixteen hours, hardly interrupted even by short pauses for repose; but the unusual exertion seemed rather to heighten than to depress the prince’s cheerful enjoyment in travelling.

The following day we visited the mosques of the city, which are remarkable, partly by their splendour, and in part, also, are peculiarly interesting for the history of architecture in the middle ages, as the earliest general application of the pointed arch is here visible. The questions which relate to this most characteristic department of architecture, the so-called gothic style, interested me so deeply a few years ago, that even here I could not forbear following my old pursuit. The pointed arch is found in the oldest mosques, even as far back as the ninth century. Upon the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, the new form of arch was transported to that island, where, in the eleventh century, it was found by the Normans, the next conquerors, and was still more generally adopted. Without entering into further details, it seems to me scarcely possible to indicate any historical connexion of the Norman pointed arch of Palermo with our style of pointed arch of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The acceptance of such a connexion would be still more difficult for the explanation of the rows of pointed arches to be found already much earlier in Germany, which are sporadic, but still according to rule; those, for example, in the cathedral of Naumburg as early as the eleventh century, and in Memleben even in the tenth. Theorists do not indeed admit this yet, but I am still waiting for a refutation of the argument I have brought forward.[17]

The Nilometer on the island of Roda, which we visited after the mosques, also contains a series of pointed arches, belonging to the original building, which dates as far back as the ninth century, proved by the Cufic inscriptions, which have been carefully examined by those who are learned in these matters.

Egypt, however, does not only lay claim to the oldest application, therefore, perhaps to the invention, of the pointed arch, but also to that of the round arch. Near the Pyramids there are a number of tombs having stone vaulted roofs, whose single blocks exhibit the correct concentric cut. These belong to the 26th Manethonic Dynasty of the Psammetici, that is, to the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ, and are therefore coeval with the Cloaca Maxima and the Carcer Mamertinus in Rome. But we have also found tombs with vaulted roofs made of Nile mud bricks, which go back as far as the time of the Pyramids. Now, contrary to the opinion of others, I deny that the brick arch, whose single bricks with their parallel surfaces, are only made concentric by the wedge of cement, presupposes a more intimate acquaintance with the actual principle of the arch, and more especially with its qualities of support; and, as a proof of this, we never meet with a concentric joined arch before the time of the Psammetici, but frequently an apparently real arch, in like manner cut out of horizontal layers of stone. But wherever the brick arch was very ancient, we may there most naturally place the development of the concentric stone arch, which is met with at a later period at that very place, contemporaneous at least with its appearance in other countries.

On the following morning I was intending to accompany the prince into the interesting institute of M. Lieder, when Erbkam arrived unexpectedly from our camp. He reported that during the previous night, between two and three in the morning, a number of shots had been suddenly fired in the immediate neighbourhood of our tents, and that at the same time a body of more than twenty people had broken into the camp. Our encampment is on a narrow flat space in front of the rock-tombs, which are excavated about half-way up the precipitous sides of the Libyan valley, and the great accumulation of rubbish has formed a broad terrace before them. It was only accessible on one side, by a cleft, which passes our terrace from above, downwards. It was from this point that the attack was made. They first fell upon the tent in which we all take our meals, and which also serves the purpose of a drawing-room, which soon fell down. Then followed the other great tent, in which Erbkam, Frey, Ernest Weidenbach, and Franke, were sleeping. This was also torn down, and covered its inmates, who, in the general confusion, extricated themselves with difficulty from the ropes and canvas. Besides all this, the arms had been taken the day before into one tent, for the reception of the prince, and had been arranged and secured to the central pole, so that no one had them at hand. The watchmen—cowardly fellows—who knew that by the orders of the police here, they would incur punishment, were anything of the sort to befal us, even should they not be to blame, had immediately run off on all sides, uttering loud cries, and have not yet returned. The robbers now laid hold of the chests and boxes which stood nearest to them, rolled whatever they could seize down the hill, and soon disappeared across the plain. Their muskets were evidently not loaded with ball, for no one had been wounded by them; they had, however, attained their object, which was to increase the confusion. E. Weidenbach, and some of our servants, had alone been wounded in the head and shoulders, though not dangerously, by the butt-ends of their muskets, or by bludgeons. The purloined articles must, however, have bitterly disappointed the expectation of the robbers, for the great trunks scarcely contained anything but European clothes, and other things, which no Arab can use. A number of coloured sketches are most to be regretted—the Sunday studies, up to the present time, of the very able artist Frey.

We know besides, very well, from whence this attack has proceeded. We dwell on the frontier of the territory of Abusir, an Arab village which has been long under evil report, situated between Kafr el Batran, at the foot of the Pyramids of Gizeh, and Saqâra. By Arabs (Arab. pl. ʾUrbân) I mean, according to the custom of this country, those inhabitants who, as we are informed, only settled at a later period in the Nile valley, and having obtained certain privileges, founded some villages here. They are distinguished by their free origin, and their more manly character, from the Fellahs (Fellahʿ, pl. Fellahʿîn), the original peasants of the land, who, enervated by their centuries of bondage, have reached a low point of degradation, and who were not, besides, able to withstand the encroachment of Islam. The name of Bedouin (Bedaui, pl. Bedauîn) belongs alone to the ever free son of the Desert, who only roves about the borders of the inhabited country. In the vicinity of the Pyramids there are now a number of Arab villages. To these, also, belong the three places I have mentioned. Since our place of encampment was within the territory of the Sheikh of Abusir, a young, handsome, and enterprising man, he had a certain claim to supply us with the necessary number of well-paid watchmen. I, however, preferred to place ourselves under the protection of the more trustworthy, and more powerful Sheikh of Saqâra, whom I had known before, and within whose district the principal field of our labours is situated. This determination deprived the people of Abusir of a reward, and us of their friendship, as I had already observed for some time past, without vexing myself any further about it. They had manifestly taken the opportunity at the present time, when I was absent in Cairo with several servants, to execute this prank. The footmarks were traced through the plain to Abusir, and a little clever boy probably served as a spy, the grandson of an old Turk from the Mameluke times, the only friend in Abusir, with whom we sometimes exchanged visits. It must have been also by means of this boy, who often came to our camp, that the first theft was committed in Abeken’s tent, with which he was well acquainted.

The attack was a serious affair, and its consequences might be important, if it remained unpunished. I went immediately with M. von Wagner to Scherif Pascha, the minister, whose business it was to find out the offenders.

A few days afterwards the plain beneath our camp became an animated scene. The mudhir (governor) of the province arrived with a splendid cavalcade, and a great troop of under officials, and servants, and pitched his gay camp at the foot of the hill. We exchanged visits of ceremony, and discussed what had happened. The mudhir told us beforehand that the individual offenders would not be found out, at any rate they would not be brought to confess, because each knew that his throat stood a poor chance. However, on the second day, the Sheikhs of Saqâra and of Abusir, and a number of suspected persons were brought forward, in order to be put upon their trial. As was to be expected, no decision was come to, neither by personal interviews, nor examinations. The punishment was therefore summarily executed. One after the other they were tied to a post, their faces towards the ground, and the soles of their feet upwards. They were then unmercifully bastinadoed with a long whip of hippopotamus hide, called kurbatsch, often till they fainted. It was in vain that I urged that I saw no reason to punish these particular persons, and I was still more astonished when our old venerable friend, the Sheikh of Saqâra, for whose innocence I would have accepted any surety, was also led up, and, like the others, was laid in the dust. I expressed my surprise to the mudhir, and protested earnestly against it, but received for answer that he could not be exempted from the punishment, as though, indeed, we had not been on his ground and territory, we had however received the watchmen from him, who had run off, and had not then returned. With some difficulty I obtained, at least, a mitigation of the punishment; but he had already become almost insensible, and it was necessary to have him carried to the tent, where his feet were bound up. The whole affair ended with a compensation in money for the value of the stolen articles, which I purposely did not estimate at too low a price, as every loss of money remains for years in the remembrance of the Arab, while he forgets the bastinado, indeed boasts of it, as soon as he no longer feels it. Nezel min e’ semma e’ nebút, bárakak min Allah, say the Arabs, i. e. “The rod came from Heaven, a blessing from God.” But also in the matter of the fine, the sum that we demanded was so distributed, that the rich Sheikh of Saqâra was compelled to pay a far greater share than the Sheikh of Abusir, a partiality which was probably in some measure owing to the intercession of the old distinguished Turk of Abusir with the Turkish mudhir.

As soon as the money was paid down I went to our Sheikh of Saqâra, whose unmerited adverse fate had seriously vexed me, and I publicly gave him the half of his money back again, promising in confidence that afterwards, when the mudhir should have departed, I would restore to him also the other half. This was such an unexpected thing to the old sheikh, that he looked at me for a long time incredulously, then kissed my hands and feet, and called me his best friend on earth; I, who had just been, at all events, the indirect occasion of his beautiful beard being soiled with dust, and of his feet being so lacerated as to cause him weeks of pain. His wondering joy, however, was not directed so much at me as at the unhoped-for sight of the money, which never loses its charm with the Arab.

There is a curious mixture of noble pride and vulgar avarice to be found in the Arab, which is at first quite incomprehensible to the European. Their free noble bearing, and imperturbable repose, appear to express nothing but a proud sense of honour; balanced, however, against the smallest gain of money, it melts away like wax before the sun, and the most contemptuous treatment is not taken into consideration, but is borne with crouching servility where money is in question. We might at first imagine one of these two natures to be hypocrisy, or dissimulation; but the contradiction returns too often in all forms, both great and small, not to lead to the conviction that it is characteristic of the Arab, if not of the entire East. Even as early as in the days of the Romans, the Egyptians had so far degenerated, that Ammianus Marcellinus could say of them: Erubescit apud eos, si quis non infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat,[18] and in the same manner the fellah to-day points with a contented smile to his scars as soon as the tax-gatherer has withdrawn, who, in spite of his instruments of torture, has been curtailed of a few piastres.

LETTER IX.

Cairo, the 22nd April, 1843.

A violent cold, which for some time checked my usual activity, has led me hither from our camp at Saqâra. The worst is, that we are still obliged to postpone our further journey. Certainly all which such a spot affords is of the utmost interest, but the abundance of material this time almost causes us embarrassment. The most important, but most difficult works, and those which occupy the longest time, are those of our architect Erbkam. To him belongs the great task of making the most detailed plans of the border of the desert, in nearly the central point of which we lie encamped. This ground comprises the almost uninterrupted field of tombs from the Pyramid of Rigah as far as that of Daschûr. The separate plans of the northern fields of Abu Roasch, Gizeh, Zauiet el Arrian are already completed. However meritorious the sketches of Perring, they cannot be compared in exactitude with ours. Entire Necropoli, with the Pyramids belonging to them, have been newly discovered, partly by myself, partly by Erbkam. Some of the Pyramids, hitherto unknown, are even now from eighty to a hundred feet high; others are indeed almost wholly demolished, but were originally of considerable extent, as is manifested by their base. My return to Saqâra will, it is to be hoped, give the signal for our departure.

We shall go by land to the Faiûm, the province which branches off into the desert. The season is still incomparably beautiful, and the desert-journey will undoubtedly be far more conducive to our health than the voyage on the Nile, which we before contemplated.

It is to be hoped that my state of health will not detain me long here, for my impatience daily increases to return from the living city of the Mamelukes into the solemn Death-city of the old Pharaohs. And yet it would perhaps afford you more pleasure if I were able to paint in colours, or in words, what I here see before my windows.

I live in the extensive square of the Ezbekîeh, in the most beautiful and most frequented part of the city. Formerly, there was a great lake in the centre, which is now, however, converted into gardens. Broad streets run round it, separated for riders, and foot passengers, and shaded by lofty trees. There all the East pass by, with their gaily-coloured, various, yet always picturesque costumes; the poorer classes with blue and white tucked up blouses, and the richer with long garments of different materials, with silk kaftans,[19] or fine cloth dresses of delicately contrasted colours, with white, red, green, and black turbans, or with the more refined, but less becoming, Turkish tarbusch;[20] amidst these some Greeks, with their dandy tunics, or Arab Sheikhs, wrapped up in their wide antique mantles, thrown around them; the children wholly or half naked, also with shaven heads, on which now and then a single tuft stands up from the crown, as if ready to be laid hold of; the women with veiled faces, but whose eyes painted round with black, peer forth ghost-like hither and thither through peep-holes in the veil. All these, and a hundred other indescribable figures, walk, glide, and rush past, on foot, on asses, mules, dromedaries, camels, horses, only not in carriages; for these were more used even in the time of the Pharaohs than they are at present. If I look up from the street, my view is bounded on one side by splendid mosques, with cupolas, and slender-springing minarets, together with long rows of houses, most of them built carelessly, yet some of a more distinguished class, richly ornamented with artistically carved grated windows, and elegant balconies; on the other side, by the green domes of palm-trees, or by leafy sycamores and acacias. Finally, in the distant background, beyond the flat roofs, and green intervening masses, the far-shining sister-pair of the two largest Pyramids stand out distinctly on the Libyan horizon in sharp lines through the thin vapour. What a contrast from that mongrel Alexandria, where innate Eastern habits and feelings still struggle for mastery with the overpowering high-pressure civilisation of Europe. It seems to me as if we had already here penetrated into the innermost heart of the East of the present day.

LETTER X.

On the Ruins of the Labyrinth, the 31st May, 1843.

After my return to the camp of Saqâra, I only required three more days to finish our work there. I paid a last visit to the ruins of ancient Memphis, the plan of which Erbkam had meanwhile completed; some interesting discoveries terminated our researches.

On the 19th of May we at length set out on our journey, with twenty camels, two dromedaries, thirteen asses, and one horse. When I speak of camels and dromedaries, it is perhaps not superfluous to observe what is here understood by these names, for in Europe an incorrect or rather arbitrary distinction is made between them, which is unknown here. We Germans call camel what the French call dromadaire, and dromedary (Trampelthier, Germ. a corruption of dromedary), what they call chameau. The first is said to have one hump, the other two. According to that, there can be no question of dromedaries or chameaux in Egypt, for here there are no two-humped creatures, although now and then they appear in one-humped families. In Syria again, and the central parts of Asia, there would be no camels or dromadaires; at least the one-humped animals are very rare. In truth, however, it is a very immaterial difference, and whether the one hump of fat on the back be divided in two or not, in itself alone would perhaps scarcely justify the distinction of a different species. The people of the East, at the present day at least, make no distinction between them; neither did the ancients also, for the one-humped creatures do not carry easier, nor move quicker, than the others. Nor does the rider sit more conveniently between two humps, for the saddle is equally raised over the two as over the one hump. On the other hand a great distinction, although not founded on natural history grounds, has been generally established between the strong, dull camel, used as a beast of burden, commonly called gémel, and the younger, more tractable, broken-in, riding camel, which is called heggîn, because the pilgrims to Mecca (hágg, pl. heggâg) set a great value on good riding animals. An Arab takes it as much amiss if his slim favourite camel is called a gémel, as if with us, a well-broken horse was to be described as a plough or draught-horse. Dromedarius, or camelus dromas, κάμηλος δρομάς, does not appear to have meant more among the ancients, as the name proves, than a courser of a slight breed, suited for riding.

As these last are far more expensive, it is often difficult to procure, even a few of the better animals from the Arabs who furnish them; most of us are obliged to be contented with ordinary beasts of burden. Mine was this time endurable, and received, at least, the title of heggîn, from the Arabs.

I did not wait for the decampment of the general party, in which the Sheikhs of Saqâra and Mitrahinneh were included, but rode on in front with Erbkam, always beside the desert. On our way, the latter made one more plan of a Pyramid, with the surrounding ground, which I had observed on a former trip. We have now a list of, altogether, sixty-seven Pyramids, almost twice as many as are to be found in Perring. The topographical plans of Erbkam are most invaluable.

Soon after sunset we arrived at the first Pyramid of Lischt, where we found our tents already pitched. The following morning I made the caravan depart early, and I remained behind with Erbkam, that we might employ ourselves in examining and noting down the two Pyramids, which stand rather widely apart in this isolated field of death. We did not follow till two o’clock, and arrived about seven in the evening at our tents, which were pitched on the south side of the stately Pyramid of Meidûm. It was again a short day’s journey to the Pyramid of Illahûn, and thence through the embouchure of the Faiûm to this spot, three hours more.[21] It was late before we started. I left Erbkam and E. Weidenbach behind, to put on paper the examination of the ground; and I rode off with only two servants, half an hour in advance of the caravan, in order to reach the Labyrinth by a more interesting route, along the Bahr Jussuf, and to fix upon the place of encampment.

Here we have been, on the southern side of the Pyramid of Mœris, since the 23rd May, and are settled among the ruins of the Labyrinth; for I was certain from the first, after we had made but a hasty survey of the whole, that we are perfectly entitled to designate them under this name: I did not, however, imagine that it would have been so easy for us to become convinced of this.

As soon as Erbkam had measured and noted down a small plan of what is extant, I caused some excavators to be levied from the surrounding villages, through the Mudhir of Medînet el Faiûm, the governor of the province, and ordered them to make trenches through the ruins, and to dig at four or five places at once. A hundred and eight people were thus occupied to-day. With the exception of those belonging to the nearest place, Howara, who return home every evening, I allow these people to encamp on the northern side of the Pyramid, and to spend their nights there. They have their overseers, and bread is brought to them; every morning they are counted, and they are paid every evening; each man receives a piastre—about two silver groschens;[22] each child, half a piastre, sometimes, when they have been particularly diligent, as much as thirty paras (there are forty of them in a piastre). Each of the men brings with him a pickaxe, and a shallow, woven basket (maktaf). The children, who form the greatest numbers, are only required to bring baskets. The maktafs are filled by the men, and carried away by the children on their heads. This is done in long processions, which are kept in order and at work by special overseers.

Their chief pleasure, and a material assistance in their daily work, is singing. They have some simple melodies, which at a distance, owing to their great monotony, make almost a melancholy impression. When near them, however, the unmerciful persistence of the shrill voices, as they often amuse themselves many hours together in the same manner, is hardly to be borne. It is only the consideration that I am helping so many to bear half their burden for the day, and that I materially further the work, which has constantly prevented me interfering when it reaches this point, till I sometimes at length leave my tent in despair, in order, by employing myself at a greater distance, to obtain some repose for my ears. The only variety in the execution of the stanza of two lines, is that the first line is sung by one voice, the second by the whole chorus, while the hands are clapped at every bar of common time. For example:

Makûl, in the first line, is really only “food,” but it has become a general expression for dates, because, in the huts of the Fellah, this is the chief, and, for many people, the only food. Another rather more animated melody is this one:

in which the chorus, in exception to the general rule, separates into two parts. I hardly think, however, that these thirds are intentional, they slip in of themselves; for it sometimes happens that single voices join in singing the same cadence in a totally different strain without paying any regard to whole hours of discord. The Arab—I might almost say, the people of the East generally—are devoid of the sense of making the simplest complications of several voices into a harmony. The most artistic music of the best singers and performers, which often inexpressibly delights the most civilised Musulman in Cairo, and collects large masses of people as an audience, consists only in a melody a hundred times repeated, flourishing, restless, and whirling, whose theme cannot be retained, and can scarcely be detected by a European ear. Nor are the different instruments, when played together, employed for any harmonious united variety, beyond what is suggested by the rhythm.

We have eight watchmen during the night, who really do watch, as I often convince myself by making a nightly round. One of them walks constantly up and down with his gun on the ramparts surrounding our camp, for if any where, we have to fear another attack here, not from the Arabs, but from the still more dangerous Bedouins, who inhabit the borders of the desert in many single hordes, and are not under the control of great sheikhs, who we might secure in our interests. From Illahûn to this place, we passed through a Bedouin camp, whose sheikh must have known of our arrival, as he rode out to meet me on horseback, and offered his services, if we should require anything here. Farther on, we met an old man and a girl in a distracted state, uttering loud cries of despair. They threw dust into the air, and heaped it on their heads. As we approached nearer to them, they complained to us with inconsolable expressions that two Bedouins had just robbed them of their only buffalo. We actually saw the robbers still in the distance, on horseback, driving the buffalo before them into the desert. I was alone with my dragoman and my little donkey-boy, Auad, a lively, dark-skinned Berber, and I could be of no assistance to these poor people. Such thefts are not unfrequent here. A short time ago, one tribe drove a hundred and twenty camels away from another tribe, and none of them have yet come back.

Nevertheless, we shall probably remain here unmolested; for the sentence we passed at Saqâra is well known, and they are aware that we are specially recommended to the authorities. They have also now become convinced that we carry no gold or silver with us in our heavy chests, which was formerly very generally believed among the Arabs. Added to this, we are ourselves well armed against any new attack. I have collected the most valuable chests in my own tent, and every night an English double-barrelled gun and two pistols lie ready beside my bed. Besides, I clear out my tent every evening, that we may be prepared for anything, especially for storms, from which we have had to suffer much latterly, and of a degree of violence unknown in Europe. Abeken’s tent fell three times over his head in one day, and the last time roused him in a very disagreeable manner out of his sleep. Thus we are often whole days and nights in constant expectation that during the next gust of wind our airy house may fall down upon our heads; under this apprehension, it requires some habit to continue to work or to sleep quietly.

It appears that we are to have a taste of all the plagues of Egypt. Our experience began with the inundation at the Great Pyramids; then came the locusts, whose young fry has now increased like sand upon the sea-shore, and is again devouring the green fields and trees, which, combined with the previous cattle disease, is indeed sufficient to cause a famine; then occurred the hostile attack which was preceded by a daring robbery. Nor has even a conflagration been wholly wanting. By an incautious salute, Wild’s tent was set on fire and partly burnt in Saqâra, while we stood around in bright sunshine, which prevented the fire being seen by us. Now comes, in addition to this, the annoyance of mice, which we had not hitherto experienced; they gnaw, play, and squeak away in my tent, as if they had always been at home there, quite unconcerned whether I am within it or not. During the night they run over my bed, and over my face; and yesterday I started up frightened, out of my sleep, because I suddenly felt the sharp little tooth of one of these audacious guests upon my foot. I sprang up in a rage, struck a light, and knocked against all the chests and pegs; but on lying down once more, I was soon driven out of bed again. In spite of all these annoyances, however, we continue to keep up a good and cheerful spirit, and God be thanked, they have hitherto only threatened us, and made us heedful, not materially injured us.

The superintendence over the servants, and the management of much extra business, has now been considerably alleviated, by my having brought a well-qualified Kawass with me from Cairo. These Kawass, who form a peculiar band of sub-officers of the Pascha, are considered here, in the country, a peculiar and important class of persons. Only Turks are appointed, and they possess, through their nationality alone, an innate superiority over every Arab. There are probably few nations who have so much natural ability to rule as the Turks, who, nevertheless, we are often accustomed to regard as rude, uncouth, and half barbarians. On the contrary, as a nation, they have some degree of distinction. Imperturbable repose, calmness, reserve, and energy of will, appear to belong to every Turk, down to the common soldier, and do not fail to make a certain impression upon the European on first acquaintance. This external bearing with the appearance of deliberate firmness, this reserved proud politeness easily passing into nice shades of ceremonial, is met with in a still higher degree among the upper rank of Turks, who have all, from childhood upwards, passed through a school of the strictest etiquette in their own families. They have an innate contempt for everything which does not belong to their own nation, and appear to have no feeling for the natural superiority of higher mental culture and civilisation which the ordinary European usually inspires among other nations.

Nothing is to be gained from the Turk by kindness, considerate attention, demonstration, or even by anger; these he considers as proofs of weakness. The greatest reserve alone, and the most careful distant politeness towards the great, or the bearing of a person of some consequence, and absolute commands to inferiors, answers the purpose here. A Turkish Kawass drives a whole village of Fellahs, or Arabs, before him, and makes a decided impression even on the still prouder Bedouins. The Pascha employs the Kawass-corps as special messengers, and on commissions, throughout the whole country. They are the chief executive servants of the Pascha, and of the governors of the provinces. Every foreign consul has also a similar Kawass, without whom he hardly takes a single step, since he is his guard of honour, the sign, and the right hand of his indisputable authority. When he rides out, the Kawass rides before him with a great silver stick, and drives the people and animals with words or blows out of his path; and woe to him who should make a movement, or even a gesture of disobedience. The Pascha sometimes also gives such a guard of honour, with similar authority, as an escort to strangers who are specially recommended to him, and thus we also received a Kawass at the commencement of our journey, who however, during our long period of repose in Gizeh was only a burden, and at length, on account of his making extravagant demands, was not very graciously dismissed by me. On the occasion of the attack in Saqâra, I caused another to be given me by Scherif Pascha; but he still is not the sort of man that we want, so I have now brought a third with me from Cairo, who hitherto has proved an excellent one. He relieves me from the entire superintendence over the servants, and manages admirably all that I have to transact with the people and authorities of the country. If I were in Europe I should have supposed that I had more than sufficient strength for the whole external guidance of the expedition, as well as for its more immediate object, but in this climate one must measure by a different scale. Patience and repose are here, just as necessary elements of life, as meat and drink.

LETTER XI.

The Labyrinth, the 25th June, 1843.

These lines are written to you from the distinctly recognised Labyrinth of Mœris and the Dodecarchs, not from the doubtful spot whose identity is still contested, of which I myself was unable to form any conception from the hitherto more than deficient descriptions even of those who have removed the Labyrinth hither. An immense cluster of chambers still remains, and in the centre lies the great square, where the courts once stood, covered with the remains of large monolithic granite columns, and of others of white hard limestone, shining almost like marble.

I approached the spot, fearing that we must only endeavour, as others had done before us, to confirm the information of the ancients on the geographical position of the place; that all form of the edifice itself had disappeared, and that an unshapely heap of ruins might deter us from making any examinations. Instead of this, at the first superficial survey of the ground, a number of complicated spaces, of true labyrinthine forms, immediately presented themselves, both above and below ground, and the eye could easily detect the principal buildings, more than a stadium (Strabo) in extent. Where the French expedition had vainly sought for chambers, we literally at once find hundreds of them, both next to, and above one another, small, often diminutive ones, beside greater ones, and large ones, supported by small columns, with thresholds, and niches in the walls, with remains of columns, and single casing-stones, connected by corridors, without any regularity in the entrances and exits, so that the descriptions of Herodotus and Strabo, in this respect, are fully justified. But at the same time also, the opinion, which was never adopted by me, and is irreconcileable with any architectonic view, that there are serpentine, case-like windings, in place of square rooms, is decidedly refuted.

The whole is so arranged, that three immense masses of buildings, 300 feet broad, enclose a square place, which is 600 feet long and 500 feet wide. The fourth side, one of the narrow ones, is bounded by the Pyramid, which lies behind it; it is 300 feet square, and therefore does not quite reach the side wings of the above-mentioned masses of buildings. A canal of rather modern date, passing obliquely through the ruins, and which one can almost leap over, at least at the present season, cuts off exactly the best preserved portion of the labyrinthian chambers, together with part of the great central square, which at one time was divided into courts. The travellers preferred not wetting their feet, and remained on this side, where the continuation of the wings of the buildings is certainly more concealed beneath the rubbish. But the chambers lying on the farther side, especially their southern point, where the walls rise nearly ten feet above the rubbish, and about twenty feet above the base of the ruins, are to be seen very well even from this, the eastern side; and viewed from the summit of the Pyramid, the regular plan of the whole design lies before one as on a map. Erbkam has been occupied ever since our arrival, in making the special plan, on which every chamber or wall, however small, will be noted down. The farther portion of the ruins is, therefore, by far the most difficult to record. On this side it is an easier task, but so much the more difficult to understand. Here the labyrinth of chambers passes on southwards. The courts were situated between this and the Pyramid lying opposite on the northern side. But almost all of these have disappeared. We have, therefore, nothing to guide us but the dimensions of the square, which lead us to suppose that it was divided into two halves, by a long wall, against which the twelve courts (for we cannot, indeed, with any certainty, make out that there were more) abutted on both sides, so that their entrances turned towards opposite sides, and had immediately facing them the extensive mass of innumerable chambers.

But who was the Maros, Mendes, Imandes, who, by the account of the Greeks, erected the Labyrinth, or rather the Pyramid belonging to it, for his tomb? In the Manethonic list of Kings, we find the builder of the Labyrinth introduced towards the end of the 12th Dynasty, the last of the Old Monarchy, shortly before the invasion of the Hyksos. The fragments of the mighty columns and architraves which we have dug up from the great square of the halls, exhibit the name-shields of the sixth king of this same 12th Dynasty, Amenemha III. Thus the important question of its place in history is answered.[23] We have also made excavations on the north side of the Pyramid, because it is here that we conjecture the entrance must have been. But it has not been hitherto discovered. We have only as yet penetrated into a chamber which lay in front of the Pyramid, and which was covered by a great quantity of rubbish, and we have several times found the name of Amenemha here also. The builder and occupier of the Pyramid is therefore determined. But this does not refute the statement of Herodotus, that the Dodecarchs, only 200 years before his time, had undertaken the building of the Labyrinth. We have found no inscriptions in the ruins of the great masses of chambers which surround the central space. It may be easily proved by future excavations that this whole building, and probably also the disposition of the twelve courts, belong only, in fact, to the 26th Dynasty of Manetho, so that the original temple of Amenemha formed merely part of this gigantic architectural enclosure.

So much for the Labyrinth and its Pyramid. The exact position which its builder occupies in history is by far the most important result that we could altogether hope to obtain here. I must now say a few words respecting the other world’s wonder of this province, Lake Mœris.

The obscurity which has hitherto hung over it seems at length to have been dispersed, by a beautiful discovery, which was made a short time ago by the excellent Linant, the director of the water-works of the Pascha. Hitherto there was only one point of agreement, that the lake was situated in the Faiûm. Now, as at the present day there is only one single lake in this remarkable semi-oasis, the Birqet-el-Qorn, which is situated in its most remote and lowest parts, this must be the Lake Mœris; we have no other choice. Its celebrity, however, rested principally upon this, that it was an artificially designed (Herodotus says an excavated) and extremely profitable lake, which was filled by the Nile when it was high, and when the water was low, flowed off again by the connecting canal; and irrigating on the one side the grounds of the Faiûm, on the other, during its reflux, the adjacent tracts of the Memphitic district, at the same time yielded extremely rich fishing near the double sluices at the mouth of the Faiûm. To the annoyance of Antiquarians and Philologists, not one of all these peculiarities belonged to the Birqet-el-Qorn. This is not an artificial, but a natural lake, which is only in part fed by the water of the Jussuf canal. One of its useful qualities can be hardly said to exist, since no fishing-boat enlivens its surface, encircled by an arid desert, because the brackish water contains scarcely any fish, and is in no degree favourable to the vegetation on its shores. When the Nile is at its height, and there is a more abundant supply of water, it certainly rises; but it is situated at far too low a level to allow a drop of the water with which it has been supplied, ever to flow back again. The whole province must be buried beneath the flood before the waters could find their way back into the valley, for the artificially lowered rocky channel through which the Bahr Jussuf is brought hither, branching off from the Nile about forty miles south, lies higher than the whole oasis. The surface of the Birqet-el-Qorn is now about seventy feet below the point where the canal flows in, and can never have risen to a much greater height,[24] which is proved by some remains of a temple upon its shores. As little does it agree with the statement, that the Labyrinth, and the capital Arsinoë, the present Medînet-el-Faiûm, were situated on its shores.

Linant has now discovered huge dams, miles in length, of the most ancient solid construction, which separates the uppermost portion of the shell-like, convex-formed basin of the Faiûm from those parts which are situated lower and lie farther back, and, according to him, could only have been intended to retain artificially a great lake, which now, however, since the dams have been long broken through, lies completely dry. This lake he holds to be that of Mœris. I must confess that the whole thing, when he first communicated it to me by word of mouth, impressed me with the idea that it was an extremely happy discovery, which will also spare us in future many fruitless researches. An inspection of the ground has now removed all my doubts as to the correctness of this view. I hold it to be an insubvertible fact. Linant’s treatise is now being printed, and I will send it to you as soon as it is to be had.[25]

But finally, if you ask me what the name of Mœris has to do with that of Amenemha, I can only answer, nothing. The name Mœris neither appears on the monuments, nor in Manetho. I rather think that here again we find one of the numerous misunderstandings of the Greeks. The Egyptians called the lake, Phiom en mere, the Lake of the Nile-inundation (Copt. ⲙⲏⲣⲉ, inundatio). The Greeks made out of mere, the water which formed the lake, a King Mœris who designed the lake, and then troubled themselves no further about the true originator, Amenemha. At a later period the whole province received the name ⲫⲓⲟⲙ, Phiom, the Lake, from which the present name Faiûm has been derived.

LETTER XII.

The Labyrinth, the 18th July, 1843.

We have accomplished our journey round that remarkable province, the Faiûm, very rarely visited by Europeans, which, on account of its fertility, may be named the Garden of Egypt; and precisely because these parts are almost as unknown as the distant oases of Libya, you will, perhaps, be glad to hear some more details about them from me.

I started with Erbkam, E. Weidenbach, and Abeken, on the 3rd of July. We went from the Labyrinth along the Bahr Wardâni, which skirts the eastern border of the desert, and forms the boundary, to which the shore of Lake Mœris at one time extended towards the East. The canal is now dry, and is replaced by the still more recent Bahr Scherkîeh, which, as they say, was made by the Sultan Barquq, and is conducted through the middle of the Labyrinth; it at first crosses the Wardâni several times, but afterwards keeps more inland. In three hours we reached the point where the huge dam of Mœris projects from the middle of the Faiûm into the desert. It runs out in this spot for about one and a half geographical miles as far as El Elâm. In the middle of this tract it is intersected by Bahr-bela-mâ, a deep bed of a stream, which now cuts through the old lake-bottom, and is usually dry, but when there is a great supply of water, it is used as an outlet for the superfluity towards Tamîeh, and into the Birqet-el-Qorn. This enabled us to examine the dam itself from a nearer point of view. The current, which at times is swollen and rapid, has scooped out a passage for itself since the destruction of the lake, not only through the alluvial soil that formed the bottom of the lake, but also through several other layers of earth, and even through the slightly indurated limestone lying undermost; so that the water, at this season, reduced certainly to a minimum, flows about sixty feet lower than the present dry bottom of the lake. I measured accurately the separate layers of earth, and carried away with me a specimen of each. The breadth of the dam cannot be determined with certainty, but may, perhaps, have amounted to 150 feet. The height of the dam has probably become somewhat lower with time. I found it to be 1 m. 90 (6 feet 3 inches English) above the present bottom of the lake, and 5 m. 60 (18 feet 4 inches English) above the opposite plain. If we suppose this last to be on a similar level with the original bottom of the lake (which was, however, probably lower, because the external ground was irrigated, and consequently became elevated), then the dam, apart from its gradual levelling from above downwards, must have been formerly as much as 5 m. 60, consequently 17 feet high, and the ground in the inner part of the lake, during its existence of more than two thousand years, must have risen by deposits of earth about 11 feet. But if we admit that the black earth also, from 11 to 12 feet thick, which is still to be found outside of the dams, was deposited within the historical times, then the above numbers would even require to be doubled. Thus we have some idea how its utility must have been much diminished with time; for the lake (if we assume that its circumference is what Linant asserts), by the filling up of the 11 feet of earth, must have lost 13,000 millions of square feet of the water, which it might have formerly contained. An elevation of the dams could in no possible manner have prevented this, because they had been already placed in exact relation to the point of the influx of the Bahr Jussuf into the Faiûm. This may have been one of the most substantial reasons why Lake Mœris was allowed at a later period to fall into decay; and even Linant’s bold project to restore the lake could not wholly repair this loss, even if he were to make the Bahr Jussuf branch off from the Nile at a much higher point than was thought necessary by the old Pharaohs.

In two hours and a half from this intersection, following the dam to El Elâm, where it ceases, we reached the remarkable remains of the two monuments of Biahmu, which Linant considers to be the Pyramids of Mœris and his consort, which were seen by Herodotus in the lake. They were built out of great massive blocks; the nucleus of each of them is still standing, but not in the centre of the almost square rectangle, which, by their appearance, they seem to have originally occupied. They rose at an angle of 64°, therefore, with a much steeper inclination than Pyramids usually do. Their present height, which, however, seems to have been originally the same as it is now, only amounts to twenty-three feet, to which, nevertheless, must be added, a peculiar and somewhat projecting base of seven feet. A small excavation convinced me that the lowest layer of stone, which only reaches four feet beneath the present ground, was founded neither on sand nor on rock, but upon Nile mud, which more especially render the great antiquity of these buildings very doubtful. At least it is to be inferred from this that they did not stand in the lake, which, if it encircled them, must have had a remarkable curve outwards to the north-west.

We had been riding hitherto on the line of separation between the ancient bottom of the lake and the adjacent district. The former is bare and sterile, since the land, at the present day, lies so high that it cannot be overflowed. On the other hand, the broad tract of land enclosing the ancient lake, forms by far the most beautiful and most fertile part of the Faiûm. We now traversed this district, while we left the capital of the province, Medînet el Faiûm, with the mounds of the ancient Crocodilopolis on our left, and rode by Selajîn and Fidimîn, to Agamîeh, where we spent the night. The next morning, near Bischeh, we reached the limits of this continuous garden-land. Here we entered a new region, forming a striking contrast to the former, by its sterility and desolation, enriching it like a girdle, and separating it from the crescent-shaped Birqet-el-Qorn, situated in the lowest and most distant part. About mid-day we reached the lake. The only boat which was to be had, far and wide, conveyed us in an hour and a half across the expanse of water, encircled all around by the desert, to an island lying in the centre of the lake, called Gezîret-el-Qorn. We, however, found nothing on it worthy of notice, not even a trace of a building, so towards the evening we returned.

The next morning we re-crossed the lake in a more northerly direction, and landed on a small peninsula of the opposite shore, which rises at once 150 feet, to a plateau of the Libyan Desert, commanding the whole Oasis. We then ascended, and about an hour distant from the shore, in the midst of the inhospitable desert, devoid of water and vegetation, we found the extensive ruins of an ancient town, which on earlier maps is named Medînet Nimrud. They were utterly unacquainted with this name here; the place was only known by the designation of Diméh. On the following day, the 7th July, the regular plan of these ruins, with the remains of its temple, was noted down by Erbkam, who had spent the night here with Abeken. There are no inscriptions on the temple, and whatever sculptures we found, were placed in this remarkable building at a late period. It was probably intended only as a military station, against invasions from Lybia into the rich country of the Faiûm.

On the 8th July we went in our boat to Qasr Qerûn, an old town on the southern end of the lake, with a temple of late date, and in excellent preservation, but with no inscriptions, the plan of which was taken on the following day. From this place we followed the southern frontier of the Oasis, by Neslet, as far as the ruins of Medînet Mâdi, on Lake Gharaq, near which the ancient dams of Lake Mœris projected from the north, and on the 11th July we again arrived at our camp on the ruins of the Labyrinth. We found all well, including Frey, whom we had left indisposed, and whose repeated attacks of illness, probably produced by the climate, cause me some anxiety.

To-morrow I am thinking of going to Cairo with Abeken and Bonomi, to hire a boat for our journey south, and to prepare everything that is requisite for our final departure from the neighbourhood of the capital. We shall take four camels with us for the transport of the monuments which we have collected in the Faiûm, and strike into the shortest road, namely, from here by Tamîeh, which we did not touch at, on our journey round, and thence across the desert heights which separate this part of the Faiûm from the Nile valley; we shall then descend into it by the Pyramids of Daschûr, and thus hope to reach Cairo in two days and a half.

LETTER XIII.

Cairo, the 14th August, 1843.

I regret to say that I received such uncomfortable accounts of the state of Frey’s health, soon after our arrival in Cairo, that Abeken and Bonomi at length determined to go to our camp, and to bring him in a litter which they took with them, from the Labyrinth to Zani on the Nile, and thence by water to this place. As soon as Dr. Pruner had seen him, he pronounced that the only advisable course was to let him immediately return to Europe. The liver complaint, under which he was found to be suffering, is incurable in Egypt, and as it had already made great progress, he left us yesterday at mid-day. May the climate of home soon restore our friend’s strength, who is both amiable and full of talent, and is a great loss to us all.

A few days ago, I purchased some Ethiopian Manuscripts for the Library at Berlin, from a Basque, Domingo Lorda, who has lived a long time in Abyssinia, and accompanied D’Abadie on several journeys. He bought them, probably, for a small sum, in a convent situated on the island of Thâna, near Gorata, one day’s journey from the sources of the Blue Nile, whose inhabitants were brought to a state of great distress by locusts. The one contains the history of Abyssinia, from Solomon to Christ, and is said to come from Axum, and to be between five and six hundred years old. This first part of the Abyssinian history, called Kebre Negest, “the Fame of the Kings,” is said to be far more rare than the second, Tarik Negest, “the History of the Kings;” but this manuscript also contains at the end a list of the Ethiopian kings since the time of Christ. The largest manuscript, adorned with many great pictures in the Byzantine style, and by what I learn about it from Lieder, almost unique in its kind, contains chiefly the histories of saints. The third contains the still valid Canones of the Church, complete. I hope that it will be an acceptable purchase for our Library.[26]

The purchases for our journey are also now completed; a convenient boat is hired, which will save us from the great difficulties of a land journey, since this, more especially during the impending season of inundation, could scarcely be accomplished.

LETTER XIV.

Thebes, the 13th October, 1843.

On the 16th August I went from Cairo to the Faiûm, from which our camp broke up on the 21st. Two days later we sailed away from Beni-suef, and, sending the camels back to Cairo, only took the asses with us in our boat, as, on considering the matter more attentively, we found that the land journey, originally contemplated by me along the range of the hills some distance from the river on the western side, was quite impracticable during the inundation, and on the eastern bank would have been partly too fatiguing, and partly devoid of objects of interest to us on account of the proximity of the desert frontier on that side, beyond which there is nothing for us to explore. We have, therefore, only made excursions from the boat, sometimes on foot, sometimes on asses, principally to the eastern hills, which are easily reached; but on the western bank, also, we have visited the most important points.

The very day after our departure from Beni-suef we found a small rock-temple in the neighbourhood of the village of Surarieh, unnoticed by earlier travellers, not even mentioned by Wilkinson, which, as early as the 19th Dynasty, was dedicated by Menephthes, the son of Ramses Miamun, to the Egyptian Venus (Hathor). Farther on are several groups of tombs, which had also hitherto received scarcely any notice, although, from their extreme antiquity, they are peculiarly interesting. The whole of Middle Egypt, judging by the tombs which have been preserved, seems to have principally flourished during the Old Monarchy, before the invasion of the Hyksos, not only during the 12th Dynasty, to which the renowned tombs of Benihassan, Siut, and Berscheh belong, but even as early as the 6th. We have found groups of tombs, of considerable size, from this early period, which belonged to towns whose names even are no longer known in the later Egyptian geography, because they had probably been destroyed by the Hyksos. We remained the longest time in Benihassan, namely, sixteen days. Hence the season has now arrived, which we must not lose for our journey south. In the following places, therefore, notes alone were taken, and paper impressions of a most important kind; for instance, in El Amarna, in Siut, in the venerable Abydos, and in the more recent, but not on that account less magnificent, Temple of Dendera, which is almost in perfect preservation. In Siut we visited the Governor of Upper Egypt, Selîm Pascha, who for several months past has been working an ancient alabaster quarry, which had been re-discovered by the Bedouins, between Berscheh and Gauâta.

The town of Siut is beautifully built and in a charming situation, especially when viewed from the steep rock on the western bank of the valley close behind it. The view of the overflowed Nile valley from these heights is the most beautiful which we have yet seen, and, at the same time, extremely characteristic of the inundation season, in which we are now travelling. From the foot of the steep rock, a small dam overgrown with sont-trees,[27] and a bridge, leads across to the town, which lies like an island in the boundless sea of inundation. The gardens of Ibrahim Pascha, extending on the left, form another island, green and fresh, covered with trees and brushwood. The town, with its fifteen minarets, rises high above the mounds of rubbish of the ancient Lycopolis. A still larger dam leads from it to the Nile, and, towards the south, other long dams may be seen, like floating threads drawn across the mass of waters. On the other side the Arabian chain of mountains approach tolerably near, by which the valley becomes closed in, forming a picture which can be easily surveyed.

We have been in the royal city of Thebes since the 6th October. Our boat landed us first, under the walls of Luqsor, at the most southern point of the Theban ruins. The strong current of the river has here encroached to within such a short distance of the old temple that it is itself even in considerable danger. I endeavoured to obtain a view over the ruins of Thebes, from the summit of the temple, in order to compare it with the image that I had formed of it from maps and descriptions. The distances, however, are too great to make a good picture. You look upon a wide landscape, in which the scattered groups of temples stand forth as single points, and can only be recognised by one who has a previous knowledge of the subject. Towards the north, at the distance of a short hour, rise the mighty Pylones of Karnak, which of itself formed a town of temples altogether gigantic and astonishing. We spent the succeeding days in taking a cursory survey of them. On the other side of the river, at the foot of the Libyan range, are the Memnonia, once an uninterrupted series of splendid buildings, unrivalled among the monuments of antiquity. Even now the temples of Medînet Hâbu, with their high mounds of rubbish, are distinguishable in the distance, at the southern end of this series, exactly opposite to Luqsor; and at the northern end, an hour from that point down the river, the temple of Qurnah, which is in good preservation; between them both stands the temple of Ramses Miamun (Sesostris), already of great celebrity, from its description by Diodorus. Thus the four Arabian places, Karnak, and Luqsor on the eastern side of the river, Qurnah, and Medînet Hâbu on the western, form a great square, which measures on every side about half a geographical mile, and gives us some notion of the magnitude of the most splendid portion of ancient Thebes. How far the remaining inhabited portion of the City of a Hundred Gates extended towards the east, north, and south, it is difficult to discover now, because all that in the lapse of time has not maintained its original position, has gradually disappeared beneath the annually increasing rise of the soil of the lower plain by the inundation.

No one ever inquires here about the weather, for one day is exactly like the other, serene, clear, and hitherto not too hot. We have no morning or evening red, as there are neither clouds nor vapours; but the first ray of the morning calls forth a world of colours in the bare and rugged limestone mountains closing in around us, and in the brownish glittering desert, contrasted with the black, or green-clothed lower plain, such as is never seen in northern countries. There is scarcely any twilight, as the sun sinks down at once. The separation of night and day is just as sudden as that between meadow and desert; one step, one moment, divides the one from the other. The sombre brilliancy of the moon and starlight nights is so much the more refreshing to the eye which has been dazzled by the ocean light of day. The air is so pure and dry, that except in the immediate vicinity of the river, in spite of the sudden change at sunset, there is no fall of dew. We have almost entirely forgotten what rain is, for it is above six months since it last rained with us in Saqâra. A few days ago we rejoiced, when, towards evening, we discovered some light clouds in the sky to the south-west, which reminded us of Europe. Nevertheless, we do not want coolness even in the daytime, for a light wind is almost always blowing, which does not allow the heat to become too oppressive. Added to this, the Nile water is pleasant to the taste, and maybe enjoyed in great abundance without any detriment.

The clay water-bottles (Qulleh) are invaluable to us; they are composed of fine, porous Nile mud, which allows the water to ooze through them continually; the evaporation of this, as soon as it appears on the warm surface, as is well known, produces cold, and thus, by this simple process, the bottles are constantly kept cool in the hottest period of the day. The drinking-water, on that account, is usually cooler than it is in Europe during the summer. We principally live upon poultry, and, as a change, we occasionally kill a sheep. There are very few vegetables. Every meal is concluded by a dish of rice. For dessert we have the most beautiful yellow melons, or juicy red water-melons. The dates also are excellent, but not to be had everywhere. I have at length, to the great joy of my companions, learned to smoke a Turkish pipe, which keeps me a quarter of an hour in perfect kêf: by this word the Arabs designate their easy repose, their comfort; for as long as one “drinks” the blue smoke of the long pipe from the shallow bowl, so easily overset, it is impossible to leave one’s position, or to undertake anything else. We have a convenient costume—loose trousers of light cotton stuff, and over them a wide long tunic, with short wide sleeves. Besides this I wear a broad, turned-up, grey felt hat, as a European badge, which keeps the Arabs in proper respect. We eat, according to the custom of the country, on a low round table, not a foot high, sitting on cushions, with our legs folded under us. This position has become so convenient to me, that I even write in it, sitting on my couch, the letter portfolio on my knees, as a support. Above me is spread out a canopy of gauze to keep off the flies—this most shameless plague of Egypt during the day—and the gnats during the night. In other respects, we suffer far less from vermin here, than in Italy. We have not yet been bit by scorpions and serpents, but in return there are very malignant wasps, which have frequently stung us.

We shall only remain here till the day after to-morrow, and shall then travel towards the south without stopping. We shall wait for our return to devote as much time and labour as the treasures in this spot demand. At Assuan, on the frontiers of Egypt, we shall, for the first time, change our mode of transport, and send back our great boat, in which we already feel quite at home. On the other side of the cataracts we shall take two smaller boats for our journey onwards.

LETTER XV.

Korusko, the 20th November, 1843.[28]

Our journey from the Faiûm, through Egypt, was necessarily very much hastened owing to the advanced season. We have, therefore, rarely remained longer at a place than was requisite for a hasty survey, and have chiefly confined ourselves, during the past three months, to keeping an exact register of what exists, and to increasing our important collection of impressions upon paper of the most interesting inscriptions.

On our rapid journey as far as Wadi Halfa, we have collected from three to four hundred impressions, or exact copies, of Greek inscriptions alone. They often confirm Letronne’s acute conjectures, but also not unfrequently correct the unavoidable mistakes of such a difficult work as his. In the inscription from which, without any foundation, it was proposed to settle the position of the town of Akoris, his conjecture, ΙΣΙΔΙ ΛΟΧΙΑΔΙ, is not verified: L’Hôte had read ΜΟΧΙΑΔΙ, but it is ΜΩΧΙΑΔΙ, and before ΕΡΩΕΩΣ, not ΕΡΕΕΩΣ.

The dedicatory inscription of the Temple of Pselchis (as it is given in the inscription, in accordance with Strabo, instead of Pselcis) is almost as long again as Letronne assumes it to be, and the first line does not end with ΚΛΕΟΠΑΤΡΑΣ, but with ΑΔΕΛΦΗΣ, so that we must probably restore it thus:

Ὑπὲρ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ βασιλίσσης
Κλεοπάτρας τῆς ἀδελφῆς
Θεῶν Εὐεργετῶν.[29] ... [30]

At the end of the second line ΤΩΙΚΑΙ, therefore, is confirmed. The surname of Hermes, which follows in the third line, however, has been ΠΑΟΤΠΝΟΥΦΙ (ΔΙ) differing from the writing in other later inscriptions, where he is called ΠΑΥΤΝΟΥΦΙΣ. The same surname is also not unfrequently found in hieroglyphics, and then sounds Tut en Pnubs, that is to say, Thoth of, or Lord of Πνούψ, a town, the site of which is still uncertain. I have already met with this Thoth in temples of earlier date, where he frequently appears beside the Thoth of Schmun, i. e. Hermopolis Magna. In the popular language it was called Pet-Pnubs; from this, it became Paot-Pnuphis.

The interesting problem about the owner of the name, Εὐπάτωρ, which Letronne endeavours to solve in a new manner, by means of the inscriptions on the obelisk of Philæ, appears to be decided by the hieroglyphic inscriptions, where the same circumstances recur, but lead to other conjectures.[31] I have found several very perfect series of the Ptolemies, the longest down to Neos Dionysos, and his consort Cleopatra, who, according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions, was surnamed, by the Egyptians, Tryphæna.[32] A fact worthy of consideration is connected with this, namely, that in this Egyptian list of the Ptolemies, the first king is never Ptolemy Soter I., but Philadelphus. In Qurna, where Euergetes II. worships his predecessors, not alone Philometor, the brother of Euergetes is wanting, which is easily explained, but also Soter I., and Rosellini is mistaken when he regards the king who is worshipped under the title of Philadelphus, about whom Champollion was still doubtful, as Soter I. instead of Euergetes I. It appears that the son of Lagus, although he assumed the title of king from the year 305, was yet not acknowledged as such by the Egyptians, as his shields do not appear on a single monument which was erected by him. So much the more do I rejoice that I have nevertheless found his name mentioned once, in an inscription of Philadelphus, as the father of Arsinoë II. But here, we must observe, Soter has, indeed, the royal ring round his name, and also a peculiar Throne-shield name, but quite contrary to the usual Egyptian custom, no king’s title stands before either of the shields, although his daughter is called “royal daughter” and “royal lady.”[33]

It is astonishing how little Champollion seems to have attended to the monuments of the Old Monarchy. During his whole journey through Central Egypt, as far as Dendera, he only found the rock-tombs of Benihassan worthy of notice, and these also, he considered to be works of the 16th and 17th Dynasties, therefore belonging to the New Monarchy. He also mentions Zauiet el Meitîn and Siut, but hardly notices them.

So little has been said by others, besides, on most of the monuments of Central Egypt, that almost everything that we here found was new to me. I, therefore, was not a little astonished when we discovered in Zauiet el Meitîn a series of nineteen rock-tombs, all of them bearing inscriptions, which informed us who were their inhabitants, and belonging to the old time of the 6th Dynasty, therefore extending almost to the period of the great Pyramids. Five among them contain, more than once, the Shield of Makrobioten Apappus Pepi, who is said to have lived to the age of a hundred and six years, and to have reigned a hundred years; in another, Cheops is mentioned. Apart from these there is also a single grave from the period of Ramses.

In Benihassan, I have had a complete drawing made of an entire rock-tomb; it is to give a specimen of the magnificent style of architecture and artistic skill, from the second flourishing period of the Old Monarchy, during the powerful 12th Dynasty.[34] I think it will excite some attention among the Egyptologists, when they shortly learn from Bunsen’s work, why I make a division in the tablet of Abydos, and why I ventured to transfer Sesurtesen and Amenemha, these well-known Pharaohs of Heliopolis, the Faiûm, Benihassan, Thebes, and as far as Wadi Halfa, from the New, to the Old Monarchy. It must have been a brilliant period in Egypt at that time, which these magnificent halls for the dead alone testify. At the same time, among the rich representations on the walls, which exhibit a high standard of the peaceful arts, as well as the refined luxury of the great at that period, it is interesting even then to meet with the prognostics of that great adverse destiny, which brought Egypt for several centuries under the power of her northern enemies. Gladiatorial games, which form a characteristic representation of frequent recurrence, in many tombs occupy entire walls, by which we may conclude they were extensively practised at that period, but afterwards almost disappeared. Among these we frequently find amidst the red or dark-brown people of the Egyptian race, and of those races dwelling more to the south, a very light-coloured people, standing singly or in small divisions, who have usually a different costume, and most of them have the hair of the head and beard red, and have blue eyes. They also sometimes appear among the domestics of persons of rank, and are manifestly of northern, probably of Semetic, origin. We find victories of the kings over the Ethiopians and Negroes mentioned on the monuments of that period; therefore it is not surprising to see black slaves and attendants. We learn nothing of wars against the northern neighbours, but it appears that the migrations of people from the north-east had already begun at that time, and that many emigrants sought a home in the fruitful land of Egypt, in exchange for service, or other useful employments.

I here allude particularly to the remarkable scene in the tomb of the royal relative Nehera-si-Numhotep, the second tomb approaching from the north, which gives an animated idea of the entrance of Jacob with his family, and which might tempt us really to connect these circumstances, if Jacob had not come at a much later period, and if we were not compelled to acknowledge that such immigrations of single families could never have been a rare event. These, however, were the predecessors of the Hyksos, and assuredly in many respects paved the way for them. As it is only painted, and is still in very good preservation, I have traced through the whole representation, which is about eight feet long, and one and a half high. The royal scribe Nefruhotep, who introduces the company before the high official, to whom the tomb belongs, hands him a sheet of papyrus. Upon this, the sixth year of King Sesurtesen II. is mentioned, when that family of thirty-seven persons came to Egypt. Their chief, and lord, was called Abscha, they themselves Aamu, a popular name, which we meet with again associated with the same light-coloured race; this, with three other races, is frequently represented in the royal tombs of the 19th Dynasty, and formed one of the four principal families of the human race known to the Egyptians. Champollion, when he was in Benihassan, regarded them as Greeks; he was not then aware of the extreme age of the monuments which were before him. Wilkinson considers them to be prisoners; this is contradicted by their appearing with weapons and lyres, with women, children, asses, and baggage. I view them as a migrating Hyksos family, who pray to be received into the blessed land, and whose descendants, perhaps, opened the gates of Egypt to the Semetic conquerors, allied to them by race.

The town, to which the rich rock-necropolis of Benihassan belonged, and which is named in the hieroglyphic inscriptions Nus, must have been of considerable size, and, doubtless, lay opposite, on the left bank of the Nile, where ancient mounds exist even at the present time, and are marked upon the French maps. That no more of this town of NUS was known in the geography of the Greeks and Romans than of many other towns of the Old Monarchy, ought not to surprise us, if we consider that the dominion of the Hyksos intervened, which lasted five hundred years. It is thought that the sudden fall of the Monarchy, and of this flourishing town, may be traced, even now, to have happened at the end of the 12th Dynasty by this circumstance—that only eleven of the numerous rock-tombs have inscriptions, and that among these, three alone were quite completed. Special roads of considerable width led to these last, ascending direct from the bank of the river, which near the steep upper part ended in steps cut out of the rock.

Benihassan, however, is not the only place where we became acquainted with the works of the 12th Dynasty. At Berscheh, a little to the south of the great plain, where the Emperor Hadrian, in honour of his favourite, who was there drowned, built the town of Antinoe, with its splendid streets, even now partly passable, and encompassed with hundreds of columns, a narrow valley opens to the east, where we again found a series of splendidly executed rock-tombs of the 12th Dynasty, most of which, unfortunately, were mutilated by recent quarrying. In the tomb of Ki-si-Tuthotep there is a representation of the transport of the great Colossus, which has been already published by Rosellini, but without the accompanying inscriptions; from these we perceive that it was formed of limestone (here, for the first time, I learned the hieroglyphic term for this), and that it was 13 Egyptian ells high, which is about 21 feet.[35] A series of still older tombs are hewn into the face of the rock on the southern side of the same valley, but with very few inscriptions; to judge by the style of the hieroglyphics, and the titles of the deceased, they belong to the 6th Dynasty.

Some hours farther to the south there is another group of tombs, which also belong to the 6th Dynasty; here, likewise, King Cheops is occasionally mentioned, whose name we several times met with before, in a hieratic inscription in Benihassan. We found tombs from the 6th Dynasty, though with few inscriptions, in two other places situated, between the valley El Amarna, which contains the very remarkable tomb-grottoes of King Bech-en-Aten, and Siut. Perring, the measurer of the Pyramids, a short time ago seriously endeavoured, in an essay, to maintain the strange opinion, which, however, I also met with while in Cairo, that the monuments of El Amarna were derived from the Hyksos; others, on account of their striking, though not inexplicable peculiarities, would even carry them back to the time before Menes. While still in Europe I had recognised the builder of these monuments, and some other allied kings, to be antagonistic kings of the 18th Dynasty.

Rock-tombs of vast size open on the side of the valley behind Siut, in which, even from a distance, we recognised the imposing style of the 12th Dynasty. Here also, unfortunately, many of these splendid remains have been destroyed of late, as it was found more convenient to break away the walls and columns of the grottoes, than to hew out building stones from the rock itself.

I learned from Selîm Pascha, the Governor of Upper Egypt, who received us in a most friendly manner in Siut, that the Bedouins had a short time ago discovered some alabaster quarries in the eastern range of mountains, between two and three hours distant, the working of which had been committed to him by Mohammed Ali; and I heard from his dragoman, that in that place also there was an inscription on the rock. I therefore determined to start the following day, accompanied by the two Weidenbachs, our dragoman and Kawass, on this hot ride, on the Pascha’s horses, which he had sent to El Bosra for the purpose. We found there a little colony of eighteen labourers, thirty-one souls altogether, in the lonely, sultry, rocky defile, occupied in working the quarries. On the side of the rock, behind the tent of the overseer, the name and titles of the wife, so highly venerated by the Egyptians of the first Amasis, the head of the 18th Dynasty which expelled the Hyksos, were preserved in distinct, sharp-cut hieroglyphics, the remains of an inscription that had been formerly longer. These are the first alabaster quarries the age of which is proved by an inscription. Not far from that place there have been others also, which, however, had been worked out in ancient times. Above three hundred blocks have been already obtained from the one now re-opened during the last four months, the largest of which are eight feet long and two feet thick. The Pascha informed me, through his dragoman, that on our return I should find a slab, whose size and form I might myself determine, of the best quality in the quarry, and which I might accept, as a token of the pleasure he had derived from our visit. The alabaster quarries which have hitherto been discovered in this neighbourhood, are all between Berscheh and Gauâta; we might be inclined, therefore, to view El Bosra as the ancient Alabastron, if the passage in Ptolemy could be reconciled with it. At any rate, Alabastron has certainly nothing to do with the ruins in the valley of El Amarna, for which it has hitherto been taken, which does not either agree with the statement of Ptolemy, and with which it appears to have a totally different relation. The hieroglyphic name of these ruins frequently appears in the inscriptions.

In the rocky chain of Gebel Selîn there are some more very early tombs belonging to the Old Monarchy, probably to the 6th Dynasty, but with few inscriptions.

Opposite to old Panopolis, or Chemmis, we climbed up to the remarkable rock-grotto of Pan (Chem). It was founded by another rival king of the 18th Dynasty, whose tomb we have since visited in Thebes. The holy name of the city frequently appears in the inscriptions here—“The Habitation of Chem,” i. e. Panopolis. Whether the popular name Chemmis, now Echmim, originated from this, is perhaps doubtful. I have always found two different names for Siut, Dendera, Abydos, and other towns; the holy and the popular name. The first is taken from the chief god of the local temple; the second has nothing to do with this. My hieroglyphic geography increases nearly with every new monumental locality. In Abydos we came to the first of the larger temple structures. The last interesting tombs of the Old Monarchy we found at Qasr e’ Saiat; they go as far back as the 6th Dynasty. In Dendera we visited the imposing Temple of Hathor, perhaps the best preserved in all Egypt.

We spent twelve overwhelming and astounding days in Thebes, which were scarcely sufficient to enable us to thread our way among the palaces, temples, and tombs, whose royal gigantic splendour fills this wide plain. We celebrated the birthday of our beloved king with a feu de joie, and waving of banners, with chorus songs and heartfelt toasts, which we pledged in a glass of genuine German Rhine wine, in the jewel of all the splendid buildings of Egypt—the palace of Ramses-Sesostris: it was erected by this greatest of the Pharaohs to “Ammon-Ra, the King of the Gods,” the tutelar patron of the royal city of Ammon, situated on a terrace of gentle elevation, calculated to command the wide plain on both sides of the majestic river, and was worthy of himself and of the god. I need scarcely say that on such an occasion we also thought of you with a full heart. When night came, we kindled a kettle of pitch above the outer entrance between the Pylones, on both sides of which our banners were planted, and then made a great fire flame up from the flat roof of the Pronaos (or vestibule), which exhibited the beautiful proportions of the hall of columns in splendid relief; for the first time since thousands of years we again restored this to its original destination as a festive hall—the saloon of “panegyrics.”[36] The two mighty Memnon Colossi, calmly reposing on their thrones, were also magically lighted up in the distance.

We have reserved all great undertakings for our return; but it will be difficult to select from the inexhaustible materials for our particular object, and with reference to what has been already communicated in other works. On the 10th of October we quitted Thebes. Hermonthis we saw in passing. The great hall of Esneh was several years ago excavated down to the foundation by order of the Pascha, and afforded us a magnificent spectacle. We remained three days in El Kab, the ancient Eileithyia. Still more wonderful than the different temples of this once mighty place, are its rock-tombs, most of which date from the commencement of the Egyptian War of Freedom against the Hyksos, and throw much light on the relations between the Dynasties of that period. Several distinguished persons, buried there, bear the strange title of Masculine Nurse of a Royal Prince, by the well-known group mena, and the determinative of the female breast, in the Coptic tongue expressed ⲙⲟⲡⲓ. The deceased is represented with the prince upon his lap.

The Temple of Edfu is also among those which are in best preservation; it was dedicated to Horus and to Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, who is here in one place called “The Queen of Men and Women.” Horus, as a child, is represented naked, as are all children on the monuments, and with his finger on his mouth. I had before explained the name of Harpokrates from it, which now I have found represented and written here complete, as Har-pe-chroti, i. e. “Horus the child.” The Romans misunderstood the Egyptian gesture of the finger, and out of the child who cannot yet speak, they made the God of Silence who will not speak. The most interesting inscription, hitherto neither noticed nor mentioned by any one, is on the outer eastern wall of the temple built by Ptolemy Alexander I. It contains several dates, of the kings Darius, Nectanebus, and of the falsely so-called Amyrtæus, and refers to the landed estates which belonged to the temple. The intense heat of the day we spent there caused me to postpone, till our return, a closer examination, and taking the paper impression of this wall.[37] Gebel Silsilis is one of the places most abundant in historical inscriptions, which are chiefly connected with the vast workings of the sandstone quarries.

I was rejoiced to find a third canon of the proportions of the human body, in Ombos, differing very distinctly from both the older Egyptian canons which I had before met with in many examples. The second canon is closely connected with the first, and oldest, of the time of the Pyramids, from which it differs only in being brought to greater perfection, and being differently applied. The foot, as the unit, is the foundation of both, this taken six times, corresponded to the height of the body when upright; but it must be observed, from the sole of the foot, not as far as the crown of the head, but only to the top of the forehead. That portion from where the hair begins to grow on the upper part of the forehead, to the crown of the head, did not come into the calculation at all, and occupies sometimes three-quarters, sometimes the half, sometimes still less of a fresh square. The difference between the first and the second canon chiefly rests on the position of the knee. In the Ptolemaic canon, however, the division has itself been altered. The body was no longer divided into 18 parts, as in the second canon, but into 21¼ parts, to the top of the forehead, or into 23 parts, up to the crown of the head. This is the division which Diodorus gives, in the last chapter of his first book. In the lower part of the body the proportions of the second and third canon remain the same; on the other hand, those of the upper part of the body are essentially altered, the contours become altogether more extravagant, and the previous beautiful simplicity and chasteness of the forms, in which consisted both its grand and peculiarly Egyptian character, yielded to the imperfect imitation of an uncomprehended foreign style of art. The proportion of the foot to the length of the body remains the same, but the foot is no longer placed for the basis as unit.

At Assuan we were obliged to change our boat, on account of the Cataracts, and for the first time for six months past, or longer, we had the home enjoyment of heavy rain, and a violent thunderstorm, which gathered on the farther side of the Cataracts, crossed with a mighty force the granite girdle, and then, amidst the most violent explosions, rolled down the valley as far as Cairo, and (as we have since heard) covered it with floods of water, such as had been scarcely remembered before. So we may say, with Strabo and Champollion, “In our time it rained in Upper Egypt.” Rain is, indeed, so rare here, that our guards never remembered to have beheld such a spectacle, and our Turkish Kawass, who is in all respects perfectly acquainted with the country, continued to leave his own things untouched; while we long before had been carrying our chests into the tents, and having them better secured, he quietly repeated abaden moie, “never rain,” a word which since then he has often been compelled to hear, as he was thoroughly drenched, and caught a violent, feverish cold, for which he was obliged to wait patiently in Philæ.

The situation of Philæ is as charming as it is interesting by its monuments. Some of the most delightful recollections of our journey are associated with our eight days’ residence on this holy island. We used to assemble before dinner, after the scattered work of the day, on the elevated temple terrace, which rises abruptly from the river, on the eastern shore of the island; we there watched the shadow of the temple (which is in good preservation, and built of sharply cut, deep-coloured glowing blocks of sandstone) steal over the river, and mingle with the black volcanic masses of rock, towering above each other, between which the golden yellow sand pours into the valley like streams of fire. The island appears only to have become holy to the Egyptians at a late period, for the first time under the Ptolemies. Herodotus, who during the rule of the Persians ascended as far as the Cataracts, does not mention Philæ at all; it was at that time inhabited by the Ethiopians, who were also in possession of half of the island of Elephantine. The oldest buildings now to be found upon the island were erected on the southern point by Nectanebus, the last king but two of Egyptian origin, almost a hundred years after the journey of Herodotus. There are no traces of earlier remains, not even of any that were destroyed or built up into other buildings. Many older inscriptions are to be found upon the large neighbouring island of Bigeh, named in hieroglyphics Senmut. As early as the Old Monarchy, it was adorned with Egyptian monuments; for we have found a granite statue of King Sesurtesen III. from the 12th Dynasty. The little rocky island Konosso, named in hieroglyphics Kenes, also contains very old inscriptions, engraved upon the rock, in which a new and hitherto wholly unknown King of the Hyksos period is also named. Hitherto the hieroglyphic name of the island of Philæ was read Manlak. I have found the name undoubtedly more than once written Ilak; hence with the article, Philak became in the mouth of the Greeks Philai. The sign which Champollion read “man,” in other groups changes into i, thence the expression I-lak, P-i-lak, Memphitic Ph-i-lak, is now established.

We have made a valuable discovery in the court of the great Temple of Isis, of two bilingual decrees of the Egyptian priests, that is to say, drawn up in the Hieroglyphic and Demotic characters; they are tolerably rich in words, and one of them contains the same text as the decree of the Rosetta stone. I have, at least, up to the present moment, compared the last seven lines, which correspond with the inscription of Rosetta, not only in their contents, but also in the length of each single line; the inscription must be copied before I can say more about it; at all events, it is no inconsiderable advantage to Egyptian philology, if only a portion of the fragmentary decree of Rosetta can, through this, be completed. The whole of the first portion of the Rosetta inscription which precedes the decree, is here wanting. Instead of this, there is a second decree beside it, which refers to the same Ptolemy Epiphanes; in the introduction, the “Fortress of Alexander,” i. e. the town of Alexandria, is mentioned for the first time, on the monuments which have hitherto become known. Both decrees conclude, like the Rosetta inscription, with the intention to set up the inscription in Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek characters. Nevertheless, the Greek is wanting here; unless, perhaps, it was written down in red, and rubbed out when Ptolemy Lathyrus cut his hieroglyphic inscriptions over the earlier ones.[38]

The hieroglyphic succession of the Ptolemies, which appears here, begins again with Philadelphus; whereas, in the Greek text of the Rosetta inscription, it begins with Soter. Another very remarkable fact is, that Epiphanes is here called, the son of Ptolemy Philopator and Cleopatra, while, by the historical accounts, the only wife of Philopator was Arsinoë, and she is besides so named in the Rosetta inscription, and on other monuments. She is also certainly called Cleopatra in one passage of Pliny, but this might have been considered a mistake of the author, or of the manuscript, if a hieroglyphic, and, indeed, an official document did not even now present the same change of names. There are now, therefore, no longer any grounds to place the mission by the Roman Senate of Marcus Atilius, and Marcus Acilius to Egypt, to negotiate a new alliance on account of the Queen Cleopatra, who is mentioned by Livy, under Ptolemy Epiphanes, as is done by Champollion Figeac, instead of under Ptolemy Philopator as other authors relate. We must rather assume now, either that the wife and sister of Philopator bore both names, which, indeed, even then would not quite remove the difficulties; or that the project mentioned by Appian, of a marriage between Philopator and the Syrian Cleopatra, who afterwards became the wife of Epiphanes, was carried into effect after the murder of Arsinoë, though the authors give us no account of it. Here, naturally, I am without the means of making this point perfectly clear.[39]

The multitude of Greek inscriptions in Philæ is incalculable, and it will interest Letronne to hear, that on the base of the second obelisk, which still exists in its original place and position, of which only a portion has travelled with the other obelisk to England, I have found the remains of a Greek inscription, written in red, difficult indeed to decipher, which, perhaps, was at one time also gilt, similar to the two last discovered upon the base in England. I have already written to Letronne, that the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the obelisk, which, together with the Greek one of the base, I myself copied in Dorsetshire, and which I afterwards published in my “Egyptian Atlas,” have nothing to do with the Greek inscription, and were not even set up simultaneously; but it still remains a question, whether the inscription of the second base was not in connexion with that of the first; the correspondence of the three known inscriptions certainly appears exclusively confined to themselves.

The chief temple of the island was dedicated to Isis. She is called by preference “The Lady of Philek.” Osiris was only θεὸς σύνναος, which has its peculiar hieroglyphic expression, and he is only sometimes exceptionally called “Lord of Philek;” on the other hand, he was “Lord of Ph-i-uêb,” i. e. Abaton, and Isis, who was there σύνναος, is only exceptionally called “The Lady of Ph-i-uêb.” Even from this, we may infer, that the famous tomb of Osiris, on his own island of Phiuêb, was not upon Philek. Both places were expressly designated by their determinatives as Islands. There is, therefore, no question that the Abaton of inscriptions and authors was not a particular place upon the island of Philæ; it was itself an island. Diodorus and Plutarch both say so, in distinct terms, as they place it πρὸς Φιλαις. Diodorus expressly designates the island with the tomb of Osiris, as a peculiar island, which, on account of this tomb, was called ἱερὸν πεδίον, “the sacred plain.” This is a translation of Ph-i-ueb, or Ph-ih-ueb (for the h is also found in the hieroglyphics), in the Coptic tongue ⲫ-ⲓⲁϩ-ⲟⲩⲏⲃ, Ph-iah-ueb, “the sacred field.” This sacred plain was an Abaton, inaccessible except to the priests.

On the 6th of November we left the enchanting island, and began our Ethiopian journey. Even in Debôd, the next temple we came to towards the south, in hieroglyphics called Tabet (in Coptic, perhaps, ⲧⲁ ⲁⲃⲏⲧ), we found the sculptures of an Ethiopian king, Arkamen the Ergamenes, of the authors, who reigned at the same time as Ptolemy Philadelphus, and probably was in very friendly relations with Egypt. There is great confusion in the French work on Champollion’s expedition (I have not got Rosellini at hand). Many sheets which belong to Dakkeh are attributed to Debôd, and vice versâ: we collected nearly sixty Greek inscriptions in Gertassi. Letronne, who knew them, through Gau, has perhaps already published them; I am eager to learn what he has made out of γόμοι, whose priests play an important part in these inscriptions, as also out of the new gods, Σρούπτιχις and Πουρσεπμοῦνις.

The Inscriptions of Talmis offer a new instance how incorrectly the Egyptian names were often comprehended by the Greeks, who name the same god Mandulis, who in the hieroglyphic language was distinctly called Meruli, and was the local god of Talmis. It is striking that the name of Talmis, which is frequently found in this temple, never appears in the rock-temple of Bet el Ualli, certainly of much older date, which is situated in its immediate neighbourhood. Dendûr also had a peculiar protecting patron, the god Petisi, who never appears anywhere else, and has also the surname of Peschir Tenthur; Champollion’s sheets are here, also, in wonderful disorder, since the representations and inscriptions are erroneously combined.

The Temples of Gerf Hussên and Sebûa are especially worthy of notice, because Ramses Sesostris, by whom they were built, appears here both as a contemplative divinity and worshipping himself as such, with Phtha and Ammon, the two chief divinities of this temple. In the first, he is even one time called “Ruler of the Gods.”

Champollion has already remarked, with justice, that indeed all the temples of the Ptolemies, and of the Roman emperors in Nubia, were only restorations of former sanctuaries, which, in more ancient times, had been erected by the Pharaohs of the 18th and 19th Dynasties, and had been destroyed by the Persians. Thus also the Temple of Pselchis was first built by Tuthmosis III. Besides the scattered fragments of stone belonging to this first building, which, however, was not dedicated to Thoth, as Champollion believes, but to Horus, and thus at a later period altered its destination; we have found others, likewise, of Sethôs I. and Menephthes. It also appears that the axis of the first plan was not parallel with the river, like the later one, but similar to almost all other temples, its entrance was towards the river.

At the Temple of Korte the entrance door alone is inscribed with hieroglyphics, and those of the worst style. Yet even this small amount was sufficient to inform us that the sanctuary was dedicated to Isis, who is named “The Lady of Kerte.” Here also we discovered some blocks that had been used in later buildings, which had escaped the notice of former travellers; they belonged to an ancient temple, erected by Tuthmosis III., and the foundation walls may still be recognised.

In Hierasykaminos we reaped the last harvest of Greek inscriptions. As far as this place Greek and Roman travellers were protected by the garrison of Pselchis, and by another strong position Mehendi, which is not given on the maps, but was situated some hours to the south of Hierasykaminos. Primis seems only to have had a temporary garrison after the campaign of Petronius. Mehendi, whose name, indeed, seems only to designate in Arabic the buildings, the fortress, is the best preserved Roman camp that I have ever seen. It lies upon a tolerably steep eminence, and from that commands the river, and a small valley, which passes upwards from the river, to the south side of the fortress; the caravan road, also, here branches off into the desert, and does not redescend to the river till near Medik. The wall of the town encloses a square, which, towards the east, passes down the hill a short way, and measures 175 paces from north to south, and 125 from east to west. Four corner towers, and four central towers, spring up at regular intervals from the walls; among the last, those lying to the north and south were also the gates, which, for greater security, did not lead straight into the town, but with a bend. The southern gate, and all the southern portion of the fortress, which encompassed about 120 houses, are in excellent preservation. Immediately behind the gate you enter a straight street, sixty-seven paces long, which, with but little interruption, is still completely arched over; several narrow side streets lead off on both sides, and are also, as well as all the houses of that whole portion of the town, covered over with arched roofs, made of Nile bricks. The street leads to a somewhat large open place in the middle of the town, near to which was situated, upon the highest point of the ridge of the rock, the largest, and best built house, doubtless that of the commander, with a semicircular niche at the eastern end. The walls of the town are built out of unhewn stones; the gate alone, which supports a well-constructed Roman arch, is built of sharply-cut square stones, amongst which several built into it, have sculptures of the genuine Egyptian style, although of late date; a proof that before the erection of the fortress, there was an Egyptian or Ethiopian sanctuary, probably a chapel to Isis. We discovered a head of Osiris, and two heads of Isis, in one of which we could still recognise the red-marked proportion square of the third canon.

The last monument that we visited, before our arrival in Korusko, was the Temple of Ammon in Wadi Sebûa (the Lion Valley), so called from the row of Sphinxes, which are now scarcely visible above the sea of sand which has buried nearly the whole temple, as far as it stood out alone. Even the western portion of the temple, hewn in the rock, is filled up high with sand, and we were compelled to summon the whole crew of our boat to open an entrance into this part of it. We here encountered a new and very peculiar combination of divine and human nature, in a group of four divinities. The first of which was called “Phtha of Ramses, in the house of Ammon;” the second, Phtha, with other customary surnames; the third, Ramses, in the house of Ammon; the fourth, Hathor. In another inscription, “Ammon of Ramses, in the house of Ammon,” was named. It is difficult to explain this combination.[40]

I was no less astonished to find a posterity of King Ramses-Miamun in the outer court of this Temple of Ammon, consisting of a hundred and sixty-two children, represented with their names and titles, most of which, indeed, were scarcely legible, as they are very much destroyed; others are covered with rubbish, and at present could only be estimated by the distances of the spaces. Hitherto, only twenty-five sons and ten daughters of this great king were known. He did not take the two legitimate wives which appear upon the monuments simultaneously, but the one after the death of the other. To-day we had a visit from the old, blind, but powerful and rich Hassan Kaschef, of Derr, who formerly was independent regent of Lower Nubia; he had no less than sixty-four wives, of whom forty-two still remain; twenty-nine sons and seventeen daughters are still living. He has, probably, never taken the trouble to reckon how many of them he has lost, but by the usual proportion here, he must have had about four times the number of those living, therefore about two hundred children.

Korusko is an Arabian place, in the centre of the land of the Nubians, or Barâbra (plural of Bérberi), which includes the Nile valley from Assuan to beyond Dongola. They are an intelligent and honest race; peaceful, but of a disposition anything but slavish, with well-formed bodies, and a skin of a light, reddish-brown colour. The occupation of Korusko by the Arabs of the race of the Ababde, who inhabit the whole of the eastern desert from Assuan as far as Abu Hammed, is explained by the important situation of the place, being the commencement of the great caravan road, which leads direct to the province of Berber, and cuts off the great-western curvature of the Nile.

The Arabic tongue—in which we have now learnt, at least to give orders and to ask questions, indeed, also to carry on a little conversation of civilities, or on the news of the day—had become so familiar to our ears in Egypt, that the Nubian language attracted us, even by its novelty. It is divided, as far as I have been hitherto able to learn, into a northern and a southern dialect, which meet near Korusko.[41] The language has a distinct character from the Arabic, even in its first elements in the system of consonants and vowels. It is much more euphonous, as it has hardly any accumulation of consonants, no hard guttural sounds; it has little sibilance, and many simple vowels, differing more distinctly from one another than in the Arabic, and generally parted by a consonant, thus again avoiding an effeminate accumulation of vowels. It has no accordance, either with the Semitic languages or with the Egyptian, in any part of the grammatical forms, or the radical words, much less with our own, and therefore surely belongs to the original African tongue, without any immediate connexion with the present language of the Ethiopian-Egyptian race, although the people may have been often comprehended by the ancients under the name of Ethiopians, and were, perhaps, less strangers to them by descent. They are not a trading people, and therefore can only reckon up to twenty in their own language; they borrow the higher decades from the Arabic language, yet they use a peculiar word for one hundred—imil. The grammatical distinction between the genders exists almost solely throughout the language in the personal pronouns when they stand alone; they make a distinction between “he” and “she,” but not between “he gives” and “she gives.” They conjugate more by additional actual flexions, as in our languages, than by alteration of accent, and change of vowel, as in the Semitic. They form the ordinals by the addition of iti; the plural, by îgi; they do not possess a dual. The connexion of the pronouns with the verb is both prefix and affix, but it is simple and natural; they distinguish between the present and the preterite; they express the future by a particle; they have also a peculiar form for the passive voice. The root of the negation is m, usually succeeded by an n; perhaps the only agreement more than accidental with the roots of most other languages. Their original wealth of ideas is very limited. They have, indeed, peculiar words for the sun, the moon, and the stars; but they borrow terms from the Arabic for time, year, month, day, and hour; water, sea, and river, are all essi; but it is remarkable that they designate the Nile by a particular word—Tossi. They have peculiar words for all native animals, tame and wild; Arabic words for everything connected with house-building, and even navigation; it is only the boat they themselves call kub, which, most likely, has nothing to do with the Arabic mérkab. They have only one word—béti (fenti)—for the date-fruit and the date-tree, which are expressed by different terms in Arabic—bellah and nachele. The sycamore-tree they call by an Arabic name: but it is remarkable, that they designate the sont (acacia) tree by the same word as tree generally—g’ôui. Spirit, God, slave, the ideas of relationship, the different parts of the body, weapons, the produce of the field, and all that belongs to the preparation of bread, have Nubian names; on the other hand, servant, friend, enemy, temple, to pray, believe, read, is Arabic. It is striking that they have special words for writing, and book; but not for style, ink, paper, letter. They call all the metals by Arabic names, with the exception of iron. They are rich, in the Berber tongue; poor, in Arabic; and, in fact, they are all rich in their miserable home, which they cling to like the Swiss, and, devoid of wants, they despise the Arabic gold, which they might earn in Egypt, where their services are much sought for, as house watchmen, and in all confidential posts.

We are now waiting for the arrival of the camels, to commence our desert journey. Till we reach Abu Hammed, eight days hence, we shall only once find water fit to drink. We shall travel four days longer on camels, as far as Berber; there, by the arrangement of Achmed Pascha, we shall find boats ready for us. We must go to Kartûm, to supply ourselves again with provisions; if we may believe Linant, to go still higher up as far as Abu Haras, and thence to Mandera, in the eastern desert, will scarcely repay us; but Achmed Pascha has promised to send an officer to Mandera, to test once more the statements of the natives.

I shall send this report, with other letters, by an express messenger to Qeneh.

LETTER XVI.

Korusko, the 5th January, 1844.

It is with no small regret that I have to inform you that we shall, perhaps, be compelled to give up our Ethiopian journey, the second principal task of our expedition, and return to the north from this spot. We have waited, in vain, since the 17th November for the camels, always promised, but never appearing, that were to take us to Berber, and we have still no more prospect of seeing them than at the beginning. I am sorry to say that what we heard on our arrival is confirmed; the Arab tribes, who alone manage the transport, are discontented with Mohammed Ali’s reduction of the charge from eighty to sixty piastres for each camel from hence to Berber; they have agreed among each other to send no more camels here, and no Firman, no promises, no threats, are of any avail. A great number of chests, with ammunition, destined for Chartûm, have been lying here these ten months past, and they are unable to convey them any farther. We had hoped for the assistance of Achmed Pascha Menekle, the new governor of the Southern Provinces, as he had been most friendly and unbounded in his promises. The officer, who remained behind here with the ammunition, received a direct order from him to detain the first camels that should arrive, for our use; nevertheless, we are not at all nearer to our object. The Pascha himself had scarcely means to pursue his journey onward, although he required but few camels. He had brought some of them with him from the north, and he caused some to be forcibly driven together here. Notwithstanding this, he was very ill-provided on his departure, and it is said that half of his beasts either died, or fell sick in the desert.

On the 3rd December, as no camels had yet come, though the Pascha must have passed the province of Berber, from whence he was to send us the requisite number, I sent our own excellent and trustworthy Kawass, Ibrahim Aga, with Mohammed Ali’s Firman, across the desert of nine days’ journey, to Berber. Meanwhile, we went up as far as Wadi Halfa, to the second Cataract, and visited the numerous monuments which are to be found in this region, returning here, three weeks afterwards, with a rich harvest.

It is now thirty-one days since our Kawass set out on his journey, and a few days ago I received a letter from the Mudhir of Berber, by which I learn that he was still unable to furnish me with camels, although, after the arrival of our Kawass, and the reception of the letter of the Mudhir in this place, he had immediately despatched soldiers, in order to collect the necessary number of sixty camels. Thus they are in the same situation there, as we here; the authorities can do nothing in opposition to the ill-will of the Arabs.

Since the sudden death by poison, at Chartûm, of Achmed Pascha, who had been placed at the head of the whole Sudan, and who, as it is asserted, has for some time past been engaged in a conspiracy, in order to make himself independent of Mohammed Ali, the Southern Kingdom has been divided into five provinces, and placed under five Paschas, who are to be installed in their several offices by Achmed Pascha Menekle. One of their number, Emir Pascha, has been hitherto Bey at Chartûm, under Achmed Pascha, who, it appears, he betrayed. Three others arrived at Korusko soon after Achmed Pascha Menekle. The most powerful of them, Hassan Pascha, went to his province of Dongola by water, as far as Wadi Halfa; he had scarcely any attendants, and wanted but few camels to proceed on his journey. The second, Mustaffa Pascha, who is destined for Kordofan, has seized by force a mercantile caravan returning from Berber. However, by the Arabs’ report, some of the wearied beasts became unserviceable when they reached the well, which is situated about four days’ journey in the desert; there he found some merchants, whom he robbed of eight camels; the rest of this caravan did not make its appearance here, fearing probably that it would be again detained, it has taken another route to Egypt. The third Pascha, Ferhât, is still waiting here with us, and uses all the means in his power to collect some camels from the north or the south for himself. Hence our last hope has vanished with respect to this province, as we are less capable than he to arouse the small force of the authorities; and at this moment we have neither Firman nor Kawass with us. Every one, and the Paschas more than all, endeavour to console us in the most friendly manner from day to day; but meanwhile the winter is passing away, the only season when we can work in the upper country. In addition to this, the Mudhir, till now of Lower Nubia, with whom we were on friendly terms, has been complained of by the Nubian Sheikh of his province to Mohammed Ali, and has just been recalled by him. This part of the country has, therefore, been temporarily placed under the Mudhir of Esneh, whose deputy is a young, but otherwise well-disposed man, not however yet acquainted with the province, so we must expect still less from him.

I have, therefore, at length made up my mind for the last course which remains open to me. I shall, myself, go to Berber with Abeken, and a very few camels, and leave Erbkam here, with the rest of our party, and all the baggage. There I shall be better able to see the state of affairs on the spot, and, by aid of the Firman and the Kawass, whose authority I am much in want of here, I shall try what can be done. We were received here, by Achmed Pascha Menekle, with the greatest courtesy, and are already assured of his most efficient support, through the interposition of his body-physician, our countryman and personal friend, Dr. Koch. Perhaps money and threats, even though late in the day, may carry our point. By mere chance I have myself been able to procure six camels. Two more are still absolutely necessary for the completion of our little caravan; but the deputy of the Mudhir, with the best will towards us, cannot even procure these two camels. We have already been waiting three days for them, and still do not know whether we shall receive them.

LETTER XVII.

E’ Dâmer, the 24th January, 1844.

Our difficulties, though at a late hour, are terminated. I arrived here yesterday with Abeken, still two days’ journey from the Pyramids of Meröe, and probably the whole of our camp also arrived yesterday at the southern extremity of the Great Desert at Abu Hammed. After my last discouraging account from Berber, I set out on the 8th January, about mid-day, with Abeken, the dragoman Jussuf Scherebîeh, a cook, and our little Nubian boy Auad. We had eight camels, two of them, however, scarcely in a fit state to make the journey, and two asses. As the promised guide was not at hand, I compelled the Sheikh of the camels, Achmed, to accompany us himself, as he might be of service to us, on account of his reputation among the tribes of the Ababde Arabs dwelling here. We had besides these, another guide, Adâr, who had been given us instead of the promised one, and five camel-drivers; and soon after our departure several other foot-passengers joined our party, besides two people with asses, who availed themselves of this opportunity to return to Berber. We took with us ten water-skins, some stores of rice, macaroni, biscuit, and cold meat, besides a light tent, our coverlets on which to ride and sleep, the requisite changes of linen, and a few books; and, in addition, a proper supply of good courage, of which I scarcely ever feel the want in starting on a journey. Our friends accompanied us a short way into the rocky valley, which very soon entirely concealed the neighbouring banks of the river, and its pleasant palm-trees.

The valley was both wild and monotonous, nothing but sandstone rock, the surface of which was burnt as black as coal, but in every quarry, and every hollow, this changed into a brilliant golden yellow; from these a multitude of streams of sand, like streams of fire out of black dross, trickled down, and filled the valleys. We were preceded by the guides; they had simple folds of drapery round their shoulders and hips; in their hands were either one or two spears, made of firm, but light wood, provided with iron points and shafts; a round, or lightly carved shield, with a very prominent boss made of giraffe skin covered their naked backs; their other shields were oblong in form, and usually made of hippopotamus skin, or of the dorsal hide of the crocodile. During the night, and often in the daytime also, they bound sandals under their feet, the thongs of which, not unfrequently cut out of one piece with the sole, are drawn between the great toe and the second toe, and then surround the foot in the manner of a skate.

Sheikh Achmed was a magnificent man, youthful, but tall and noble in stature; he had extremely supple limbs, of a brilliant brown-black colour, his features were very expressive of emotion, a brilliant dark eye, which had both a gentle and sly look, and his mode of speech was so incomparably beautiful, with such harmonious expression, that I liked to have him constantly beside me, although we had a continual contest with him in Korusko, as he was bound to furnish the camels and all appurtenances, and on account of circumstances he neither would nor could procure them. He gave us a proof in the desert of his agility and the elasticity of his limbs, for taking a long run on the sandy ground, peculiarly unfavourable for leaping, he made a bound of 14½ feet in width; I measured the distance between the footmarks with his lance, which was rather more than two metres long (6 feet 7 inches English). Adâr, our second guide, alone ventured to make the leap after him, but he did not nearly reach the same distance.

The first day we had started early, about eleven o’clock in the morning, and we rode on till about five; we then stopped for an hour and a half, and went on again till about half-past twelve. We then pitched our tents on the hard ground, and laid down to sleep, after a march of twelve hours. The most refreshing thing, after these hot and fatiguing days’ journeys, was our tea in the evening; we were, however, obliged to habituate ourselves to the leathery taste of the water, which we perceived even through the tea and coffee. The second day we were fourteen hours on our camels; starting about eight in the morning, we halted about four o’clock in the afternoon to eat something, proceeded on our journey about half-past five, and about half-past twelve we struck our encampment for the night, having left the hills, and about ten o’clock, with the rising moon, descended into a vast plain. Hitherto we had not seen a tree, nor a blade of grass, not even a creature, except some white eagles and ravens, who fed upon the carrion of the camels which had fallen. On the third day, after setting off early in the morning, we met a troop of one hundred and fifty camels, which had been purchased by the Government, to be sent into Egypt. The Pascha is anxious to import several thousand camels from Berber, that he may thereby, in some measure, repair the consequences of the cattle-disease of last year. A great number had already passed through Korusko, without our venturing to make use of them, as they are the private property of the Pascha; we could not have mounted them besides, as they had no saddles.

The guide of the troop, whom we met to-day, brought us at last the long desired intelligence that our Kawass, Ibrahim Aga, had left Berber with sixty camels, and was already marching quite close to us, but on another route, which led across the desert a little more to the west. Sheikh Achmed was sent after him, that he might bring us three good camels, in place of our feeble ones; and also to gain some further intelligence about him. He said that he should overtake us the following night, or at latest the second. I sent a couple of lines to Erbkam, by the Chabîr (guide) of the troop. We halted about half-past five, and remained all night, hoping to see Sheikh Achmed arrive sooner. Towards evening we saw the first scanty vegetation of the desert; the yellowish-grey dry blades of grass, which were hardly visible when near, in the distance gave a pale greenish-yellowish colour to the ground, which alone called my attention to it.

We ought to have arrived the fourth day at the well of brackish water, fit however for the camels to drink; but that we might not hasten on too quickly before Sheikh Achmed, we terminated our day’s journey as early as four o’clock, about four hours distant from the well. At length, about mid-day, we left the great plain Bahr bela Ma (the River without Water), which unites with the mountain chain of El Bab, two days’ journey in length, and which we had entered coming out of Korusko, and we now approached other chains. Hitherto we had seen nothing but sandstone rocks, both beneath and around us; it was therefore really a joyful event, when looking down from my tall camel upon the sand, I saw the first Plutonic Rock. I immediately glided down from my saddle, and broke off a fragment; it was a greyish green stone of very fine grain, and undoubtedly of the nature of granite. The preceding chains of mountains were also chiefly composed of species of porphyry and granite of different colours, not unfrequently associated with broad veins of red syenite, such as appears so abundantly on the surface at Assuan, and which was so extensively worked by the ancient Egyptians. Farther in the mountains, quartz was sometimes very prevalent, and the appearance was very singular when, here and there at different heights, the snow-white silicious veins appeared on the surface of the black mountains issuing like a spring from a point in the mountain, and flowing into the valley, where its white rolled fragments spread out like a lake. I carried away with me some small specimens of the different kinds of rocks. After we had passed behind a low mountain defile and a small valley, Bahr ʾHatab (the Wood River, on account of the wood, which is said to grow somewhat farther away on some neighbouring mountains), and another valley, Wadi Delah, inclining to the northern side of the principal mountain which succeeds it, we reached the rocky hollow, E’ Sufr, where we expected to find rain water, and to re-fill our shrunken water-skins (girbe, pl. geràb). During one month of the year, about May, there is usually some rain in this high mountain of primitive rock. The huge granite basins in the hollow valleys are then filled, and retain the water throughout the entire year. Some vegetation was to be seen on this Plutonic Rock, resulting from the rain, and because the granite itself seems to contain more fertilising matter than the barren loose sand, almost wholly composed of small grains of quartz. In Wadi Delah, which evidently has water in the rainy season, we came to a long continuous row of Doum Palms; the circular form of their leaves, and their bushy growth, has a less bare appearance than the long slender-leaved date palm; the latter cannot stand the rain, and therefore cannot live in Berber, while the Doum Palm appears in Upper Egypt for the first time, quite isolated, and the farther we travel south, we see them in greater numbers, larger in size, and of more luxuriant growth. If their fruit drop off when unripe and dry, the small portion of pulp round the stony kernel tastes like a coating of sugar; if they ripen, the yellowish woody pulp may be chewed; it has a good taste, and some of their fruit had an aroma almost similar to the pine-apple. They are sometimes as large as the largest apples.

About four o’clock we pitched our camp, the camels were sent into the hollow, situated behind, to the rain water, and Abeken and I got upon our asses, to accompany them to these natural reservoirs. Riding over coarse gravel and sharp stones we penetrated deeper and deeper into the ascending defile; the first large basins were empty, we left our asses and camels behind, clambered up the smooth granite sides of the rock, and stepped from one basin to another amidst these huge masses of rock. All were empty; the guide said there must be water in the fissure which lay farthest back, that there it was never exhausted; but even in that spot not a drop was to be found, so we were obliged to return without any success, as dry as we came. The numerous herds of cattle, which during the past year had been driven out of the Sudan into Egypt, had consumed it all. Only three skins of water had remained over for our party, and we were therefore compelled to find out some means to procure more. Other cisterns were said to exist higher up in the mountains behind this defile. I was anxious to climb up the rocks with the guide, but he considered it too dangerous an undertaking. We turned round, rode back to the encampment, and with the setting sun, the camels were forced to start once more in search of water among the hills lying to the north, about an hour distant from this spot. They returned at a late hour with four skins full; the water was good, and pleasant to the taste. Sheikh Achmed, however, did not either return this night, and we now hoped to find him at the well, whither he might have preceded us by the southern road.

We started soon after sunrise, on the fifth day, and penetrated deeper into the great mountain chain of Roft, which always exhibited the same rock, at first slaty in texture, then more in the form of blocks, afterwards abounding in quartz. The heat of the day was more oppressive in the mountains than in the plains, where the north wind blowing almost continuously, produces greater coolness. With the exception of the different kinds of rock, there was little around to attract our notice. I met with a great ant-hill in the middle of the barren desert, and I looked at it for a long time; there were smaller and larger bright black ants, who were carrying all the small pieces of earth which they were able to lift out of their building, so that the coarser little stones alone remained, and formed solid walls; the larger ants were distinguished by their heads being in proportion to their size, twice as thick as the others, and they did not themselves work, but led the regiment, and gave a push to each of the smaller ants, who were carrying nothing, drove them forwards, and kept them more diligently at work.

The difficulty to converse when riding on the hard-pacing camel is so much the greater because it is not easy to make them keep the step beside each other, as with the horse or ass. When upon a good dromedary (Heggîn), and travelling without, or with but very little baggage, the creature keeps in a trot. This is an easy pace, and is not very fatiguing, but it is difficult to get accustomed to the long step of the ordinary baggage-camel, which throws the high load backwards and forwards. Yet even this was alleviated by our being sometimes able to dismount from our camels and get upon our asses, and we often went on foot for a considerable distance both early in the morning and in the evening.

I now return to the fifth day of our desert journey. We started about eight o’clock in the morning from the little valley of E’ Sufr, where we had encamped under some gum, or sont-trees, and about half-past twelve, after turning to our left into a flat valley for the distance of about half an hour from our road among the hills, we reached the brackish well in Wadi Murhad. Here we had accomplished about half our desert journey. We saw some huts built of small stones and reeds, and near them a couple of starved goats were fruitlessly searching for some pasture; our black host led us into a reed arbour, where we made ourselves as comfortable as we could in the shade.

In this rocky valley we had been struck for some time by the snow-white crust of Natron, frequently appearing above the sand which makes the water of the well brackish. Towards the end of the valley, where it divides into two branches, the water is to be found between five and six feet beneath the surface, and has been discovered by digging eight wells. The water in the wells which lie farthest back, is greenish, rather salt, and has a bad taste, which, however, satisfies the camels; the three in front, on the contrary, yield clear water, which might very well have been drank by us in a case of necessity. There is a government station here, usually inhabited by six persons, but at the present moment four of them had been sent out on an excursion, and only two remained behind. From this spot there are two roads to Korusko, a western and an eastern one. Ibrahim Aga had chosen the former road, we the latter, and we had, therefore, unfortunately missed each other. Sheikh Achmed was also not to be found here; probably he had not overtaken our camels before the second day, and we were compelled to proceed on our journey without him.

The Ababde Arabs, with whom we have now everywhere to deal, are an honest and trustworthy people, from whom we have less to fear than from the crafty and thievish Fellahs in Egypt. To the north-east of their territory, the races of the Bischâri are spread over the country, who have a peculiar language, and are now in bitter enmity with the Ababde Arabs, because more than two years ago when they had attacked and murdered some Turkish soldiers in the little valley where we had spent the night, Hassan Chalif, the superior Sheikh of the Ababdes, to whose protection the road of communication between Berber and Korusko had been confided, caused forty of the Bischâris to be put to death. Besides, by aid of the Ababdes, more than four-and-twenty years ago, Ismael Pascha succeeded in bringing his army across the desert, and taking possession of the Sudan. It is only upon the road that we are now pursuing that guides are maintained by government; there are none on the longer road, from Berber to Assuan, which is, however, better supplied with water, though now but little used. About half-past four we rode away from the well, after we had inspected some hagr mektub (stones with inscriptions) for which we inquire everywhere, viz., some rocks in the neighbourhood, on which, in somewhat modern times, a number of horses, camels, and other creatures have been roughly scratched, similar to what we had already often seen in Nubia. About half-past nine we halted for the night, after having quitted the high chain of mountains an hour and a half previously. On the morning of the sixth day, we crossed the wide plain Mundera, to which another lofty chain, Abu Sihha, is attached, at the farther side; the southern frontier of this plain, where it inclines towards that chain, is called Abdebab; the southern portion of the large chain of Roft laying behind us is called Abu Senejat.

About three o’clock we left the plain behind us, and again entered the mountain range, which, like the others, is composed of granite. Half an hour afterwards, we halted for our mid-day’s repose. In a couple of hours we rode on farther, and encamped towards midnight, after we had traversed another small plain, and from the stony range Adar Auîb which succeeds it, entered a new plain, comprehended under the same appellation, which extends as far as the last chain of mountains belonging to this desert of Gebel Graibât.

On the following day, the seventh of our journey, we started about half-past seven in the morning, and at length, beyond Gebel Graibât, we reached the great boundless plain of Adererât, which we did not quit again till we arrived at Abu Hammed. To the south-west we now kept in view the small hill El Farût and the larger range of Mograd; to the east, far distant, another mountain chain, Abu Nugara, joins that of Adar Auîb. Then to the south-east there were other Bischâri chains of mountains, whose names were unknown to our Ababde guides. The commencement of the great plain of Adererât was covered for whole hours together with beautiful, pure quartz, sometimes rising up out of the sand in the form of solid rock, although the predominant kind of rock continued to be black granite, which towards the south was traversed by a broad vein of red granite. Early in the day a small caravan of merchants passed us at some little distance.

At a very early hour in the day we saw the most beautiful mirages, both near us and at a distance, exhibiting a very deceptive resemblance to lakes and rivers, in which the mountains, blocks of stone, and everything around is reflected, as if in clear water. They form a strange contrast with the hard arid desert, and, as it is related, must have often bitterly deceived many a poor wanderer. When we are not aware that no water can be there, it is often totally impossible to distinguish the semblance from the reality. Only a few days ago, in the neighbourhood of El Mechêref, I felt perfectly certain that I saw either Nile water which had overflowed, or a branch of the river, and I rode up, but only found Bahr Scheitan, “The water of Satan,” as it is called by the Arabs.

Even though the sand may have obliterated all traces of the caravan road, it cannot easily be missed during the day, as it is sufficiently marked by innumerable skeletons of camels, several of which are always in view; yesterday I counted forty-one, which we passed during the last half hour before sunset. We did not lose one of our own camels, although they had not rested long in Korusko, and had had scarcely anything to eat or drink on the road. My own camel, into whose mouth I had sometimes put a piece of biscuit, used to look round in the middle of the march when it heard me biting, or twist round its long neck, till it laid its head, with its soft large eyes on my lap, to get something more.

About four o’clock in the afternoon we stopped for about two hours, and then went on again till about eleven o’clock, when we went in search of a place for our night’s encampment in the great plain. The wind however blew so violently that it was impossible to secure our tent. In spite of the ten iron pegs which fasten it all the way round, it was three times overthrown, before it was completely pitched; we allowed it therefore to remain as it was, and laid ourselves down behind a little wall, which the guide had made out of the saddles of the camels, to protect us from the wind, and we slept à la belle étoile.

On the eighth day we might have arrived at Abu Hammed late that evening, but determined to halt for the night, one hour sooner, that we might reach the Nile by daylight. The birds of prey increased in number as we approached the river; we frightened away about thirty vultures from the fresh carcase of a camel, and only the day before I had shot a white eagle in the desert, as well as some desert partridges, that were in search of stray grains of Durra[42] on the caravan road. We only saw the footsteps of beasts of prey, round the skeletons of the camels; they did not disturb us in the night, as they did in the camp at Korusko, where we killed a hyæna, besides several jackals. Towards mid-day we met a caravan of slaves. The last encampment for the night before we reached Abu Hammed was in a less windy position, yet our supply of charcoal was exhausted, and our people had forgotten to collect camels’ dung on the road for fuel; therefore, to appease our thirst, we were obliged to be contented to drink the last brown water of the skins unboiled. We could give no more to the asses.

On the 16th January we mounted our camels about half-past seven in the morning, and looked forth from our high thrones towards the Nile. It was, however, only visible a very short time before we reached it. The river does not cut through any broad valley at this spot, but flows in a bare, rocky channel, passing almost unperceived through the slightly elevated and wide rocky plain. On the farther side of the river the ground had more the character of a plain, and some Doum Palms grew upon an island that had formed there. Shortly before we reached the bank, we met a troop of 150 camels, which had just started from Abu Hammed. A great circular embankment of earth then became visible with some towers upon it like a fortress, which had been erected by the great Arab Sheikh Hassan Chalif, for the government stores. A small hollow contains five huts, one made of stones and earth, another of trunks of trees, two of mats, one of bus, or durra-straw; a more open space then spread before us surrounded by several wretched houses, one of which was prepared for our reception. A brother of Hassan Chalif who lives here came out to meet us; he led us into the house, and proffered his services. Some anqarebs (reed bedsteads), which on account of the creeping vermin are much in use here, were brought within doors, and we settled ourselves for the day, and the following night, for we were obliged to allow the camels at least so much time for repose.

We were surrounded by a great square space, thirty feet wide on every side, the walls were made of stone and earth, two thick trunks of trees, branching like a fork, supported a large architrave, above which the other joists were placed, which were covered and joined together by mats and wickerwork. It strongly reminded me of some very ancient architecture which we had seen represented in the rock-grottoes of Benihassan; the columns, the network of the ceiling, through which as in that instance the only light except what was admitted by the door entered by a square opening in the centre, there was no window. The door was composed of four short trunks of trees, of which the uppermost one was exactly like the ornamented door-posts in the tombs of the time of the Pyramids. We hung a canvas curtain before the door to protect us from the wind and dust; another door led at the opposite corner into a side-room, which was arranged for the kitchen. It was a windy day, and the wind was disagreeably charged with sand, so that we went very little out of doors. But we refreshed ourselves with some pure and fresh Nile water, and a meal of well-dressed mutton. The Great Desert lay behind us; and we were only four days’ journey from El Mechêref, the capital of Berber, during which time we should follow the course of the river. We learned that Achmed Pascha Menekle was in our neighbourhood, or that he would soon arrive, in order to lead a military expedition from Dâmer, a short day’s journey beyond El Mechêref, up the Atbara to the province of Taka, where some of the tribes of the Bischâris had revolted.

When we stepped out of doors the following morning, our Arabs had all anointed themselves most beautifully, and had put on clean clothes; but what most astonished us, was the appearance of their magnificent white powdered wigs, which gave quite a venerable appearance to their faces. To make their toilet complete, they are in the habit of combing up their great heads of hair into a high toupie, which is sprinkled over with fine, flaky, shining, white butter, like powder, expressly prepared for this purpose. But in a short time, when the sun rises higher, this greasy snow melts, and the hair seems then as if it was covered with innumerable pearls of dew, till even these gradually disappear, and dripping over the neck and shoulders, spread a gloss over the pliant dark brown skin, which gives their well-built figures the appearance of antique bronze statues.

We started the next morning, about eight o’clock, with a fresh camel, which we had had an opportunity of obtaining in exchange for a tired one. The nearer we approach the island of Meröe, the valley becomes so much the wider, and more fertile, and the desert even becomes more like a steppe. The first station was Geg, where we passed the night in an open space of ground; the air is very warm; about half-past five in the afternoon it was still 25° R. (87° Fahr.). The second night we halted beyond Abu Haschin, close to a village, which in fact is not really a station, as we were anxious to get through the five ordinary stations in the space of four days; the third night we halted in the open air, near a cataract of the Nile. On the fourth day from Abu Hammed we removed somewhat farther from the river into the desert, yet we always remained on the soil of the ancient valley, if I may so designate a yellowish earth which is now no longer overflowed by the river, but which was turned up by the inhabitants of the village directly from beneath the sand; that they might improve their fields with it. We stopped in the evening at the village of El Chôr, one hour distant from El Mechêref, and the fifth day we arrived at an early hour at the capital of the province of Berber.

I sent the dragoman forward to announce our arrival, and to ask for a house, which was given up to us, and we took possession of it immediately. The Mudhir of Berber was in Dâmer, but his Wakil, or representative, visited us, and soon after Hassan Chalif, the principal Arab Sheikh, who promised us better camels to take us to Dâmer; he was rejoiced to hear some tidings of his and our friends, Linant and Bonomi, and was much pleased in looking over our picture books, among which he found likenesses of some of his own relations and ancestors. We had scarcely arrived, before we received news that Hassan Pascha had arrived at the same time as ourselves, from a different quarter. He had travelled from Korusko to his province of Dongola, and now came from Edabbe, on the southern frontier of Dongola, right across the desert to El Mechêref, whither Emin, the new Pascha of Chartûm, had gone to meet him. This meeting caused us some inconvenience with respect to the arrangements of our journey; nevertheless, we so far advanced our object, that on the following morning, the 22nd of January, soon after Hassan Pascha had again set out on his journey, we were also enabled to depart for the south, leaving two camels behind, which we did not require any longer as water-carriers, and exchanging three others for better ones.

We rode away about mid-day, and stopped in the evening at the last village before reaching the river Mogrân, the ancient Astaboras, which we had to cross before getting to Dâmer. It is called on the maps Atbara, which is evidently derived from Astaboras; yet this name does not appear now to be used for the lower, but for the upper river, beginning from the place of the same name. On the following morning we crossed the river close to its mouth. Even at this point it was now very narrow in its great bed, which in the rainy season is entirely filled, and two months hence it is only prevented from being wholly dried up by a little stagnant water. On the farther side of the river we entered the (Strabonic) island of Meröe, by which appellation the land between the Nile and the Astaboras was designated. Two hours more and we arrived at Dâmer.

The houses were too wretched to receive us. I despatched Jussuf to Emin Pascha, in whose province we now are, and who has encamped in tents with Hassan Pascha on the bank of the river. He sent a Kawass to meet us, and invited us to dismount and to dine with them. I however preferred to have our tent pitched at some little distance, and first of all to change our travelling costume. The Mudhir of Berber immediately visited us to ask what we might require, and soon after Emin Pascha sent a sumptuous dinner for us to our tent: four well cooked dishes, and, besides, a whole sheep stuffed with rice and roasted on the spit, with a flat cake of puff paste stuffed with meat.

About three o’clock in the afternoon, about the time of Asser, we announced that we were going to pay our visit; just as we were making our arrangements to set out we heard some sailors’ songs, and saw two boats with red flags, and the crescent, floating down the river; it was Achmed Pascha Menekle, who was returning from Chartûm. The Paschas and the Mudhir immediately repaired to his boat, and it was late before they separated; our friend, Dr. Koch, unfortunately, was not expected to arrive from Chartûm for two days later. I had received a letter from Erbkam very soon after our arrival, in which he announced to me, through a passing Kawass, that he had left Korusko on the 15th January with Ibrahim Aga; he wrote from their first night’s encampment. The Kawass had ridden with incredible speed in fourteen days from Cairo to Berber, and he brought Achmed Pascha the permission which had been earnestly requested, to raise the government charge for the camels between Korusko and Berber from sixty to ninety piastres above what it was before.

26th January.—The day before yesterday we paid an early visit to Achmed Pascha, which he returned yesterday. He will do all in his power to accelerate our journey onwards. He communicated to us that, as he had before promised, he had sent an officer from Abu Haras to Mandera, three days into the desert, and had heard it reported by him that some great ruins were still extant on that spot. A letter from Chartûm, which we received yesterday from Dr. Koch, mentioned the same thing, and it was verbally confirmed by himself this morning. After dinner he is going to introduce us to Mûsa Bey, who has been on the spot. At the same time he informed us that he had received some letters addressed to us, and that they were left in Chartûm; also that the draughtsman who had been engaged from Rome had arrived in Cairo.

A boat is ready in El Mechêref for our travelling companions. I myself, however, intend to ride on before with Abeken. Achmed Pascha has sent me word that in an hour’s time a courier departs for Cairo, who will take this letter with him.

Postscript.—The glowing accounts about Mandera, upon closer inquiry, seem to want confirmation. It will hardly be worth our while to go there.

LETTER XVIII.

On the Blue River, Province of Sennâr, Lat. 13°, 2nd March, 1844.

To-day we reach the most southern limit of our African journey. To-morrow we again turn towards the north and homewards. We shall go as far as the neighbourhood of Sero—a place on the boundary between the provinces of Sennâr and Fasokl, for our time will not allow us to do more. From Chartûm I have ascended the river as far as this spot, with Abeken alone. We relinquished the desert journey to Mandera, the rather as the eastern territories are at present insecure from the war in Taka; and we now employ the time, in travelling several days farther across Sennâr, to gain some information about the character of the river and the adjacent country. This journey is worth the trouble, for, from Abu Haras, situated at the influx of the Rahad, between Chartûm and Sennâr, the character of the whole country is completely altered in its soil, vegetation, and animals. I then thought I should like to obtain a view of the Nile valley itself, as far up the river as possible, as the character of this narrow strip of country has had a greater influence on the course of history than any other spot in the whole world.

It is impossible, without incurring danger, or making peculiar preparations, to travel up the White River beyond a few days’ journey, as far as the boundaries of Mohamed Ali’s conquests. After this, there are the Schilluks on the western bank, the Dinkas on the eastern, both native negro nations, who are not very friendly to Northern guests. The Blue River is navigable still farther up, and in historical times, as well as at the present day, was of much greater importance than the White River, as it was the means of communication between the North, and Abyssinia. I should have liked to have penetrated as far as the province of Fasokl, the last under Egyptian rule; but it cannot be combined with the calculation of our time. This evening, therefore, we shall terminate our southern journey.

But I must go back in my reports to Dâmer, where, on the 27th January, I embarked with Abeken upon a boat belonging to Mûsa Bey, the first adjutant of Achmed Pascha, who politely placed it at our disposal. About eight o’clock in the evening we halted for the night at the island of Dal Haui. We had received a Kawass from Emin Pascha, who came here with Ismael Pascha at the time of the conquest of the country, went with Defterdar Bey to Kordofan (or, as he expresses it, Kordifal), then accompanied him on his avenging march to Schendi, in consequence of the murder of Ismael, and since that time has, for three-and-twenty years, roamed over the whole of the Sudan in all directions. He carries in his head the most complete map of these countries, and has a marvellous memory for names, directions, and distances; so that I have drawn two maps according to his statements, particular parts of which may not be without geographical interest. He has also been in Mecca, and therefore likes to be called Haggi Ibrahim (The Pilgrim Ibrahim). He has great experience in other matters also, and will be extremely useful to us from his long and extensive knowledge of the country.

On the 28th January we halted about mid-day at an island called Gomra, as we heard that there were some ruins in the vicinity which we were anxious to see. We were obliged to go through a shallow arm of the Nile, and to ride back an hour northwards on the eastern bank. At length, after passing the villages of Motmar and El Akarid, between a third village, Sagadi, and a fourth, Genna, we found the insignificant ruins of an ancient place, constructed of bricks and strewed over with potsherds.

We returned in the mid-day heat, not in the very best humour, and did not reach Beg´erauîeh in our boat before sunset, near which the Pyramids of Meröe are situated. It is singular that Cailliaud does not mention this spot; he only speaks of the Pyramids of Assur, i. e. Sûr, or e’ Sûr. This is the name of the whole plain in which the ruins of the town and Pyramids are situated, and also a single portion of Beg´erauîeh, which last, by wrong spelling, is called, in Hoskins, Begromi.

Although it was already dark, I nevertheless rode to the Pyramids with Abeken. They are situated a short hour inland, on the first elevation of the low hills which run along in an easterly direction. The moon, which was in its first quarter, feebly illuminated the plain, covered with stones, low bushes, and clumps of reeds. After a rapid ride, we at length reached the foot of a row of Pyramids, closely crowded together, which rose before us in a crescent, as the form of the narrow elevation rendered necessary. To the right, a little behind, another group of Pyramids joined these; a third lies more to the south, and rather more forward in the plain, but too distant to be seen by half moonlight. I fastened the bridle of my donkey-steed to a block of stone, and clambered up the first mound of ruins.

Although the individual Pyramids are not accurately placed according to the quarters of the heavens, as they are in Egypt, nevertheless all the ante-chambers here attached to the Pyramids themselves are turned away from the river, towards the east, doubtless on the same religious grounds which induced the Egyptians to place the unattached temples standing in front of their Pyramids also towards the east; therefore, in Gizeh and Sagâra, towards the river, while their sepulchral chambers are towards the west.

Half looking, half feeling, I found some sculptures on the outer walls of the small sepulchral temple, and I also felt figures and writing on the inner walls. It occurred to me that I had the end of a candle in my saddle-pocket; I lighted this, and then examined several ante-chambers. There I immediately encountered the Egyptian gods, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Atmu, &c., with their names in the known hieroglyphic character. I also found the name of a king in the first chamber. One of the two Rings contained the emblems of a great Pharaoh of the Old Monarchy, Sesurtesen I., the same which had been adopted by two later Egyptian monarchs, and I here found them, for the fourth time, as the Throne-Name of an Ethiopian king. The sculptures on the remaining sides were not completed. I found some Royal Shields this evening also in another ante-chamber, but not very legible. The inscriptions and representations had altogether been much damaged. The Pyramids have also all of them lost their summits, as in Egypt, and many have been destroyed down to the ground.

Our new Kawass, who did not like to leave us alone in the night time, had immediately followed us. He had a perfect knowledge of the locality, as he had been here a long time with Ferlini, and had assisted him in his researches among the Pyramids. He showed us the spot in which Ferlini, in 1834, had found immured the rich treasure of gold and silver rings.

I also discovered, the same evening, a cased Pyramid, according to the principle of the Egyptian Pyramids, which were afterwards enlarged by superimposed layers of stone. According to the inscriptions and representations of the ante-chambers, these Pyramids were most of them built solely for kings, some of them, perhaps, for their wives and children. Therefore, their great number indicates a tolerably long succession of kings, and a well-established Monarchy, which probably must have remained in a state of tranquillity for a series of centuries.

The event of most importance in this moon and torchlight survey, was not, however, exactly the most cheering. I was unavoidably convinced that on this most renowned spot of ancient Ethiopia, I had nothing before me but the remains, proportionately speaking, of a very late period of art. Even earlier than this, the drawings of Ferlini’s monuments, which I saw for the first time in Rome, and the monuments themselves, which I had just seen in London, impressed me with the opinion that they had been, indeed, sculptured in Ethiopia, but certainly not previous to the first century before the birth of Christ, therefore about the same period to which certain genuine Greek and Roman works belong, which were discovered simultaneously with the Ethiopian treasure. I must now make the same remark upon the monuments in general, which are found not only here but throughout the whole island of Meröe, as well as of all the Pyramids at Beg´erauîeh, and of the temples of Ben Naga, of Naga, and in the Wadi e’ Sofra (the Mesaurât of Cailliaud), which we have since then seen. The representations and inscriptions do not leave the smallest doubt of this, and it will in future be a fruitless task to endeavour to support the favourite supposition of an ancient, brilliant, and renowned Meröe, whose inhabitants were at one time the predecessors and the instructors of the Egyptians in civilisation, by the demonstration of monumental remains from that old period.

This conviction is besides of no small scientific value, and seems even now to throw some light on the historical connection between Egypt and Ethiopia, the importance of which can be only thoroughly demonstrated by the monuments of Barkal. There, I have no doubt, will be found the oldest Ethiopian monuments, although, perhaps, not earlier than the period of Tahraka, who reigned simultaneously over Egypt and Ethiopia in the seventh century before Christ.

The next morning at sunrise we rode back to the Pyramids, and discovered fifteen different kings’ names, some of them, however, in very bad preservation.

We had just completed our survey of the two groups of Pyramids lying to the north-east, and were riding on to the third, which is situated in the plain, not far from the ruins of the town, and is, perhaps, the oldest Necropolis, when we heard shots from the bank, and saw white sails fluttering over the river. Soon afterwards Erbkam, the two Weidenbachs, and Franke, came walking across the plain, and hailed us from a great distance. We had not expected them to arrive so soon, and, therefore, rejoiced still more to see them again. We could now pursue our journey to Chartûm together.

We sailed away about two in the afternoon, and the next morning about ten o’clock reached Schendi. We proceeded in the afternoon, spent the night on the island of Hobi, and the following morning arrived at Ben Naga. Here, we first visited the ruins of two small temples; the one lying towards the west, had Typhonic pillars, instead of columns, but no inscription was to be found on the few remains; in the other temple to the east, some sculptures were preserved on the low remains of the walls of the temple; and also some writing on several circular fragments of columns, but too little to take away any connected ideas from them. Had we made some excavations, we might probably have discovered some kings’ names, but it was impossible to make such an experiment till our return.

We procured some camels for the following day, and about nine o’clock in the morning I started with Abeken, Erbkam, and Max Weidenbach, for Naga. Such is the name given to the ruins of a town and several temples, which are situated in the eastern desert, between seven and eight hours distant from the Nile. From our landing-place in the vicinity of the only group of palm-trees in the surrounding country, it was only one half hour to the village of Ben Naga, which is in Wadi Teresib. One hour eastward down the river (for it here flows in a direction from west to east) are the above-mentioned ruins, in Wadi el Kirbegân, near to which we had disembarked the previous day; we left them now on our left hand, and rode in a south-easterly direction into the desert, having here and there some parched bushes; we traversed the valley of El Kirbegân, which, as far as this point, runs outwards from the river, in which we found an encampment of the Ababde Arabs.

Four hours and a half from Ben Naga we came to a single hill in the desert called Buêrib. It was on the water-shed between the smaller south-western Wadis (so even the flattest depressions of the ground are called, in which the water runs off, and which we should scarcely call valleys) and the great, broad Wadi Auatêb, which we were now descending, after having left Buêrib at a short distance on our left. In three hours and three-quarters from Buêrib we arrived at the ruins of Naga.

It was not till we approached the temple that I solved the enigma, which I had hitherto sought in vain to interpret, and on which neither Cailliaud nor Hoskins could offer any explanation; namely, how had it been possible to found and to maintain a large city in the midst of the desert, so far removed from the river. The whole valley of Auatêb is even now cultivated land. We found it far and wide covered with the stubble of Durra. The inhabitants of Schendi, Ben Naga, Fadniê, Selama, Metamme, consequently of both banks of the Nile, come as far as this to cultivate the land and to gather in the Durra. The water of the tropical rains suffices to fertilise this flat but extensive tract of low ground, and in ancient times, when more care was bestowed upon it, a still greater profit must have been derived from this region. During the dry season of the year they must undoubtedly have had large artificial reservoirs, such as we found even now, though without water, near the more remote ruins to the north-west of Naga.

The ruins stand on a projection of a mountain range several hours long, which from them has taken the name of Gebel e’ Naga, and stretches out from the south, northwards. Wadi Auatêb passes along its western side towards the river. We arrived about half-past five o’clock, after an uninterrupted ride. On the road we saw the path covered with the marks of gazelles, wild asses, foxes, jackals, ostriches. Lions are also met with here, but we did not see any of their tracks.

I visited the three principal temples before nightfall, all of which belong to a very late period, and do not suggest the ideas of very ancient art, as Cailliaud and Hoskins thought they could recognise. There is, besides, a fourth temple by the side of the three principal temples, of Egyptian architecture, whose well-joined arches, not unpleasantly combined with Egyptian ornaments, not only presupposes them to have been erected when the Roman dominion extended over the world, but even that Roman architects were on the spot. This last temple has no inscriptions. With respect to the three others, the two lying to the south were built by one and the same king; in the representations in both temples he is accompanied by the same queen. But a third royal personage appears behind them having a different name in the two temples. The Throne-Shield of Sesurtesen I. is again attached to the name of the king, although he does not appear to be the same as the King of the Pyramids of Sûr. Besides, both those other personages have assumed old Egyptian Throne-Shields, which might easily mislead us.

The third most northern temple has sustained much injury, and very little writing remains upon it, yet a king is mentioned on the door-posts who differs from the builder of both the other temples.

The figures of the gods are almost wholly Egyptian, but on the southern temple there is a figure unknown in Egypt, with three lions’ heads (a fourth may perhaps be supposed behind) and four arms. This may be the barbaric god specially mentioned by Strabo, whom the Meröites worshipped besides Hercules, Pan, and Isis.

The next morning, the 2nd of February, we again visited the three temples, took some impressions on paper, and then started for the third group of monuments, named by Cailliaud Mesaurât. This, however, is a term which is here employed to designate all the three groups of ruins, and which only means pictures, or walls furnished with pictures. The ruins of Ben Naga are called Mesaurât el Kirbegân, because they are situated in Wadi el Kirbegân; it appears that the second group only has retained its old name of Naga, or Mesaurât e’ Naga; the third group situated towards Schendi is called Mesaurât e’ Sofra from the mountain basin in which it lies, which is called e’ Sofra, the table.

We first pursued, for the space of two hours, in a northerly direction the mountain chain of Gebel e’ Naga, in the valley of Auatêb. Then, about half-past twelve, we ascended through the first defile which opens to the right, into a valley situated somewhat higher, e’ Seleha; it becomes broader behind the first low fore-range, and is luxuriantly overgrown with grass and shrubs; after extending for an hour and a quarter in the direction of S.S.W. to N.N.E., it opens on the left hand into the valley of Auatêb, and straight on into another smaller valley, from which it is separated by Gebel Lagâr. It is this small valley, which from its circular form is called e’ Sofra; here are the ruins which were also seen by Hoskins, who did not, however, advance as far as Naga. We arrived about a quarter past two, and had not, therefore, been quite four hours coming from Naga to this spot. As we only wished to take a passing hasty survey, we walked through the widely-scattered ruins of the principal building, which Cailliaud held to be a great school, and Hoskins an hospital; and we saw in the few sculptures, which are unaccompanied by inscriptions, that here also we had before us monuments of a late period, probably still more recent than those in Sûr and Naga. We then went to a small temple in the neighbourhood, with pillars on which are represented riders upon elephants, lions, and other strange barbarous scenes. We looked at the huge artificial cisterns, now called Wot Mahemût, which in the dry season must have compensated the inhabitants for the want of the river; and about four o’clock we returned to Ben Naga.

As we emerged from the hills, we met great troops of wild asses, which always kept at a little distance from us, as if they would invite us to hunt them. They are of a grey or greyish-red colour, with white bellies; they all have a black stripe drawn distinctly across the back, and the tip of the tail is also generally black. Many of them are caught when young, but they cannot then even be used for riding or carrying burdens. It is only the next generation which can be employed in that manner. Almost all the tame asses in the south, which come from the Ass Cataract (Schellâl homâr) in Berber, are got from this wild breed, and have the same colour and similar marks.

We encamped soon after sunset in a plain, overgrown with bushes. The camel-drivers and our Kawass were in great terror of lions in this desert till a large fire was kindled, which they kept most carefully alive throughout the night. If a lion only lets his voice be heard near a caravan, which really does sound deep and awful across the wide desert, all the camels run away on every side as if they were mad, and it is difficult to catch them again, frequently not before they have sustained and done much injury. Human beings are not, however, easily attacked. A few days ago a camel was strangled by a lion in our neighbourhood, but on the farther side of the river. A man who was present saved himself on the nearest tree.

On the 3rd of February we again set out about seven in the morning; we left the two Buêribs, the great “blue” and the little “red,” at a considerable distance on our left hand, and shortly before nine o’clock arrived in the valley of El Kirbegân, which we followed for half an hour in the direction of the river. We saw the Mesaurât el Kirbegân in its whole extent on our right, but kept upon the hills till a little after eleven, when we arrived at Ben Naga, and half an hour afterwards once more at our landing-place.

Two hours afterwards we continued our journey in our boat. We made, however, little progress with a strong adverse wind, and saw nothing new, except for the first time a hippopotamus swimming in the water. The next morning we disembarked on the western bank, opposite the village of Gôs Basabir, to see the ruins of the walls of an old fortress, with towers of defence, which surrounded the summit of a hill. The space enclosed was about 300 paces in diameter. In the afternoon we approached the Schellâl (the Cataract) of Geraschab, the higher mountain ranges lying before us, closed in upon each other, and at length formed a mountain hollow, seemingly without any outlet; this was, however, to our surprise, near at hand, for we turned to our left into a narrow defile, which widened into a high and wild rocky valley; we followed it for nearly an hour before again emerging on the other side into another plain. The eruptive granite ranges of Qirre pass on the eastern side of the river into Rauiân, “the thirsty quenched;” while to the west, some distance from the river, there is Atschan “the thirsty,” also rising up in a detached form.

The 5th February we landed about eleven in the morning at Tamaniât. Mohammed Saïd, the former treasurer of the late Achmed Pascha, whose acquaintance we had made in Dâmer, had given us a letter to one of the sub-officials there, which contained instructions to him to deliver to us the fragment of an inscription which had been found in Soba. It belonged to the centre of a marble table, which was inscribed on both sides with Greek or Coptic letters of a late period. The signs, which were not difficult to read, neither contained Greek nor Coptic words; only the name ⲅⲉⲱⲣⲅⲓⲟ.. could be deciphered. The same evening we arrived in Chartûm. This name signifies an elephant’s trunk, and probably was derived from the form of the narrow tongue of land on which the town is situated, between the two Nile rivers which unite at this spot.

My first visit with Abeken was to Emin Pascha, who had reached Chartûm before us. He received us in a very friendly manner, and would not allow us to leave him the whole morning.

A magnificent breakfast, consisting of thirty dishes, which we partook of at his house, gave us a most curious insight into the secrets of the Turkish culinary art; as I learned from our highly-fed Pascha, it resembles the most accomplished systems of the latest French kitchens, in obeying the refined regulations of a fastidious taste in the preparation and arrangement of food. Soon after the first dishes, mutton, roasted on the spit, is brought in, which cannot be dispensed with at any Turkish meal. Then follow various courses of dishes of meats and vegetables, solid and liquid, sour and sweet, and a certain repetition of changes is observed in the successive dishes, in order to keep up the keenness of the appetite. Pillau, boiled rice, always forms the conclusion.

The external preparations for such an entertainment are somewhat as follows. A great, round, metal tray, with a flat border, about three feet in diameter, is placed on a low frame, and serves as a table, round which five or six persons seat themselves on cushions or coverlets; the legs vanish beneath the body, in the ample folds of the dress; as to the hands, the left must be invisible, it would be quite improper to let it ever be seen during meals. The right hand must alone be active. No such thing as a plate is to be seen, no more than knives and forks. The table is covered with deeper or shallower, covered or uncovered dishes, which are constantly changed, so that but a very few morsels can be taken from each. Particular dishes, however, such as roast meat, cold milk with cucumbers, &c., remain longer on the table, and one returns to them more frequently. Both before and after dinner, the hands are of course washed. A servant, or slave, kneeling, holds in one hand a metal basin, in the middle of which lies a piece of soap, in a little projecting saucer, expressly used for the purpose; with the other he pours water from a metal pitcher over the hands, and a fine, ornamentally embroidered towel hangs over his arm for drying them.

After dinner the pipe is immediately presented, coffee handed round, and then one may retire. The Turks are in the habit of making this the period of their mid-day repose, till Asser. But before we parted from our host, a number of weapons were brought, belonging to the savage nations living farther up the country, lances, bows, arrows, clubs, and a king’s sceptre, which he sent to the boat for me, as a present to his guest.

We afterwards visited our countryman, Neubauer, the apothecary of the province, who has been very unfortunate: a short time since, he was removed from his post by the late Achmed Pascha; but he has now been again appointed apothecary by Achmed Pascha Menekle, through the intercession of Dr. Koch. We then went to a Pole who has settled here—Hermanovich, the head-physician of the province, who, in consequence of an order from the Pascha, offered us his house, to which we went the following day; it had lately been newly fitted up; there was a garden beside it, and a great court-yard, which was very useful for unpacking and repairing our chests and tents.

The next day the Pascha returned our visit. He came on horseback. We handed him coffee, pipes, sherbet, and showed him some drawings and pictures from Egypt, in which he was interested merely from curiosity. He is a large, corpulent man, a Circassian by birth, and therefore, like most of his countrymen, better informed than the Turks in general. I saw a rich collection of all kinds of birds of the Sudan, at the house of a Syrian, Ibrahim Chêr; there were about 300 different species, and between twenty and thirty choice specimens of each.

On one of the following days, I took a walk with Abeken and Erbkam to the opposite bank of our tongue of land on the White River, which we then followed up to its junction with the Blue; its waters are in fact whiter, and have a less pleasant taste than those of the Blue, because at a higher point it flows slowly through several lakes, the standing water of which imparts an earthy and less pure taste to it. I have filled some bottles with the water of the Blue, and White Rivers, which I shall take away with me sealed up.

On the occasion of a more recent and friendly visit of the Pascha, we met the brother of the former Sultan of Kordofan (who was himself also called Mak or Melek) and the Vizier of the Sultan Nimr (Tiger) of Schendi. The latter still lives in Abyssinia, whither he fled, after having, in the year 1822, burned the conqueror of his country, Ismael Pascha, a son of Mohammed Ali, and all his officers, after a nocturnal banquet which he had prepared for him in a somewhat lonely house.

On the 14th, we made an excursion up the White River, but were soon obliged to turn back, because it has so little current, that, on account of the north wind which of late has constantly been blowing, our return threatened to be tedious. The banks of the White River are barren, and the few trees which formerly stood in the neighbourhood of Chartûm are now cut down, and have been used for building or fuel. There is a larger mass of water in the White River than in the Blue, and even after its junction it preserves its course, so that the Blue River must be viewed as the secondary river, but the White as the true Nile. Their different waters can be distinguished beside each other for a long time after their junction.

On the 16th February, I sent for some Dinka slaves, to interrogate them about their language. They were, however, so dull of apprehension, that I could only with difficulty get out of them the words for numbers up to a hundred, and a few separate pronouns. The languages of the Dinkas and the Schilluks, who dwell several days’ journey distant up the White River, the former on the eastern bank, the latter on the western, are as little known grammatically as most of the other languages of Central Africa; I therefore requested the Pascha to procure me some intelligent persons who were well acquainted with those languages. This was impossible for the present, but we shall attend to it on our return.

Meanwhile our purchases and repairs being completed, I hurried on the departure as much as possible. The house of Hermanovich will also be at our disposal on our return; it is built in a convenient manner, and is very airy. I had a prospect of the oldest house in the town from my window, whose pointed straw roof peeped over our wall. These pointed straw huts, called Tukele, are the characteristic buildings of this country, and are found almost exclusively in the south. But as Chartûm is a new town, the small number of old huts have disappeared, with the exception of this one, and all the houses are built of unburnt bricks.

About mid-day, on the 17th February, we embarked on board our boats. I sailed to the south with Abeken up the Blue River, partly to become acquainted with its natural character, partly to view the ruins of Soba and Mandera; our other travelling companions, who had nothing to occupy them farther up, sailed northwards back to Meröe, in order to sketch the monuments there.

The following day we landed on the eastern bank, where great heaps of red bricks, destined for exportation, proclaimed the vicinity of the ruins of Soba. At the present day, unburnt bricks alone are made throughout the country, therefore all the ruins of burnt stones must have belonged to an earlier period. This material for building is transported in great quantities from Soba as far as Chartûm, and beyond it.

We disembarked, and had scarcely got beyond the thorny bushes nearest to the bank, when we perceived the overturned mounds of bricks, covering a large plain, possibly an hour in circumference. Some larger heaps might be the remains of the Christian churches which are described by Selîm of Assuan (in Macrizi), in the tenth century, as magnificently decorated with gold, when Soba was still the capital of the kingdom of Aloa. We were shown the spot where some time ago a stone lion is said to have been discovered, which is now in the possession of Churshid Pascha, in Cairo. Nowhere could walls, nor the form of buildings, be recognised; it was only on the mound to the south, at a little distance off, that we found some hewn yellow blocks of sandstone, and a low wall; on another heap lay several rough slabs of a black slaty stone.

The country round Soba, like this, is flat both far and wide to the base of the hills in front of the Abyssinian range, and the ground, especially at this season, is arid and black; the denser vegetation is confined to the bank of the river; farther off there are nothing but single trees, now in greater, now in fewer numbers.

I promised the sailors a sheep, on condition that we should reach Kamlîn betimes, for there was a strong wind, which made us very slow in our progress; our boat, besides, is not a fast one, the sailors are inexperienced, and from the low state of the water, the boat easily sticks fast in the sand; we sailed on almost the whole night through, and reached Kamlîn about eight in the morning.

The ancient place of the same name lies one half-hour farther up the river, and is composed of a few huts. The houses near which we landed belong to a number of factories, which Nureddin Effendi, a Coptic Catholic Egyptian, who went over to Islam, established, in common with the late Achmed Pascha, more than four years ago, and which yield a rich profit. A simple, homely German, who has never given way to the bad customs of the East, born in the neighbourhood of Würzburg, by name Bauer, has established a Soap and Brandy Manufactory, of which he takes the management himself. A Sugar and Indigo Factory is conducted by an Arab. Bauer has settled farther to the south than any European we have ever met with in Mohammed Ali’s dominions, and we were rejoiced to find such a good termination to the long but not very agreeable chain of Europeans, most of them degenerated in civilisation, who have preferred the Turkish government to that of their Fatherland.[43]

He has an old German housekeeper with him, Ursula, a comical, good-natured soul, to whom it was no less a holiday to receive German guests again, than it was to himself. With joyful alacrity she rummaged out some European utensils, and the only fork that was still in preservation, and served up fried chickens, saurkraut, and some small sausages, with excellent wheaten bread; at last actually a cherry cake, of baked European cherries (for our fruits do not grow in Egypt), in short, a home repast such as we never expected to see in this Ultima Thule.

On a pedestal in front of Bauer’s house we found the most southern Egyptian sculpture which we have met with: a sitting statue of Osiris, with the usual attributes, carved out of black granite; a portion of it is mutilated, and it is of a late style, about 2½ feet high; it had been found in Soba, and is not devoid of interest, being the only monument of Egyptian art from this town.

The European arrangement of Bauer’s rooms made a strange impression on us, here in the midst of the black population in the south. A wooden Black Forest house-clock, with weights, beat in regular time; some half-broken European chairs stood round the fixed table, a small book-shelf was placed behind it, with a selection of the German classics and historical works; in the corner the Turkish divan, which could not be dispensed with even here. Above the great table, and beside the canopied bed in the opposite corner, hung bell-pulls, which communicated with the kitchen. An inquisitive Nesnas ape looked in at the grated window next the door; and across the little court-yard we saw the busy Ursula, in a crimson-flowered gown, tripping hither and thither among little naked black slave-boys and girls, ordering them to do this and that with a somewhat scolding voice, and peeping into the steaming-pots in the adjoining kitchen. We saw nothing of her the whole morning; not even during the excellent and savoury repast which she had prepared for us; it was only after dinner that she presented herself, with many curtseys, to receive our commendations. She lamented over the insufficiency of her cooking apparatus, and vehemently reproached Herr Bauer because he had no intentions of leaving this detestable, dirty, hot country, although he had promised her to do so from one year to the other. She came hither with Bauer, and has been eleven years in the country, and four years in Kamlîn. He intends to return to Germany in another year, to settle in Styria or Thuringia with his savings, and, like his father, to be a peasant again.

After rising from table, the son of Nureddin Effendi also sent us a Turkish dinner, ready cooked, of twelve to fifteen dishes, which however, after our European repast, we left to the servants. We had also seen the factories that morning, and had tasted the fine brandy (called Marienbad), which Bauer prepares chiefly from sugar-cane and dates. The business seemed to be in the best order, and even the cleanliness, so unusual in this country, of the rooms, the vessels, and utensils, were proofs of the solid basis upon which this factory, worked by slaves alone, is conducted. The pleasant impression made upon us by this visit was also considerably increased by discovering that Bauer possessed a second piece of the above-mentioned marble inscription, which had been discovered in the ruins of Soba. He presented me with the fragment, which was easily joined with the other piece, though we had still not got the complete inscription. The fragment shows the traces of twelve lines on the one side, and of nine on the other. The characters can be distinctly read here also; but the name ⲓⲁⲕⲱⲃ is alone intelligible. It is either very barbarous Greek, or a peculiar language formerly spoken in Soba. In fact, we know, through Selîm, that the inhabitants of Soba had their sacred books in the Greek language, but translated them also into their own.

After we had also paid a visit to the son of Nureddin Effendi, we started with the promise to call upon him again on our return.

From Kamlîn the banks continue at an equal elevation. The character of a river valley is lost. There is no longer a deposit of black earth; the precipitous and high banks consist of a primitive soil, and a calcareous conglomerate, which, by Bauer’s account, can be easily burnt into plaster.

On the morning of the 21st we came to a considerable bend of the river towards the east; the wind became, on that account, so unfavourable, that our Kawass disembarked, to press into our service people from the neighbourhood to draw our boat along. I walked for several hours along the western bank, as far as Arbagi, a deserted village, built of black bricks, but on the remains of a still older place, as I discovered from the walls of burnt bricks. This place was formerly the chief centre of the commerce of the Sudan, which, at a later period, was transferred to Messelemîeh. Soon after this we saw the two most northerly growing Baobabs, which here are called Hómara. These giant trees of the creation (Adansonia digitata) become more and more frequent, south of this spot, and at Sero they are among the common trees of the country. One of the stems which I paced round, measured above 60 feet in circumference, and was certainly not one of the largest of its kind, as they are still not numerous here. At this season they were leafless, and stretched out their bare branches far above the surrounding green trees, which looked like low bushes beside them. I found their fruit, which is called Gungules,[44] here and there among the Arabs; they resemble small gourds, in the form of pears, and have a light hairy surface. If the hard, tough shell is broken, a number of kernels are found inside, which are surrounded by a dry, sweetish, sourish pulp, which is nevertheless pleasant to the taste. The leaves are digitate.

On the 22nd of February we arrived on the western bank, at a small village, whose inhabitants, men, women, and children, fled with terror at our approach across the sandy plain to the wood, probably because they were afraid of being pressed to draw the boat on farther. On the opposite bank there was another village, and from it we saw a magnificent procession of men, dressed out in the Arabian and Turkish costume, march down to the river with some beautifully bridled horses. It was the Kaschef, and the principal Sheikh of Abu Haras, who had heard about us from Achmed Pascha, as we had intended to go from this spot into the desert to Mandera with camels and guides. The horses were intended for us, and we therefore rode to the house of the Kaschef, to make some more inquiries about the antiquities of Mandera and Qala. As the desert road to the shore of the Red Sea leads from here by that place, we found several people who had passed near it. However, by what I gathered from all the accounts, there seem to be only some hills in the form of a kind of fortress at both these places, or, at the most, some roughly-built walls, intended to protect the caravans, but no ancient buildings or hieroglyphic inscriptions. In Qala there might be some camels and horses, also, scratched into the rock by Arabs or other people, such as we have frequently seen in the Great Desert near the well of Murhad, and in other places.

We therefore determined to relinquish this desert journey, and to go farther up the river instead, that we might become acquainted, as far as our time permitted, with the natural character of the Nile river, its banks, and neighbouring inhabitants.

After a short quarter of an hour from Abu Haras, we came to the mouth of the Rahad, which, in the rainy season, conveys a considerable mass of water into the Nile, but was now nearly dry, and had only a little stagnant water, which next month may perhaps also disappear.

I left the boat as often as possible, to get acquainted with the banks. To go farther inland was of itself interdicted chiefly by the wood, which clothes both sides of the river, and is nearly impenetrable. There, in luxuriant splendour, grow the shady, high-domed tamarind-tree, the tower-like hómara (Baobab), the many-branched gemús (sycamore-tree), and the various kinds of the brittle, gum-yielding sont-trees. Creeping plants, often the thickness of a man’s body, climb up their branches like gigantic serpents, in innumerable windings, to their very summits, and down again to the ground, where, along with the low shrubs, they fill up every gap between the huge stems. In addition to this, scarcely one of ten among the trees or shrubs has not thorns, which renders any attempt to penetrate the close thicket not only dangerous, but impossible. Several among them—for instance, the sittere-tree—have thorns placed together in pairs, and in such a manner, that one thorn bends forwards, the other back; if any one, therefore, approaches the branches carelessly, he may be sure that his clothes will carry away with them some unavoidable signs, not to be obliterated here without difficulty, and then imperfectly. Some other thorny trees look extremely ornamental, and growing in more open situations, they rise like slender young birches. We distinguished two species which are usually joined together, and can only be known from one another because the bark of the one stem is of a brilliant red colour up to the outermost little branches, like a growth of blood-vessels, while that of the other is of a dark black colour. Both of them have glistening long white thorns, which, with the little green leaves, rise up with a sharp outline, as if they had been painted with the brush.

Scarcely one of the birds, which frequently hovered around us in large numbers, were known to me, even in Egypt. I shot many of them, and had them stuffed by our cook, Siriân. Among them were some beautiful silver-grey falcons (suqr schikl), guinea-fowls (gedâd el wadi), with knobs of horn on the nose, and blue lappets on both sides of the head; black and white rhinoceros birds (abu tuko) with huge beaks; some birds quite black, with a bright crimson breast (abu labba); large brown and white eagles (abu tôk), one of which, with outspread wings, measured six feet; smaller brown eagles, the hedâja, and black and white ones, which are called ráchama. These last, which are much more numerous towards Egypt, are the same which we are in the habit of seeing among the hieroglyphics. On the bank there are also great numbers of black and white plovers, furnished with black curved spines on their wing-joints, and the long-legged, completely white, abu baqr (cow-birds), who are in the habit of grazing on the backs of the buffaloes and cows.

We saw great bats frequently flying about in broad daylight; their long golden-brown wings look bright through the branches, and suddenly they hang head downwards on the branches like great yellow pears, and can then easily be shot. They have long ears, and a strange trumpet-like nose.

We also hunted the Monkeys, but from their agility they were very difficult to reach. One day we found an immense tree, quite full of monkeys; some of them hastily came down on our approach, and fled to a distant thicket; others hid themselves among the foliage, quite at the top; but some of them who considered both methods of escape dangerous, sprang with inconceivably bold leaps from the uppermost branches of the tall tree, which might have been about 100 feet high, to the smaller trees standing near, whose thorny branches bent down beneath their weight without letting them fall; they thus gained their end, and escaped my gun.

The Crocodiles become more numerous the farther south we go. The tongues of the sandy islands are often covered with them. They generally lie in the sun, close to the edge of the water, open their mouths, and seem to sleep, but do not allow any one to approach them; but even if they are hit by the shot they immediately dive into the river. It is therefore very difficult to obtain one. Our Kawass only once made such a good shot at a young crocodile, about three feet long, that it was unable to get back to the water. It was brought to the boat, where it lived for several days afterwards, to the terror of our little Nesnas monkey, Bachît.

It is no less difficult to approach the Hippopotami, which we have sometimes seen in great numbers, but with their heads alone above the water. Once only a young hippopotamus stood quite clear out of the water on a sandy island; it allowed us to come unusually near. The Kawass shot, and hit it, naturally without the ball penetrating the thick hide, whereupon the clumsy creature, with its unshapely head, its fat belly, and short elephant legs, galloped off in a most comical manner to reach the water close beside him, and immediately disappeared. They generally are in the habit of coming on land only in the night, and they do much injury in the fields of Durra and other plantations, by treading down and devouring. It is not known that a hippopotamus was ever caught alive here.

We saw no lions, but we heard their roaring in the distance throughout the starlight night; there is something very solemn in the deep and sonorous voice of this royal beast.

The 24th of February we came to a second tributary river of the Nile, the Dender, which is larger than the Rahad. I went up part of it to see (which was impossible at its mouth) whether the water was still flowing, and farther up I discovered that, where the still water had collected into small canals, certainly a very feeble current yet existed; in the rainy season the Dender must rise more than twenty feet, as may be seen by its bed; I found its banks were cultivated with cotton bushes, gourds, and other useful plants.

The heat is not excessive, in the morning about eight o’clock it is usually 23° R.; about mid-day till about five o’clock, 29°; and about eleven o’clock at night it is 22° (83¾°, 97¼°, 81½° Fahr.).

We spend our evenings in our boat; here I make our Kawass, Hagi Ibrahim, inform us about the geography; or I take some Nubian sailors into my cabin to learn their language. I have already made a long vocabulary in the Nubian language; comparing it with other lists in Rüppell and Cailliaud, I found many words in the Koldági language spoken in the southern territories of Kordofan which agree with them; this proves there is an intimate connection between the two languages. The Arabs are in the habit of calling the Nubian language lisân rotâna, which I at first supposed to be its actual name; but it only means a foreign tongue different from the Arabic. They do not, therefore, only speak of a Rotâna Kenûs, Mahass, Donqolaui, when they mean to designate the three Nubian dialects, but also of a Rotâna Dinkaui, Schilluk—even of a Rotâna turki and franki, thus likewise of Turkish and French; i. e. of European gibberish. The same error is the cause of the now received designation of the Nubian as the Berber, and of their language as the Berber language; for this is not the name of the people, nor of their language, as is generally thought, but originally means only the people speaking a foreign tongue, the Barbaros.

On the 25th of February we disembarked at Saba Doleb; I searched for ruins, but only found high domes in the form of bee-hives, built well and solidly of bricks, about 20 feet high, and closely resembling the Greek Thesauri, constructed of horizontal layers, lapping over inwardly. They are tombs of holy Arab Sheikhs of a late period; the inhabitants of the village could not tell us the date of their erection. Beneath the cupola, and in the centre of the building, which is between 15 and 18 feet wide, there is the long narrow tomb of the saint, surrounded with larger stones, and covered with a number of small stones, which, according to a superstition, must necessarily amount to a thousand; I found six domes similar to these, most of them half, some wholly fallen to pieces; two, however, in very good preservation, which are even still visited; a seventh, probably the most recent, was built of unburnt bricks.

At Wad Negudi, a village situated to the west of the Nile, we found the first Dilêb Palms, with slender naked stems and small bushy crowns, resembling, at a distance, the Date Palm, but when near, from their leaves, like the Doum Palm. Their fruit is round, like that of the Doum Palm, but of a larger size. These trees are said to be very abundant on the tributary rivers towards the east; but here, on the Nile, they are only to be found within a very small tract of land. The leaves are regularly divided like a fan into a great number of connected folds, and the leaf-stalk has strong serrated notches. The Rais of our boat, who was with me, sawed off another leaf with one of these leaf-stalks; I had it brought to the boat, to take it away with us. It is divided into sixty-nine points, and is five feet and a quarter long, from that part of the stalk where the fan begins, although it is still young, and therefore its fan is still completely closed. Another larger one, which had just unfolded itself, we set up in the boat as an umbrella, and sat beneath its shade. We were obliged to make a path to those palm-trees through gigantic woods of grass, which shoot up stiff and thick like corn-fields, and cover large plains. The points of the blades towered up five or six feet above our heads, and even the tall camels, which are bred here, could hardly look over it.

On the 26th February we arrived at the village of Abu el Abas, on the eastern bank. It is a chief town of this district, and the Kaschef who lives here is placed over 112 villages. I there purchased a dog-ape from a Turkish Kawass for a few piastres. This is the holy ape of the ancient Egyptians, the Cynocephalus, which was dedicated to Thoth and the Moon, and appears as the second among the four Gods of Death. It is interesting to me to have a creature about me for some little time, which I have seen innumerable times upon the monuments, and thereby to observe the faithful apprehension and representation of its essential and characteristic appearances in the ancient Egyptian sculpture. It is remarkable that this ape, so peculiar to Egypt in ancient times, is now only found in the south, and even there, it is not very common. How many species of animals and plants, even manners and customs of men, with which we become acquainted through the monuments of Egypt, can only now be found in the most southern parts of ancient Ethiopia, so that now many representations, for instance in the tombs of Benihassan, seem to delineate scenes in this country rather than in Egypt. There is no special name here for the Cynocephalus, only the general one, qird (large monkey). Its head, hair, and colour, are not unlike those of a dog, and hence its Greek name. Sometimes also it barks and snarls like a dog. It is still young, and very good-natured, but far more intelligent than Abeken’s pretty little Nesnas ape. It is extremely ludicrous when it wishes to get something good to eat, which we have in our hands; it then lays back its ears on its head, and knows how to express the utmost delight, but remains sitting quiet like a good child, only chattering with the lips, like an old wine-bibber. At the sight of the crocodile, however, all the hair of its body bristled up; it uttered piercing shrieks, and could scarcely be held down from terror.

On the 27th February we reached Sennâr, the celebrated ancient capital of the Sudan, whose king, before the conquest of the country by Ismael Pascha, had dominion as far as Wadi Halfa, and ruled over a number of smaller kings who paid him tribute. One would not suspect, from the present aspect of the place, that only a short time since it was such a powerful royal residence. Between six and seven hundred pointed straw huts, Tukele, surrounded the piles of red-brick ruins, where formerly the royal mansion stood. These bricks are now employed for building an abode for Solimân Pascha, who is to reside in Sennâr; it was already so far complete that the Wakil[45] of the absent Pascha was able to hold his divan within it. We found him there, just as he was sitting in judgment. Many other people, Sheikhs and Turks, were present; among them the Sheikh Sandalôba, the chief of the Arabian merchants, and a relative of the Sultâna Nasr, whose acquaintance we afterwards made in the village of Sorîba, which she makes her royal residence. We paid a visit to this distinguished man in his own house, with which honour he seemed much gratified. His principal apartment is a dark, lofty hall, with a roof resting on two pillars and four pilasters, upon which we mounted to obtain a view over the town.

Meanwhile an anqareb was prepared for us, to sit upon in the court-yard; they brought us mead (honey with water), and led a hyæna out of the stable, here called Marafil, and two young lions, the largest of which, belonging to Solimân Pascha, and two wethers, were taken to the boat, as a present from his Wakil. I had the creature fastened down in the hold, and as a welcome immediately received a violent scratch on my hand from his sharp claws. His body is now above two feet long, and his voice has already become a strong tenor. There is a most tumultuous scene now every morning on our, not very large, boat, when we drink our tea at an early hour in front of the cabin; on each side of the door, a monkey is making its merry leaps, and when the lion is released from the hold of the vessel, and on the deck, which is given to him during the day, we are obliged to place our cups and pitchers in safety, as he endeavours to reach them with his clumsy, but already strong claws.

On the 29th of February, about nine in the morning, we arrived at Abdîn. The 1st of March the wind was unfavourable to us, and we made very little progress, so that we had plenty of time at our disposal for shooting birds. Towards evening I came to a village romantically situated in a creek formed by the river, spreading out at this point. Many huts, built of straw, extended their pointed roofs upwards between the branches and thick foliage of the trees. Narrow crooked paths, forming a real labyrinth, led from one hut to the other, between thorns and trunks of trees; within the huts, and in front of them, the black families were lying, the children playing by a feeble lamp-light. I asked for some milk, but was told to apply at an Arab village in the neighbourhood, to which I was led by a man armed with a spear, the universal weapon of the country. Making our way through thin shrubs and tall grass, we reached the large troops of cattle belonging to the Arabs, who had raised their mat huts round the pasture ground. The Fellahs who have settled here are much browner than the wandering Arabs, though they are not negroes, but they appear by race to be connected with the Nubian stock.

The 2nd of March we landed on an island close to the eastern bank. At a short distance from the landing-place the Rais discovered a broken crocodile egg, at a spot where there was some newly turned up ground. He dug down with his hands, and found forty-four eggs lying beside each other three feet deep in the sand. They were still covered with a slimy coat, as they had been only laid the previous day or during the night. Crocodiles prefer coming out of the river on a windy night, they bury their eggs in the ground, cover them over, and the wind soon disperses all traces of the disturbed earth. A few months afterwards the young ones creep out. The eggs are like large goose’s eggs, but as much rounded off at both ends as these are only at the blunt end. I had some of them boiled, they are eatable, but have a disagreeable taste; therefore I willingly left them to the sailors, who devoured them with a hearty appetite.

We landed at the forsaken village of Dáhela on the eastern bank, from which I proceeded alone a distance of about three-quarters of an hour inland. The character of the vegetation continues the same. The ground is dry and level, the small hills and valleys which intersect it are not the original forms of the ground, but seem only to have been produced by rain. The farthest point I aimed at was a great tamarind-tree which towered up splendidly from the lower trees and bushes, and round which were fluttering a number of green and red birds hitherto unknown to me.

On my road, I first came to a settlement, Kumr betá Dáhela, where the inhabitants of the village I mentioned above are accustomed to keep their villeggiatura. They only remain here during the dry months, and wander back in the beginning of the rainy season to their more solidly built village on the bank of the river. The last village that I reached is called Româli, a little above the place which is marked Sero on the map, and which is situated at the 13° of north latitude. On the hot and fatiguing road back, I was present at a burial; silent and serious, without sound or lamentation, two corpses wrapped in white cloths were borne by men on anqarebs, and were laid in a grave several feet deep, in the wood, close to the passing road. Perhaps they had died of the cholera-like plague, which we hear has broken out with virulence in these southern parts.

We would willingly have gone up, as far as Fazoql, into the last province in Mohammed Ali’s dominions, to become acquainted with the complete change in the character of the country, which then again occurs, beginning at Rosêres, and exhibiting so many phenomena, plants and animals, peculiar to the tropics; but our time had come to an end.

The Rais received orders to lower the sails and masts; by which the boat at once lost its dignified appearance, and it floated down with the current of the river like a wreck. Soon the agreeable silence in the vessel, which had hitherto hastened on as if of its own accord, was interrupted by the shrill and discordant singing of the rowers, struggling against the wind.

On the 4th of March we again arrived at Sennâr, and on the morning of the 8th reached Wed Médineh. This place is almost as important as Sennâr. A regiment of soldiers is here in garrison with the only band of music in the Sudan, and with two cannons. We were immediately visited by the chief clerk of the regiment, Seïd Haschim, one of the most distinguished people of the place, with whom we had formerly become acquainted in Chartûm.

We determined to go from this on a visit to the Sultâna Nasr (Victoria) in Sorîba, which is about an hour and a half inland, partly to learn something of the character of the country farther removed from the river, partly to gain some notion of the court of an Ethiopian princess. Seïd Haschim offered his dromedaries and asses, and to accompany us himself on this expedition. We therefore set out with him in the afternoon over the hot, black plain, where only a few trees were scattered here and there, and soon got over the uninteresting ground on our active animals.

Nasr is the sister of the most powerful and the richest King (Melek) in the Sudan, the Idris Wed (i. e. Welled, the son or descendant of) Adlân, who now indeed is under the supremacy of Mohammed Ali, but yet rules over several hundred villages in the province of El Fungi; his title is Mak el Qulle, King of the Qulle Mountains. One of his ancestors was called Adlân, and the whole family at present is named after him; his father was the same Mohammed (Wed) Adlân, who at the period of the victorious campaign of Ismael Pascha, appropriated to himself the greater part of the power belonging to the legitimate but feeble Bâdi, King of Sennâr, but who afterwards, at the instigation of a second Pretender, Reg´eb, was murdered. When Ismael approached, and Reg´eb had fled with his adherents into the Abyssinian mountains, King Bâdi joined the children and the party of Mohammed Adlân, and submitted to the Pascha, who made him a Sheikh over the country, had the murderers of Mohammed Adlân empaled, and bestowed great power and riches on his children Reg´eb and Idris Adlân. Their sister Nasr was also treated with great respect, which was still more increased because she was descended, on the mother’s side, from the legitimate royal house itself. On that account she is also called Sultâna, Queen. Her first husband was Mohammed Sandalôba, a brother of Hassan Sandalôba, whom we had visited in Sennâr. He died a long time ago, but by him she had a daughter, Dauer (the Light), who married a great Sheikh, Abd el Qader, but she was afterwards separated from him, and now always resides with her mother in Sorîba. The second husband of Nasr is Mohammed Defalla, the son of one of her father’s viziers. He was just then with Ahmed Pascha Menekle, on the campaign (Ghazua, out of which the French have made Razzia) in Taka. But even when he is at home, on account of her noble birth, she continues mistress in the house.

A great preference for the female sex seems to have been a very universal custom since ancient times in these southern countries. We must recollect how frequently we find reigning Queens of Ethiopia mentioned. In the campaigns of Petronius, Candace is well known, a name which, according to Pliny, was given to all the Ethiopian Queens; according to others, only to the mother of the King. In the pictures at Meröe, also, we sometimes see very warlike, and doubtless reigning, Queens represented. According to Makrizi, the genealogies of the Beg´as, who I consider to be the direct descendants of the Meröitish Ethiopians, and the ancestors of the present Bischâris, were not counted by the men, but by the women; and the inheritance did not go to the son of the deceased, but to the son of the sister, or of the daughter of the deceased. In like manner, according to Abu-Sela, among the Nubians, the sister’s son always had the preference of his own son in the succession to the throne; and, according to Ibn Batuta, the same custom existed among the Messofites, a negro people lying to the west. Even now the household and chief offices belonging to the courts of several southern princes are wholly filled by women. Ladies of distinction are in the habit of allowing their nails to grow an inch long, as a sign that their duty consists in commanding, and not in working; a custom we have lately seen in the representations of the unshapely and corpulent Queens of Meröe.

When we arrived in Sorîba, we stepped through a peculiar gate-house into the great square court-yard, which passes round the principal building, and then into an open lofty hall, the roof of which rested on four pillars, and four pilasters. The narrow beams of the ceiling jut out several feet above the simple architrave, and form the immediate support of the flat roof; the whole entrance reminded me much of the open façades of the tombs of Benihassan. In the hall there stood some beautiful furniture of Indian work in ebony, some broad anqarebs, with frames for the fly-nets. Magnificent coverlets were immediately brought in, and sherbet, coffee, and pipes handed round; the vessels were made of gold and silver. Black slave girls in light white dresses, which are fastened round the hips, and drawn over the bosom and shoulders, handed the refreshments, and looked most strange with their half-braided, half-combed wigs. The Queen did not however appear; perhaps she shrank from showing herself to Christians; we were only able to see some women who were standing behind a half-opened door, which re-closed, and to whom we ourselves might have been an object of curiosity. I therefore sent word to the Sultâna, through Seïd Haschim, that we had come to pay a visit to herself, and we now begged we might be permitted to pay our respects to her. Upon which, soon afterwards, a strong wooden door, cased with metal, which led from the inner chambers to the hall, opened wide, and Nasr, with free and dignified steps, walked in. She was wrapped in long, finely-woven linen, with coloured borders, and underneath she wore wide, party-coloured trousers of a darker hue. The female household followed her, eight or ten girls in white dresses, bordered with red, and ornamented sandals. Nasr sat down before us in a friendly and natural manner; she only sometimes drew her dress before her mouth and the lower part of her face, an Oriental custom which is universal in Egypt among women, but which is less practised in this country. She replied to the salutations which I addressed to her through the Dragoman, with an agreeable voice, but only remained a short time with us, and then again retired through the same door.

We were now permitted to see the interior of the house, with the exception of her own apartments, which were in a small adjoining house; and we got upon the roof to have a view over the village. We afterwards took a walk through the place, saw the well, which is lined with bricks to the depth of 60 feet, and supplies a lukewarm water, which is more insipid than that of the Nile, from which Nasr always has her own drinking water fetched. We then turned back, intending to start, but Nasr invited us to spend the night in Sorîba, as it was already too late to return to Wed Médineh by daylight. We accepted the invitation, and immediately a repast of cooked food was brought in, which was only a preparation for the magnificent supper. The Sultâna, however, did not allow herself to be seen again the whole evening. We remained in the hall, and slept on the same cool cushions which had served us during the day as a divan. The next morning, however, we were invited to visit her in her own rooms. She was more willing to talk to-day than yesterday, had European chairs placed for us, while her attendants and slave girls squatted down round us. We told her about her name-sister, the Sultâna Nasr of England, and exhibited her portrait to her on an English gold coin, which she regarded with much curiosity. Nevertheless, she showed very little desire to see with her own eyes that distant world beyond the northern ocean.

About eight o’clock we rode back to Wed Médineh. Soon after our arrival Seïd Haschim received a letter from Nasr, in which she asked him confidentially whether I would accept a little slave girl from her, as a gift to the stranger. I sent a message to inform her that this was contrary to our customs, but that there would be no difficulty if, instead of a slave girl, she would select a slave boy; and, after the removal of some scruples, as this seemed to her less becoming, she really sent a little slave boy, who was brought to me in our boat.

He had been the playmate of the Sultâna’s little grandson, the son of her daughter Dauer, and was handed over to me with the name of Rehân (the Arabic designation for the sweet-scented basilicum). I was also informed that he was born in the district of Makâdi, on the frontier of Abyssinia, which generally furnishes the most intelligent and faithful slaves. This district is under Christian domination, and is inhabited both by Christians and Mohammedans, who are separated into different villages. The former call themselves Nazâra (Nazarenes), or Amhâra (Amharic Christians); the latter Giberta. Amongst the latter, children of their own race, or that of their neighbours, are frequently stolen and sold to Arabian slave-dealers; for in the central parts of Abyssinia the slave trade is strictly interdicted. However, this account of the boy has since proved incorrect, and perhaps was only meant to remove the obstacle which some might find in offering me a Christian boy, while on the other hand it would appear still more doubtful to hand over to me a native Mohammedan. The boy himself first communicated to our Christian cook, and afterwards to myself, that he was born of Christian parents, that he had here for the first time received the name of Rehân, and that his real name was Gabre Máriam, i. e. in Abyssinian, “the slave of Mary.” He was born near Gondar, the capital of Amhâra. He appears to have belonged to a family of some distinction, for the place called Bamba, which is stated by Bruce to be in the neighbourhood of Lake Tzana, by his accounts belonged to his grandfather; and his father, who now is dead, possessed many herds, which the boy often drove, with others, to the pasture. One day, above three or four years ago, when on such an expedition, at a considerable distance from his dwelling-place, he was stolen by some mounted Bedouins, carried off to the village of Waldakarel, and then sold to King Idris Adlân; by him he was afterwards presented to his sister Nasr. He is a pretty boy, very dark, and may be now between eight and nine years old; but much more advanced than a child of this age would be with us. The girls here marry from eight years old upwards. He wears his hair in a peculiar manner, in innumerable little braids; these must, at least once every month, be re-braided and daubed with grease, by a woman skilled in the art; and his body also must from time to time be well rubbed with grease. His entire clothing consists in a great white cloth, which he binds round his hips, and throws upwards over the shoulders. I call him now by his Christian name, and shall take him to Europe with me.

Seïd Haschim did all in his power to keep us some days longer in Wed Médineh. The first evening he invited us to his house, with the Turks of most distinction, and had a number of dancing-girls to show us the national dances in these parts; they chiefly consist in contortions of the upper part of the body and the arms, similar to what are represented on the Egyptian monuments; but differ from the Egyptian dances of the present day, which are chiefly limited to very ungraceful gestures.

A good-natured and very comical old man led on the dances, while he at the same time sang some Arabic songs, with a piercing but not disagreeable voice, which had reference to the assembled company, or to persons of repute, such as Nasr, Idris Adlân, Mak (i. e. Melek), Bâdi, &c.; and with his left hand touched the chords of a five-stringed lyre, passing the plectrum over them in time with his right. His instrument only embraced six tones of the octave. The first string on the right hand had the highest tone, C, to be struck with the thumb, the string immediately succeeding, the lowest tone, E; then followed the third, F; the fourth, A; the fifth, B. The instrument is called Rababa, and the performer on it Rebâbi. This man had been instructed by an old celebrated Rebâbi in Schendi; he had made his instrument himself, after the model of that belonging to his master, and had also acquired from him his talent for making verses, and thus became the favourite black bard of Wed Médineh. All the poetry of his songs had been composed by himself; they were sometimes improvised, and whoever disobliged him or his patrons, would probably be made the object of his satire.

I made him come to me the following morning, and, through Jussuf, write down four of his poems in Arabic: one on Mohammed, the son of Mak Mesâʾd, who resides in Metammeh; one upon King Nimr, who burnt Ismael Pascha, and is still living in Abyssinia; a third on Nasr; and lastly, a song of homage to pretty girls.[46] It is impossible to render these melodies in our notes. I have only written down a small portion of them, which in some measure approaches our mode of singing. They are generally half recited, half carried down, with quivering tones, from the highest notes to a deep and long-sustained tone. These are their most peculiar characteristics, but they are quite incapable of being noted down. Each verse contains four rhymes; the voice is retained lightly on each of them, on the second more than on the first and third; but longest on the last rhyme. The music always sinks at this point, and the same deep tone recurs, which gives a certain character to the progressing song. A particular recurrence of the melody may, indeed, also be noticed, but this is impossible for a European ear to remember. I purchased the instrument from the good-natured old man. He gave it unwillingly, although I let him name his own price; and several times after he had taken the money, and had laid down his instrument for it, an air of anxious sorrow came over his expressive countenance. The following day I bid him come to me again. He was depressed, and told me his wife had given him a sound beating for having given his instrument away. Here it is no disgrace for a man to be beaten by his wife, but it is so perhaps in the reverse case. A woman who has been beaten goes at once to the Cadi to complain; she then generally obtains justice, and the husband is punished.

In Wed Médineh we were also present at a funeral ceremony, which seemed a strange enough one to us. A woman had died three days before; the day succeeding her death, the third, the seventh, and several days afterwards are peculiarly solemnised. In front of the house, an hour before sunset, above a hundred women and children had collected, and more were constantly coming in, and cowered down beside the others. Two daughters of the deceased were present, whose richly ornamented and grease-besmeared heads they had already strewed with ashes, and had rubbed the whole of the upper part of their bodies white with them, so that their eyes and mouths alone shone forth clean, and, as it were, set into the white mask. The women wore long cloths round their hips; the young girls and children the Ráhat, a girdle composed of five strips of leather, hanging down close together; this is usually bound round the loins by a cord, prettily ornamented with shells and pearls, and it falls half-way down the leg. There was a great wooden bowl with ashes, which was repeatedly filled again with fresh ones. Female musicians cowered down close on either side of the door uttering shrill screams, which pierced our ears; they now clapped their hands together in time; now struck the sounding Dara-buka (a kind of hand kettle-drum, called here in the Sudan Daluka); and now beat with sticks on some hollow gourds floating in tubs of water. The two daughters, about eighteen or twenty years of age, and the nearest relations, began, two and two, to move at first slowly towards the door in a narrow passage between the constantly increasing crowds; then suddenly shrill screams, clapping of hands, and loud shrieks burst from them all at once; whereupon they turned round, and began their fearfully contorted dancing. Bending the upper part of their body in convulsive and strained twistings and turnings, and slowly balancing themselves, they moved their feet forwards, then suddenly threw their breasts upwards with violence and their heads back on their shoulders, which they stretched out in all directions, and thus, with half-closed eyes, gradually glided forwards. In this manner they went down a slight incline of fifteen and twenty paces, where they threw themselves on the ground, covered themselves with dust and earth, and turned back again to re-commence the same dance. The younger of the two daughters had a beautiful slight figure, with wonderful elasticity, and when she stood quietly erect, or was lying on the ground with her sunken head, her regular and gentle, though inanimate features, even during the dance, and the classical form of her body, was exactly like an antique statue. This dancing procession was repeated over and over again. Each of the mourners is compelled at least to go through this once, and the nearer the relationship so much the more frequently is it repeated. Whoever cannot immediately force her way up to the vessel of ashes, takes them from the head of her neighbour to strew it on her own head. In front of this squatting assembly some women are cowering, who understand how to sob loudly and to shed profuse tears, which leave long black streaks on their white-rubbed cheeks. The most striking, and the most repelling, part of this spectacle is, that nothing is done from unrestrained sorrow, but all with deliberation, with a degree of pathos, and evidently studied; children as young as four and five years old are placed in the procession, and if they perform the difficult and unnatural movements well, their mothers, who are cowering behind, call out to them taib, taib—i. e. bravo! well done! In the second act, however, of this ceremony, rendered peculiarly stunning by its continual clapping, screaming, and shrieking, all the dancers throw themselves into the dust, and tumble down the hill; but this they also do slowly, and with deliberation, carefully drawing up their knees to their bodies, to hold their dresses with them, and also crossing their arms; they then roll down, over knees and back. This ceremony begins one hour before sunset, and lasts till night.

The unnatural feeling pervading the whole proceeding makes an indescribable impression, which is rendered still more disagreeable by seeing nothing in all of it but an inherited and perverted custom, an empty spectacle; not a trace of individual truth and natural sentiment can be perceived in the persons who participate; and yet the comparison between this and certain descriptions and representations of similar festivals among the ancients, teaches us to understand much, of which judging by our own manner of life, we can never form a correct notion, till we have once seen with our eyes such caricatures of metamorphoses as are here and there exhibited in the East.

The following day we visited the hospital, which we found very cleanly, and in good order; it holds a hundred patients, but there were then only eight-and-twenty within it. We then went to the barracks, in the large court-yard of which the men are exercised. The commanding officer ordered out the band of music, and they played several pieces before us. The first was the Parisienne, which sounded most strangely in this country, as well as the succeeding pieces, most of them French, and known to me; they were, however, tolerably well executed. The musicians performed almost solely on European instruments, and have also admitted the name of our trumpet into their Arabic musical language, but have transferred it to the drum, which they call trumbêta, while for the trumpet they have a peculiar name of their own, nafir; they call their great flute sumára, the small one sufára, and the great drum tabli. There were only twelve hundred soldiers present belonging to the regiment, which consists of four thousand men, almost all negroes, whose black faces staring out of their white linen uniform and red-tasselled caps, made them look like dressed-up monkeys, only much more unhappy and oppressed. The negroes are incapable of any military discipline and regular exertion, and generally sink beneath the imposed yoke. We did not, however, suspect that these same people would two days afterwards rebel in a body, and set off to their hills.

Emin Pascha was expected hourly. But on the 13th I received in the morning a letter from him, from Messelemîeh, between four and five hours distant from this place, in which he wrote that he should not come to Wed Médineh before the following day, and hoped to find us still there. He at the same time informed me that the war in Taka was over, and that all had submitted. Several hundred natives had been killed in skirmishes; the morning before the chief battle, all the Sheikhs of the tribes from Taka had come to the Pascha to sue for pardon, which he had granted them, on condition that no fugitive should venture to remain in the great wood, which was their chief place of refuge. The following morning he had the wood searched, and as nobody was discovered in it, he had it set on fire, and entirely burnt to the ground. On his journey back, he intends to pass through the eastern districts to Katârif, on the Abyssinian frontier, and thence to go to the Blue River. We had scarcely read this news from Taka, when we heard the sound of cannon in front of the barracks announcing the victorious message to the population round.

In another letter, which had gone to Emin Pascha instead of me, Herr von Wagner gave me the pleasing intelligence that our new companion, the painter Georgi, had arrived from Italy, and had already started for Dongola, where he waits for further orders. I shall write to him to come as far as Barkal to meet us.

As we were certain by this letter of finding the Pascha still in Messelemîeh, we started for that place about mid-day; and as the town is situated an hour and a half distant from the Nile, we made the journey by land.

The boat, meanwhile, was to follow us to the harbour of Messelemîeh, that is to say, to the nearest landing-place of this most important of the commercial towns of the whole Sudan. Besides Jussuf, we took with us the Kawass and Gabre Máriam, who sat behind me on the dromedary, where there is always left a small place for a servant, like a coach-box behind the carriage; he sits on the narrow hinder part of the animal, and holds on to the saddle with both his hands. It was hot, and the ground was parched up. The few birds which I saw were different from those which habitually inhabit the banks of the river.

Half-way we came to Tâiba, a village which is only inhabited by Fukara (plur. of Fakir). These are the sages, the holy men of the people, a kind of priest, without however having priestly functions to perform; they can read and write; they do not permit any music, dancing, or festivals among them, and therefore have a great reputation for sanctity. The chief of this village is the greatest Fakir of the whole surrounding neighbourhood. Every one believes in him like a prophet; whatever he predicts, happens. The late Achmed Pascha, one month before his death, caused him to be imprisoned. “God will punish you for this,” was his answer to the order, and one month afterwards the Pascha died. He is a very rich man, and possesses several villages. We went in quest of him, and found him in his house at dinner; about twenty people were sitting round a colossal wooden bowl, which was filled with a gruel of boiled Durra and milk. The bowl was pushed in front of us, but we could not eat any of this food. We amused ourselves with the old Fakir, who joined in our conversation with easy, friendly, and pleasing manners, and then inquired our names, and the object of our journey. Every one who entered, our servants among the number, approached him reverently, and touched his hand with their mouth and forehead. The dignity of Sheikh is hereditary in his family; his son is looked up to almost as much as himself, and in this way we can understand how a village like this, when the Sheikh has once been himself a Fakir, can become altogether a priest-village. E’ Dâmer, on the island of Meröe, was formerly a Fakir place similar to this. The inhabitants of Tâiba, probably of Arabic race, call themselves Arakin. There are a number of such local names here, whose origin it is difficult to make out.

When we had smoked out our pipes, we left the congregation of holy men, and rode away. One half hour before we reached Messelemîeh, we came to a second village called Hellet e’ Solimân, where we dismounted at a house which had been built by the late Mak, or Melek Kambal, of Halfaï, when he married the daughter of Defalla, to whom the village belonged; it now belongs to his brother’s son, Mahmûd welled Schauîsch, who has besides the title of Melek, but is really only the guardian of Kambal’s little son, Melek Beshîr. It is easy to see what is now thought here of the old reverential title of Melek, or King. Mahmûd was not at home, as he had accompanied Ahmed Pascha on his campaign. Nevertheless, we were entertained in his house according to the hospitable custom of this country. Coverlets were spread out, milk and fresh baked Durra bread in thin slices, which has by no means a bad taste, was brought in; added to this, another simple, but refreshing beverage, abréq, fermented sourish Durra water. Soon after Asser we reached Messelemîeh. Emin Pascha received us very kindly, and communicated to us the intelligence that Mohammed Ali’s first minister, Boghos Bey, whom I had visited in Alexandria, was dead, and that Artim Bey, a man of elegant manners, and a shrewd politician, had been appointed in his place.

We declined the Pascha’s invitation to supper, and offer of a night’s lodging, and soon rode away towards the river, where we hoped to find our boat. As it had not yet arrived, we spent the night on anqarebs in the open air. We were not able to start for Kamlîn till the following morning, the 15th March, and reached it towards evening. The next day we spent agreeably with our countryman, Herr Bauer. On the 17th, having paid a visit to Nureddin Effendi, in Wad Eraue, several hours distant from Kamlîn, we arrived on the following day at Soba, where I immediately sent for one of the vases which had been found in the ruins of the ancient city, and which was said to be kept by the brother of the Sheikh. After waiting a long time, it was brought to us. It was an ancient vessel for incense, made of bronze in filigree work. The sides of the vessel, which was of a roundish form, and about nine inches high, and of similar width, consisted solely of open-work Arabesques; the swinging chains had been fastened to the upper border by three little hooks, one of which, however, has broken away, so that the most interesting part of the whole, an inscription running round beneath the border, and like the Arabesques carved à jour, in rather large letters, thereby is unfortunately incomplete. This is of peculiar importance, as the writing is again in the Greek, or rather in the Coptic character, as on the stone-tablet; but the language is neither of these, but doubtless the ancient vernacular tongue of Soba, the capital of the mighty Kingdom of Alŏa. Short as it is, it is distinguished from the stone inscription by containing the Coptic signs ϣ (sch) and ϯ (ti), which are not to be found in the latter. I purchased the vessel for a few piastres. This is now the third monument of Soba which we take away with us, for I must mention, in addition, that at the house of Seïd Haschim, in Wed Médineh, we also saw a small Venus of Greek workmanship, carved in pure style, and about a foot high, which had likewise been found in Soba, and was presented to me by its owner. At length, on the 19th March, we again entered the house of Herr Hermanovich, in Chartûm, later than our original calculations had led us to expect, for which reason I had already communicated our delay to Erbkam, in a letter from Wed Médineh.

LETTER XIX.

Chartûm, the 21st March, 1844.

Here, for the first time, we received more exact intelligence of the military revolt in Wed Médineh, which was of a most serious nature, and would have infallibly thrown us into the greatest danger had we remained two days longer in that town. All the black soldiers revolted while Emin Pascha was residing there. The drill-sergeant and seven white soldiers were killed immediately; the Pascha was besieged in his own house, which was briskly fired into; his negotiators were repelled, and the powder magazine seized. All the arms and ammunition, with the two cannons, fell into the hands of the negroes, who then selected six leaders for themselves, and set out in six divisions on the road to Fazoql to take refuge in their mountains. The regiment in this place, which has about 1500 blacks in it, was at once disarmed, and will be kept within the barracks. The most serious consequences are dreaded, as Ahmed Pascha Menekle has been so inconsiderate as to take almost all the white troops along with him to Taka; otherwise I should rejoice at the desertion of the blacks, as they are treated in the most revolting manner by their Turkish masters. Yet the insurrection may easily bring the whole country into a state of disorder, and then, also, have an injurious influence on our expedition. The blacks will undoubtedly endeavour on their road to draw over to their own party whatever country people they meet, especially the troops of Solimân Pascha in Sennâr, and of Selîm Pascha in Fazoql. The whites are far too few to offer them effectual resistance. News has just arrived that between five and six hundred slaves of the late Ahmed Pascha, belonging to the indigo factory at Tamaniât, a little to the north of this, have fled with their wives and children to the Sudan, and intend to join the soldiers; the same is reported of the factory at Kamlîn, so that we necessarily feel anxious about our friend Bauer, who was not, indeed, cruel as the Turks are, but yet was a strict master.

26th March.—The news is spread that the troops in Sennâr and the people belonging to Melek Idris Adlân, have put the negroes to the sword. It is also said, that the slaves of Tamaniât have been overtaken by the Arnauts, and murdered or dragged back, and that the revolt in Kamlîn has been suppressed. Still we cannot build much on this, as the intelligence reached me through our Kawass from the people belonging to the Pascha, and the desire was also expressed that I should spread the news still farther, and write about it to Cairo.

Yesterday, as we were walking in the dusk of the evening, in the large and beautiful garden belonging to Ibrahim Chêr, in whose cheerful and pleasantly-situated house I write this letter, we saw tall dark clouds of sand rise like a wall on the horizon. A violent east wind has also been blowing to-night ever since, and still blows, enveloping all the trees and buildings in a disagreeable sandy atmosphere, which almost takes away our breath. I have closed the window-shutters firmly, and barricaded the door with stones, to be in some measure secured from the first assault; nevertheless, I am constantly obliged to cleanse the sheet of letter paper from the covering of sand which is incessantly thrown down on it.

I returned in such a tattered condition from my hunting excursion to Sennâr, that I was at length obliged to assume the Turkish costume, which I cannot now soon exchange again. It has its advantages for the customs of this country, especially for sitting on coverlets, or low cushions; but the Tarbusch, which lies so flat upon the head, is very ill-adapted to this sunny sky, and the fastening of the innumerable buttons and hooks is daily a most wearisome trial of patience.

30th March.—We intend to leave Chartûm as soon as this packet of letters is handed over to the Pascha. The revolution is now completely suppressed in all parts. It would doubtless have had a far worse result had it not, from a particular cause, broken out in Wed Médineh several days too soon. It had been planned and secretly arranged for a long time past in the whole of the south, and was not to have broken out before the 19th of this month simultaneously in Sennâr, Wed Médineh, Kamlîn, Chartûm, and Tamaniât. The precipitate movement in Wed Médineh had, however, disarranged the whole plan, and had especially given time to Emin Pascha to send messengers to Chartûm, by which means the negro soldiers here were consigned and disarmed before news of the outbreak had reached their ears. Emin Pascha, however, seems himself to have been totally helpless. The victory is said to be solely due to the courage and presence of mind of a certain Rustan Effendi, who with 150 devoted soldiers, chiefly whites, pursued the negroes, who were 600 strong, overtook them beyond Sennâr, and after attacking them three times, defeated them, with great loss of life. Above a hundred of the fugitives have surrendered, and have been taken to Sennâr in irons; the remaining number were killed in the action, or leapt into the river and were drowned there.

But the news arrived here at the same time, that an insurrection had also broken out on account of the taxes in Lower Nubia, in Kalabsche, and another village, that both villages had on that account been immediately destroyed by Hassan Pascha, who is to come to Chartûm in place of Emin Pascha, and that the inhabitants had been killed or driven away.

LETTER XX.

The Pyramids of Meröe, 22nd April, 1844.

We quitted Chartûm on the 30th March, towards evening, and proceeded half the night by moonlight.

The following day we arrived at Tamaniât. Almost the whole of the large village had disappeared, and only one vast burning plain was to be seen. The slaves in their revolt had laid everything in ashes, the walls of the factory are alone left standing. As I had quitted the boat and arrived on foot, I was unexpectedly startled near the still smoking ruins by a horrible spectacle, for I suddenly found myself in an open piece of garden, which was completely covered by the mutilated corpses of blacks. The greatest proportion of the slaves who had been recaptured were here shot down in masses.

We stopped at sunset in Surîe Abu Ramle, before a cataract, which we were unable to pass during the night.

The 1st of April we again started long before daybreak, and thought we should make a good step in advance. But the wind rose with the sun, and as the boat could not be towed at this point on account of the rocky banks, a few hours afterwards we were compelled to halt again, and to lie quiet in the heavy, dense atmosphere of sand. In front of us lay the insulated range of Qirre, detached from which, Aschtân (the Thirsty) on our left hand, Rauiân (the Thirsty assuaged) on our right, stand forth from the plain like watch-posts; the former, however, at a greater distance from the river.

Rauiân was only about three-quarters of an hour distant from our boat. I set out with my gun, traversed the bare stony plain, and climbed the mountain, during the inundation season almost entirely surrounded by water, for which reason we were always told that it stood upon an island. The rock of which it is composed is granite, of a mixed coarse and fine grain, with much quartz. On the road back, I passed the village of Meláh, the huts of which lie hidden behind large mounds of upturned earth, formed by the inhabitants when they dig for salt (malh). A great deal of it is found in the surrounding country (thus Meláh is the Arabic translation of salt-work, or Sulza). Towards evening we sailed on a little farther, in the midst of the range, and lay to, in a little rocky creek. The following day, also, we made but little progress. We saw some black slaves wandering about like chamois, on the eastern summits of the wild granitic rocks, who have perhaps escaped from Tamaniât, but their miserable life will not probably be much longer prolonged. They disappeared immediately again behind the jagged summits, our Kawass having indulged in the brutal jest of firing at them in the air. I climbed up the western mountains with Abeken; they rise precipitously for about 200 or 300 feet from the bank. It is evident here, by the natural walls of rock, to what height the river rises and deposits its mud at high-water. I measured nearly 8 metres (26 feet English) from that point to the surface of the water at the present moment, and the river will continue to sink about 2 feet more.

From the summit of the mountain we saw the wide desert extending behind the farthest eminences, and soon after passing Méraui, we shall be wandering across it. We quitted the picturesque range of mountains with regret, which form such an agreeable interruption to the flat banks of this far and wide level country.

On the morning of the 4th April, we at length reached our group of palm-trees at Ben Naga, and immediately went to the ruins in the Wadi el Kirbegân, where we found a portion of a pillar, and several altars in the south-eastern temple which had been newly-excavated by Erbkam; the same Royal Shields were upon them as upon the principal temples of Naga in the desert, besides several others which had not previously appeared. Of the three altars that had been excavated, the central one, of very hard sandstone, was in excellent preservation. On the western side there was a representation of the King, on the eastern, of the Queen, with their names, and on both the other sides were two goddesses. On the northern side the hieroglyphic group of the North was also inscribed, and on the southern that of the South. Both the other altars exhibited the same figures. All three were still standing on their original site, and were let into a smooth floor, which was composed of square slabs of stone covered with plaster. Unfortunately I had not then the means of carrying away the best of these altars, which weighed at least 50 cwt., and I had, therefore, to plan a special excursion from Meröe for the purpose.

On Good Friday, the 5th April, we arrived at Schendi. We entered the widely-scattered but depopulated town, saw the ruins of the palace of King Nimr, in which he had burnt Ismael Pascha, after a nocturnal festival which he had prepared for him, and many houses which still bore traces of the balls of Defterdar Bey, who was sent by Mohammed Ali to revenge the death of his son. The dwelling of King Nimr, which now also lay in ruins, used to stand in the centre of the town on an artificial eminence. The suburb, built for the present military garrison, is at a little distance up the river, and separated from the town. We then returned to the boat, which had put in near the fortress-like house of Churshid Pascha, where the military commander now resides.

On the same day we arrived, shortly before sunset, at Beg´erauîeh, and immediately rode to the Pyramids, where we once more found Erbkam and the remainder of the party safe and sound. They have been diligently drawing in Naga and Wadi Sofra, and the rich costume of the kings and gods, as well as the representations belonging to these Ethiopian temples in general, devoid of style indeed, but ornamental, look very well on paper, and will make a splendid show in our sketch-books. Much had been done in this spot also, and many new things had come to light in clearing out the ante-chambers, which had been full of rubbish. Abeken thought, even, during our first visit, that he had found the name of the Queen Kentaki (Candace). Now, indeed, we see that the Shield is not written 𓍹𓐼𓎡𓈖𓍘𓐱𓇋𓎡𓇌𓐱𓐷𓏏𓐰𓆇𓐸𓐽𓍺 but 𓍹𓐼𓎡𓈖𓍘𓐱𓇋𓎱𓇌𓐱𓐷𓏏𓐰𓆇𓐸𓐽𓍺 which would read Kentahebi; nevertheless it seems to me to have meant that famous name, and that the questionable sign merely has been changed by the ignorant scribes. The determinative signs 𓏏𓆇 prove, at least, that it is the name of a Queen. The name of Candace was known even at an earlier period as that of a private person. The name of Ergamenes is likewise found, and this also written sometimes correctly, sometimes with mistaken variation.

We kindled Easter bonfires on the evenings of the succeeding holidays. Our tents are situated between two groups of Pyramids in a small hollow of the valley, which is everywhere covered with dry tufts of a woody grass. We lighted this all about us; it blazed up high, and flung the whirling flames upwards into the dark starry night. The spectacle of fifty or sixty such fires burning at once in the valley was beautiful; they threw a ghost-like light on the half-crumbled Pyramids of the old kings ranged on the eminences round, and on our airy tent-pyramids rising in the foreground.

We were surprised on the 8th of April by seeing a magnificent cavalcade of horses and camels, which appeared within our camp. It was Osman Bey, who, as the chief in command, is leading back the army of 5000 men from Taka. The French military surgeon, Peney, was in his suite, besides the Chief Sheikh Ahmed welled ʾAuad. The troops had encamped near Gabuschié, one hour farther up the river, and were to pass through Beg´erauîeh in the evening. The visit to our camp had, however, another object, which was soon disclosed in the course of conversation. Osman Bey was desirous of making treasure-diggers out of his pioneers, and of ordering some battalions to come hither, to pull down a number of Pyramids. The discovery of Ferlini is still remembered by most people, and has since that time caused the ruin of many Pyramids. They were also full of it at Chartûm, and more than one European, besides the Pascha himself, imagined they might still find treasures there. I constantly endeavoured to prove to them all, that the discovery of Ferlini was pure chance, that he had not found the gold rings in the sepulchral chambers with the mummies, where they alone might reasonably have been searched for with any hope of success, but walled up in the stone, in which place they had been concealed by a whim of the owner. I endeavoured to convince Osman Bey of this also, who even offered me the aid of his companies of soldiers to conduct the work of destruction. I naturally declined this, though perhaps I should have accepted it for the sake of laying open to view the sepulchral chambers, which necessarily must have their entrance in front of the Pyramids in the natural rock, had I not feared that here also we might not arrive at any brilliant result, and even if our own expectations were not so, yet those of the credulous general might be bitterly disappointed. I succeeded in diverting him from his idea, and thus for the present, at least, the existing Pyramids have been saved. The soldiers have departed without having made war on the Pyramids.

I invited the three gentlemen to dine with us, which placed the old Sheikh in some embarrassment, for he was always trying to cut the meat with the back of his knife, till at length I myself laid aside the European implements, and began to eat in good Turkish fashion; my example was soon followed willingly by the rest of the company, especially by our excellent dark-skinned guest, who did not fail to observe my polite attention. After dinner they again mounted their sumptuously-caparisoned animals, and the procession hastened towards the river.

On the 9th of April, I sent Franke and Ibrahim Aga to Ben Naga, with stone-saws, hammers, and ropes, to transport the great altar to this spot. I myself rode with Jussuf to Gabuschié, partly to return the visit of Osman Bey, who had intended to give the soldiers a day of rest in our neighbourhood, partly to take advantage of the presence of the distinguished Sheikh Ahmed, through whose interest I hoped to procure boats to carry us across the river, and camels for the desert journey that we had in prospect. The army had, however, already decamped, and had passed the first places on the road. I therefore rode after them with Jussuf in a brisk trot, and soon overtook the 400 Arnauts who formed the rear. They were not, however, able to inform us how far Osman Bey was in advance. The Arnauts are the soldiers most dreaded in the whole country for brutality and cruelty, who at the same time are treated with most indulgence by their leaders, because they are the only troops who serve voluntarily, and the only foreigners taken into pay. It is but a few months ago since they were sent to the late Ahmed Pascha by Mohammed Ali, under an officer who was peculiarly feared, with the order, as it is said, to bring the Pascha, dead or alive, to Cairo. The sudden death of the Pascha at all events released him from his commission. The name of that officer is Omar Aga, but he is known through the whole country by the not very flattering appellation of Tomus Aga (Commandant Cochon) which was once given him by Ibrahim Pascha, and which, since that time, he himself thinks it an honour to bear. His own attendants, when we overtook his horses and baggage, and inquired after their master, called him by this name. After riding briskly for about five or six hours in the most oppressive heat, we at length reached the camp at the village of Bêida.

We had by degrees gone more than half-way to Schendi, and were rejoiced at the near prospect of finding some refreshment, after the exhaustion of the hot ride; for we had already made up our minds to fast, till our return in the evening, as there was absolutely nothing that we could eat in the villages between; there was not even milk to be had.

Osman Bey and Hakîm Peney were as much surprised as delighted at my visit; some bowls of Suri were immediately brought for our refreshment—a beverage which undergoes a slow and troublesome process of preparation, from half-fermented Durra; it is an agreeable acid, and, especially with sugar, has a most excellent and refreshing taste. After our breakfast, I went through the camp with Peney. The tents were pitched along the river in the most picturesque variety of groups, on a great space of ground here and there scattered over with trees and thicket, and completely surrounded by it. An Egyptian army, composed half of blacks and half of whites, most of them in tatters, returning in forced marches from a depredatory expedition against the poor natives, presents, indeed, a very different aspect from what we are accustomed to witness at home. Although the intimidated population of Taka, for the most part innocent of individual revolt, had already sent messengers to the Pascha, to avert his vengeance, and moreover, on the approach of the troops, had not offered the slightest resistance, nevertheless, several hundred unarmed men and women, who either would not, or could not fly, were murdered by that notorious troop of Arnauts; and Ahmed Pascha caused a number of other men, who were believed to have been concerned in the insurrection, as they were each led before him, to be beheaded in front of his tent. Then, after all the conditions that were imposed had been fulfilled, and the heavy contributions which had been required from them under every variety of pretext had been also correctly paid, the Pascha caused all the Sheikhs to assemble at once, as if for a fresh conference, but forthwith had them all put in fetters, together with 120 other people, and led away as prisoners. The young and strong men were to be placed among the troops, the women handed over to the soldiers as slaves; the Sheikhs were reserved for punishment till a later day.

This was the glorious history of the Turkish campaign against Taka, as it was related to me by the European eye-witnesses. Already twelve among the forty-one Sheikhs who were carried away, and were nearly sinking under the fatigue of the marches, have been shot on the road. The others were exhibited to me singly. Each of them carried before him the stem of a tree as thick as a man’s arm, about five or six feet long, which terminated in a fork, into which the neck was fixed. The prongs of the fork were bound together by a cross-piece of wood, fastened with a strap. Some of their hands, also, were tied fast to the handle of the fork, and in this condition they remain day and night. During the march, the soldier who is specially appointed to overlook the prisoner, carries the end of the pole: in the night most of them have their feet also pinioned together. All of them had had their black curls shaven off. The Sheikhs alone still wore their large head-dress of braids or curls. Most of them looked very depressed and miserable; they had been the most distinguished of their nation, and had been accustomed to be treated by those they commanded, with the greatest reverence. They almost all spoke Arabic, beside their own language, and mentioned to me the tribes to which they severally belonged. But the most distinguished of all of them was a Fakir, who was held sacred; his word had been regarded like that of a prophet throughout the whole land, and, by his oracular sayings and exhortations, he had been chiefly instrumental in causing the whole revolution. He was called Sheikh Mûsa el Fakir, and was of the tribe of the Mitkenâbs. I found him an old, blind, broken-down, hoary man, with a few snow-white hairs; his body was already more like a skeleton; he was obliged to be raised up by others, and was scarcely able to hear and answer the questions which were addressed to him. His little, shrivelled face, was incapable of any new expression corresponding to the present circumstances. He looked forwards with a fixed and indifferent stare, and I was surprised how such a shadow could have still exercised so much influence on the minds of his fellow-countrymen as to excite a revolution. Yet it is remarkable that, both in Egypt and everywhere about here, blind people have an especial reputation for sanctity, and are held in great respect as Prophets.

After breakfast I had one of the captured Sheikhs, Mohammed welled Hammed, brought to the tent of Osman, that I might question him about his language, of which I was still perfectly ignorant. He was an intelligent, well-spoken man, who at once took advantage of the opportunity which I readily granted him, to relate his history to Osman Bey and Sheikh Ahmed, and to assure them of his innocence of the revolutionary events. He belonged to the tribe of the Halenka, from the village of Kassala. I made him give me the lists of the forty-one Sheikhs and their tribes, and had them written down. Six tribes had taken part in the insurrection—the Mitkenâb, Halenka, Kelûli, Mohammedîn, Sobeh, Sikulâb, and Hadenduwa (plur. from Henduwa).

All the tribes of Taka speak the same language; but only a few of them also understand the Arabic. I suspect that it is the same as that of the Bischâri tribes. It has many, and well-distributed vowels, and is very euphonous, as it is without the hard guttural sound of the Arabs. On the other hand, it has a peculiar alphabetical letter, which to our ear seems to stand between r, l, and d; a cerebral d, which, like the Sanscrit, is pronounced by throwing back the point of the tongue upwards.

After our examination of the Sheikh it had become too late to set out again; night would have overtaken me, and especially on camel-back, it is impossible to avoid the dangerous branches of the thorny trees. I therefore complied with the invitation to spend the night in the camp, till the rising of the moon; Osman Bey would then at the same time start in the opposite direction with the army. A whole sheep was roasted on the spit, which we ate with a hearty appetite.

I learnt from Osman Bey about many interesting customs of the most southern provinces, as for the last sixteen years he has been living here in the south, and has an accurate knowledge of the country, to the extreme limits of Mohammed Ali’s government. It is still the custom in Fazoql to hang a king who is no longer beloved, which occurred only a few years ago to the father of the present reigning monarch. His relatives and ministers assemble round him, and announce to him that as he no longer pleases the men and women of the country, the oxen, asses, and fowls, &c., &c., but is detested by all, it is better that he should die. Once upon a time, when a king did not wish to submit to this practice, his own wife and mother made the most pressing remonstrances to him, not to load himself with still greater disgrace, upon which he yielded to his fate. Diodorus narrates exactly the same resignation to death in those who in Ethiopia were to die by judicial verdict; a person who had been condemned, and who had at first intended to save himself by flight, had nevertheless allowed himself to be strangled without resistance by his mother, who had obstructed him in his design. Osman Bey has only lately, he assures me himself, abolished the custom there of burying old people alive, when they become feeble. A pit used to be dug and a horizontal passage at the end of it, and the body laid within, like that of a dead person, firmly swathed in cloths; by his side they placed a bowl with merisa, fermented Durra water, a pipe, and a hoe, to cultivate the land; also, according to the wealth of the individual, one or two ounces of gold, to pay the ferryman who must convey the deceased across the great river which flows between heaven and hell. The entrance is then filled up with rubbish. Indeed, according to Osman, the whole legend of Charon, even with a Cerberus, appears still to exist here.

This custom of burying old people alive also exists, as I afterwards heard, among the negro tribes to the south of Kordofan. Invalids and cripples, those especially who have an infectious malady, are there also put to death in a similar manner. The family complains to the sick man, that because of him, no one will come near them any longer; that he himself is wretched, and death would be only a gain for him; that he would again find his relations in the other world, and would be in health and happiness there. They charge him with kind messages to all the deceased, and then bury him either as they do in Fazoql, or standing upright in a pit. Besides merisa, bread, a hoe, and a pipe, he is there given a sword and two pairs of sandals, for the deceased live in the other world just as they do here on earth, only in greater happiness.

The dead are buried with loud lamentations, while their actions and good qualities are extolled. Nothing is there known of a river and ferryman of the lower world, but they are acquainted with the old Mohammedan legend of the invisible angel Asrael, or as he was here called Osraîn. He is commissioned by God, as they say, to receive the souls of the dead, and to conduct the good to the place of reward, the bad to that of punishment. He dwells upon a tree, el Ségerat Mohàna (the Tree of Completion), which has as many leaves as there are living men. There is a name upon every leaf, and a new one grows whenever a child is born. If any one sickens, his leaf fades, and should he die, Osraîn breaks it off. In former times he used to come in a visible form to those whom he was going to carry away from the earth, and thereby put them in a great fright. Since the days of the Prophet he has been invisible, for when he came to fetch the soul of Mohammed, the latter told him that it was not good that he should terrify mankind by his visible appearance; they might then easily die of fright without having previously prayed; for he himself, although very courageous, and a man of enlarged mind, had been terrified by his appearance. The Prophet, therefore, prayed to God that he would make Osraîn invisible, and the prayer was heard.

Osman Bey told me that among some other tribes in Fazoql, the king was obliged to administer justice daily beneath a certain tree. If on account of sickness, or from any other mishap, which renders him unfit, he does not make his appearance for three whole days, he is hung up. Two razors are placed in the noose, and when this is drawn tight, they cut the throat across.

The meaning of another of their customs is quite obscure. At a certain time of the year they have a kind of carnival, where every one does what he likes best. Four ministers of the king then bear him on an anqareb out of his house to an open space of ground; a dog is fastened by a long cord to one of the feet of the anqareb. The whole population collects round the place, streaming in on every side. They then throw darts and stones at the dog, till he is killed, after which the king is again borne into his house.

Amidst these and other tales and accounts of those tribes, which were besides confirmed by the old Chief Sheikh Ahmed, we feasted on the roasted sheep in the open air in front of the tent. Night was somewhat advanced, and the near and distant camp-fires, with the people busy around them, either squatting about, or walking up and down between groups of trees, had an extremely picturesque and unique effect. Gradually they all became extinguished, with the exception of the watch-fire; the poor prisoners scattered here and there, had their legs fastened still more tightly together, and it became quieter in the camp.

Osman Bey is a strong, cheerful man, with natural manners, and at the same time a strict and valued officer. He promised to give me a slight proof of the discipline and good order among his soldiers, whose external appearance did not prejudice me very much in their favour by an unexpected reveillé. I was sleeping on an anqareb in the open tent, covered with a soldier’s cloak. About three o’clock in the morning I was awoke by a slight noise; Osman Bey, who lay beside me on the ground, got up, and ordered the nearest drummer of the chief watch to beat the reveillé. He made a few, short, interrupted beats of the drum, quickly sinking again into silence. These were immediately repeated at the post of the next regiment, then at the third, fourth, and fifth, in various, always more distant, positions of the camp; and suddenly the whole mass of 5000 men rose up and stood to their arms. Nothing was to be heard but a soft whispering and rustling of the soldiers, who were rousing each other, and the faint clank of the weapons, which were cautiously separated from one another. I went through the camp with Dr. Peney, who came across to me from the adjoining tent, and in a very few minutes we found the whole army under arms, arranged in ranks, the officers marching up and down in front. On our return, after we had related to Osman Bey the wonderfully punctual execution of his commands, he allowed the soldiers to separate again, and did not give the signal for the breaking up of the camp before four o’clock. That produced a very different effect: all were quickly in movement and activity; the abominable gurgling and miserable roaring of the camels was heard above everything during the packing up; the tents were taken down, and in less than half an hour the army marched southwards with pipe and drum.

I started in an opposite direction. The early morning with the bright moonlight was very refreshing; the birds awoke with the dawn of day, a cool wind rose, and we trotted quickly through the thorny sont-trees. Soon after sunrise we met a magnificent procession of well-dressed men, and attendants, on camels and asses. It was the King Mahmûd welled Schauîsch, whose father, the warlike Schauîsch, King of the Schaiqies, is well known in the conquering expedition of Ismael Pascha, to whom he did not submit for a long time, and at whose house in Hellet e’ Solimân, near Messelemîeh, we had stopped a few weeks ago. He had gone with Ahmed Pascha Menekle to Taka, and followed the army to Halfaï, where he now usually resides. About half-past nine we again reached the Pyramids. My camel, a young one, and very difficult to manage, shortly before, took fright in the plain, and ran round in a circle with me as if it was mad; at length, stumbling over a tall bunch of grass, it fell on one knee, and hurled me far over its head, happily without doing me any serious injury.

On my return I occupied myself, without interruption, with the Pyramids and their inscriptions. I had several more chambers excavated, and made an exact description of each individual Pyramid. Altogether, I have found about thirty different names of Ethiopian kings and queens. I have certainly not yet been able to bring them into any chronological order, but from a comparison of the different inscriptions, I have learnt much about the manner of the succession, and form of government. The King of Meröe (whose name in one of the most southern Pyramids is written Meru, or Mérua,) was at the same time first Priest of Ammon; if his consort survived him, she succeeded him in the government, and the male heirs to the throne only took the second place beside her; if the reverse happened, the son, as it appears, succeeded, who, even in the lifetime of his father, bore the royal shields and titles, and was second Priest of Ammon. Thus we still see here the domination of the priests, which is spoken of by Diodorus and Strabo, and the pre-eminence of the worship of Ammon, which is even mentioned by Herodotus.

The inscriptions on the Pyramids show that, at the period of their erection, the hieroglyphic writing was no longer perfectly understood, and that the hieroglyphic signs were often only added as a customary ornament, without wishing to express anything by them. Even the kings’ names are thereby rendered uncertain, and this for a long time prevented me from recognising the three royal personages who built the chief temples in Naga, Ben Naga, and in Wadi Temêd, and who undoubtedly belonged to one of the most brilliant periods of the Meröitic Monarchy. I am now convinced that the Pyramids with Roman arched ante-chambers, in the brick-work of which Ferlini found the treasure concealed, in spite of slight alterations in the name, belonged to the same mighty and warlike queen who appears in Naga with her rich decorations, and her pointed nails almost an inch long. By the circumstance of their having belonged to a well-known, and, as it appears, the greatest of all the queens of Meröe, who built almost all the temples still in tolerable preservation on the island, Ferlini’s jewels become infinitely more valuable for the history of Ethiopian art, in which they now occupy a fixed position. The purchase of that remarkable discovery is a most important acquisition to our museum.

An Ethiopian-demotic writing was more in use at that period, and more generally understood than hieroglyphics. It was similar to the Egyptian-demotic in its characters, although consisting of a very limited alphabet of between twenty-five and thirty signs. The writing, like the latter, is read from right to left, but is distinguished by a constant separation of the words by two strongly-marked points. I have already found six-and-twenty similar demotic inscriptions; some of them on steles and libation-tablets; some of them in the ante-chambers of the Pyramids, over the persons belonging to the processions, who usually go to meet the deceased king with palm-branches; some of them on the smooth surfaces of the Pyramids; and indeed always in such a state, that they are clearly proved to have belonged originally to the representations, and not to have been added at a later period. On a closer examination of this writing, it will not perhaps be difficult to decipher, and we should then obtain the first certain sounds of the Ethiopian language spoken here at that period, and could decide on its true relation to the Egyptian language, while the almost perfect agreement between the Ethiopian and Egyptian hieroglyphics have hitherto yielded no conclusive evidence that there is an equal accordance between the two languages. It seems, on the contrary, and with respect to the later Meröitic period may be safely affirmed, that the hieroglyphics, as the sacred monumental writing, were adopted from Egypt without alteration, but also without being perfectly understood. The few signs which constantly recur, prove that the Ethiopian-demotic writing is purely alphabetic, which must very much facilitate the deciphering of it. The separation in the words has perhaps been borrowed from the Roman writing. But its analogy with the Egyptian development of writing went still further; for next to this Ethiopian-demotic writing there is an Ethiopian-Greek, at a later period, which may be perfectly compared with the Coptic, and it has borrowed certain letters directly from it. It is found in the inscriptions of Soba, and in some others on the walls of the temple-ruins of Wadi e’ Sofra. We have therefore now, as in the case in Egypt, two modes of writing, which no doubt sprang up one after the other, and really contain the actual Ethiopian dialect of the country. It is now usual to call the ancient Abyssinian Geez language the Ethiopian, which, with the characteristics of a Semetic language that has immigrated from Arabia, has only a local, but no ethnographic claim on our attention. A Geez inscription, which I have found in the chamber of a Pyramid, has evidently been written down at a later period.

I hope that we shall obtain many important results from studying the native inscriptions, as well as the present living languages. The Ethiopian name comprehended much that was dissimilar among the ancients. The ancient population of the whole Nile valley as far as Chartûm, and perhaps, also, along the Blue River, as well as the tribes of the desert to the east of the Nile, and the Abyssinian nations, were in former times probably more distinctly separated from the Negroes than now, and belonged to the Caucasian race. The Ethiopians of Meröe (according to Herodotus, the parent-state of all Ethiopia) were a red-brown people, similar to the Egyptians, but darker, as they are at the present day. The monuments also prove this, on which I have more than once found the red colour of the skin in the kings and queens preserved. In Egypt, especially in the Old Monarchy, before the mixture with the Ethiopian race, at the period of the Hyksos, the women were always painted yellow; and the Egyptian women even now, who are blanched in the harem, incline to the same colour. But red women appear even after the 18th Dynasty, and the Ethiopian women were always so represented. It appears that much Ethiopian blood is mingled with the nation of the so-called Barâbras, so widely distributed at the present day, and this perhaps will also one day appear still more distinctly from their language. This, no doubt, is the ancient Nubian, and has been still retained in somewhat distant regions to the south-west under this name; for the Nuba languages in and round Kordofan, as can be proved, are partly related to the Berber language. I have also found indications in the local names that this last, which is only now spoken from Assuan to Dar Schaiqîeh, south of Dongola, in the Nile valley, predominated for a long while also in the province of Berber, and still higher up.

Marûga, Danqeleh, and e’ Sûr, are close to the ruins of the city of Meröe, and are situated along the river from south to north; all three are comprehended under the name of Begerauîeh, so that we scarcely ever hear anything but this last name mentioned. Five minutes to the north of e’ Sûr lies the village of Qala, and ten minutes farther on El Guês, both of which are comprehended under the name of Ghabîne. One hour down the river there are two other villages, not far apart, called Marûga, which were deserted even before the conquest of the country; and still more to the north, close to the Omarâb Mountains, which project towards the river on the eastern bank, there is a third village called Gebel (mountain village) inhabited only by Fukaras. Cailliaud knew only the most southern of the three Marugas, situated near the largest temple-ruins. He was struck by the name, on account of its similarity with that of Meröe. The similarity becomes still more evident when it is known that the real name is Maru, since -ga is only the universal termination to names, and is always either added or omitted, according to the grammatical combination, for it does not belong to the root of the word. In the dialect of Kenûs and Dongola this termination is -gi; in the dialect of Mahass and Sukkôt it is -ga. When I ran over the different local names of the upper countries with one of our Berber servants, I learnt that in one dialect maro or marôgi, in the other maru or marûga, means “mounds of ruins,” “destroyed temples;” thus, for example, the ruins of ancient Syene, or those on the island of Philæ, are called marôgi. There is another Berber word quite distinct from this, mérua, which is also pronounced méraui, by which all white rocks, white stones, are designated; as, for example, such a rock as occurs in the neighbourhood of Assuan, on the eastern side of the Nile, at the village of El Gezîret. By this it is evident that the appellation Marûga has nothing to do with the name of Meröe, as a town would not be called when first founded “ruin city.” On the other hand, the name of Mérua, Méraui (in German, Weissenfels, white rock), would be very appropriate for a town, if its local position gave occasion to it, as at Mount Barkal, but which, again, is not really the case here.

LETTER XXI.

Keli, opposite Meröe, the 29th April.

Franke did not return from his expedition to Ben Naga before the 23rd instant. He brought the altar here, on a boat, in sixteen blocks. All the stones taken together, which we must carry along with us on the difficult journey of six or seven days across the desert, form a load for about twenty camels, so that our train will be considerably longer than before. Unfortunately, on account of the difficulty of the means of transport, we have been unable to take anything away with us from Naga in the desert, except a Roman inscription, mentioned above, and a great Clavis Nilotica, peculiarly carved. Some very strange representations are to be seen there; among others, a figure sitting frontways, a crown of rays over the floating hair, the left arm raised at a right angle, and the fore-finger and middle-finger of the hand stretching upwards, as is represented in the old Byzantine figures of Christ. The right hand holds a long staff resting on the ground, as John the Baptist usually holds it. This figure is totally different from the Egyptian representations, and no doubt is borrowed elsewhere, as well as another god who frequently appears, also represented frontwise, with a richly curling beard; he might at first sight be compared to a Jupiter, or Serapis, in bearing and appearance. The mixture of the religions had made great progress at that period, evidently of very late date, and it would not surprise me if it should be proved by later researches that the Ethiopian kings had adopted Christ and Jupiter also, among their various kinds of gods. The god with the three or four lions’ heads is probably not a native invention, but obtained from some other quarter.

On the 25th we crossed the Nile in boats, in order to set out on the left bank, on our road across the desert to Gebel Barkal. There seemed to be difficulties again about procuring camels, but my threat, that if they would not come to a private agreement I should, on the ground of my Firman, settle the matter, not with the Sheikh but with the Government, had such a rapid effect, that, even the following morning, we were enabled to set out with eighty camels from Gôs Burri in the immediate neighbourhood, across the desert.

Here, in Keli, I had again an opportunity of witnessing a funeral ceremony—this time, for a deceased Fellah—for which purpose about two hundred people had collected, the men separate from the women. The men were seated, two and two opposite, embracing each other; they laid their heads on their shoulders, raised them up again, beat themselves, clapped their hands, and wept as much as they were able. The women moaned, sang songs of lamentation, strewed themselves with ashes, walked about in procession, and threw themselves on the ground; everything very similar to what we saw in Wed Médineh, except that their dance more resembled, in its violent movements, that of the Dervishes. The remainder of the inhabitants of Keli sat round in groups under the shade of the trees, sighing and lamenting, with their heads bent down.

As we were obliged to wait for the camels, I once more crossed over to Beg´erauîeh, to search for certain ruins, which were said to be situated somewhat more to the north. Starting from El Guês, I arrived in three-quarters of an hour, upon my ass, at the two villages of Marûga, not far removed from each other. To the eastward of the first, on the low eminences running along in that direction, there are a number of mounds of tombs, which from a little distance looked like a group of Pyramids standing out from the sky. The elevation turns backwards, in the form of a crescent, towards the south, and is covered with these circular-thrown-up mounds, composed of black desert stone; standing on a large mound in the centre I counted fifty-six of them.

Five minutes farther on in the desert there is a second group of similar mounds, twenty-one in number; but many others lie near it, scattered on single small pieces of ground. Situated in a still lower position, and even within the limit of the thicket, I discovered a third group, to the south of the two former ones, containing about forty tombs, in some of which we could still clearly recognise their original square form. The tomb in best preservation was between 15 and 18 feet wide on every side; like many others, it had been excavated in the centre, and had been filled up with mud deposited by the rain, in which a tree was growing; a great square wall of 24 paces enclosing it on every side, was still remaining of another tomb, the lowest layers were built up solidly of small black stones, and a mound seemed to have been erected within, but not in the centre. Another still stronger circumvallation, in good preservation, was not much smaller in circumference, but appeared to have been completely filled up with a Pyramid. Nothing was to be seen of an actual casing. The mounds continued still more to the south amidst the thicket, and altogether there might be about two hundred which could be distinguished. Perhaps, also, they continue still farther on the border of the desert, in the direction of Meröe, whither I would have ridden back had I not sent the boat too far down the river, in quest of which I now was obliged to hasten. It appears, therefore, that this was the actual cemetery of Meröe, and that pyramidal, or, in default of smooth sides, conical mounds of stones, were the usual forms of the tombs, even of private individuals, at that period.

LETTER XXII.

Barkal, the 9th May, 1844.

The desert of Gilif, which we traversed on our road hither, to cut off the great eastern bend of the Nile, derives its name from the principal mountain range which lies in the centre of it. On the maps it is confounded with the desert Bahiuda, which bounds it to the south-east, and across which runs the road from Chartûm to Ambukôl and Barkal. Our direction was first due east as far as a well, afterwards to the north-west, and in the midst of the Gilif range to the great Wadi Abu Dôm, which then led us across in the same direction to the western bend of the Nile.

The general character of the country here, is not so much that of a desert as between Korusko and Abu Hammed, but more that of a sandy steppe. It is almost everywhere covered with Gesch (tufts of reed-grass), and not unfrequently with low trees, chiefly Sont-trees. The rains which fall here at certain seasons of the year, have deposited considerable masses of earth on the low grounds, which might be profitably cultivated, and this is sometimes traversed, to the depth of three or four feet, by torrents occasioned by the rain. The soil is yellow, and composed of a clayey sand. The rock forming the subsoil, and the whole of the mountains, with the exception of the lofty Gilif range, is a sandstone. The ground is covered to a considerable extent with hard, black blocks of sandstone, the road is generally uneven, and undulating. Numerous gazelles, and large white antelopes with only a brown stripe down their backs, are to be found on these plains, which are also frequented in the rainy season by herds of camels and of goats, on account of the plentiful supply of pasture.

On the 29th April we left the river, but, as is very customary in caravans of any considerable size, this was only a first start—a trial of our travelling powers, such as birds of passage make before their long migration. We had only been two hours on the road when the guide allowed the restless swarm to encamp again, just beyond Gôs Burri, at a little distance from the river; the camel-drivers were without their provisions; some single beasts were still procured, others were exchanged. It was not before the following day at twelve o’clock that we got into perfect order and in full march. We spent the night in the Wadi Abu Hammed, at which point Gebel Omarda was on our right hand.

The third day we started very early; passed Gebel Qermana, and arrived at the well of Abu Tlêh, which took us far to the east, and detained us several hours after mid-day. From this point we were seven hours traversing a wide plain, and encamped about ten at night near Gebel Sergen. The 2nd May, after proceeding four hours, we reached a district well supplied with trees, to the right of Gebel Nusf, the “Mountain of the Half,” which is situated half-way between the well of Abu Tlêh and Gaqedûl, as on all these journeys the wells are the real indicators of the hour in the desert-clock.

The Arabs from the district of Gôs Burri, who are our guides, belong to the tribe of the ʾAuadîeh; they are not nearly as respectable as the Ababde Arabs, have a rapid and indistinct mode of speech, and altogether seem to have very little capacity. They may have already intermingled much with the Fellahîn of the country, who here call themselves Qaleâb, Homerâb, Gaalîn. There are also some Schaiqîeh Arabs here, probably only from the time of the conquest of the country by the Egyptians; they carry shields and spears like the Ababde Arabs. The wealthy Sheikh, Emin, of Gôs Burri, had given us his brother, the Fakir Fadl Allah, as our guide, and his own son, Fadl Allah, as overseer to his camels; but even the best among these people make but a miserable and starved appearance in comparison with our desert companions of Korusko. The order of the day here was as follows: that in general we should start about six in the morning, and keep moving till ten o’clock; after that, the caravan rested during the mid-day heat till about three o’clock, and we then proceeded again till about ten or eleven at night.

We rode across the large plain of El Gôs the whole afternoon, so called, probably, from the great sand dunes, which are characteristic of this part of the country, and which, more especially towards the south, assume a peculiar form. They are almost all in the shape of a crescent, which opens towards the south-west, so that from the road on our right hand we look into a number of tunnels, or semi-theatres, whose precipitous walls of sand rise nearly ten feet from the ground, while the north wind, passing over the field within, clears it completely from the sand, which would gradually fill up the cavity. But the rapidity with which this moveable sand-architecture alters its position is manifested by the single tracks on the caravan-road, which are frequently lost under the very centre of the highest sand-hills. About eight o’clock in the evening we left Gebel Barqugres on our left hand, and halted for the night, about ten o’clock, at a short distance from the Gilif range.

The 3rd May we marched through the Wadi Guah el ʾalem, which is covered with a great many trees, into the heart of the mountains, which are chiefly composed of porphyritic rock, and like all primitive mountains, on account of their longer retention of the precipitated humidity and the small amount of rain, are more covered with vegetation than the sandy plains. In three hours we reached the Wadi Gaqedûl, thickly covered with Gesch and thorny trees of every description, Sont, Somra, and Serha. We met some herds of camels and goats grazing here, especially near the water, which had also attracted numerous birds, among others ravens and pigeons. The water is said to be retained for the space of three years, without any fresh accession in this broad, low-situated grotto, about 300 feet in diameter, surrounded, and for the most part covered in, by lofty walls of granite. It was, however, so dirty, and had such an abominable smell, that it was even despised by my thirsty ass. The drinkable water is situated higher up in the mountains, and is difficult of access.

We here quitted the northerly direction into which we had been led by the well, since leaving Gebel Nusf, and continued for several hours very much to the west along the Gilif range, into the Wadi el Mehet, then traversing the perfectly dry bed of the valley (Chôr) of El Ammer, from which the road to Ambukôl diverges, we halted past ten o’clock at night in the Wadi el Uer, which was named by others the Wadi Abu Harod. From this point, the Gilif range retreated for some distance farther towards the east, and only left a succession of sandstone hills in the foreground, along which we rode the following morning. In the W.N.W. we saw other mountain ranges, which are no longer called Gilif; one single two-pointed mountain among them, which stood out from the rest, was called Miglik. The great inlet of the Gilif chain, filled with sandstone rock, is two hours broad;[47] the road then continues to lead in a more northerly direction, into the midst of the range itself, which is here called Gebel el Mágeqa, after the well of Mágeqa.

Before entering this mountain range, we came to a place covered with heaps of stones, which might be supposed to be barrows, though no one lies buried beneath them. Whenever the date merchants come this road, many of whom we met the following morning, with their large round plaited straw baskets, their camel-drivers at this spot demand a trifle from them. He who will give nothing, has a cenotaph such as this erected to him, out of the surrounding stones, as a bad omen for his hard-heartedness. We met with a similar assemblage of tombs in the desert of Korusko. We reached this well soon after nine o’clock, but without halting ascended a wild valley to a considerable height, where we encamped about mid-day.

The whole road was amply supplied with trees, and thereby offered an agreeable variety. The Sont, or gum-trees, were rare here; the Somra appeared most frequently, which begins to spread out directly from the ground in several strong branches, and terminates with a flat covering of thinly-scattered boughs and small green leaves, so that it often forms a completely regular inverted cone, which at this spot sometimes attains to about the height of fifteen feet. Near it grows the Heglik, with irregular boughs round the stem, and single tufts of leaves and twigs, like the pear-tree. The thornless Serha, on the other hand, has all the branches surrounded with quite small green leaves, like moss, and the Tondub has no leaves at all, but in their place only small green little twigs, growing zig-zag, and almost as close as foliage, while the Sálame shrub consists of long flexible twigs covered with green leaves and long green thorns.

About four o’clock we set out, and descended very gradually from the heights. There are also a number of wells in the Wadi Kalas, with very good rain water, about twenty feet in depth; we pitched our encampment for the night at this spot, although we arrived there soon after sunset. The animals were watered, and the skins filled. The whole of the plateau is well supplied with trees and shrubs, and inhabited by men and animals.

Our road on the following day preserved the same character, as long as we were wandering between the beautiful and rugged escarpments of porphyry. After proceeding a couple of hours farther, we came to two other wells, also called Kalas, with little, but good water. From this spot, a road diverged in a north-easterly direction to the well of Meröe, in the Wadi Abu Dôm, probably so called also from a white rock.

Three hours farther, having passed Gebel Abrak, we entered the great Wadi Abu Dôm, which we now pursued in a west north-west direction. This remarkable valley passes uninterruptedly by the side of a long mountain chain from the Nile at El Mechêref to the village of Abu Dôm, which is situated obliquely opposite Mount Barkal. When we consider that the upper north-eastern opening of this valley, which traverses the whole Peninsula and its mountain ranges, lies nearly opposite the mouth of the Atbara, which flows into the Nile in the same direction above Mechêref, we cannot help suspecting that once, though perhaps not in historical times, there must have been a connection by water, which cut off the largest portion of the great eastern bend of the Nile, now formed by the rocky elevated plateau at Abu Hammed, driving back the stream above a degree and a half towards the south, contrary to its common direction. The name of the valley is derived from the single Dôm Palms, which are here and there found in it. The mountain chain, which passes along the north of the valley, is completely separated from the range, through which we had hitherto come. At the entrance of this valley we left the solid ground of which the mountain is composed, and the loose sands again prevailed, without however overpowering the still far from scanty vegetation.

In the afternoon, after leaving on our left hand a side valley, Om Schebak, which contains well-water, we encamped for the night as early as nine o’clock. The following morning we came to the deep well of Hanik, and halted about mid-day at a second well, which was called Om Saiale, after the tree of that name.

At this spot, I left the caravan with Jussuf, to reach Barkal by a circuitous road by Nuri, situated on this side of the river somewhat higher up. In an hour and a half we arrived at some considerable ruins of a large Christian convent in the Wadi Gazâl, so called from the gazelles, which dig in great numbers for water here in the Chôr (bed of the valley). The church was built as high as the windows of white, well-hewn sandstone, and above that of unburnt bricks. The walls are covered with a strong coating of plaster, and are painted in the interior. The vaulted apse of the three-naved Basilica is situated, as usual, towards the east, the entrances behind the western transept are towards the north and south; all the arches of the doors, the windows, and between the pillars, are round: above the doors, Coptic crosses are frequently exhibited, more or less ornamented, whose most simple form ✙ may be compared with the ancient Egyptian symbol of Life. The whole church is a genuine type of all the Coptic churches which I have seen in ruins, and I therefore add the small ground plan just as Erbkam took it down.

The building is above eighty feet long, and exactly half as broad. The outer wall to the north has fallen in. The church is surrounded by a great court, whose walls of enclosure, as well as the numerous convent cells, some of which have vaulted roofs, are built of rough blocks, and are in good preservation; the largest of them, a dwelling forty-six feet long, is situated in front of the western side of the church, and is only separated from it by a small narrow court; no doubt it belonged to the prior, and a special side-entrance led from it into the church. Two churchyards are situated on the southern side of the convent; that to the west, about forty paces removed from the church, contained a number of tombs, which consisted simply of a collection of black stones heaped up together. The eastern churchyard was situated nearer to the buildings, and was remarkable from possessing a considerable amount of tombstones with inscriptions, partly in Greek, partly in Coptic, which will induce me to pay a second visit to this remarkable convent before we leave Barkal. I counted more than twenty stones with inscriptions, some of which had sustained much injury, and about as many tablets in burnt earth, with inscriptions scratched into them, though most of them were broken to pieces. They contain the most southern Greek inscriptions which have been hitherto known in the Nile region, with the exception of those of Adulis and Axum in Abyssinia. There is no doubt that the Greek language following in the wake of Christianity, and the traces of which we might have ourselves pursued in structural remains even beyond Soba, was at one time employed and understood, at least for religious objects, by the natives in the flourishing districts, even as far as the interior of Abyssinia; nevertheless these monumental inscriptions (none of them, as far as I could see in a hasty survey, in the Ethiopian language) allow us to infer that the inhabitants of the convent were Greek Coptics who had immigrated.

About five o’clock I left my companions, who went direct to Abu Dôm, and I immediately set out for Nuri. We soon saw Mount Barkal shining blue in the distance; it rises singly and precipitously from the surrounding plain, and has a broad platform, and, by its peculiar form and position, at once attracts attention; about six o’clock the Nile valley, which is here of considerable breadth, lay spread out before us, a sight always longed for after the desert journey, and which, like the approaching misty coast after a sea voyage, keeps the attention of the traveller in a state of joyful expectation.

Our road, however, now turned towards the right, and led among the mountains, which stretch out into the plain, and are still composed of masses of porphyry. When we stood directly in front of Barkal, I observed on our left hand a great number of black barrows, either round, or pyramidal in form, similar to those I previously saw at Meröe. It was probably the general cemetery of Napata, which even in the time of Herodotus was the royal residence of the Ethiopian kings, and was situated on the farther bank; a considerable town must therefore at one time have been placed on the left bank of the Nile, which would also explain the position of the Pyramids of Nuri on the same side of the river. Nevertheless, I have not been able to discover any mound of ruins in accordance with this surmise. I only saw some similar to these, though not of considerable extent, behind the village of Duêm and at Abu Dôm, which were called Sanab. It was not before half-past seven that we arrived in the neighbourhood of this considerable group of Pyramids, and we quartered ourselves for the night in the house of the Sheikh of the village.

Before sunrise I was already at the Pyramids, of which I counted twenty-five. They are some of them grander than those at Meröe, but are built of soft sandstone, and, therefore, have suffered much from exposure to the weather; only very few of them had a portion of the smooth casing preserved. The largest shows, again, the same structure in the interior which I have referred to in the Pyramids of Lower Egypt; a smaller internal Pyramid was enlarged in all its dimensions by a superimposed stone casing. In one place, on the west side, the smoothed upper surface of the internal structure was most clearly disclosed beneath the well-joined external covering, which is eight feet thick. Little is to be seen here of ante-chambers such as there are in Meröe and at the Pyramids of Barkal; I think I have only found the remains of two; the rest, if they ever existed, must have been completely demolished, or buried beneath the rubbish. Some of the Pyramids, however, stand so immediately against each other, that, on that account alone, an ante-chamber, at least on the last side where it might have been expected, could not have existed. Besides this, the Pyramids are generally built quite massively of square blocks; I could only perceive, on the one situated most to the east, that it was filled up with black unhewn stones. There is also a truncated Pyramid like that of Daschûr; but here the lower, and not, as in that instance, the upper angle of inclination, must have been the one originally intended, as the former is scarcely sufficient for a series of steps. Although, unfortunately, I had been unable to discover any inscriptions, with the exception of one single small fragment of granite, yet much seems to favour the idea that this group of Pyramids is of an older date, while those of Barkal are more recent.

Soon after ten o’clock I reached Abu Dôm, where I found my companions already arrived. The whole of the next day was occupied in crossing the Nile, and we did not reach Barkal before sunset. Georgi, to my delight, had arrived here some days previously from Dongola. We now more than ever require his assistance, because drawings must be made of whatever we meet with here. The Ethiopian royal residence of King Tahraka, who reigned at the same time in Egypt, and left buildings behind him, the same who in the time of Hezekiah marched to Palestine against Sennacherib, is too important for us not to exhaust it, if possible, of its treasures.

LETTER XXIII.

Mount Barkal, the 28th May, 1844.

During the next few days I expect the arrival of the transport boats which I begged of Hassan Pascha, and which set off eleven days ago; they are to receive our Ethiopian treasures, and to convey us to Dongola. The results of our researches here are not without importance. Upon the whole, they are quite confirmatory of the opinion that Ethiopian art is only a late offshoot from the Egyptian. It does not commence under native rulers before the time of Tahraka. The little which is extant from a still earlier period belongs to the Egyptian conquerors and their artists. Here, at least, it is confined solely to one temple, which Ramses the Great erected to Amen-Ra. It is true that the name of Amenophis III. has been discovered on several of the granite Rams, as well as on Lord Prudhoe’s Lion in London, but there are good grounds to suppose that these magnificent Colossi did not originally belong to a temple here. They were only brought here at a later period, it appears, from Soleb, probably by the Ethiopian king whose name is found engraved on the breast of the above-mentioned lion, and which, from the incorrect omission of a sign, has been hitherto read Amen Asru in place of Mi Amen Asru.

Nevertheless, I consider these Rams so remarkable, especially on account of their inscriptions, that I have determined to carry away the best of them. The fat wether probably weighs nearly 150 cwt. However, in the space of three sultry days, it has been safely dragged on rollers to the river bank by ninety-two Fellahs, and it there waits for embarkation. Several other monuments besides are to accompany us from this spot, as we need no longer fear their weight since the desert is behind us. I will only mention an Ethiopian altar, four feet high, with the Shields of the king who erected it; a statue of Isis, on whose plinth there is an Ethiopian-demotic inscription of eighteen lines; another also from Méraui; as well as the peculiar monument bearing the name of Amenophis III., which was copied by Cailliaud, and was thought to be a foot, but, in truth, is the lower portion of the sacred sparrow-hawk. All these monuments are of black granite.[48]

The town of Napata, the name of which I have now frequently found in hieroglyphics, and even on the monuments of Tahraka, was situated, no doubt, somewhat farther down the river, near the present town of Méraui, where considerable mounds of ruins still testify to this. The Temples and Pyramids were alone situated near the mountain. This remarkable mass of rock bears the name of the “Sacred Mount” 𓈋𓐰𓏤𓃂 in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. The god who was peculiarly worshipped here was Ammon-Ra.

On the 18th of May we accomplished our long intended second visit to the Wadi Gazâl; we took an impression of all the Greek and Coptic inscriptions of the cemetery, and carried away with us such as appeared in some degree legible.

We feel now, more than ever, what the torrid zone will be in the hot season which we are now approaching. The thermometer generally rises after mid-day to 37° and 38° R. (115-117¼° Fahr.), and is occasionally even above 40° (122° Fahr.) in the shade. I frequently found the burning sand beneath our feet as much as 53° (151° Fahr.); and anything made of metal can only be laid hold of in the open air with a cloth. All our drawings and papers are abundantly bedewed with drops of perspiration. But the most oppressive thing is the hot wind, which, instead of cooling us, drives a regular furnace heat into our faces, and the nights are not much more refreshing. The thermometer, towards evening, falls down to 33° (106¼° Fahr.), and by the morning is as low as 28° (95° Fahr.). Our only refreshment is in taking frequent baths in the Nile, which, however, in Europe, would be considered warm baths. Between times we have more than once had tempests, with violent storms of wind loaded with sand, and even a few drops of rain fell in the midst of them. Yesterday, a gust of wind beat our tent down to the ground, and at the same moment, owing to its violence, our large arbour, built of solid stems of trees and palm-branches, fell upon our heads, while we were eating within it; we could scarcely enjoy our dinner from the strong spicing of sand. Violent squalls and whirlwinds seem to be peculiar to this country, or to this season, for often we see four or five high columns of sand rushing up at once to the sky, at different distances, like great volcanoes. There are few snakes here; but, on that very account, more scorpions and hideous great spiders, which are dreaded by the natives even more than the scorpions. We now sleep, on account of the venomous vermin, on anqarebs, which we have had brought out of the village.

LETTER XXIV.

Dongola, the 15th June, 1844.

Before we left Barkal, I undertook another excursion of three days up the Nile to the Cataract country, which we had cut off by our desert journey. I was anxious to become acquainted with the character of this district also, the only part of the Nile valley through which we had not travelled with the caravan. We went by water as far as Kasinqar, and spent the night there. At this point bold masses of granite rise up majestically, which divide the river into numerous islands, and impede the navigation. The following morning, before the camels were ready, we reached, not without difficulty, the island of Ischischi; it is surrounded by violent and dangerous currents. We here found ruins of walls, and buildings built of bricks, and sometimes of stones, both hewn and unhewn, by which we may conclude there were fortifications on the island at different periods of time; but there were no inscriptions, except one single one, consisting of a few incomprehensible signs.

We did not mount our camels in Kasinqar before nine o’clock, and then rode along the right bank between the granite rocks, which leave but a small space for a scanty vegetation. Almost all the numerous, though generally small, islands refresh the eye by green groups of trees and cultivated bits of ground, which are cut up in a variety of ways by the black rocks. There would be scarcely room in this rocky channel for villages of any considerable size, still less sufficient to maintain them. Those that exist are distributed in houses standing singly, and small groups of houses far apart, but which bear one and the same name up to certain frontier points. The village plot of ground belonging to Kasinqar terminated with a beautiful group of palm-trees. We then entered the territory of Kûʾeh, after that followed the long tract of Hamdâb, which includes the island of Mérui or Meröe, which is a quarter of an hour in extent. Here also the name is explained by its appearance. It is very lofty, sometimes forty feet above the surface of the water, but completely barren and uninhabited; and with the exception of the low black rock, which at times is covered by the water, the whole island is totally white. This chiefly arises on account of the dazzling moving sands with which it is covered; but, what is still more remarkable, the rock which projects from them is also white, either on account of great veins of quartz, similar to what I had observed in another strikingly white rock which lay on our road in the province of Robatat, and which was called Hager Mérui by the camel-drivers, or because the weathered granite had here assumed this colour. The name of the town of Méraui, near Barkal, is perhaps derived from the same origin; in that instance the white rocky precipices descending from Méraui to the river, which, on our departure, especially struck me by their colour, must have given occasion to it. On the opposite bank, Gebel Kongeli approaches close to the river, which is also called Gebel Mérui, from the island, and in the same manner the rushing cataract a little above the island has received the name of Schellâl Mérui.

About four o’clock we arrived at the ruins of Hellet el Bib, which in the distance looks exactly like a castle of the middle ages. It rises from a low rock, whose ridge intersects the court and the building itself, so that one portion of it looks like an upper story to the other. The whole structure is composed of unburnt, but well and carefully made, bricks, which were firmly joined together with a little lime, and covered with a coating of the same. There are various larger and smaller chambers in the interior, some of them furnished with semicircular niches, and arched doors. The walls on the western side were fifteen feet high. The outer wall of the court was of unhewn stones, but carefully built up to the height of between five and eight feet; it embraced a tolerably regular square space, each side of which was about sixty-five paces long.

This small castle, though of considerable importance in this district, reminded us much, by its niches and arched doors, of the Christian architecture of the earlier centuries, but yet did not seem to have had any religious destination. Perhaps, therefore, it only belonged to the flourishing times of the powerful and warlike Schaiqîeh tribes, which, according to tradition, are said to have first wandered from Arabia into these parts several hundred years ago. In the time of the Egyptian conquest the country was under three Schaiqîeh princes, one of whom might have resided here. The neighbourhood, besides, was somewhat more favoured by nature, the banks more level, and covered with thicket, which here and there bordered some of the land capable of cultivation. After I had drawn out the plan of the building we started on our return about nine o’clock in the evening, by the light of a full moon, and we considerably shortened our journey by taking the road through the desert from the island of Saffi. About eleven o’clock we halted for the night, on an open sandy spot of ground of the great granite plain. About five o’clock we again started betwixt moonlight and morning dawn, and, as early as nine, we reached our boat at Kasinqar.

Near this place I met with a new tree in a small Wadi, which led to the river. It was called Bân, and is said to grow nowhere in this country except in this Wadi, called after it Chôr el Bân, and in one other Wadi near Méraui.[49] A strong stem, with a white bark, not unlike our walnut-tree, with some side stems and branches just as white, rose short and knotty from the ground. Most of the branches were now bare; only a few of them had foliage, if we choose to call the long green twigs collected in little bunches by that name. The fruits are long, roundish, furrowed pods, which split into three parts, when the black-shelled nuts contained within (of the size of small hazel nuts), five to ten in number, are ripe; the white oily kernel, sweet as a nut, though also somewhat acrid, is good to eat, and is much liked, but it is more particularly used by the inhabitants in the immediate neighbourhood for pressing oil out of it. The blossoms are said to be yellow, and to grow in clusters.

About mid-day the Sheikh of Nuri came on board our boat, and I collected some more information from him about the Cataract country. In the province of Schaiqîeh, and the adjoining one of Monassir, eight separate cataracts are reckoned; the first, Schellâl Gerêndid, at the island of Ischischi; then Schellâl Terâi, at Kûʾeh; Schellâl Mérui; Schellâl Dahák, at the island of Uli; Schellâl el Edermîeh; e’ Kabenât; e’ Tanarâi; and Om Derás. Afterwards the rocky country continues uninterruptedly to El Kab, from which point the river has very little fall as far as Schellâl Mogrât, in the great bend towards Berber.

At the present day nothing but Arabic is spoken in the whole of this district; but some recollection of the earlier Nubian population has been distinctly retained, since even now a number of villages are distinguished from the others as Nuba places. The following were mentioned to me as such, above the province of Dongola: Gebel Maqál and Zûma on the right bank, and near it the island of Massaui, which also still bears the Nubian name of Abranarti; then upon the left bank Belled e’ Nuba, between Debbe and Abu Dôm, Haluf or Nuri and Bellel; opposite to these, Gerf e’ Schech and Kasinqar. Then there is a gap in the statement, and it refers to places up the river to Chôsch e’ Gurûf, a little below the island of Mogrât, to Salame and Darmali, two villages between Mechêref and Dâmer; lastly, there is another Belled e’ Nuba to the north of Gôs Burri, in the province of Metamme.

On the 4th of June we at length left Barkal, after having placed the Ram and the other heavy monuments on two transport boats specially devoted to that purpose.

We stopped the first night in Abu Dôm, on the left bank. I had heard of a Fakir in this place, who was said to be in possession of written records about the tribes of the Schaiqîeh Arabs. He was an intelligent, and, for this country, a learned man, who would not indeed yield up to me the few sheets of his own copy which he actually possessed, but immediately set to work to transcribe them for me.

The following morning we first landed in Tanqassi, situated an hour and a half below Abu Dôm, where we were told we should find ruins. A Fakir Daha, who belonged to the Korêsch, the tribe of the Prophet, accompanied us to the, now at least insignificant, mound of bricks. We passed his hereditary sepulchre, a small building with a cupola that had been built by his grandfather, but had already received in addition to him, his father and several relatives. From this spot I descried some mounds in the distance, which the Fakir pronounced to be natural. We, however, rode up to them, and a short half hour from the river found more than twenty Pyramids of tolerable size, now apparently only consisting of black earth, but originally built of Nile bricks. Single stones lay around, and on the eastern side, at a short distance, there were always two small heaps of stones, which seem to have belonged to the ante-chamber, and were perhaps connected with the Pyramid by brick walls; but nowhere could we find hewn stones, and still less inscriptions.

We also found a field of Pyramids at Kurru, on the farther bank, although but little could be discovered of the ruins of a town. Of the two most considerable Pyramids, the largest, which still bears the strange name of Qantur, was 35 feet high; and towards the south-east we saw the remains of an ante-chamber. Twenty-one smaller ones are grouped round these two, four of which, like the largest Pyramid, were entirely built of sandstone, but are now in great part demolished; others only consisted of black field stones. Lastly, to the west of all of them, the ground plan is still to be seen of a large Pyramid, which was probably once completely massive, and has been on that account demolished; the foundations were laid in the rock. It appears that these Pyramids also, which, by their solid structure, are quite distinct from those lying opposite, belonged to a royal Dynasty of Napata, for which reason the absence of any considerable ruins of a town would be easier to explain here than on the opposite side of the river.

Three-quarters of an hour farther down the river is situated the village of Zûma, on the right bank. Near it, in the direction of the mountains, there rises an old fortress, with towers of defence, called Karat Negil, whose front walls were only destroyed and thrown down about fifty or sixty years ago, when the inhabitants of Zûma settled here. The name is derived from an ancient King of the country, Negil, in whose time the surrounding land, now dry, was still within reach of the Nile, and is said to have been fertile.

The first thing that I saw on the road to the fortress was again a number of Pyramids, eight of which are still 20 feet high; including those which are destroyed, and which in general seem to have been those which were most massive, we found above thirty; the ancient stone quarries are still to be seen which furnished the material for the Pyramids.

These three fields of Pyramids, that of Tanqassi, Kurru, and Zûma, or Karat Negil, whose sites were paced, and carefully noted down by Erbkam, are planted on an extent of ground of but a few hours in circumference, and indicate the existence of a strong and flourishing population in this district in Heathen times; on the other hand, in the district immediately succeeding this, and more or less throughout the whole province of Dongola, we found numerous remains of Christian churches.

On the 7th of June we visited three of these, situated at short distances from each other, all on the right bank of the river. Two hours and a half from Zûma we first come to Bachît. Here the precipitous rock of the desert advances close upon the river, and bears a fortress, no doubt, also dating from Christian times, with eighteen semicircular projecting towers of defence. In the interior, beneath barren heaps of rubbish, there were still the ruins of a church, which at that time seems to have everywhere formed the central point of the stronghold. Here it was only 63 feet long, and the whole nave rested on four columns and two pilasters; nevertheless, the plan corresponded perfectly with the general type.

The church of Magal, which is situated only one half hour farther on, must have been considerably larger, as we found beneath the ruins monolithic granite columns 13½ feet high from below the capital, which is separated from it, and is 1½ foot high and 2 feet in diameter; it appears to have had five naves.

From this point we reached Gebel Dêqa in one hour. Strong, massive walls again surrounded a Christian fortress, which was situated on the projecting sandstone rock, and in the interior exhibited the ruins of several buildings of considerable size; among them, those of a small, three-naved church, very similar to the one at Bachît.

This is the frontier village of the province of Schaiqîeh, in the direction of Dongola, the last place coming from the south, whose inhabitants speak Arabic. Formerly the frontier of the Nubian population and language, undoubtedly, was as far up as the cataracts above Barkal. This seems to have occasioned the accumulation of strong posts in this district, and probably also the strong fortification of the island of Ischischi.

Christianity penetrated to the Nubians from Abyssinia as early as the sixth century; they were at that time a powerful people, till their Christian priest-kings, in the fourteenth century, yielded to the encroachment of Islamism. We must date the erection of the numerous churches from those days, the ruins of which we have found scattered from Wadi Gazâl, northwards, throughout the whole province.

The same day we went as far as Ambukôl, at the extremity of the western bend of the Nile, and halted here for the night. The following day we reached Tifar, and again visited the ruins of an old fortress with the remains of a church.

On the road we met the boat of Hassan Pascha, which was on its way to Méraui. We each fired many salutes as a mutual greeting, and anchored beside each other. The Pascha inquired with interest about the treasures which he suspected existed in the Pyramids of Barkal, and with the greatest courtesy promised us all that we could desire to promote our journey and its objects. After returning our visit, we parted with fresh salutes.

The 10th June we reached Old Dongola, the former royal residence of this Christian kingdom. The extensive ruins of the town, however, now testify to little more than the considerable extent which it once embraced. On a hill in the neighbourhood, which commanded an admirable panorama, now stands a mosque. An Arabic inscription on marble proves that it was opened on the 20 Rabî el auel, of the year 717 (1st June, 1317), after the victory of Safeddin Abdallah e’ Nâsir over the infidels.

As we have had very little opportunity of improving our monumental knowledge since leaving Barkal, and had much leisure in our boat, I employed myself specially during this time with a comparison and research, as far as lay in my power, of the Nubian language, which is spoken in this part of the country. It presents very remarkable linguistic phenomena, but does not exhibit the slightest similarity with the Egyptian language. My belief is, that the whole race penetrated into the Nile valley from the south-west at a late period. We have now a servant from Derr, the capital of Lower Nubia, who speaks tolerably good Italian, is animated and intelligent, and is a great assistance to me in acquiring a knowledge of his own dialect, the Mahass. I have sometimes tormented him with questions in the boat for five or six entire hours in one day, for it is no small trouble for both of us to understand each other about grammatical forms and inflections. He has, at any rate, at the same time acquired more respect for his own language, here everywhere considered bad, and inferior to the Arabic, and which it is thought one ought rather to be ashamed of.

Yesterday, after sailing three days from Old Dongola, we at length reached New Dongola, usually only called by the Arabs El Orde (the Camp); we had the great joy of receiving here the large packet of letters, whose arrival had already been announced to us on the road by Hassan Pascha. We now look forward with fresh courage and renewed confidence to the last difficult portion of our southern journey. For from this point we must again, alas! quit our boats, and mount the far more uncomfortable ships of the desert. The Cataract country before us can only be navigated during the short season of the highest flood, and even then not without danger. Nevertheless, our richly freighted stone-boat must undergo this dangerous trial, as naturally it is impossible to think of transporting our Ram and the other monuments from Barkal by land.

We shall besides be unable to leave this as soon as we otherwise should have done, owing to the total change in the arrangements for our journey during the next five or six weeks. Yet we shall be obliged to separate from our boat of burden, as it must seize the proper moments of high water, which first occurs a few weeks hence.

LETTER XXV.

Dongola, the 23rd June, 1844.

Yesterday we returned from an excursion of four days to the nearest cataract, which we were able to reach by water. We were rewarded far beyond our expectations, for we found a number of ancient Pharaonic monuments, the only ones in the whole province of Dongola, and some of them of extreme antiquity.

On the island of Argo we discovered the first Egyptian sculptures from the Hyksos period; and at Kermân, on the right bank, the traces of a town extending far across the plain, with an immense necropolis attached to it, in which two huge monumental tombs were distinguished above all the others, one of which was called Kermân (like the village), the other Defûfa. They are not Pyramids, but of an oblong form; the first 150 by 66 feet, the second 132 by 66 feet in extent, and about 40 feet high, built massively of good, solid unburnt bricks of Nile mud; each provided with an outer building, which might have corresponded to the temples in front of the Egyptian Pyramids. Several fragments of statues from the best ancient style scattered round them, some, having good hieroglyphics upon them, testify their great antiquity, and lead us to suppose that the oldest Egyptian settlement of any importance on Ethiopian territory must have been on this spot: it was probably occasioned by the Egyptian power having been driven back towards Ethiopia during the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt. No doubt the enormous granite quarries which we found on the right bank, some hours to the north of Kermân, opposite the island of Tombos, at the entrance of the Cataract country, were connected with this. The inscriptions on the rock contain Shields of the 17th Dynasty, and an inscription of eighteen lines, mentions the second year of Tuthmosis I.

I have also, here in Dongola, begun to study the Kong´âra language of Dar Fûr. A negro soldier, a native of that dreaded warlike country, with woolly hair, and thick projecting lips, and who we took with us last year from Korusko to Wadi Halfa, as a military attendant, instead of Ibrahim Aga, who had been sent away, found us out here again, and was given up to me by the Pascha for my studies in language. He promises well, but in half an hour I am obliged to exchange him with the Nubian. The Kong´âra language is quite different from the Nubian, and in particular points seems to me to show a stronger analogy with certain South African languages.

I was rejoiced here to see the fortress built by Ehrenberg in 1822, which has suffered indeed by the inundations, but still always serves as a dwelling for the governor, now Hassan Pascha. We shall also leave a monumental structure behind us, for Hassan Pascha has requested Erbkam to give him the plan of a powder-magazine, and to seek out a suitable site for it.

LETTER XXVI.

Korusko, the 17th August, 1844.

We did not accomplish our departure from Dongola before the 2nd of July. We went slowly down the western side of the river. That very day we passed over extensive fields of ruins, the dim remains of once flourishing towns, whose names have died away. The first we found were opposite Argonsene, others at Koï, and at Mosch. The following day we arrived at Hannik, opposite Tombos, in the province of Máhas. Here the Cataract country begins immediately, and a fresh Nuba dialect, which extends as far down as Derr and Korusko. The Nile, on the whole, retains its northerly direction as far as a high mountain, named after a former conqueror, Ali Bersi. Early on the third day we left this on our left hand. It is situated on the sharp bend of the river, from north-west to due east, from which point it is usual to cut off the largest portion of the province of Máhas by a desert road running in a northerly direction. We, however, followed the turns of the river, and dismounted near two old castles on the bank, at a grove of palm-trees, under whose shade we rested during the sultry mid-day hours. The nearest of these castles, so romantically situated between the fissures of the rock, I find differently named on every map, as Fakir Effendi (Cailliaud); Fakir el Bint, from Bint, the girl (Hoskins); Fakir Bender, from Bender, the capital (Arrowsmith). In the dialect of this place, however, it is called Fakir Fenti, or, in that of Dongola, Fakir Benti; and it is so named from the palm-trees at its foot, Fenti, Benti, being the names for palm and date.

On the 4th of July we got as far as Sêse, a hill which bears the remnants of a fortress. Our servant, Ahmed, from Derr, related to us that, at the death of every king, his successor was led up to its summit, and there adorned with a peculiar royal cap. Castles like that of Sêse, many of which we saw, far and near, on the plateau beyond the river district, indicate an early, numerous, and warlike population, which has now almost entirely disappeared. The ruins, situated a quarter of an hour south of Mount Sêse, are called Sesebi. Here stood an ancient temple, of which only four columns stand erect, with palm capitals. They have the Shields of Sethôs I., the most southern we have met with belonging to this king. Near these temple remains are the ruins of a large town, on an artificially raised piece of ground, of which the regular encircling walls may still be recognised.

On the 6th July we arrived at Solb (Soleb), where a temple of considerable importance, and still in good preservation, was erected by Amenophis III. to his own genius, the deified Ra-neb-ma (Amenophis).[50] The rich representations belonging to this temple—the same to which once also belonged our own Ram from Barkal, and Lord Prudhoe’s Lion—gave us materials for almost five days’ work. We did not again set off before the 11th July.

Scarcely one hour to the north of this is situated Gebel Dosche, a sandstone rock, projecting into the river, in which, on the river side, a grotto is cut, which contains representations of the third Tuthmosis.

The very same evening we arrived at Sedeïnga, where Amenophis III. erected a small temple to his own wife, Tii. In the midst of the picturesque heap of ruins, thrown one above another, rises one single column, which has remained standing. A great necropolis stretches out towards the west.

On the 13th of July we halted near a Schôna (such is the name given to the station store-houses maintained by government), opposite Mount Abir or Qabir, a little below the northern point of the island of Sai. On the other side of the river, not exactly opposite, stands the village of Amara, and near it the ruins of a temple. I was not a little surprised to recognise directly on the columns (six of which are still preserved) the fat Queen of Naga and Meröe, with her husband. This temple was built by them, an important testimony to the widely-extended dominion of that Ethiopian Dynasty. In the necropolis to the south of the temple I also observed fragments of inscriptions in the above-mentioned demotic Ethiopian alphabetic writing, such as I had also found near Sedeïnga.

The following day, after having visited the island of Sai, where we had found the scanty remains of a temple with inscriptions of Tuthmosis III. and Amenophis II., besides the remains of a town and a Coptic church, we proceeded farther, and on the 15th of July reached Dal, which forms the frontier between the provinces of Sukkôt and Batn el hagér (Stone-belly); at night we encamped at the Cataract of Kalfa.

From this point our road passed near the hot sulphur spring of Okmeh, to which I turned off from our caravan road with Abeken. It led us from the Schôna, where we separated, along the rocky bank, above an hour backwards to a square tower, which has been erected over the spring, and which is now called after its builder, Hammâm seidna Solimân. The tower, which is 9 feet in diameter, and in the inside 4 feet wide, is now half filled with sand and earth; the stream of water, about the thickness of a man’s wrist, issues from the eastern side of the tower; on the other side, within the space of a square foot, sixteen little whirlpools rise out of the sand, and here, where the water is hottest, it is not quite 44° R. (131° Fahr.). It tastes sulphureous, and a white substance is deposited on the earth round the spring. Every year the river rises above it, and even over the tower, which stands half-way up the river bank. The surface of the water had now only risen to about the height of a man, and had not yet reached the spring. A rough hole is dug into the rubbish for the sick who come here, and is covered with branches to keep back the stream. Somewhat farther down the river another small spring of water appears, which has a temperature of 40° R. (122° Fahr.) when it issues from the ground. The saying goes, that Okasche, a friend of the Prophet’s, was killed in a campaign in the south, his corpse floated down hither, and then disappeared in the rock on the opposite bank; there, even now, at some distance up the river, his grave is shown; a tree marks the spot.

On the 17th July we encamped at the temple of Semneh. The village consists only of a few straw huts, which are shaded by some date palms, but the number of potsherds in the neighbourhood prove that a place of some importance stood here formerly. The temple is surrounded with very ancient fortifications, of immense dimensions; its erection dates even as far back as the Old Monarchy under Sesurtesen III., a king of the 12th Dynasty. It appears that this king first enlarged the limits of the Egyptian Monarchy as far as this point; indeed it has been found that at a later period he was himself worshipped in these districts as a divinity of the country. The temple which Tuthmosis III. erected here in the New Monarchy, is also dedicated to him, and to the god Tetun. On the right bank, also, at the village of Kummeh, there are still some old fortifications, and within them a still larger temple, which was even begun by Tuthmosis II.

The most important discovery which we made here, and which I shall only mention briefly, because I am at this moment sending a more detailed account of it to Ehrenberg, is a number of short rock inscriptions which mark the highest rises of the Nile during a series of years under the government of Amenemha III. (Mœris), and of his immediate successors. These statements have in some measure a historical value, as they decidedly confirm my supposition that the Sebekhoteps followed immediately after the 12th Dynasty, and they are in some measure peculiarly interesting for the geological history of the Nile valley; because they prove that the river, above 4000 years ago, rose more than 24 feet higher than now, and thereby must have produced totally different conditions in the inundation and in the whole surface of the ground both above and below this spot. Our examination of this remarkable locality, with its temples and rock-inscriptions, occupied us twelve whole days.[51]

On the 29th July we went from Semneh to Abke, and the following day visited the old castle situated to the north of it, which is called el Kenissa, the church, and formerly therefore probably contained one. From the top of this castle we had the most magnificent prospect of the chief cataracts of the whole country. Three great falls could be distinguished from the smaller ones in the broad, rocky island valley, and the eye passed over several hundred islands, as far as the black mountain range on the opposite bank. But towards the north the wide plain spread out, which extends from Wadi Halfa to Philæ. The succession of the different kinds of rock was most distinctly visible as we descended from the last ridge of the rocks on the banks into the great plain, from which some single cones of sandstone alone protruded, as if from the bed of a primitive ocean. Here undoubtedly are the sources of the everlasting sand, which, driven by the northern wind among the primitive mountains, rendered our road to Semneh very difficult.

On the 1st of August we left Wadi Halfa in three boats, and from this point again sailed through a country with which we were already acquainted. The following morning we came to Abu Simbel, where we spent nine days, in order to become perfectly acquainted with the copious representations on both the rock-temples. I long searched in vain for the remarkable Greek inscription which Leake had found on one of the four great Ramses Colossi, till I fortunately re-discovered it, buried tolerably deep, on the left leg of the second Colossus from the south. I was obliged to make a great excavation to obtain a perfect impression of it on paper. I see no reason why we should not take this antique inscription for what it states itself to be, namely, memoranda of the Greek mercenaries, who came hither with Psammeticus I. in pursuit of the rebellious warriors. Beneath the other inscriptions on the Colossus, I also found some Phœnician inscriptions.

After we had visited from this point some other rock-monuments on the opposite bank at Abahuda and Schataui, we quitted Abu Simbel on the 11th of July, and next halted on the right bank near Ibrîm, ancient Primis, the name of which I have also found in hieroglyphics written P.R.M. Ibrîm is situated on the left bank opposite Anîbe, near which we discovered, and made a drawing of, only one private tomb from the period of the 20th Dynasty, but it was in good preservation. Thence we proceeded to Derr, where we got the largest despatch of letters we have yet received, so that it was a real holiday for us. With these treasures we hastened past Amada to this spot Korusko, whose delightful group of palms had won our hearts during our long, though involuntary, detention there last year. We have fixed upon the present Sunday to celebrate with pleasant recollections the happy termination of our southern journey. Our boats lie quietly beside the bank.

LETTER XXVII.

Philæ, the 1st September, 1844.

I am only now able to finish my journal from Korusko, whence we set sail on the evening of the 18th August for Sebûa.

From this point, as far as Philæ, the valley is called Wadi Kenûs, “the valley of the Beni Kensi,” a tribe of which we read much in the Arabic accounts. The upper valley of Korusko, as far as Wadi Halfa, is called on all the maps Wadi Nuba, a name which has indeed been already used by Burckhardt, but which must originate in some mistake. Neither our Nubian servant, Ahmed, a native of the district of Derr, nor the people who are settled in the country, are acquainted with this name; and even Hassan Kaschef, above seventy years of age, who governed the country before the Egyptian conquest, could give no answers to my particular inquiries about this name. They all agree in stating that the lower district has always been called Wadi Kenûs. Afterwards, near Korusko, follows the Wadi el Arab, so called from the Arabs of the desert, who have encroached as far as this spot; then Wadi Ibrîm; and lastly, Wadi Halfa. But since the conquest the official name for the whole province between the two cataracts is Gism Halfa, the province of Halfa.

In Korusko I found a Bischâri, by name Ali, whose animated and pleasant deportment determined me at once to make him my instructor in this important language. He was quite satisfied with my invitation for him to accompany us, and now every moment that is at liberty is employed in preparing a grammar and vocabulary of this language. He comes from the interior of the country, from Beled Ellâqi, which is eight days distant from the Nile, and twenty from the Red Sea, and gives a name to the remarkable Wadi Ellâqi, which extends, without interruption, through the very midst of the extensive range of country between the Nile and the Red Sea. He calls the country of the Bischâri tribes Edbai, and their language, Midâb to Beg´auîe, the Beg´a language, from which may be traced its identity with the language of the mighty Beg´a nations, so often mentioned in the middle ages.

From Korusko we next sailed to Sebûa, where we spent four days; then by Dakkeh (Pselchis) and Kubán (Contra Pselchis) to Gerf Hussên, with its rock-temple dedicated by Ramses to Ptah. This place is frequently called by earlier travellers Girsche, a confusion with the village situated on the farther eastern bank, which is called by the Arabs Qirsch, by the Nubians Kisch or Kischiga, and which is situated near some considerable ruins of an ancient city which bear the name of Sabagûra. The 25th August we spent in the temple of Dendûr, first built under the Roman dominion; and the following day in Kalabscheh, the ancient Talmis, whose temple likewise contains only the Shields of Cæsar (Augustus). Talmis was for a long time a capital of the Blemyes, whose inroads into Egypt gave the Romans plenty of employment. On one of the columns of the great outer court there is engraved the interesting inscription of Silco, who calls himself a βασιλίσκος Νουβάδων καὶ ὅλων τῶν Αἰθιόπων.[52] In it he boasts of his victories over the Blemyes, who I hold to be a branch of the Meröitic Ethiopians, the Bischâri of the present day. It seems that the demotic Ethiopian inscriptions, one of which is remarkable by its length, and perhaps forms a counterpart to the Greek inscription of the Nubian King, can only be ascribed to these Blemyes. I have discovered another very late inscription on the wall to the back of the temple, but in such barbarous Greek that it is almost inexplicable. I send it to Böckh for him to decipher.

On the 30th August we reached Debôt, and the following day Philæ, where we immediately took possession of the enchanting temple-terrace, which, since that time, has been our chief quarters, and will remain so for several weeks longer. The great temple-buildings, although the most ancient of them date only as far back as Nectanebus, present an unusual number of hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek inscriptions, and, to my surprise, I have also found here a whole chamber in one of the pylones which contains nothing but Ethiopian representations and inscriptions.

LETTER XXVIII.

Thebes, Qurna, 24th November, 1844.

On the 4th of November we reached this last great station of our journey, and feel that we have again reached much nearer home. We have selected a charming castle on a rock for our residence here, which will certainly be protracted for several months. It is situated on a hill called Abd el Qurna, and is an ancient tomb enlarged by brick buildings, from which we overlook the whole Theban plain at one view. I should be afraid of being almost oppressed by the overwhelming number of monuments, if the mighty character of the ruins of this most royal city of all antiquity did not maintain, and daily renew, our interest to the highest possible degree. While our investigations of the numerous temples, from the Ptolemaic and the Roman period, immediately preceding that, had in fact become almost fatiguing, here, where the Homeric forms of the mighty Pharaohs of the 18th and 19th Dynasties stand out before me in their dignity and splendour, I feel as fresh again as at the commencement of our journey.

I first had excavations made in the renowned temple of Ramses Miamun, lying at our feet, which have led to unexpected results. Erbkam has superintended the work with the greatest care, and his ground plan which is now finished of this most beautiful building of the Pharaonic times, described by Diodorus as the tomb of Osymandyas, is the first which can be called perfect, as it no longer rests on arbitrary restorations, which are too long in the French descriptions and too short in those of Wilkinson.

I have also had excavations made in the rock-tomb of the same Ramses in Bab el Meluk, which was covered over with rubbish, and which Rosellini was mistaken in thinking unfinished; several chambers have already been opened, and if fortune favours us we shall also still find the sarcophagus, not indeed unopened—the Persians had already taken care of that—but perhaps less mutilated than others, as the tomb has been closed up by the river mud from very ancient times.

On our journey from Korusko hither, besides our antiquarian labours, I was engaged with the languages of the southern countries, still so little known. Amidst these, three may be selected as being the most widely-distributed; the Nuba language, that of the Nuba or Berber nation; the Kungara language, of the negroes of Dar Fûr; and the Bega language, that of the Bischarîbas inhabiting the eastern portion of the Sudan. I have prepared the grammar and vocabulary of all three, so fully, that whenever they are published some notion of these languages may be obtained. The most important of them is the one last mentioned, because, both with reference to its grammatical construction and by its position in the development of languages, it proves itself to be a very remarkable member of the Caucasian stock. It is spoken by the people, for which reason I think I can perceive that they were once the inhabitants of the flourishing city of Meröe, and thus have a peculiar claim, to be called in a more exact sense the Ethiopian people.

It has furthermore been proved, that nothing can be discovered of a primitive Ethiopian civilisation, or indeed of an ancient Ethiopian national civilisation, which is so much held up by modern erudition; indeed, we have every reason to deny this completely. Whatever in the accounts of the ancients does not rest on total misapprehension, only refers to Egyptian civilisation and art, which had fled in the time of the Hyksos rule to Ethiopia. The irruption of Egyptian power from Ethiopia, at the foundation of the new Egyptian Monarchy, and its progress even far into Asia, was mentioned in the Asiatic, and afterwards in the Greek traditions, as an event which was transferred from the Ethiopian country to the Ethiopian nation, for no knowledge of a still older Egyptian Monarchy, and of its high but peaceful state of civilisation, had penetrated to the northern nations. I have sent an account of the results of our Ethiopian journey to the Academy, and in it I give a cursory survey of the history of Ethiopia from the first conquest of the country by Sesurtesen III. in the 12th Manethonic Dynasty down to the most flourishing period of the Meröitic Monarchy in the first centuries of our era, and then through the middle ages down to the Bischarîbas of the present day, whose Sheikhs we saw in chains marching over the ruins of what was once their capital, and passing in front of the Pyramids of their ancient kings.

LETTER XXIX.

Thebes, Qurna, 8th January, 1845.

A short time ago we received the joyful intelligence that our colossal Ram and the other Ethiopian monuments had arrived safely in Alexandria. We shall also bring away some valuable monuments from this spot, among them a beautiful sarcophagus of fine white limestone, on parts of which are some painted inscriptions, which go back as far as the Old Monarchy in the first period of the increasing greatness of Thebes.[53]

I have made another conquest to-day, which gives me double pleasure, as it was only effected with indescribable difficulty, and has brought out a monument in the most perfect preservation, which will hardly find its equal in our museums. A sepulchral chamber with interesting representations of kings of which we have made drawings, opens out of a deep pit which was excavated a short time ago; from this a narrow passage leads still deeper into a second chamber, which is painted all over, just like the other. The chambers are hewn out of an extremely friable rock, which loosens from the ceiling in large fragments at the slightest touch; the rock-caves were therefore vaulted in a circular form, with Nile bricks, which were covered with stucco, and then painted. At the side of the inner door, on the right hand, King Amenophis I. is represented, and on the left, his mother Aahmes-nufre-ari, who even in later times was much worshipped. Both are about four feet high, painted on the stucco, and the colours preserved as fresh as possible. I was anxious to detach these figures from the wall, which they entirely covered; but for this purpose I was compelled to break through the brick walls all round, and afterwards also to take out the bricks singly from behind the stucco with the greatest care. This at length we have accomplished after great labour. We have taken out the whole stucco, which is only the thickness of a finger, with the figures completely uninjured, and, placing it on two slabs composed of smooth boards covered with skins, linen, and paper, we raised it from the narrow sepulchral cave, which is still half filled with rubbish.

We have also, to my great delight, got a fresh supply for our plaster casts. A short time ago 5 cwt. of plaster arrived, forwarded to us by M. Clot Bey, for which we had sent an order to France, and I have found an Arab here, and immediately taken him into my service, who has at least sufficient knowledge to prepare the plaster and to make casts from bas-reliefs.

LETTER XXX.

Thebes, the 25th February, 1845.

We have now been inhabiting our Theban Acropolis, on the hill of Qurna, above a quarter of a year, every one busily employed in his own way from morning to evening, in investigating, describing, and drawing the most valuable monuments, taking paper impressions of the inscriptions, and in making plans of the buildings; we have not yet been able to complete the Libyan side alone, where there are at least twelve temples, five-and-twenty tombs of kings, fifteen belonging to the royal wives or daughters, and a countless number belonging to private persons, still to be examined. The eastern side, with its six-and-twenty sanctuaries, in a certain degree of preservation, will however demand no less time, and yet, more has been done by previous travellers and expeditions in Thebes itself, especially by the French-Tuscan expedition, than in any other spot, and we have everywhere only compared and completed their labours, and not repeated them. We are also far from imagining that we have now by any means exhausted the infinite number of monuments; whoever follows us with new information, and with the results of more advanced science, will also find fresh treasures, and gain fresh instruction from the same monuments. I have always had a historical aim in view, and this has especially determined my selection of the monuments. Whenever I believed that I had attained what was most essential for this end I was satisfied.

The river here divides the broad valley into two unequal halves. On the west side it approaches close to the precipitous Libyan range, which there projects; on the eastern side it bounds a wide fruitful plain, extending as far as Medamôt, a spot situated on the border of the Arabian desert, several hours distant. On this side stood the actual town of Thebes, which seems to have been chiefly grouped round the two great temples of Karnak and Luqsor, situated above half an hour apart. Karnak lies more to the north, and farther removed from the Nile; Luqsor is now actually washed by the waves of the river, and may even formerly have been the harbour of the city. The west side of the river contained the necropolis of Thebes, and all the temples which stood here referred more or less to the worship of the dead; indeed, all the inhabitants of this part, which was afterwards comprehended by the Greeks under the name of Memnonia, seem to have been principally occupied with the care of the dead and their tombs. The former extent of the Memnonia may be now distinguished by Qurna and Medînet Hâbu, places situated at the northern and southern extremities.

A survey of the Theban monuments naturally begins with the ruins of Karnak. Here stood the great royal temple of the hundred-gated Thebes, which was dedicated to Ammon-Ra, the King of the Gods, and to the peculiar local god of the city of Ammon, so called after him (No-Ammon, Diospolis). Ap, along with the feminine article Tap, from which the Greeks made Thebe, was the name of one particular sanctuary of Ammon. It is also often employed in hieroglyphics in the singular, or still more frequently in the plural (Napu), as the name of the town; for which reason the Greeks naturally, without changing the article along with it, generally used the plural Θῆβαι. The whole history of the Egyptian Monarchy, after the city of Ammon was raised to be one of the two royal residences in the land, is connected with this temple. All Dynasties emulated in the glory of having contributed their share to the enlargement, embellishment, or restoration of this national sanctuary.

It was founded by their first king, the mighty Sesurtesen I., under the 1st Theban Royal Dynasty, the 12th of Manetho, between 2600 and 2700 B.C., and even now exhibits some ruins in the centre of the building from that period, bearing the name of this king. During the Dynasties immediately succeeding, which for several centuries groaned under the yoke of the victorious hereditary enemy, this sanctuary no doubt was also deserted, and nothing has been preserved which belonged to that period. But after the first king of the 17th Dynasty, Amosis, in the 17th century B.C., had succeeded in his first war against the Hyksos, his two successors, Amenophis I. and Tuthmosis I., built round the remains of the most ancient sanctuary a magnificent temple, with a great many chambers round the cella, and with a broad court, and pylones appertaining to it, in front of which Tutmosis I. erected two obelisks. Two other pylones, with contiguous court-walls, were built by the same king, at a right angle with the temple in the direction of Luqsor. Tutmosis III. and his sister enlarged this temple to the back by a hall resting on fifty-six columns, besides many other chambers, which surrounded it on three sides, and were encircled by one common outer wall. The succeeding kings partly closed the temple more perfectly in front, partly built new independent temples near it, and also placed two more large pylones towards the south-west, in front of those erected by Tuthmosis I., so that now four lofty pylones formed the magnificent entrance to the principal temple on this side.

But a far more splendid enlargement of the temple was executed in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. by the great Pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty; for Sethôs I., the father of Ramses Miamun, added in the original axis of the temple the most magnificent hall of pillars that was ever seen in Egypt or elsewhere. The stone roof, supported by 134 columns, covers a space of 164 feet in depth, and 320 feet in breadth. Each of the twelve central columns is 36 feet in circumference, and 66 feet high beneath the architrave; the other columns, 40 feet high, are 27 feet in circumference. It is impossible to describe the overwhelming impression which is experienced upon entering for the first time into this forest of columns, and wandering from one range into the other, between the lofty figures of gods and kings on every side represented on them, projecting sometimes entirely, sometimes only in part. Every surface is covered with various sculptures, now in relief, now sunk, which were, however, only completed under the successors of the builder; most of them, indeed, by his son Ramses Miamun. In front of this hypostyle hall was placed, at a later period, a great hypæthral court, 270 by 320 feet in extent, decorated on the sides only with colonnades, and entered by a magnificent pylon.

The principal part of the temple terminated here, comprising a length of 1170 feet, not including the row of Sphinxes in front of its external pylon, nor the peculiar sanctuary which was placed by Ramses Miamun directly beside the wall farthest back in the temple, and with the same axis, but turned in such a manner that its entrance was on the opposite side. Including these enlargements, the entire length must have amounted to nearly 2000 feet, reckoning to the most southern gate of the external wall, which surrounded the whole space, which was of nearly equal breadth. The later Dynasties, who now found the principal temples completed on all sides, but who also were desirous of contributing their share to the embellishment of this centre of the Theban worship, began partly to erect separate small temples on the large level space which was surrounded by the above-mentioned enclosure-wall, partly to extend these temples also externally.

The head of the 20th Dynasty, Ramses III., whose campaigns in Asia, in the fifteenth century before Christ, were scarcely inferior to those of his renowned ancestors, Sethôs I. and Ramses II., built a special temple, with a court of columns and a hypostyle hall, above 200 feet long, which now intersects, in a rather unsymmetrical manner, the enclosure-wall of the external court in front; and he founded, at a little distance from it, a still larger sanctuary for the third person of the Theban Triad, Chensu, the son of Ammon. This last was completed by the succeeding kings of his Dynasty, and the priest-kings of the 21st Dynasty, who added to it a magnificent court of columns, with a pylon in front. In the 22nd Dynasty we recognise Scheschenk I., the warlike King Shishak of the Bible, who, about 970 B.C., conquered Jerusalem. His Asiatic campaigns are celebrated on the southern external wall of the great temple, where, in the symbolic form of prisoners, he leads 140 vanquished towns and countries before Ammon. Among their names there is one which, not without reason, is considered to be a designation for the kingdom of Judæa, as well as the names of several well-known towns in Palestine.

The two priests’ Dynasties mentioned above, which followed immediately after the Ramessides, were no longer of the Theban race, but proceeded from towns in Lower Egypt. The power of the Monarchy sank with this change; and after the short 23rd Dynasty, from which period there are still some remains in Karnak, a revolution seems to have occurred. The present lists of authors name only one king of the 24th Dynasty, who has not yet been re-discovered on the Egyptian monuments. In his reign the invasion of the Ethiopians occurred, who, from the 25th Dynasty, Schabak and Tahraka (the So and Tirhaka of the Bible), reigned in Egypt at the commencement of the seventh century B.C. These kings came, indeed, from Ethiopia, but governed completely in the Egyptian manner, and they did not neglect to worship the Egyptian god-kings. Their names are found on several smaller temples of Karnak, and on a splendid colonnade in the great court in front, which seems to have been first placed there by Tahraka. According to historical accounts, this last king returned of his own accord to Ethiopia, and left the Egyptian kingdom to its native rulers.

The dispossessed Saitic Dynasty now returned to the throne, and once more, in the seventh and sixth centuries, developed all the splendour of which this country, as rich in internal resources as in external power, was capable of producing under a powerful and wise sceptre. It opened for the first time a peaceful intercourse between foreign countries and Egypt; Greeks settled amongst them, commerce flourished, and a new and enormous amount of wealth was accumulated, such as before had only been attained by the spoils of war and tribute. But this was only an artificial height of glory; for the pristine vigour of the nation had long been broken, and even art gave more signs of luxury than of intrinsic value. The last flourishing period of the nation soon passed away. The country could not withstand the advancing storm of the Persians. In the year 525 it was conquered by Cambyses, and trodden down with barbaric fanaticism. Many monuments were destroyed, and not a single sanctuary nor wall was erected during this period; nothing at least has been preserved to our time, not even from the long and milder government of Darius; one temple only in the Oasis of Kargeh, or at least sculptures with his name, having been discovered from that period. Under Darius II., exactly one hundred years after the commencement of the Persian rule, Egypt became, indeed, once more independent, and we then again find the names of the native kings in the temples of Karnak; but after three Dynasties had succeeded each other in rapid succession, during the space of sixty-four years, it fell a second time under the dominion of the Persians, who soon afterwards, in the year 332, lost it by the conquest of Alexander of Macedon. Since then the country was reduced to the necessity of getting habituated to foreign rulers, it had lost its independence for ever, and passed from one hand to another, the succeeding ruler always worse than the preceding, down to the present day.

Under the Macedonians and Greeks, Egypt still possessed sufficient vigour to retain its religion and institutions in the manner that had been carried down from ancient times. The foreign princes in all respects took the place, and followed in the footsteps of the ancient Pharaohs. Karnak bears testimony to this. We here find the names of Alexander and Philip Aridæus, who preceded the Ptolemies in restoring that which had been destroyed by the Persians. Alexander rebuilt the sanctuary behind the great temple; Philip that to the front; the Ptolemies added sculptures to it—restored other parts, and even erected entirely new sanctuaries, at no inconsiderable expense, though no longer, indeed, on the grand scale of the Egyptian classic style of the olden times. Even the last epoch of declining Egypt, that of the Roman dominion, is still represented in Karnak by a series of representations which were executed under Cæsar Augustus.

Thus this remarkable spot, which, in the course of twenty-five hundred years, had increased from the small sanctuary in the centre of the large temple to a complete city of temples, situated on a level space a quarter of a geographical mile in length, and above 2000 feet in breadth, presents both an almost uninterrupted thread of events, and an interesting scale of measurement for the history of the whole of the New Egyptian Monarchy, from its origin in the Old Monarchy down to its decline under the Roman dominion. The appearance or non-appearance of the Dynasties and individual kings in Egyptian history is almost uniform with the representation of them in and round the temple of Karnak.

Higher up the river than Karnak, where the stream, which has been divided by the fertile island of Gedîdeh, reunites, rises even now to view a second bright point of the ancient city, the temple of Luqsor. One of the most powerful Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, Amenophis III., who had only built a side temple in Karnak, and had added but very little to the principal temple, here erected a so much the more splendid sanctuary to Ammon, which the great Ramses enlarged still more by a second magnificent court in front, in the direction of Karnak. For, although a good half hour distant from it, this temple must also be regarded as belonging to the space dedicated, from ancient times, to the great national sanctuary. This is proved by a circumstance which otherwise would be difficult to explain: that the temple, though situated close to the bank, has its entrance, contrary to custom, away from the river, and directed towards Karnak, with which it was, besides, immediately connected by colonnades, series of rams, and artificially-constructed roads.

The ruins on the eastern bank terminate with Luqsor. The monuments of western Thebes offer still greater variety, as here the subterranean dwellings and palaces of the dead are added to those above ground. At one time an uninterrupted series of the most splendid temples extended from Qurna as far as Medînet Hâbu, which nearly occupied the whole of the narrow strip of desert between the cultivated land watered by the Nile and the foot of the mountain range. The immense field of the dead spreads out immediately behind these temples, where the sepulchral caves, like the cells of bees, close beside each other, are either dug in the rock of the plain, or hewn in the adjacent hills.

Qurna is situated on the angle of the Lybian range, projecting farther forward towards the river. As the mountains here suddenly retreat towards the west, they form a great mountain cauldron, the front part of which, where it is separated by low hills from the valley, is called El Asasif. Behind, it is closed in by lofty, steep escarpments of rock, which display their beautiful stone to the mid-day and morning sun. These precipitous declivities of the limestone range, which, owing to their solid and uniform texture, are particularly adapted for the finest sculptures of the rock-tombs, seem to have been produced by the gradual removal of a bed of clay beneath them, from the wearing effects of exposure to the weather, and thus the overhanging masses are deprived of their foundation.

In this rock-creek are situated the most ancient tombs, and they belong to the Old Monarchy. Their entrances may be seen from a distance, high up in the rocks lying to the north, exactly beneath the vertical precipice which rises from the steep hills of rubbish to the summit of the mountain ridge. Their external site, and the road up, bounded by low stone walls leading to the entrances in a steep and straight line of several hundred feet from the valley, reminded me directly of the tombs of Benihassan, which belong to the same period. They date from between 2500 and 3000 B.C., under the kings of the 11th and 12th Manethonic Dynasties, the first of which laid the foundation of the mighty power of Thebes, and made the town the seat of the government they had rendered independent of Memphis; the second elevated it to be the capital of the Monarchy of the whole country.

These grottoes, of which there are some of a similar age in the adjacent hills in the foreground, generally descend, in an oblique angle, deep into the rock, but they have neither paintings nor inscriptions; it was only the stone sarcophagi on which peculiar diligence was bestowed. These are usually formed of the finest limestone, and are sometimes above nine feet long; they have inscriptions, and are decorated with colours, both internally and externally, in the elaborate and pure style of that period, very elegantly, though with a certain degree of parsimony. We are bringing away with us one of these sarcophagi, as I mentioned once before. A few days ago it was safely carried down into the plain, after the pit, which had long been completely filled with rubbish, had been cleared, and part of the solid rock itself had been cut through, to obtain a shorter exit for it. The occupant of the tomb was the son of a prince, and himself bore the dynastic appellation of the 11th Royal Dynasty, namely, Nentef.

In the outermost angle of this rock-cove is situated the most ancient temple-building of Western Thebes, which belongs to the period of the New Egyptian Monarchy, at the commencement of its glory. One street, above 1600 feet long, adorned on either side with colossal rams and sphinxes, led from the valley in a straight line to an outer court, then, by means of a flight of steps to another, whose front wall was adorned with sculpture, and had a colonnade before it, and finally, beyond, by a second flight of steps to a granite gate in good preservation, and to the last temple court, which was surrounded on both sides with beautifully decorated halls and chambers, and terminated behind with a broad façade, placed along the precipitous rock. Another granite gate, in the centre of this façade, leads at length to the innermost temple-chamber, which was hewn into the rock, and had a lofty, stone-vaulted roof, out of which again opened several smaller niches and chambers, at the sides and the back. All these chambers were covered with the most beautiful sculptures, with variegated colours on a grey ground, executed in the finished style of that period. This grand structure, beside which stood other series of buildings, now destroyed, seems to have been originally connected with the river, by a street intersecting the whole valley, and beyond, with the great temple of Karnak, which lies exactly in the same direction; I have no doubt that it was with this object that the narrow rock-gate was first artificially cut through the hills in front, across which the temple-street enters into the lower plain. It was a Queen, Numt Amen, the elder sister of Tuthmosis III., who accomplished this bold plan of a structural connection between the two sides of the valley, the same who had erected the two greatest obelisks in front of the temple of Karnak. She never appears on her monuments as a woman, but in male attire; we only find out her sex by the inscriptions. No doubt at that period it was illegal for a woman to govern; for that reason, also, her brother, probably still a minor, appears at a later period as ruler along with her. After her death, her Shields were everywhere converted into Tuthmosis Shields, the feminine forms of speech in the inscription were changed, and her names were never adopted in the later lists along with the legitimate kings.

There are two peculiar temples, both erected on the border of the desert by Tuthmosis III., who completed the work of his royal sister during the long period that he sat alone upon the throne. Of these, the northern one can now only be recognised by its ground plan, and by the remains of its brick pylon; the southern one, on the other hand, at Medînet Hâbu, is still in good preservation; and judging by some sculptures, the oldest part of the building might perhaps have belonged to an earlier Tuthmosis, and have only been completed by him. His second successor, Tuthmosis IV., also built a temple, which has now almost disappeared.

He was followed by Amenophis III., in whose brilliant and long reign the temple of Luqsor was built. To him are inscribed the two giant Colossi, far out in the fertile plain, near Medînet Hâbu, which once stood at the gates of a great temple-building, but whose remains are now for the most part buried beneath the crops of the annually accumulating soil of the valley. Perhaps, also, a connecting street, corresponding with that to the north, once led from this point across the valley to Luqsor, on the opposite side. Of the two Colossi, the one situated to the north-east was the celebrated sounding statue, which the Greeks connected with their charming legend of the beautiful Memnon, who every morning at sunrise greeted his mother, Aurora, while she moistened him with her tears of dew for his early heroic death. This myth, as Letronne has shown, was only composed at a late period; because the actual phenomenon of clear tremulous tones produced by the springing of small particles of the stone when it became rapidly warm after being cooled during the night, did not become strikingly evident till fragments of the statue had partly fallen inwards upon itself, having been previously split by an earthquake which happened in the year B.C. 27. The phenomenon of cracking and sounding stones in the desert and among great fields of ruins, is not unfrequent in Egypt; but the nature of the hard flinty conglomerate of which this statue is composed, is peculiarly favourable to it, as is further proved by the innumerable large and small cracks now penetrating in all directions portions of the statue, which were described even as late as the Greek period, and consequently were then uninjured. It is also remarkable how, even now, several of the pieces that have split off, and are only hanging loose, sound as clear as metal if they are struck, while others beside them remain perfectly dumb and without sound, according as they are more or less moistened by their reciprocal positions. The numerous Greek and Roman inscriptions which are engraved upon the statue, and which intimate the visits of strangers, especially if they have been so fortunate as to hear the morning greeting, first commence in the time of Nero, and extend down to the time of Septimius Severus, from which period we may probably date the restoration of the original monolithic statue. Since this restoration of the upper portion in single blocks, the phenomenon of the sounding stones seems, if not to have entirely ceased, yet to have become less frequent and less striking. The change of Amenophis (who even then, as the inscriptions inform us, was not forgotten) into Memnon was probably chiefly occasioned by the name of this entire western portion of Thebes, Memnonia, which the Greeks seem to have explained by the “palaces of Memnon,” while the name in hieroglyphics, Mennu, meant, speaking generally, “splendid buildings, palaces.” At the present day the statues are called by the Arabs Schama and Tama, or, both together, the Sanamât, i. e. the “idols” (not Salamât).[54]

When we came here in the beginning of November, the whole plain, as far as the eye could reach, was overflowed, and formed one entire sea, from which the Sanamât rose up still more strangely and more solitary than from the green but yet accessible corn-fields. A few days ago I measured the Colossi and the elevation to which the soil of the Nile had risen upon their thrones. The height of the Memnon statue, calculated from head to foot, not including the tall ornament on the head which it once bore, amounted to about 14 metres 28′, or 45 feet and a half, in addition to which the base separated from it, a block by itself, measured 4 metres 25′, or 13′ 7″, of which 3 feet were covered by steps placed round. Thus the statues were originally nearly 60 feet in height, including the Pschent, perhaps 70 feet above the ground on which the temple stood. Now the surface of the valley is already 8 feet above that level, and the inundation sometimes rises as far as the upper edge of the base, therefore 14 feet higher than it could ever have risen, at the period of their erection, without reaching the temple itself. Now, if we compare this fact with our discovery at Semneh, where the surface of the Nile during historical times has sunk above 23 feet, it is proved, by simple addition, that the Nile at the Cataracts fell from a greater height by at least 37 feet between this and Semneh than it does at present.[55]

Horus, the last King of that great 18th Dynasty, had also erected a temple near Medînet Hâbu, which has now, however, disappeared in rubbish. The fragment of a colossal statue of the King, of hard limestone, almost like marble, seems to point out the position of what was once the entrance to the temple, the bust carved in the most finished style, weighing several hundred-weight, is intended for our Museum.

A large portion of two temples still exist from the succeeding Dynasty; they were built by the two greatest and most renowned of all the Pharaohs—Sethôs I. and his son Ramses II. The temple belonging to the first is the most northern in the series, and is usually called the temple of Qurna, because the old village of Qurna was grouped round a Coptic church at this spot, and was principally situated in the interior of the great outer courts of the temple, but which was afterwards deserted by the inhabitants, and exchanged for the rock-tombs in the angle of the mountain situated very near at hand.

Farther towards the south, between the temples of Tuthmosis III. and IV., now totally destroyed, stands the temple of Ramses II. (Miamun), in its structural arrangement, and in all its parts, perhaps the most beautiful in Egypt, though inferior in grandeur of scale, and in variety of interest, to the temple of Karnak. That portion of the temple to the back as well as the lateral halls, belonging to the hypostyle hall, have disappeared, and their original plan could only be explained by the aid of careful, protracted excavations, under the direction of Erbkam. All round this destroyed portion of the temple the extensive brick halls are visible, which are everywhere covered with regular and neatly-built waggon-vaulted roofs, some of them 12 feet wide, which belong to the period of the erection of the temple itself. This is indisputably proved by the stamps, which were impressed on every brick in the royal factory, and which contain the Name-Shields of King Ramses. That this temple, even in ancient times, attracted much notice, we learn from the particular description of it, under the name of the Tomb of Osymandyas, given by Diodorus Siculus, according to Hecataeus.

Directly to the right of the temple, one of the few industrious Fellahs has laid out a small vegetable garden, which affords us some variety for our table, and for that reason, yielding to the intercessions of our good-natured dark-skinned gardener, as was but just, it was spared in our excavations, which threatened to extend towards that side, although it is over the foundations of a side temple hitherto unnoticed, whose entrance I found opening into the outer court of the temple of Ramses.

The southernmost, and best preserved of all the splendid buildings in the long series, is situated in the midst of the ruins of the houses of Medînet Hâbu, a Coptic town, now totally forsaken, but once of no small importance. It was founded by Ramses III., the first King of the 20th Dynasty, the rich Rhampsinitus of Herodotus, in the thirteenth century before Christ, and on its walls extols the great campaigns of this King, by land and by sea, which might rival those of the great Ramses. In the interior of the second outer court a great church was built by the Copts, the monolithic granite columns of which are still scattered about. The chambers to the back are for the most part in a heap of rubbish. But the far projecting sort of pylon building, in front of the temple, is of peculiar interest; it contained the private apartments of the King, in four stories, placed one above the other. The Prince is represented on the walls, in the midst of his family, conversing with his daughters, who are recognised to be Princesses by the side-plait of their hair; he is playing at drafts, and receiving fruits and flowers from them.

This building terminates the series of large splendid temples known under the peculiar appellation of Memnonia. They comprise the really flourishing period of the New Monarchy, for after Ramses III., the external power, as well as the internal greatness of the Monarchy again declined. It is only from this, and the immediately succeeding period, that we find the tombs of the Kings in the rock-valleys of the mountain range.

The entrance to these is situated on the farther side of the promontory of Qurna. The escarpments of the rock there rise rugged and barren on either side, rounding off above to bare summits, and their golden brows are partly covered with coal black stones, as if they had been burnt by the sun. The peculiarly solemn and gloomy character of this country always struck me most vividly when I was riding back after sunset over the endless heaps of stony rubbish covering the bottom of the valley to a considerable height, and only furrowed by broad chasms, formed in the course of thousands of years, by sudden torrents of rain, which, though of rare occurrence, are not entirely unknown, as we ourselves have witnessed. All is mute and dead around; the rapid tramps of my little ass being only interrupted occasionally by the dull barks of the jackals, or the gloomy hooting of the night-owls.

After long windings, which lead by circuitous paths almost immediately behind the lofty mountain sides of the Asasif valley described above, the valley divides into two branches, the one on the right hand conducting to the most ancient of those tombs. Only two of these are opened, both belonging to the 18th Dynasty: the one dedicated to Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, the other to a rival King Ai, coming very soon after him, who was not admitted into the monumental lists of the legitimate kings.[56]

The last is situated at the extreme end of the slowly-ascending cleft in the rock; the granite sarcophagus of the King, in the small sepulchral chamber, has been destroyed, and his name is everywhere studiously erased, with the exception of a few traces on the walls, as well as upon the sarcophagus. The other lies farther forward in the valley, is of greater extent, and covered with beautiful sculptures, though, alas! much mutilated by time and human hands. Besides these two tombs, there are several more here incomplete, without sculptures; others, no doubt, are concealed beneath the high mounds of rubbish, which to clear away would have occupied more of our time and means than, after mature consideration, we thought right to bestow on it. In one place where I made them dig, following tolerably certain signs, we found, indeed, about ten feet beneath the rubbish, a door and chamber, but these also without sculpture. Some remains of earthen vases were, however, brought to light at the same time, which contained the name of a king hitherto unknown.

The left branch of the principal valley, which contains the tombs of almost all the Kings of the 19th and 20th Dynasties, seems to have been originally closed by an elevation of the bottom of the valley, and to have been first opened artificially, by a paved ascent to the spot.

Here we find pits with wide openings not far above the bottom of the valley, on the descending slope of the mountain, which pass downwards at a somewhat oblique angle. Where the overhanging rock has a perpendicular height of 12 to 15 feet, the sharply-carved door-posts of the first entrance appear, which was once provided with one or two great folding-doors to close it. There also the painted sculptures generally commence, which, on suddenly approaching, strike one by the wonderful contrast between their sharp lines, brilliant surfaces, and fresh vivid colours, and the jagged rock and rugged rolled stones scattered around, among which they are placed. Long corridors of imposing height and width now lead always deeper into the rocky mountain range; the sculptures on the sides, and the ceiling also, continue in single subdivisions, which are formed by the contraction of the passages and by additional doors. The King is represented worshipping before different gods, and directs his prayers and justifications for his earthly life to them; the peaceful occupations of the justified spirits are represented on one side, the punishments of Hell for the wicked on the other; the Goddess of Heaven is represented extended lengthways on the ceiling, as well as the hours of the day and night, with their influences on mankind, and their astrological signification, all accompanied by explanatory inscriptions. Lastly, we arrive at a great vaulted hall of pillars, whose walls generally exhibit the representations on a golden yellow ground, for which reason it also bore the name of the Golden Hall. This was intended for the royal sarcophagus, which stood in the centre, and was from six to ten feet high. But often if the King, after the completion of the tomb, in its first and most necessary extent, felt his vigour still unimpaired, and promised himself a prolonged life, the central passage of this hall of pillars was cut out in a still more steep descent, for the commencement of a new hall; new corridors and lateral chambers were attached, sometimes they deviated from the first direction into another, till the King, for the second time, fixed upon a goal, and terminated the building with a second hall of pillars, almost more spacious and splendid than the first; smaller chambers on both sides were then added to this, if the time still allowed, destined for particular sacrifices for the dead, till at length the last hour struck, and the royal corpse, having undergone the process of embalming for seventy days, was entombed in the sarcophagus. It was then closed up, in such an artificial manner that the colossal granite tomb, as the cover could not be raised, was always obliged to be destroyed by the plunderers of the corpses, who, at a later period, penetrated into every spot.

The tombs of the Princesses also, which are collected together in a smaller valley behind Medînet Hâbu, at the southern end of the Memnonia, belong exclusively to the period from the 18th to the 20th Dynasties, as well as the most important of the innumerable tombs of private individuals, which extend over hill and valley, from beyond Medînet Hâbu to the entrance of the King’s valley. The priests of rank, and the great officers, liked to have represented on the walls of their tombs their whole wealth in horses and carriages, herds, boats, and implements, as well as their hunting-ground and fish-ponds, their gardens and hall, for company, even the artists and artisans they employed, actively engaged in various ways; all this renders these tombs much more interesting than those of the Kings, where the representations almost exclusively refer to the life after death.

Among the later monuments, the tombs from the 26th Dynasty of the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ are especially worthy of notice. The greatest proportion of these are dug in the flat ground, in the front part of the rocky creek between Qurna and the hill of Abd el Qurna, where we reside, and they are called specially El Asasif. The rocky plain alone afforded room at that time for sepulchral buildings of any considerable size, and was therefore employed for that purpose on a vast scale. Even in the distance a number of lofty gates and walls built of black bricks are seen. These enclosed great sunken courts within an oblong, to which the entrance led by immense arched pylon gates, resembling at a little distance Roman triumphal arches. Stepping through this within the enclosure wall, we look directly into a court cut 12 or 15 feet deep into the rock, into which we descended by a staircase. This uncovered court belongs to the largest sepulchral building now accessible; it was built for a royal scribe, Petamenap; is 100 feet long, and 74 broad. From this we stepped through an outer hall into a great rock-chamber, having an extent of from 65 to 52 feet, supported by two rows of pillars, with some lateral chambers and corridors on either side; then through an arched entrance into a second hall, from 52 to 36 feet large, with eight pillars; and into a third, 31 feet both ways, with four pillars; and lastly, into a chamber from 20 to 12 feet large, terminating with a niche. From this chamber, at the head of the first series of rooms, a door on the left hand leads into an immense chamber; and on the right, another to a continuous series of six corridors, with two staircases of nine to twenty-three steps, and a chamber in which a perpendicular pit, 44 feet deep, led at the bottom to a small lateral chamber. This second range of chambers and passages which run at right angles with the first, amounted in its whole length to 172 feet, while the first, including the external court, amounted to 311 feet. Finally, from the chamber with the well, a corridor turns off again to the right, which leads to a diagonal chamber, extending altogether 58 feet in this third direction. But before arriving at the two staircases in the second range, a fourth line of passages again opened to the right, running on 122 feet in one and the same direction, to which, on the left hand, is attached a great passage running round in a square 60 feet long on every side, along with other lateral chambers; the central part of which is decorated on its four sides like a huge sarcophagus. The sarcophagus of the deceased rests also, in fact, in the centre beneath the great square, which, however, can only be reached by means of a vertical pit 18 feet deep, opening into a fourth range, which conducts to a horizontal passage 58 feet long; then to a third pit, through this to more chambers; and lastly, through the ceiling of the last to a chamber placed above it, which contains the sarcophagus, and which is situated exactly beneath the centre of the above-mentioned square. The whole of the ground covered by this tomb, that of a private individual, amounts accordingly to 21,600 square feet, and calculated with the pit chambers, to 23,148 square feet.[57] This enormous work appears still more colossal if we consider that all the surface of the walls, the pillars, and the doors are covered from above downwards with innumerable representations and inscriptions, which astonish us still more by the care, sharpness, and elegance with which they are executed.

The few remains which are found from the period of the later foreign dominion are far less important. We can only mention two small temples near Medînet Hâbu among those erected under the Ptolemies, and a third at the end of the great Lake circumvallation, which extends from Medînet Hâbu towards the south. The oldest sculptures in this last are from the time of Cæsar Augustus, yet the Cella, now the only part in good preservation, was built by Antoninus Pius. The outermost gate of the temple district contains the only representations found in Egypt of the Emperor Otho, the discovery of which was once a most joyful event to Champollion and Rosellini. They had, however, overlooked the circumstance that on the opposite side the name of the Emperor Galba, hitherto equally unknown in Egypt, was also to be found.

Even in Strabo’s time ancient Thebes had crumbled into several villages, and Germanicus visited it, as we are doing, from a thirst for knowledge, and with reverence for the great antiquity of its monuments, cognoscendæ antiquitatis, as Tacitus informs us. The latest hieroglyphic imperial name that I have found in all Egypt, is that of Decius (A.D. 250); it appears in a representation on the temple of Esneh. A hundred years later the holy Athanasius retires to the Theban desert among the Christian hermits there resident. The edict of Theodosius against Paganism (391) divested the Egyptian temples of their last authority, and greatly favoured the development of monkish and recluse habits, to which Egyptian Christianity was always peculiarly inclined.

After that period numerous churches and convents spring up throughout the country, even in the upper districts of the Nile; and the sepulchral caves of the desert become troglodytic habitations for an ascetic hermit population. The Thebaic necropolis, above all other places, presented the greatest variety of means to satisfy these new wants. Both the kings’ tombs, as well as the tombs of private individuals, were very much employed for Christian cells, and still bear traces on their walls of this new purpose to which they were applied. A letter of the holy Athanasius, the archbishop of Alexandria, to the orthodox monks of Thebes, still exists in a tomb at Qurna, in beautiful untial characters on the white stucco, but unfortunately in a very fragmentary condition. It was a favourite practice to convert ancient temples into Coptic churches or convents.

The largest church seems to have been erected in the temple of Medînet Hâbu (town of Hâbu). Monolithic granite columns of considerable size still cover the ground in great numbers, in the second outer court at this spot; in order to obtain room for the niches in the choir, an ancient Egyptian pillar was taken away on the northern side, and a series of doors from the chambers which were arranged for the priests’ cells were broken through the external wall of the temple to the back. The convent appertaining to it, called the Der el Medînet—“belonging to a town”—was placed in the Ptolemaic temple behind the hill of Qurnet Murrâi, situated close at hand. Another church stood in the temple of Old Qurna, and the convent of Der el Bachît, situated on the heights of Qurna, probably belonged to it. The ruins of a third convent occupy the chambers of the temple of the Queen Numtamen, in the angle of the Asasif valley, and bear the name of Der el Bahri, the northern convent.

Such transformations of the ancient magnificent buildings were partly against, and partly in favour of, their preservation. Single walls were frequently demolished, or broken through, to enable them to make new arrangements; upon others the heathen images were destroyed to obtain bare walls, or at least, the human figures and even those of animals in the inscriptions, especially the heads, were studiously picked out, and mutilated, as high up as the loftiest ceilings. Not unfrequently, however, the same zealous, pious hands also served to preserve the ancient splendour in a most successful manner, for sometimes, instead of laboriously destroying the representations with a hammer, they preferred covering them over from the top to the bottom with Nile mud, which had generally afterwards an additional white coating, in order to receive the Christian paintings. In time this Coptic loam again fell off, and the ancient paintings came out once more, with a brilliancy and surprising freshness, which they could hardly have retained on uncovered walls, exposed to the air and sun. In the niche of an ancient cella I found St. Peter, in the ancient Byzantine style, holding the key, and raising his finger, but beneath the half-decayed Christian casing, the cow’s horns of the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, peeped forth from behind the glory; to her, originally was given the incense and sacrifice of the king who is standing by her side, which now are offered to the venerable apostle. I have often with my own hands assisted time in the work of restoration, and still further loosened the stucco, which is generally covered over with totally uninteresting Coptic paintings, that I might restore the splendid sculptures of the Egyptian gods and kings concealed beneath them once more to their older and greater claims on our attention.

A great part of the population of Thebes on both sides of the Nile is still Coptic; our Christian cook Siriân was born here, and a Coptic woman of good means, Mustafîeh, who lives at a short distance from us, supplies us daily with excellent wheaten bread. For a long time past, however, the Arabic Mohammedan population has gained the upper hand here, as throughout the country, and the Copts can only oppose this by the influence derived from ancient days, by their knowledge of arithmetic, and their privilege of filling the most important financial offices in the country.

The small church in which the Theban Christians are now in the habit of assembling every Sunday, is situated alone in the great gravelly plain to the south of Medînet Hâbu. It has an Arabic cupola, and is surrounded by the wall of a court. I entered it a few days ago from noticing that the black turbans, which are only worn by Copts, were proceeding in greater numbers than usual to the chapel. It was the feast of the holy Donadeos, who had founded the church. The service was over. I only found the old priest, who inhabits and takes charge of the church, inside with his numerous family. The compartments were covered with mats; I was shown the division for the men and women, the small chapels decorated with variegated carved work attached to it, the square cistern for baptisms and holy water. A large old Coptic book still lay open on the reading-desk, with extracts from the Psalms and Gospels, and an Arabic translation beside it. I asked the old man whether he could read Coptic; he answered in the affirmative, but thought that his children could read better than himself; his eyes had already become feeble. I sat myself down upon the mat, and the whole troop of great and small yellow-brown children and grandchildren of the old priest squatted down around me. I asked the eldest lad to read a little, and he immediately began not to read, but to sing with the greatest fluency—that is to say, to chant in rough grumbling tones. I interrupted him, and asked him now to read slowly in his usual voice; he did it with far greater difficulty, and with many mistakes, which his younger brother sometimes corrected over his shoulder; but when I went so far as to inquire the meaning of the individual words, he pointed coolly to the Arabic translation, and thought it was explained there, and wanted to read this aloud to me; he could tell me nothing as to the single words, not even about the value of the single letters over the paragraphs, nor, indeed, could the old man have done that at any time. Afterwards I made them show me the other treasures in the way of books belonging to the church, which were immediately brought in a great cloth tied together at the four corners, containing some prayer-books very much worn, some of them in Coptic, some in Arabic. I left a small present behind for the good of the church, and had rode on a little farther, when one of the boys overtook me, bringing me breathless a small consecrated kind of biscuit cake, stamped with a Coptic cross and a Greek inscription, which gift I was obliged to repay by a second bakschisch. These are the Epigoni, the most genuine, unmixed descendants of the old Pharaonic nation that once conquered Asia and Ethiopia, and led its prisoners from the north and south into the great hall of Karnak before Ammon; in whose wisdom Moses was educated, and with whose priesthood the Greek sages went to school.

O Aegypte, Aegypte! religionum tuarum solæ supererunt fabulæ, æque incredibiles posteris; solaque supererunt verba lapidibus incisa tua pia facta narrantibus, et inhabitabit Aegyptum, Scythes, aut Indus, aut aliquis talis, id est vicina barbaria.[58]

We now know the meaning of this aliquis which Hermes Trismegistus then knew not how to explain; it is the Turks, who at present dwell in the fields of Osiris.

At the foot of our hill, in the direction of the green plain, stands a single group of Sont-trees, which overshadow a pleasant reservoir nicely lined with stones; here the sheep and goats are daily brought to water, and every evening and morning the dark girls and veiled women descend from their rock-caves, returning afterwards with a slow step, their tall water-jugs on their heads; a lovely picture from the patriarchal times. But close to where the refreshing element is found there is a bare white spot in the middle of the fertile plain: on this, two lime-kilns are erected, in which, as often as they are wanted, the very best blocks of the ancient temples and rock-grottoes, with their images and inscriptions, are pounded and burnt into lime, that they may again cement together other blocks, which are extracted from these convenient and inexhaustible stone-quarries, for some cattle-stall or other structure for government purposes.

The same day that I visited the Coptic church, I was desirous of riding from that spot to the village of Kôm el Birât, which is situated on the other side of the great lake of Hâbu, now dry. To my no small surprise, my guide, the excellent old ʾAuad, who I have engaged to be my servant while here, on account of his great knowledge of the locality, informed me that he could not accompany me thither, he even almost shrank from pronouncing the name of the village, and could not be persuaded to give me any information about it, and about his strange behaviour. It was only when I got home that I learnt the ground of his refusal from others, and afterwards also from himself. Above seven or eight years ago a man was killed in the house of the Sheikh of Qurna, to whose household ʾAuad then belonged; how it happened is not yet made out. In consequence of this circumstance, the whole family of the murdered man emigrated from this place, and settled in Kôm el Birât. Ever since the law of vengeance for blood has hung over the two families. Not a single member of that family has from that time trod the ground of Qurna; and if ʾAuad, or any other individual from the Sheikh’s house were to be seen in that village, any one of the injured family would be justified in killing him openly. This is the ancient Arabic custom.[59]

I turn from my wanderings through the ruins of the great royal city, and through the changes of thousands of years which have passed over them, to our castle on the detached hill of Abd el Qurna. Wilkinson and Hay have rendered an essential service to later travellers by building up the habitable rooms, which, from our being desirous of spending a long time in Thebes, we have profited by. A broad, convenient road leads by windings from the plain to a spacious court, the left side of which (the mountain side) is formed by a long shady colonnade; beyond this there are several habitable rooms. At the end of the court stands a single watch-tower, on which the Prussian flag waves, and beside it a small house with two rooms, one above the other, the lowest of which I occupy myself. There is no want of accommodation either for the kitchen department, the servants, and the asses.

The wide, boundless prospect across the Theban plain over the wall of the court, low on the inner side, but with a deep fall externally, is most beautiful and enchanting. The eye from this point, and still more perfectly from the summit of the tower, or from the top of the hill rising directly behind our dwelling, commands all, that still remains of Ancient Thebes. In front of us the splendid ruins of the Memnonia, from the angle of the hills at Qurna on our left, to the lofty Pylones, which tower up above the mounds of ruins of Medînet Hâbu on our right; then the green meadow encircled by the broad Nile, from which the solitary Colossi of Amenophis rise on the right hand, and beyond the river the groups of temples at Karnak and Luqsor, behind which the lower plain extends several hours farther to the clear outline of the slightly undulating Arabic ranges, which every morning were lit up by the first rays of the sun casting a wonderful richness of colouring over the valley and rocky desert all around us. There is no other spectacle in the world that I can compare with this, a scene which daily impresses us with fresh wonders and delight; but it reminds me perhaps of the view, for two years before my window, looking down from the Tarpeian Rock, which comprised the whole of Ancient Rome from the Aventine, with the Tiber at its foot, to the Quirinal, and beyond that the undulating Campagna, with the beautiful profile of the Alban hills (strikingly like those we now behold) in the background.

We never, however, look out into the distant country without being peculiarly attracted to the silvery water-highway, and without our eyes following the pointed sails, which may bring us letters or travellers from the North. Winter here, as in all other places, is the season of sociability. Not a week passes that we do not see several guests among us. A stranger’s book, which I have placed here for future travellers, and furnished with an introduction, was inaugurated on New Year’s Day by our own signatures. Since then above thirty names have been added, although the book has hitherto been kept exclusively in our castle, and will only be handed over to our faithful castellan ʾAuad on our departure.

On Christmas Eve we for the third time selected a palm for our Christmas-tree. This symbol, still more beautiful than our fir-tree, was decorated with lights and small gifts. Our artists celebrated the cheerful festival in other imaginative ways, and an illuminated Christmas crib, executed in the typical manner, and placed at the end of the long rock-passage, was most successful.

As it is natural to expect, England is by far the most numerously represented among travellers; the French are more rarely seen, but among their numbers I must mention the well-known and amiable savant Ampère, who, as he told me, intends to spend several months in this country, in order to make some solid progress in his Egyptian studies.[60] We are not, however, without some of our German countrymen, and one beautiful Sunday morning, at the close of the year, we had the pleasure of seeing Lic. Strauss, the son of the court chaplain in Berlin, and his cousin Dr. Krafft. We were just about to begin our simple Sunday service, which ever since Abeken, our dear friend and former preacher of the desert, has quitted us, I have been in the habit of conducting myself. I therefore immediately resigned my place to one of these two rev. gentlemen, which more befitted them than me; and as it happened that we had with us the very sermons written by the two fathers of our dear guests, one of these was selected for a discourse.

Messrs. Seufferheld and Dr. Bagge, from Frankfort, visited us almost simultaneously with them, and soon afterwards our friend Dr. Schledehaus from Alexandria, with the Austrian painter Sattler, and when Messrs. Strauss and Krafft called on us a second time, on their journey back, they met some other guests here, Messrs. Tamm, Stamm, Schwab, and the Assessor von Rohr, from Berlin. This very day twelve Germans (nine of them Prussians) sat down to dinner with us.

LETTER XXXI.

On the Red Sea, between Gebel Zeït and Tôr. Good Friday.
The commencement of Spring. 21st March, 1845.

Our vessel lies motionless in the midst of the sea, in sight of the distant coast of Tôr, which we hoped to have reached in the course of last night. I sit down to write in order to divest myself of the annoying state of impatience necessarily resulting from an exceedingly inconvenient and protracted calm, under a sultry mid-day sun, in a sailing vessel, adapted only for bales of goods.

On the 20th of February we changed our abode in Thebes from the western to the eastern bank, from Qurna to Karnak. We settled ourselves here in some chambers of the great royal temple; but as I was desirous of setting out on my journey to the Peninsula of Sinai as soon as possible, I limited myself for the time, to merely taking such a survey of the monuments as was absolutely necessary, in order to enable me to appoint the work that was to be done during my absence.

The 3rd of March I set out on my journey. The younger Weidenbach accompanied me, in order to give me some assistance in the drawings, which would be absolutely required: besides him, I took our Dragoman Jussuf along with me, the Kawass Ibrahim Aga, Gabre Máriam, and two additional servants. We first went down the Nile as far as Qeneh. After it became dark and the stars had risen, the conversation, which had hitherto been animated, ceased, and, lying on the deck, I watched the star of Isis, the sparkling Sothis (Sirius), this Polar star of Egyptian chronology, as it gradually ascended over our heads. Our two oarsmen were only too musically inclined, and went through their whole stock of songs, quivering them with innumerable repetitions, sometimes interrupted by the short cry of Scherk, Gharb (East, West), which was softly answered by the feeble and obedient boy’s voice of our little steersman. Half waking, half dreaming, we then glided down the river till about midnight, when the Arab quivering also ceased; the strokes of the oar became fainter, and at length the boat was left entirely to the waves. The rising of the moon in her last quarter, and dawning day, first aroused them to renewed activity.

We arrived early in Qeneh, where we were very kindly received in the house of the illustrious Seïd Hussên. He is the important man through whose hands all our letters pass, both going and coming, and who is thus highly deserving of our gratitude. He and his two sons were of great assistance to us in obtaining the innumerable things which were requisite for our departure for the desert, which we were desirous of accelerating as much as possible. Meanwhile, I was delighted with the patriarchal manners which prevailed in this most estimable Arabian family. All business was carried on there, as it is throughout the East, in public, and most commonly in the street. In front of each house there is a long divan, another in the room; friends come in, make a short salutation, sit down almost unnoticed, and business goes on as usual. Guests of higher rank are offered coffee, or the long pipe. Slaves stand round, ready at the slightest sign. Acquaintance of inferior rank kiss the hand of the master of the house, even if they are only passers by; they do it all seriously and quietly, without the least demonstration of feeling, but with the usual greetings, frequently murmured for a long time from one to another. If there is no more space left on the divan, or if it is occupied by persons of higher rank, the new comer squats down on the ground beside it. Every one rises and goes at his pleasure, and, what strikes us as very singular, without any parting words, though the forms of greeting are so long. The master of the house, also, quits his guests without any salutation, if the visitor is not a person of distinction; when such is the case, he is frequently detained for a long while by the monotonous, and almost always empty, conversation. This domestic life in the street, such as prevailed more or less among the ancient Greeks and Romans, and which is so fundamentally different from the life in our studies and offices, is closely united with the Eastern character in general. Individuals always deport themselves with propriety and reserve, but they are compliant, and ready for anything that occurs. In respectable families, such as this, there also exists an amiable religious feeling, originating in a true and kindly disposition. Old Hussên is above seventy, with a white beard, but, in spite of his age, taking a lively interest in all that occurs, and meeting every one in a friendly manner. The two sons, who are nearly fifty, carry on the business. They treat the old man with extreme reverence. Both are great smokers, but they never smoke in the presence of their father; this would be regarded as a want of the respect which is due to him; they immediately lay aside their pipes when he enters. In the evening after supper, when it would have been too great a privation to resign them, the sons sit in front of the threshold to smoke; while we, as the guests, sit with the old man in the room, they only take part in the conversation through the open door.

The evening before our departure we visited a manufactory of the celebrated Qulleh (cooling vessels), 200,000 of which are annually made; and also the field from which the clay of which they are made is taken. It is only one Feddan (160 square roods) in extent.

After spending a couple of days at Qeneh, we quitted it, on the 6th March, with fifteen camels. The first day we only rode three hours, as far as the copious spring of Bir Ambar, charmingly situated between Palms and Nebek-trees,[61] and provided by Ibrahim Pascha with a dome-shaped building for the caravans. We also reached early on the following day the second night-encampment, at the station of Leqêta. The ancient road to Kossêr from Koptos, the present Quft, the mounds of which we saw in the distance on our right hand, leads immediately to the projecting mountains of El Qorn (the Horns). We did not descend into the broad Kossêr road until we approached these mountains, and after a march of six hours arrived at Leqêta at the junction of the roads from Qeneh, Quft (Koptos), Qûs (the ancient ⲕⲱⲥ or Apollinopolis parva), and a fourth road, also, leading direct from Luqsor hither. Five wells furnish here a supply of tolerably good water; two buildings, with domes half fallen down, are destined for the reception of travellers.

I here noticed a trait of Arabian hospitality which I must also mention. At our last repast at Qeneh a fresh draught of the delicious Nile water was brought me in an ornamental gilt cup, decorated with pious sayings from the Koran. I was pleased with its simple and yet agreeable form, the segment of a sphere, and expressed this to old Hussên, without anticipating the answer I immediately received:—“The cup belongs to you.” As I had nothing about me which I could give in return for the gift, I went away shortly after, declining the civility, and left the cup standing unnoticed. That night, when I went to rest, I found it placed beside my bed, but the following morning I gave express orders that it should not be packed up. We started on our journey, and in Leqêta, where for the first time I opened my travelling-bag, my surprise was great when the first thing I beheld was the cup carefully placed within it. Gabre Máriam had closed my baggage, and in reply to my almost angry inquiry how it was that the cup was here, contrary to my order, he confessed that he had been obliged to place it at the top, by the express wish of old Seïd Hussên. I was now, indeed, compelled to yield, and to think of some present for him, on my return.

We again started from Leqêta the same evening, and rode three hours farther to an old station, at the Gebel Maáuad, very little used now, and deficient in water. Our Arabs, from the tribe of the Ag´aïze, are not so animated as the Ababde, or Bischariîn, and their camels are also inferior.

After Gebel Maáuad, we entered the hilly, sandy plain of Qsur el Benat, and after another pass, the plain of Reschraschi. At the end of this, Gebel Abu Gueh rises on the left, upon which we turned our backs and went to the right, round an angle of rock, on the precipitous sides of which, composed of sandstone, I found engraved the Shields of the sun-worshipper Amenophis IV., along with his consort, and over it the Sun, with rays spread out like hands around it. Their names, as everywhere else, were partly erased, although the King had not yet altered his name into that of Bech-en-aten. Towards mid-day we entered the primitive mountain range, and in three-quarters of an hour arrived at the well of Hamamât.

There appears to have been an ancient Coptic settlement here, and the broad well, about 80 feet deep, lined with stones, into which there is a descent by a winding staircase, is even now ascribed by the Arabs to the Nazarenes (the Christians). The ancient stone-quarries, which were our most immediate object, were situated another half hour from the well.

I pitched my head-quarters here, in a spacious grotto covered with Egyptian and Greek inscriptions, as, by a hasty survey, we easily perceived that we should find work which would occupy us for several days. The ancient Egyptians, who were great lovers and eminent connoisseurs of remarkable kinds of stone, had here found a bed of precious green breccia, and beside it, also, some beautiful dark-coloured veins of granite, which were worked as early as the 6th Dynasty, rather more than B.C. 2000. There are numerous memorial inscriptions engraved on the surrounding rocks since that period. Among them there are several especially deserving notice, from the time of the Persian Government. The hieroglyphic shields of Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, are indeed almost alone known in this spot; and a royal state architect from the Dynasty of the Psammeteci, has displayed his whole pedigree, no less than twenty-three families, who, without one exception, held this important post, and some of them also, in connection with high priestly honours. An ancestral mother stands at the head of the long series, who must have lived nearly 700 years before the last link of the chain. A great number of Greek Proskynemata allow us to infer that the stone-quarries were still used in the time of the Greeks and Romans. For five whole days we were occupied from morning to night with copying and taking impressions, to the continual wonder of the small caravans which we saw almost daily pass before us, as the principal road by which the pilgrims of Upper Egypt, and a great part of the Sudan, pass to Kossêr and Mecca, leads through this valley.

My original plan had been to go from Qeneh to Kossêr, and to embark thence for Tôr. As the voyage, however, occupies a great deal of time, I was very glad to learn in Qeneh that there is also a road from Hamamât, across the mountain chain to Gebel Zeït, nearly opposite Tôr. I therefore determined to take that road, difficult, indeed, but interesting, and far shorter. At the same time I sent a messenger in advance to Kossêr to give orders that a vessel should start for Gebel Zeït without delay, and await us there.

In Hamamât I had also a severe contest with the Arabs, who suddenly became apprehensive of the long road, but little known and almost devoid of water, and who wanted rather to guide us by Kossêr along the coast. But as my principal object was to visit certain ancient stone-quarries in the lofty mountain range, I threatened, if they did not keep their word, to write to the Pascha, and I made them responsible for all the consequences. Thus after long capitulations I accomplished my plan. Nevertheless, it was still very nearly upset, as, on the evening before our departure, we were almost poisoned by the carelessness of our cook, who had allowed some vinegar to stand in copper vessels. However, we recovered happily after a night of great suffering, and on the 13th March started from Hamamât.

We had brought with us six barrels full of water from Qeneh; the camel-drivers were worse provided, and must consequently have suffered much from thirst. Besides Selâm, our old trustworthy guide of the caravan, I had brought with me in addition a special guide from Qeneh, Selîm, who was said to be well acquainted with the mountainous district between Hamamât and Gebel Zeït, although he had only made the journey once before, above twelve years ago; and under his guidance, we got in two days as far as Gebel Fatireh. After great labour and long searching, we re-discovered the remains of the ancient colony of workmen, who quarried here a beautiful black and white granite. From this point, however, the ignorance of the guide was manifested in many ways. On the evening of the 15th of March we arrived at a high water-shed, and were compelled to pass the night on the hard rocky ground, there being no possibility of pitching a tent. The following day, Palm Sunday, we suddenly came early in the morning upon a steep precipice, which descends about 800 feet between the two chains of the Munfîeh mountain range. It seemed impossible to pass the steep and dangerous path with a caravan. The Arabs one and all protested in the most decided manner against attempting it, and poured forth the most violent curses upon Selîm. He was in a difficult position. He had evidently not known the difficulties of this pass; the roads that are passable, though it is true they are very circuitous, lead either by Nechel Delfa, eastward, or by Schaib el Benat, westward of this spot. To strike into one of these two roads now, would have at least cost us two more days, and as we had already lost a great deal of time at Gebel Fatireh, we should have run into still greater danger of a deficiency of water, as our supply had been calculated very exactly, and between Hamamât and Gebel Zeït we had only the prospect of one single spring, which was said to be situated near Gebel Dochân. I therefore gave orders, and carried my point in spite of the most violent protestations to the contrary, that all the camels should be unloaded on the height, and that the whole of the baggage should be carried down on the shoulders of the Arabs. My own servants had to begin, and we all set to work together. Chests and trunks were taken singly from one point of rock to another; we had most difficulty in managing the great water-casks, which could only be moved by three or four people at once. The unloaded beasts were then carefully led down, and thus the bold enterprise terminated successfully without any accident or injury, amid loud and fervent appeals to Abd el Qader, the sacred patron of the camel. After three toilsome hours, all was over, and the beasts were again loaded.

Soon after, however, we were to encounter a far more serious danger. I was as usual riding in advance with Max and some of the servants, and had charged the caravan to follow the footmarks of my ass in the sand. Towards mid-day we saw Gebel Dochân, “the Smoking Mountain,” on our left hand, rising deep blue beyond the Munfîeh chain, and several hours afterwards, when we emerged from the higher mountains into an undulating and more open country, on the farther side of the wide plain, and beyond the sea, we, for the first time, saw the distant mountains of Tôr, like rising mist, situated in the third quarter of the globe, which we were now about to enter.

Soon after three o’clock we came to two Bedouin huts made of mats, in which we found a woman, and a dark-skinned boy, with beautiful eyes, who gave us some milk. On my inquiring whether there were ancient walls in the neighbourhood, the boy conducted us to a piece of granite rock, one hour distant, standing isolated, surrounded by a rough, but well piled up, wall, about 10 feet high. The square, in which the above-mentioned rock formed the acropolis, was 70 paces long, and 60 broad; the entrance from the south was furnished with two circular bastions; and similar ones stood at the four corners, and in the centre of the three remaining sides. In the interior single chambers were partitioned off, and in the centre there was a well of burnt bricks, but which was now covered with rubbish.[62]

According to the statements of our guide, we ought now to have been near the water that was said to be only one half day’s journey distant from our last night’s encampment. But the sun went down without our having reached the desired goal. By the dim light of the moon in her first quarter, we at length turned into a lofty rock-valley, which Selîm assured us would certainly lead to the spring. We ascended for a long time between bare granite precipices; the moon set, no well appeared, and the guide confessed that he had missed the right valley. We were obliged to turn back. The same thing occurred in a second and a third valley into which the guide conducted us, who was now evidently quite lost, having altered his direction more than once. He excused himself on the plea of uncertain moonlight, and assured us that at break of day he would immediately discover the right path. Nothing, therefore, remained but to lie down on the hard ground, in our light riding-dresses, to take a short disturbed sleep, without eating or drinking; for our water-bottles had long been emptied, and we had each of us, some time before, devoured our small provision of four biscuits. Some camel-saddles were our only protection from the cold north wind. Thus, with the stars above and the stones beneath us, we placed our hopes in the following morning.

With the dawn of day we again mounted. My ass, who had taken the last scanty ration of water that had been measured out for it, more than four-and-twenty hours back, and could not endure thirst like the camels, would scarcely go a step farther. Selîm, however, was in good heart, and thought we should soon get back to the right road. We found innumerable marks of camels. “Only a little while longer,” exclaimed the guide, “and we shall be all right.” Our hope was again revived.

Beautiful variegated blocks of granite and porphyry, which I saw lying among the loose stones, were joyful signs to me of the vicinity of the Mons porphyrites. Meanwhile, the broad valley into which we had turned constantly became narrower, and divided into two branches, the right of which we ascended. But this also divided once more, and like the valleys described above, everything round us led to the sad conviction that here we were again upon the wrong path; I made a halt to give some rest to our tired animals, and sent the guide forward alone to find out his right road. Hungry, and above all, thirsting for a draught of water, we encamped in the shadow of a rock-precipice. We were in a critical position. I had begun to doubt whether our guide would ever find the spring in this desert and uniformly barren mountainous region. And where was our caravan? Had it found its way to the water? If, as hitherto had been the case, it had followed the footmarks of my ass, which were distinguished singly among the innumerable tracks of camels, then it was lost like ourselves. We waited impatiently for Selîm; he could at least lead us back to the Arab huts, which we had seen the previous day. But one hour after the other passed away: Selîm did not come. The sun rose higher, and deprived us of the narrow shadow of the mountain precipice, beside which we had halted. We sat silent upon the burning stones. We did not venture to leave the spot for fear of missing Selîm. Had he met with an accident, or could he have forgotten himself so far as only to think of his own preservation, and to leave us to our fate, which is said to have happened some years ago to three Turks, in this same desert, who were never seen again? Or was Selîm too weary to return back to us? He had been on foot almost all the way, and must consequently be much more exhausted than we were.

From time to time we mounted the nearest heights, and fired off our guns. All in vain! We were at length compelled to yield to the cheerless conviction that we should not see our guide again. After waiting four hours, mid-day had arrived, and with it the latest time to start, if we could still cling to the faint hope of again finding out the Arab huts, which must be about six hours distant from us. To search any longer for the spring of water would have been madness, as even Selîm had not found it; Gebel Zeït, where our vessel lay, was two and a half days’ journey distant, and the Nile, on the other side of the mountain range, five days’ journey off: the camels had drank nothing for four days, and the ass was already completely exhausted.

We, therefore, started once more. My companions had done everything that I proposed, but I never felt more severely the responsibility I was under for others, whose lives were at stake with my own, than when forming that lingering determination. It seemed foolhardy to think of travelling without our guide, only directed by the stars, in this totally uninhabited and barren mountainous land, lost as we already were, and brought still more out of our right direction by the crossed and crooked paths we had pursued during the night; nevertheless, it was our last resource.

After deliberating for some time, we determined to ride back to the principal valley, which we had passed through that morning so full of hope; the endless variety of bare, jagged mountain precipices, however, and the valleys without a tree or bush, filled only with rubbish and loose stones, leave such a completely uniform impression, that none of us would ever have recognised this principal valley, had we not felt sure that we were right by the direction and probable distance. At the outlet of this valley we were obliged again to enter the region of the lower hills, between which, towards the south, it seemed at least there was a possibility of finding the Arab huts, as I had taken the position of the magnet, with reference to the highest point of Dochân, from the mountain fortress, which was not too far removed from that spot. The huts, indeed, were so concealed, that we might ride past them at a short distance without observing them; perhaps, even the mats might to-day be set up in a different place. Thus we were lost in the wide, burning desert, without a guide, tormented by increasing hunger and thirst, and so far as human calculation went, wholly in the hands of chance. Silently we descended in the burning, mid-day heat, each occupied with his own reflections, when suddenly—I shall never forget that moment—two men emerged from the nearest angle of the rock; they rushed towards us, embraced our knees, kissed our hands, offered us water from their pitchers, and continued to repeat their congratulations and salutations with touching joy. “El hamdu l’illah!” Praised be God! sounded from all sides. We were saved.

Our caravan, from which the two Arabs came, had as usual followed our traces, and therefore, like us, got into the wrong road; but Ibrahim Aga, soon perceiving our error, had halted early in the day, and during the night kindled small fires on some of the hills with the scanty materials for burning which had been collected with difficulty, and he had almost fired off all his powder. But the wind blew towards the opposite quarter, and we heard none of the signals of our anxious comrades. The following morning they had proceeded onwards, and owing to Sheikh Selâm’s surprising knowledge of the locality, though he had only once been here above five-and-twenty years before, they reached the road to the spring. Nevertheless, Ibrahim Aga made the caravan encamp one hour before arriving at it, as all traces of us had disappeared, and anxious about our fate, he sent patrols of Arabs into the mountains in search of us.

How strange, then, that during this very quarter of an hour we should have again struck into the great valley, where we could not fail to meet this message. As we had reached our side valley over the mountain, no marks of our beasts could lead thither, as here these generally disappeared upon the stones; had we therefore started but a few minutes later, they would certainly have passed us, and had we descended the valley earlier than this, we should have forthwith bent our steps to the right towards the huts, and turned our backs on the caravan, encamped far away on our left hand.

About two o’clock we reached the encampment, which we entered amidst universal cries of joy. The greatest surprise was expressed at not finding Selîm with us—he was given up by all. I would not, however, allow the camp to break up, but had the camels at once led alone to the spring. The Arabs were again sent into the mountains in search of Selîm, and I remained the rest of the day quietly in my tent.

Towards evening some Arabs returned from the spring, bearing with them, upon a camel, Selîm, hardly in possession of his senses, his feet bleeding and bound up. He had been found speechless, lying beside the reservoir of water, his mouth open, his body swollen from having taken an immoderate draught of the water. How he came there we could not immediately learn, for he answered none of our questions. He must, however, have at length found his way out of the high mountains accidentally, or by the wonderful faculty possessed by the Arab of following tracks. At present, perhaps, it was rather his fears of the serious consequences which might ensue from the wretched trick he had played us which rendered him speechless. When he observed that he had excited our compassion, he very soon recovered. I no longer, however, retained him near my person, but for the remainder of the journey took the old, trustworthy Sheikh Selâm as our guide in front, and left the former behind with the caravan.

Gebel Dochân, the porphyry mountain, our real object in this district, and which had occasioned the whole enterprise, now after all lay far behind us. We had been riding for several hours continuously at its base, as I had suspected even the day before, in spite of Selîm’s assurance to the contrary, for we had incorrectly fancied the spring was in its neighbourhood. None of the caravan had ever seen the stone-quarries and the remains of the ancient colony of workmen. Nevertheless, I determined to venture upon a second attempt the following day, which was successful.

I set out at daybreak with Max, the Sheikh Selâm, and a young, active Arab. The huts had not been observed by the caravan, and were also situated too much towards the east for us. We therefore rode straight towards the highest point of the group of Dochân. It so chanced, that just as we were in the neighbourhood of the river, we met an Abâdi from one of the huts with some camels, for which he was seeking out some pasture ground. With his assistance we soon attained our object.

We first found the large opening to a well built up with unhewn stones; it was 12 feet in diameter, but was now fallen to pieces and filled up with rubbish. Five pillars were still standing on the western side, most likely formerly belonging to a covered hall; a sixth was demolished. Three hundred paces farther up the valley a temple, now in ruins, was erected on a granite rock projecting from the left side of the valley. The walls were formed of unhewn stones, the finer parts of the architecture were, however, very delicately chiselled out of red granite. A staircase of twenty steps led from the north to the paved outer court, which was surrounded by a wall, and in the middle stood a rough granite altar. On the left hand four cell-chambers were attached to this court, the most southern of which, however, had partly fallen with its rock-basis. Another small chamber had been joined to these as the rock offered space for it, in which stood a tolerably large altar, but also without inscriptions. In front of these chambers, in the centre of the court, at an elevation of several feet, and with a foundation of sharply-cut blocks of granite, rose an Ionic portico, which consisted of four monolithic slender and swelling granite columns, whose bases and voluted capitals, with the blocks of the gables and architraves, lay scattered around in ruins. The long dedicatory inscriptions mentioned that the temple had been consecrated under the Emperor Hadrian to Zeus Helios Serapis, by the Eparch, Rammius Martialis. To the left of the well the ruins of the town are situated on an elevated spot. It was in the form of a square, and, as usual, fortified with towers. In the centre there was another well, the chief requisite of every station, built of burnt bricks, and covered with a coating of lime. Eight rough, slender, granite pillars form the entrance to the well.

An ancient precipitous road leads to the adjoining mountain, and conducts to the porphyry quarries, which were situated immediately beneath its summit; they furnished the beautiful deep red porphyry which is displayed in so many monuments of the imperial time. Broad veins of it, which were worked to a considerable depth, passed between another kind of rock of a blue colour, sprinkled with white, and a rock of almost a red brick colour. We found five or six quarries beside each other, the largest about 40 paces square. I could nowhere discover wedge-holes for splitting; on the contrary, the bluish rock immediately beside the quarry, which was pulverised nearly as fine as sand, seemed to indicate the application of fire. In the town, also, I found lofty and peculiar heaps of ashes.

From the quarries I ascended to the summit of the mountain, affording an extensive and glorious prospect over the mountains in the immediate vicinity to the plain, which declined rapidly from the hilly district to a sandy level extending to the sea; and on the opposite side of the blue surface of the water, we descried the lofty range of Tôr. After I had taken a number of observations with the compass I re-descended, and after sunset once more reached our camp at the Moie Messâid.

The 19th of March we crossed the plain to the Enned mountains, stretching along the sea-coast, which we traversed by a valley running diagonally across them. An abundant spring here came to the surface, whose rippling waters accompanied us for a long while. It might be considered the Fons Tadnos of Pliny, as its water has only recently become brackish and undrinkable, from the bed of natron on the surface. We left the ruins of Abu Schar, the ancient Myos hormos or Philoteras portus, on our right, and encamped on the peninsula of Gimscheh, which is called by the Arabs, Kebrit, from the sulphur which is there obtained.

Yesterday morning we rode to the Bay of Gebel Zeït, between the Enned mountains and the sea-shore. The Range of Tôr, which floated before sunrise in a milky blue colour over the surface of the sea, stood out faintly from the sky; its outline only disappeared with the rising sun.

After mid-day we arrived at Gebel Zeït, the oil mountain. Our vessel, which had been appointed to meet us from Kossêr, made the voyage from thence in six days, and had already waited four days for our arrival. The camels were dismissed here, and returned the same evening.

One quarter of an hour north of our anchorage were the Zeitieh; such is the name given to five or six pits, hollowed out in the sandy shore, or in the rock, and which fill with blackish-brown naphtha, like syrup. A few years ago researches were set on foot by Em Bey, who was in hopes of finding coal beneath, though hitherto they have had no success.

Yesterday evening it was a perfect calm. It was only during the night that a light wind rose from the north, which we immediately availed ourselves of, for setting sail. With the wind in our favour we might have accomplished the passage across in one night; but now the day is again drawing to a close, and we have not yet reached the port. The ship of burden scarcely stirs, though the long oars have been at length set in motion.

The sailors of this sea are very different from those on the Nile. Their deportment is more reserved, less sly and subservient. Their songs, which commence at the first stroke of the oar, consist of fragmentary short lines, which are sung first by one, and are taken up by another, while the remainder utter short and deep grunting sounds, as an accompaniment, at equal intervals. The Rais, on an elevated seat, rows along with the others. He is a negro, as well as several others among the sailors, but one of the handsomest and strongest Moors that I ever saw—a real Othello; when making his athletic movements, he rolls his yellow-white eyes, shows his dazzling teeth, and gives the tone to the song, leading it for a length of time, with a shrill, piercing, but skilful voice.

LETTER XXXII.

Convent on Mount Sinai, the 24th March, 1845. Easter Monday.

On the evening of Good Friday we landed in Tôr by moonlight. The harbour is now so much sanded up, that our vessel was obliged to lie off several hundred paces, and we were landed in a boat. We were met on shore by the old Greek Nicola Janni, who had before received Ehrenberg, Leon de Laborde, Rüppell, Isenberg, and other well-known travellers; and he had favourable testimonials to produce of the reception they had met with from him. After long negotiations with the insolent Arabs, who, when they discovered we were in a hurry, and that they were indispensable to us, endeavoured in all ways to overreach us, we started early the day before yesterday from Tôr, limiting ourselves to what was absolutely necessary for the land journey; and we sent the vessel to await us at Cape Abu Zelîmeh.

Our road led in a due northerly direction to the mouth of Wadi Hebrân, across the plain of El G´eʾah, which, being five or six hours broad, is situated between the sea and mountain. On first starting, however, I made a digression to the hot springs of Gebel Hammâm. They are situated at the southern end of the isolated line of mountains, which, commencing one hour to the north of Tôr, extends to the sea-shore. I again met the caravan at the well of El Hai, which is pleasantly situated, on the direct road, between gardens of palm-trees. The ground gradually rises from the sea-coast to beyond this well. As soon as we got an open prospect over the whole plain, and to the lofty range which descends towards the south-west in a steep and regularly declining chain to the extremity of the Peninsula, I took the points of the compass, with reference to all the places of any note, the mouths of valleys, and summits of mountains, which the guides were able to name. About half-past five I reached the foot of the mountain range. Here already, at the entrance of the valley, I observed the first Sinaitic Inscription on the black blocks of stone. A little farther on we came to the small piece of water shaded by some palm-trees, where we spent the night.

Yesterday we traversed the Wadi Hebrân, which separates the group of Serbâl from the principal range of Gebel Mûsa, crossed over Nakb el Egaui, which forms the water-shed between the west and east, and turning from this point southwards, over Nakb el Haui, the wind-saddle, we reached the Convent on Easter Sunday, as the sun was setting. We were drawn, like other travellers, up the high wall of the fortification, to the entrance, although there is another entrance through the convent garden, or more level ground, but which they are only in the habit of using from within. The aged and worthy prior, who is mentioned by Robinson, had died that year in Cairo, and had been replaced by another, Demetrius Nicodemus, who is said to hold the rank of a bishop.

As it is a Greek convent, instead of Easter rejoicings we came to a strict season of fasting. But independently of that, the whole life and habits of the four priests and twenty-one lay brothers made by no means such an edifying impression as we might have expected to witness in this spot. A gloomy spirit of wearisome sloth and ignorance hangs like a cloud of mist over their discontented countenances. Yet these fugitives from this world of cares are wandering beneath an ever cheerful sky of moderate temperature, are alone able, of all the inhabitants of this sultry wilderness, to refresh themselves beneath the dark shade of the cypress, palm, and olive-tree, and have besides in their possession a library of 1500 volumes, not in the smallest degree considering the best purpose for which they are intended—viz., a ἰατρεῖον ψυχῆς.[63]

To-day we ascended Gebel Mûsa. In my own imagination, and by the descriptions of former travellers, it formed the actual centre of the whole range; but this is not the case. Both in elevation and in the planimetrical projection of the whole mass of the primitive range, it forms part of the north-eastern slope. The convent in a direct line is three times as near the eastern border of the range as the western. Even Gebel Katherîn, situated immediately to the south, is loftier than the almost concealed summit of Gebel Mûsa, which is invisible to the whole of the surrounding country. Still higher mountains rise on the farther side of Katherîn, but in steps, as for example, Um Riglin, Abu Schegere, Qettâr, &c., as far as Um Schômar, which towers up over all the others, and stands in the centre of the eastern and western slope of the whole elevation, forming the principal and most northern vertebra of the long backbone of the range, which passes down to the south, and determines the direction of the whole Peninsula. All the way up Gebel Mûsa, along with the various spots which are connected with holy legends, was a walk amidst the wildest and grandest natural features; it reminded me of being led through a castle of historical renown, where the places of rest and study, &c., of some great king are exhibited.

On our return from Gebel Mûsa, we ascended the actual brow of the so-called Horeb, which Robinson regards as the true Sinai instead of Gebel Mûsa, which has hitherto been viewed as such. We passed several hermit’s huts and chapels, till we at length reached one, situated in a rocky basin, behind which the principal mass of Horeb rises up abruptly and grandly. There is no accessible road to it. We clambered up, first through a precipitous cleft in the rock, then over the brows of the rock towards the south. About half-past five we reached the summit, just above the great plain of Râha, on the immense round-formed mountain top, which has such a grand appearance from the plain. Robinson seems to have attempted this road at first, but to have given it up afterwards, and mounted to the top of Sessâf, which certainly is loftier, but situated a little to the westward, and does not project into the plain as the actual central point, like the knob which we ascended.[64] Our companions, with the exception of one active Arab boy, had remained behind, as it was, in fact, a dangerous ascent. Even this site did not allow me to entertain the view that Moses ever stood upon a rock that was visible from this valley, if the narrative is to be understood in so literal a manner. We did not ascend Gebel Katherîn, as it has fewer historical claims even than Gebel Mûsa.

LETTER XXXIII.

On the Red Sea, the 6th April, 1845.

I shall employ our tranquil sea voyage, which will last for several days longer, in arranging the various materials I have collected on the Peninsula, and combining the principal events of this episode in our journey. I shall send a more detailed account of it from Thebes.[65] These lines, however, shall be handed over to Seïd Hussên in Qeneh, and shall be forwarded to the north by the first opportunity.

We left the convent on the 25th March, towards evening, and passed downwards through the broad Wadi e’ Scheikh. I selected this roundabout way, as formerly, before the wild defile of Nakb el Haui was rendered passable, this valley was the only way by which the Israelites, if they were desirous of marching to the plains of Râha, could have reached that spot.[66] We spent the night in the upper part of the valley, near the tomb of the holy Sheikh Salih, from whom it receives the name of Wadi e’ Scheikh. In the lower portion of the valley we first meet with the manna-yielding shrubs of Tarfa,[67] and the Sinaitic inscriptions on the sides of the valley become more frequent. But before reaching the outlet of the valley, we quitted it and climbed over to our left into the Wadi Selâf, which lower down joins the Wadi e’ Scheikh, in order to reach the foot of Serbâl, by the shortest road from this. We had already frequently seen at every opening on the road the huge rocky summit rising above the surrounding mountainous district, and the accounts given us by the Arabs, of the fertile and irrigated Wadi Firân at its base, had long made me desirous of becoming better acquainted with it. I had resolved to ascend the mountain, and therefore made them lead us into the Wadi Rim, that runs down from the mountain into the Wadi Selâf, which passes along Serbâl. After riding upwards of an hour in this valley, we came to an old stone hut, which might have once sheltered a hermit; soon afterwards we found some Arab tents, and at a short distance beyond these, several Sittere-trees, which we selected for our place of encampment.

On the 27th March we rose early to ascend the mountain Derb e’ Serbâl. The true road to Serbâl leads from Wadi Firân through Wadi Aleyât to the mountain. We were forced to go round its south-eastern extremity, and ascend behind from the south, as it would have been far beyond our powers to clamber up the heights through the Rim ravine, which descends precipitously, and in a direct line between the two eastern summits. One quarter of an hour above our encampment we came to a spring, shaded by Nebek, Hamâda, and Palm-trees, whose fresh, pure water, was walled round to the depth of several feet. We then climbed over a small rib of the mountain, on which there again stood several ancient stone houses, down into another branch of the Rim valley (Rim el mehâsni), and in an hour and a half reached the south-eastern angle of the mountain. From this point we pursued a paved road of rock, which was even sometimes supported by masonry work. This led us to an artificial terrace and a wall, the remains, as it appeared, of a house that had been destroyed, and to a cool spring, shaded by tall reeds, a palm-tree, and several Jassur bushes[68] (from which the Moses rods are cut); the whole mountain is here overgrown with Habak, and other sweet-smelling herbs. Some minutes farther on we came to several caves in the rock, which once served as hermit’s cells; and after wandering for almost four hours we reached a small plateau spreading out between the summits, where we again found a house with two rooms. A road led over this level ground to the edge of the western side of the mountain, which sinks at first steep and rugged, then in more gently-inclined wide ribs, to the sandy plain of El G´eʾah, and here disclosed to me across the sea a glorious prospect of the opposite coast, and the Egyptian chain of mountains bounding it. From this point the rock-path suddenly descended along the ragged mountain declivity into a wild, deep basin, round which the five summits of Serbâl meet in a semicircle, forming one mighty crown. In the middle of this basin, called Wadi Siʾqelji, are the ruins of an old convent, to which the mountain path leads, which unfortunately we had not time to visit.[69]

I therefore returned across the level space, and then began to ascend the most southern of the summits of Serbâl. When I had almost got to the top of the precipitous height, I thought I observed that the second summit was somewhat higher, and therefore hastened down again, and sought out a way to reach this. We passed a small piece of water, and were obliged to go almost round the whole basin, till we at length succeeded in clambering up it, from the north-east side. Here, to my astonishment, between the two points into which the summit is divided, I found a small level valley, plentifully supplied with shrubs and herbs, and from this I first ascended the one, then the other point, and by the assistance of my guide, who was conversant with the spot, I took the points of the compass with reference to all the places of note which might here be surveyed in the wide horizon. For instance, I could clearly perceive how the mountain summits beyond Gebel Mûsa continue to rise higher, and that the distant Um Schômar rose above all the others. We did not set out on our return till four o’clock, so that we were obliged to avoid the circuitous road by which we had ascended, unless we were desirous of being overtaken by darkness. We therefore determined to leap down, from block to block like chamois, and follow the precipitous rocky ravine, which led almost in a straight line to our camp in Wadi Rim, and in two hours and a half, with trembling knees, we reached our tent by this impracticable path, the most difficult and the most fatiguing that I ever trod in the whole course of my life.

The following day we proceeded farther, and passing through Wadi Selâf, and the lowest part of Wadi e’ Scheikh, we reached the Wadi Firân—this most precious jewel of the Peninsula, with its Palms and groves of Tarfa, on the banks of a lovely rushing stream, which, winding among shrubs and flowers, conducted us to the old convent mountain of the town of Pharan, the Firân of the present day. Everything that we had hitherto seen, and what we afterwards saw, was naked, stony desert compared to this fertile oasis, abounding in wood and water. For the first time since we had left the Nile valley, we once more walked on soft black earth, obliged to defend ourselves with our arms from the overhanging leafy branches, and we heard singing birds warbling in the thick foliage. At the point where the broad Wadi Aleyât, descending from Serbâl, enters Wadi Firân, and where the valley spreads out into a spacious level tract, there rises in the centre of it a rocky hill called Hererat, on the summit of which are the ruins of an ancient convent building. At its foot stood once a magnificent church, constructed of well-hewn blocks of sandstone, the ruins of which are built into the houses of the town situated on the slope of the opposite mountain.

The same evening I went up Wadi Aleyât, passing innumerable rock-inscriptions, to a well, surrounded by Palm and Nebek trees, where I enjoyed the entire prospect of the majestic mountain chain. Apart from all the other mountains, and united into one single mass, Serbâl rises, at first in a slope of moderate inclination, afterwards in steep precipices, with chasms, to the height of 6000 feet (above the sea). Nothing could equal the scene when the valleys and low mountains around were already veiled in the shadows of night, and the summits of the mountain still glowed above the colourless grey, like a fiery cloud in the sinking sun.

The following morning I repeated my visit to Wadi Aleyât, and completed my observations of the whole of this remarkable district, the principal features of which I had already noted down from the summit of Serbâl.

The most fertile district of Wadi Firân is enclosed between two hills which rise from the centre of the valley; the upper one of these two is called El Buêb, the lower, situated at the outlet of Wadi Aleyât, Meharret or Hererat. In very ancient times the valley appears to have been closed in here, and the waters rushing down from all sides, even from Gebel Mûsa, into this basin, appear to have united into a lake. It is only in this manner that we can explain the very remarkable deposit of earth, which extends along the sides of the valley to between eighty and a hundred feet high, and no doubt it is this remarkable position of Firân, as the lowest point of a large mountainous district, which occasions the unusual supply of water that issues forth at this point.

Directly behind the convent hill we found the narrow bed of the valley as stony and barren as the more elevated valleys, although the brook was still visible by our side for half an hour. The violent irruption of those primitive waters permitted no more deposits of earth in this spot. It was only at the next still more decided bend of the valley, called El Hessue, that a few more groups of palm-trees appeared. Here the brook disappeared in a cleft of the rock, as suddenly as it had burst forth behind Buêb, and we did not see it again.

After being five hours on the road, we quitted Wadi Firân, that here turned off to the left hand towards the sea, and we emerged from the primitive mountains into a more level region of sandstone. The loftier range retreated towards the north-west, and encircled in a great bow the hilly, sandy district that we traversed. We next came to the Wadi Mokatteb, the “valley with inscriptions,” which derives its name from the immense numbers of inscriptions which are to be found here in several places. It is easy to perceive, that it is those places sheltered from the mid-day sun, which invited passing travellers on the road to Firân to engrave their names and short mottoes in the soft rock. We took impressions on paper of as many of them as we could obtain, or copied with the pen those which were less adapted for an impression. We found these inscriptions scattered singly, in the most various, and frequently very remote places of the Peninsula, and taking them altogether, I have no doubt whatever that they were engraved by the inhabitants of the country during the first centuries before and after Christ. I sometimes found them cut over more ancient Greek names, and not unfrequently Christian crosses are connected with them. These inscriptions are habitually called Sinaitic, which would not be inappropriate, if thereby the whole Peninsula of Sinai was intended to be designated as the spot where they are found. But we must observe, that on Gebel Mûsa itself, which is regarded as Sinai, very few single and short inscriptions of this kind have been found, such as those which, after careful observation, are to be met with in almost all spots adapted to them, but that, on the contrary, their actual centre was rather Pharan, at the foot of Serbâl.

On the 31st of March we again reached the lofty chain which turns back from the east, and marched through Wadi Qeneh into the small Wadi Maghâra, which branches off from it, and in which the sandstone and primitive rock border on one another. Here we found, high up in the northern sandstone precipices, the remarkable Egyptian rock stele belonging to the earliest monuments generally known to us among Egyptian antiquities.[70] As early as the 4th Manethonic Dynasty, the same which built the great Pyramids of Gizeh, in Egypt, more than 3000 years before our era, copper mines were discovered in this wilderness, which were worked by a colony of labourers. Even then the Peninsula was inhabited by Asiatic, probably Semetic races, for which reason we frequently see the Pharaoh represented in those rock-images as conqueror over the enemies of Egypt. Almost all the inscriptions belong to the Old Monarchy; we only found one from the period when King Tuthmosis III. and his sister reigned together.

From this point I was anxious to take the shortest road to the second place in the Peninsula, where there are ancient Egyptian monuments, Sarbut el Châdem. But there was no direct road over this lofty range to its slope on the other and north-easterly side, so we were obliged to return to Wadi Mokatteb, and get across the mountains by a very circuitous route through Wadi Sittere and Wadi Sich. As we again emerged, we had the immeasurable plateau in front of us, which includes the whole of the north of the Peninsula, and consists of one single vast bed of sandstone. This, however, descends towards the south by two steps, so that the prospect seems as if it were bounded by two lofty mountain precipices retreating at about equal distances into the far distance. The descent nearest to the south, called e’ Tih, sinks to a flat, broad sandy valley, Debbet e’ Ramleh, while the masses of sandstone rock, on this side, seem to be as high as the general plateau.

On a terrace protruding far into the broad valley, which we climbed with great difficulty, are the wonderful monuments of Sarbut el Châdem, which appear no less so, even to those who are prepared to behold them. The oldest representations led us also here into the Old Monarchy, but only as far back as its last dynasty, the twelfth of the Manethonic list. In this period, under Amenemha III., a small rock-grotto was excavated, and furnished with an ante-chamber; lofty steles were erected outside, at different distances, and without any determined arrangement, the one lying most remote being a short quarter of an hour distant on the highest point of the plateau. During the New Monarchy, Tuthmosis III. enlarged the building towards the west, and added a small pylon with an outer court. The later kings had built an additional long series of chambers, one in front of the other, in the same direction, solely, as it appears, for the purpose of protecting the memorial stele erected upon them from the weather, especially from the sharp wind, often loaded with sand, which has now almost totally destroyed the ancient steles, which were even at that time unprotected. The latest stele exhibits the Shields of the last king of the 19th Dynasty, therefore since that time, or soon afterwards, the place was probably deserted by the Egyptians.

The divinity who was here peculiarly worshipped in the New Monarchy, was Hathor, with the epithet which is also found in the Wadi Maghâra, “Mistress of Mafkat”—i. e. of the copper country, for mafka in hieroglyphics, as well as still in the Coptic language, meant “copper.” Therefore no doubt copper was also obtained here. This was confirmed by a peculiar appearance, which, strange to say, seems to have been left unnoticed by all previous travellers. To the east and west, namely of the temple, may be seen great mounds of slag, which, by their black colour, form a strong contrast with all that surrounds them. These artificial elevations, the largest of which is 256 paces long, and from 60 to 120 broad, are situated on a tongue of land forming a terrace that projects into the valley; they are coated over with a solid crust of slag between 4 and 5 feet thick, and are covered to their base with separate fragments of slag to the depth of 12 to 15 feet. The ground shows that the mines could not have been situated in the immediate neighbourhood, their site might, however, easily be discovered by the ancient roads, which are still visible, leading to the mountain range, but unfortunately we had not sufficient time to accomplish this. Hence it appears that this open spot was probably selected merely for smelting the ore, on account of the keen draught of wind, which, as we were assured by the Arabs, is here almost incessantly blowing.

The 3rd of April we rode on farther, visited the Wadi Nasb, in which we also found the traces of ancient smelting places, and the following day, towards evening, reached our ship, which had been waiting for us several days, in the harbour of Abu Zelîmeh.

We here, to our no small surprise, found four German journeymen; two of them Prussians, from the district of the Neisse, in Silesia. They had started from Cairo with the intention of visiting Sinai, and reached Suez safely; had there waited in vain for a ship, and at length, like genuine modern Crusaders, started alone to attain their bold object. They had been told (hardly in good German) that the way was short, and could not be missed, and that there was no want of water. Possessed with this happy belief, their pilgrim’s bottle filled to the brim, they entered the wilderness. But the footsteps of the children of Israel had long since disappeared, and no pillar of smoke went before them. The third day they lost their way, their bread was consumed, they had missed the wells, had several times been stopped by Arabs, and only escaped being robbed because they possessed nothing worth robbing; and thus they certainly would have been starved in the wilderness, had they not looked down from the mountains and beheld our vessel on the coast many hours distant, and fortunately reached it before our arrival. On my inquiring about the trades, to perfect which, they had undertaken this journey to the East, and also whether they hoped to find employment with the monks on Mount Sinai, as they had no money with them, it appeared that one was a carpenter, who was in hopes of making himself very useful there; I was, alas! compelled to inform him, that he would have to compete with a lay-brother in that department; the other was a shoemaker, the third a stocking-weaver, and the fourth, after some hesitation, confessed that he was a woman’s tailor. Nothing remained but to take these strange people along with us in the vessel, although they were regarded with a jealous eye by the sailors, as we began to feel some scarcity in the supply of water. I landed them at Tôr, and arranged that some one should accompany them thence to the convent.

Besides the remarkable Egyptian monumental sites of this copper country, and the so-called Sinaitic inscriptions, I was chiefly occupied during the journey with geographical inquiries in connection with the sojourn of the Israelites on the Peninsula. I think I have arrived at some results with respect to this, deviating, indeed, in essential points, from what has hitherto been admitted; but if they are correct, they furnish some important features for the historical and geographical background of that most important event in the Old Testament. I will here only point out briefly some of the chief points, of which I will say more when I write from Thebes.

I became doubtful, even in the convent at Gebel Mûsa, whether the holy mount of the law-giving could have been situated here. Since I have seen Serbâl and Wadi Firân at its base, besides a great part of the rest of the country, I have become convinced that Serbâl must be recognised as Sinai, in preference to the other.[71]

The monkish tradition of the present day is of no value to the unprejudiced inquirer.[72] Whoever has once occupied himself earnestly with such matters is aware of this. Even in Jerusalem it is for the most part useless, and has not the slightest weight, if unsupported by original authorities, how much more so in the Peninsula of Sinai, where far more remote questions, both as to time and place, are treated of. In the long interval of time between the law-giving and the first centuries of the Christian era, Sinai is only once mentioned in a passage referring to a later historical event, as the “Mount of God, Horeb,” to which Elijah retires.[73] It would, in fact, be most strange if the tradition had never received an interruption during this period, although the population of the Peninsula had meantime changed so much that we are no longer able to point out with certainty a single Old Testament name for a locality; and even the Greeks and Romans were unacquainted with those ancient designations.[74] We are, therefore, referred solely to the Mosaic narrative to prove the correctness of our present assumptions.

We must further premise with respect to this, that the general geographical conditions of the Peninsula have not essentially altered since the days of Moses. Whoever takes refuge in the opposite supposition, may indeed prove everything, but for that very reason proves nothing. It is, however, just as important to bear in mind distinctly the historical conditions of the different periods, because these indeed were calculated to produce partial alterations of particular districts.

Accordingly, no one will be able to deny that Wadi Firân, abounding at all times, and therefore in the time of Moses, in water, and possessing a rich soil, must, in consequence of its incomparable fertility and its inexhaustible rapid stream, have been the most important and the most desirable central spot of the whole Peninsula. For this wonderful Oasis, in the centre of the ever barren wilderness, was subject even then, as now, to the general conditions of the surface of the ground in that country. On the other hand, it is however no less certain, that the vicinity of the present convent of Gebel Mûsa was formerly, in spite of the scanty springs of water also appearing on the surface there, but which merely moisten the ground immediately surrounding them, just as barren as all the other parts of that mountainous wilderness, only furnishing sufficient water for the inhabitants of the convent by means of a draw-well dug into the rock;[75] and after more than a thousand years of artificial irrigation, the most careful employment of every means of cultivation only enabled them to make small plantations, such as exist there at the present time.[76] In ancient times there was not the slightest reason for making that wilderness habitable by artificial means, the rather as it was situated away from the great roads connecting the different parts of the Peninsula, and formed an actual cul de sac, with only one single entrance through the Wadi e’ Scheikh.

On the other hand, there is another spot in the Peninsula which was a position of great importance long before the time of Moses, and even in his days, but has lost it since that time: it is the harbour of Abu Zelîmeh. It was to this point that the roads led from the three different mines that hitherto we have become acquainted with. They proceeded from Wadi Maghâra, Sarbut el Châdem, and Wadi Nasb. There was no more convenient landing-place than this, to connect Egypt with those colonies; indeed, our sailors decidedly affirmed that it was the best harbour on the whole coast, not excepting that of Tôr. The Egyptians were therefore compelled to provide, above all things, for a copious supply of water, in the most immediate neighbourhood of that spot. As this was neither furnished by the sandy sea-coast, nor by valleys, which had their outlets here, wells no doubt were made at the nearest spots which offered a likelihood of yielding water from below ground. Such a spot was discovered at the lower outlet of the Wadi Schebêkeh (called by others Tâibeh), where even now, there are a number of Palms, and many other trees, consequently a moist soil, although there is no appearance of a spring.[77] This, therefore, would have been the most suitable point to dig for water, and to make a well. No one now differs in opinion that the place of encampment at the Red Sea, mentioned after Elim in the Book of Numbers,[78] was near Abu Zelîmeh. In Exodus this statement is omitted, and the twelve wells and seventy palm-trees of Elim are alone mentioned.[79] What, therefore, can be a more natural conclusion, or indeed an almost unavoidable one, than that the wells and palms of Elim were situated about an hour distant from the outlet of the valley whose entrance was at the harbour of Abu Zelîmeh, and for that very reason in Exodus, the encampment on the sea, is related as being not specially separated from Elim, the watering station of the harbour, which probably bore the same name. According to the statements that have been hitherto admitted, as well as those of Robinson, the twelve wells of Elim were situated in the Wadi Gharandel, by the latest calculations[80] between eight and nine hours distant from the port, a long day’s journey, therefore useless for the supply of that important spot. It is not easy to perceive what could have occasioned twelve wells to be made precisely in Wadi Gharandel, where even now the brackish water of that whole district appears on the surface in somewhat greater abundance than elsewhere. In addition to this, we should further be compelled to transfer the station of Mara, which immediately preceded it, to an insignificant spring not more than an hour and a half, or two hours distant from Wadi Gharandel, while the succeeding station is assumed to be at the distance of eight hours. To me, it seems scarcely possible to doubt that the first three desert marches conducted as far as Wadi Gharandel, i. e. Mara, the fourth, to the harbour station of Abu Zelîmeh, i. e. Elim.

It is only in this manner that we can understand their progress, when it is said, “And they took their journey from Elim—and came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai.”[81] The boundary of two provinces at Wadi Gharandel would geographically be just as inconceivable, as it is natural at Abu Zelîmeh. The harbour, with its small plain situated between the Nochol rock and Gebel Hammâm Faraûn, forms in fact, by the rock protruding into the sea, the most important geographical section of the whole coast.[82]

The northern plateau sinking uniformly towards the sea was called the Wilderness of Sûr; the southern mountainous district rising higher, and soon passing into the primitive rock, totally different in character, is called the Wilderness of SIN. There would be no meaning in the remark that this last was situated between Elim and Sinai, if by this it were not meant that the Wilderness of Sin extended as far as Sinai, or even farther. The next departure, therefore, from the Wilderness of Sin to Raphidîm, is not to be understood as if they had quitted this wilderness; on the contrary, they remained in it till they reached Sinai, whose name Sini, i. e. “the Mount of Sin,” was evidently first derived from this district, and for this very reason should not be sought for beyond its limits. The same conclusion may be deduced from the account about the Manna which was given to the Israelites in the Wilderness of Sin; for this is first met with in the valleys in the vicinity of Firân, and appears as little in the sandy districts near the sea, as in the more elevated regions of Gebel Mûsa.[83]

Now, if we already here put the preliminary question, which of the two mounts, Serbâl or Gebel Mûsa, was so situated as to be peculiarly designated as Sini, the “Sinic,” “the Mount of the Wilderness of Sin,” there cannot be a moment’s doubt which to select. Gebel Mûsa, invisible from every quarter, almost concealed and buried,[84] neither distinguished by height, form, position, nor any other peculiarity, presented nothing which could have induced the native tribes, or the Egyptians who had settled there, to give it the peculiar designation of the “Mount of Sin,” while Serbâl, attracting the eye to itself from all sides, and from a great distance, unequivocally commanding the whole of the northern portion of the primitive range, has always been the central point for the widely-scattered inhabitants of the country, and the goal of travellers, not only from its external aspect, but also on account of Wadi Firân, situated at its base; therefore it might very appropriately be designated the “Mount of Sin.” But if any one were to conclude from the expression the departure from the Wilderness of Sin to Raphidîm, that the broad tract of sea-shore to the south of Abu Zelîmeh, which the Israelites were obliged to traverse, was alone called the Wilderness of Sin, which is Robinson’s view of the question,[85] Serbâl, which commands and also comes into immediate contact with this district, and is accessible from this point by the old convent of Siʾqelji, might even then have been designated Mount Sin, for instance by the sailors on the Red Sea; but Gebel Mûsa, situated exactly on the opposite and eastern side of the great range, could not possibly have been named after the western Wilderness of Sin, nor have given the smallest ground for the statement that the Wilderness of Sin was situated between Abu Zelîmeh and Gebel Mûsa. One other view might still be adopted: for instance, that the whole of the primitive mountain range—that is to say, the whole of the Peninsula to the south of Abu Zelîmeh—was called the “Wilderness of Sin,” and consequently included Gebel Mûsa. Even this would not necessarily prevent our assuming that Serbâl, as the mountain best known, and nearest at hand, must especially have appeared of more importance to the Egyptian colonists than the southern range, and might have been distinguished by that name; whilst in the principal southern range Um Schômar, as the loftiest central point, would have alone justified such a distinction, and not the entirely subordinate Gebel Mûsa, still less the insulated rock Sefsâf, which is regarded as such by Robinson.

All that has been here said about Sinai as the “Mount of the Wilderness of Sin,” is also applicable to the still more remote question, which of the two mountains, Serbâl, or Gebel Mûsa, possessed such qualifications as to have been regarded by the native tribes of the Peninsula, even before the great event of the Law-giving, as a “Holy Mount,” a Mount of God.[86] For Moses drove the sheep of Jethro from Midian beyond the wilderness to the “Mount of God, Choreb,”[87] and Aaron met him, on his return to Egypt, at the Mount of God.[88] If we maintain that the necessary centre of the Sinaitic population must have been, at all events, the Oasis of Firân, we may also suppose that those tribes founded a sanctuary, a common place of worship, in the vicinity of that spot, either at the base, or, still more naturally, on the summit of the mountain which rises up from that valley.[89] This also was the most appropriate place for the meeting between Moses, who came from Midian in the East, and Aaron, who came from Egypt. In such a barren and uninhabited country there was no occasion to search for any peculiarly secret and remote corner among the mountains for such an interview.

In addition to this, the Sinaitic inscriptions, which, as mentioned above, are found in the greatest numbers, especially on the roads to Wadi Firân, and in Wadi Aleyât, which leads up to Serbâl, seem to indicate that in much later times also considerable pilgrimages were undertaken thither to solemnise religious festivals.[90]

If we now pass at once to the principal point, which must appear as most decisive to those who look attentively at the general conditions connected with the march of the Israelites, it must be allowed that if Moses desired to lead his numerous people to the Peninsula, the first and chief task he had to perform, in accordance with his wisdom, and his knowledge of the country, was to maintain them. For however we may explain the given numbers of the emigrants, which according to Robinson amounted to two millions, by Lane’s account equal to the present population of Egypt, we must always admit that there was a very considerable mass of people who were suddenly to be maintained in the Sinaitic wilderness without any importation of provisions. How then can we imagine that Moses would not have kept in view, above all other places, the only spot in the Peninsula that was fertile and amply supplied with water; and that he would not have endeavoured to reach it by the shortest path; but that in place of this, a remote nook in the mountains should have been sought out, which at that time could not possibly have supplied the daily necessity of water and other nourishment, even for only 2000 emigrants and their belongings—I mention a high number intentionally. Moses would have been wrong to have trusted here to miraculous aid from God; for this is never manifested until human wisdom and human counsel, which is not intended to be rendered superfluous through it, can go no further.

It appears to me that we should not relinquish this inevitable opinion respecting the position of Sinai, which is opposed to the view hitherto entertained, and becomes stronger the longer we reflect upon it, and we ought not to disclaim any more particular historical consideration of this wonderful occurrence, unless other grounds, as urgent, should afford proofs against our mode of acceptation. Let us therefore pursue the narrative still further.

From Elim, Moses reached Raphidîm in a march of three days. Modern scholars generally agree that the march from Abu Zelîmeh did not pass again through the same Wadi Schebêkeh or Tâibeh through which they had descended, back to the eastern sandy plain of E’ Raml, but followed the customary caravan road which leads to Wadi Firân. How should Moses then have selected the far longer upper road devoid of water, or even the still longer, and still more arid, circuitous route along the sea-coast by Tôr and Wadi Hebrân, instead of at once entering the less arid valleys of the primitive range which abounded in manna?

He was obliged therefore to go to Wadi Firân; no third way was possible. This is the urgent reason why Raphidîm (except by Robinson[91]) has almost as unanimously been transferred to Firân. It seems, however, impossible that this oasis, if it was traversed, should not have been once mentioned; therefore even Josephus,[92] Eusebius,[93] Jerome,[94] and, as it appears, all the older authors and travellers,[95] place Raphidîm near the town of Pharan. No spot in the whole land could have been of greater value for the native tribes who were menaced by Moses than these orchards of Pharan. We may, therefore, perfectly conceive that Moses was attacked at this very spot in Raphidîm by the Amalekites, who were about to lose their most precious possession. He repulsed them, and Moses could now first say that he had got possession of the Peninsula. His nearest object was attained. What could have attracted him still farther from this point?

It is also said, however, in distinct terms, that the people had arrived here at the Mount of God; consequently at the Mount of the Law. For it is said, after the victory at Raphidîm, that Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses in Midian, heard of all that had happened. “And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the Wilderness, where he encamped at the Mount of God.”[96] And even before that, the Lord had said to Moses, “Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Choreb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink,”[97] words which could only have alluded to the wonderful spring of Firân, as has been already supposed long before my time.[98] It may still further be deduced, that Moses really found repose here in Raphidîm, because now, by the advice of Jethro, he organises the hitherto disorderly mass of people to enable him to govern them.[99] He selects the best qualified men, and places them over a thousand, over a hundred, over fifty, and over ten; these are appointed judges of smaller matters while he only retains the most important for himself.

All this evidently indicates that the journey was past, and the period of repose had commenced.

The beginning of the following chapter (Exodus xix. 1-3) certainly seems to contradict this, for it is said, “In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day[100] came they into the wilderness of Sinai. For they were departed from Raphidîm, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the Mount, and Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the Mountain,” &c.

According to this, they decamped between Raphidîm and Sinai. This favoured the tradition which believed that the Mount of the Law might be re-discovered in Gebel Mûsa beyond Firân. At the same time, however, it was not considered that by admitting this we encounter much greater contradictions with the text. In the first place, the words mention no more than one day’s journey,[101] not even in the Book of Numbers,[102] where, nevertheless, between Elim and Raphidîm, not only Alus and Daphka, but the Red Sea (though this last was near Elim) are particularly mentioned. From Firân to Gebel Mûsa there were, however, at least two long days’ journeys, if not more. The “Mount of God” has likewise been already mentioned in Raphidîm, it was there called a rock in Choreb; and it is therefore impossible to understand by the Mount of God any other than “the Mount of God” to which Moses drives the sheep of Jethro.

We should, thus, be obliged to admit that there were two “Mounts of God;” one, the “Mount of God, Choreb,” in Raphidîm, which would be Serbâl, and a “Mount of God, Sinai,” on which the law was given, which would be Gebel Mûsa.[103]

To admit this would, however, in itself not only be scarcely conceivable, but most distinctly self-contradictory, inasmuch as it maintains that the Mount of God, Choreb, where God first appears to Moses, is even in anticipation designated as the Mount of the Law (Exodus iii. 1-12); that further, the general designation, the “Mount of God,” which appears so frequently without a name being appended (Exodus iv. 27, xviii. 5, xxiv. 13; Numbers x. 33), could only have been employed if there were no more than one such Mount; and, finally, because the name of Sinai, or Mount Sinai, and Choreb, or Mount Choreb, are continually mentioned with exactly the same meaning as Mount of the Law-giving.

This evident difficulty has indeed been felt strongly at all times.[104] Josephus (Ant. iii. 2, 3) forwarded his view by transposing the doubtful commencement of the xix chapter from its present position after the visit of Jethro, to before it, so that Moses does not receive his family in Raphidîm, but in Sinai. By this means certainly the double difficulty is avoided; on the one hand, because two Mounts of God do not appear, on the other, that the organisation of the people does not occur during the journey. He also deliberately omits the statement that in Choreb was situated the rock which Moses strikes for the spring of water.

Modern scholars have, on the contrary, proposed either to make Sinai the general name for the whole of the range, and Choreb the individual Mount of the Law-giving, or vice versâ, Choreb for the more extended, and Sinai for the limited designation,[105] while the tradition of the monks refer both names to different mountains situated immediately beside each other.[106] It seems to me that the comparison of the individual passages admits of none of these views; in my opinion it is rather clearly proved, by the names of Choreb and Sinai being used alternately, but with perfect equality, that both designated one and the same mountain together with the district immediately surrounding it,[107] so that Choreb perhaps was the more precise Amalekitish local name, Sinai the more indeterminate one, derived from its position in the Wilderness of Sin.

But with respect to the departure from Raphidîm, many might think it very probable that those words, which so strikingly interrupt the natural sequence of circumstances as to have been intentionally transposed either by Josephus, or prior to his time, did not originally belong here, but were placed at the commencement of the account of the Law-giving; if, as no doubt frequently occurred, this was to be understood by itself alone, separate from all that preceded and succeeded it.[108] The unusual manner in which they are connected, since the arrival at Sinai is mentioned previously to the departure from Raphidîm, and the expression “the same day,” which is so difficult to explain, while in the other statements of time a particular day is mentioned, would support the supposition.[109] Whoever, however, may consider it too bold to assume that we no longer possess the original composition, can only explain the fresh departure to be a last and insignificant removal of the encampment, such as we were obliged to admit to be the case at the departure from Elim to the sea coast. This removal was either while they advanced from El Hessue (where they first beheld the water) towards Firân, or from Firân into the upper portion of Wadi Aleyât, where the camp might have extended far and wide at the foot of the Mount.[110]

Whoever endeavours to realise the whole progress of the event, with its essential and necessary characteristics, can only be satisfied by comprehending it in this manner. He will not be able to blind himself to the conviction that Serbâl, on account of the oasis at its base, must have been the necessary object and centre for the pouring in of the new people, and that the wise Man of God, so well acquainted with the country, could never have intended to lead the multitude into a mountain enclosure like the plain at Gebel Mûsa, where they would find no water, no trees bearing fruit, nor manna, and where they would have been more easily cut off from all connection with the other parts of the Peninsula than anywhere else. He will be compelled to acknowledge that the designation of Sinai as the chief mountain of the Wilderness of Sin, and the sanctity with which it was regarded, not merely by the Israelites, but by the native tribes of the country, decidedly points to Serbâl; further, that the Raphidîm defended by the Amalekites was undoubtedly situated, together with the spring of Moses in Choreb, in the Wadi Firân; that consequently the Mount of God at Choreb, where God appeared to Moses, and the Mount of God at Raphidîm, where Moses is visited by Jethro, and organises the people, could also be no other than Serbâl, from which, finally, we must as necessarily deduce that unless we admit that there were two Mounts of God, the Mount of the Law was also near Raphidîm, and is recognisable in Serbâl, not in Gebel Mûsa.

In conclusion, if we now once more look back and observe how the present tradition bears on our account of the event, we perceive that it refers at once to the foundation of the convent, by Justinian, in the sixth century.[111] This, however, was by no means the first church of the Peninsula. At a far earlier period we already find a bishopric in the town of Pharan, at the foot of Serbâl.[112] Here was the first Christian centre of the Peninsula, and the church founded by Justinian also remained dependent on this for the space of several centuries. The question therefore is, whether the tradition which regards the present Gebel Mûsa as Sinai can be referred to a time prior to Justinian.[113] The remoteness of that district, and its distance from frequented roads of communication, though from its position in the lofty range offering sufficient subsistence for the trifling necessities of the single, scattered monks, rendered it peculiarly applicable for individual hermits, but for the same reason inapplicable for a large people, ruling the land for a certain period of time, and exhausting all its resources. The gradually increasing hermit population might have drawn the attention of the Byzantine emperors to that particular district, and, as it appears, have fixed the previously wavering tradition to that spot for future times.[114]

I have, indeed, been in need of a learned foundation for what I have here said about the position of Elim, Raphidîm, and Mount Choreb or Sinai, but this I shall not be able to supply even in Thebes; it would, however, chiefly refer to the history of the earliest tradition before Justinian, which, even were it to agree in all its parts with the tradition of the present day, would still hardly suffice to decide anything conclusively. It seems to me that these questions will always remain unsolved, if the elements which were at my command—namely, the Mosaic account, a personal view of the locality, and acquaintance with the history of that period—should not be considered sufficient to explain them. We shall only obtain a correct idea of the whole of the external character of the event, by simultaneously observing these three most essential sides of the investigation, while, on the other hand, an endeavour to obtain an indifferent and equal confirmation of each individual feature in the account now under our consideration, must necessarily lead to the wide road of false criticism, which always sacrifices the comprehension of the whole, to the comprehension of the individual part.

MAP OF THE PENINSULA OF MOUNT SINAI TO EXPLAIN THE MARCH OF THE ISRAELITES FROM ELIM TO HOREB
by R. Lepsius 1845.

G. ERBKAM delᵗ. Engraved by J. & C. Walker.

LETTER XXXIV.

Thebes, Karnak, the 4th of May.

On the 6th of April we quitted Tôr, where we had only spent one night. During our farther voyage we landed every evening on the shelly and coralline coast of Africa, till, on the 10th, we arrived at Kossêr, where excellent Seïd Mohammed of Qeneh was waiting to furnish us with camels for our return to Thebes. In four days we passed over the broad Rossafa road, crossing the mountain range, passed Hamamât, and on the 14th of April once more reached our Theban head-quarters.

We found everything in the most desirable order and activity; but our old and faithful castellan, ʾAuad, met me with a bandaged head, and saluted me in a feeble voice. A short time previously he had a narrow escape from death. I mentioned in a former letter that many years ago he, together with the whole house of the Sheikh of Qurna, burdened themselves with a crime of blood, which had not yet been expiated. The family of the man who had been killed in Kôm el Birât, had, soon after our departure, seized an opportunity when ʾAuad was returning home from Luqsor one evening with a relation, to fall upon the two unsuspicious wanderers. The attack was more aimed at the companion of ʾAuad than at himself, they therefore called out to him to go away; however, as he did not do this, but vigorously defended his relation, he received an almost deadly blow on his head from a sharp weapon, which stretched him insensible on the ground; the other man was murdered and thrown into the Nile, sacrificed to the revenge for bloodshed, which had remained unsatisfied seven years. Since that time there has been peace between the families.

A longer account of our Sinai journey will be despatched to-day, to which I have also added two maps of the Peninsula, by Erbkam, drawn from my notes. I now contemplate the difficult task of finishing my account with Thebes, which, however, I hope to accomplish in about ten or twelve days.

LETTER XXXV.

Cairo, the 10th of July, 1845.

The first place we halted at after we left Thebes on the 16th of May, was Dendera, whose magnificent temple is the last towards the North, and although of later date, almost confined to the Roman period, it yet presented an unusual amount of subjects for our portfolios and note-books. We then spent nine additional whole days upon the remarkable rock-tombs of Amarna, from the time of the fourth Amenophis, that royal Puritan who persecuted all the gods of Egypt, and would only permit the worship of the sun’s disc.

As we approached Beni-suef, we saw a magnificent steamer of Ibrahim Pascha’s hastening towards us. We hoisted our flag, and immediately the red Turkish flag, with the Crescent, appeared on board the steam-boat in return for our salute. It then altered its course, steered directly towards us, and stopped.

We were eager for the news which we were about to hear: a boat pushed off, and pulled to beside our ship. It was, indeed, a joyful surprise when I recognised my old university friend, Dr. Bethmann, in the fair Frank who came on board, and who had come hither from Italy to accompany me on my journey back by Palestine and Constantinople. Ali Bey, the right hand of Ibrahim Pascha, who was steaming to Upper Egypt, had kindly taken him into his vessel, and told me he unwillingly parted with his agreeable travelling companion, to whom he had become much attached even in their short acquaintance.

His presence, and the assistance he affords me, have become still more valuable since my other travelling companions have left me behind alone. They started from hence yesterday. Willingly indeed I would have accompanied them, as to-day is the third anniversary of my departure from Berlin, but the taking to pieces of the Pyramid tombs still detains us. The four workmen, able young men, who were sent to assist me from Berlin, have arrived, and I immediately took them with me to the Pyramids. We made ourselves a lodging in a tomb which was in a convenient situation. A travelling blacksmith’s forge was constructed, some scaffolding was raised for the windlass, and we set to work vigorously.

The difficulties of the whole affair, however, rest still more in the petty jealousies, by which we are here surrounded on every side, and in the different diplomatic influences, which are not unfrequently rendered abortive by Mohammed Ali’s distinct orders. Herr von Wagner therefore considered it absolutely necessary that I should by no means quit Egypt before the transport and embarkation of the monuments was completed, and I therefore shall be obliged to wait here patiently for several weeks longer.

LETTER XXXVI.

Cairo, the 11th July, 1845.

Will you permit me to communicate briefly some ideas which have of late considerably occupied my attention.[115] I have never lost sight of your wish to decorate the New Museum in harmony with the monuments which it contains, and I hope that you continue to entertain these views. I have had great pleasure in the account Herr Hertel has given me respecting the arrangement of the Egyptian saloons, and have heard from him that the facing of the columns is still in suspenso. It is very improbable that such a favourable opportunity will ever recur of having such means at our disposal on the first formation of a museum as we have in the arrangement of this Egyptian one, when we shall be able to furnish a complete whole, and at the same time offer to the public so much that is new and important in plan, materials, and arrangement. If I remember rightly, you have expressed a desire to form an historical museum, such, in fact, as all such museums should be, in conformity with their purpose and idea, and yet such as nowhere exists. This view, however, in an Egyptian museum, is at all events attainable in a degree which, even under the most favourable circumstances, can be but remotely approached in all other museums, because in no other nation can the date of each individual monument be so precisely and surely presented as in this, and because no other collection is distributed throughout so long a period of time (above 3000 years). I therefore presume that, as a whole, you wish to arrange the principal saloons historically, so far as this can be accomplished, and by some method to combine what belongs to the Old, what to the New, and what to the Greek-Roman Monarchy, in such a manner at least, that each chamber of any size should have a definite historical character. I have always borne this in view in forming the collection, although I by no means believe that this principle should be carried out pedantically in details. With respect to the plaster casts which you will probably wish to incorporate as a whole with the existing collection of casts, it would be very desirable to have a few duplicates made of these for the Egyptian saloons, for the sake of rendering them complete.

But what especially induces me to write from hence on such matters, is the notion that even now, or perhaps very soon, you may have made such progress in the edifice as to be desirous of coming to a decision with reference to the architectonic and pictorial decoration of the saloons, and in that case a few observations may not perhaps be unacceptable from me.

You will, no doubt, select Egyptian architecture for the Egyptian saloons; this should by all means be carried out in every part, and by what I hear from Hertel, there is still ample time for this. I think, for instance, that to produce a general harmonious impression the architectural style of ranges of columns, which is characteristic of different periods, should be retained in their historical succession of series, as well as with all their rich decoration of colouring.

The coloured paintings on the walls are, however, then indispensable. Every temple, every tomb, every wall in the palaces of the Egyptians was decorated from top to bottom with painted sculptures or paintings. The first inquiry must be, in what style these paintings should be executed. They might either be free compositions in the Greek style, or strictly Egyptian representations, avoiding, however, Egyptian perspective, therefore a kind of translation, somewhat in the manner of the frieze on the wall in the Musée Charles X.; or, lastly, they might be simple copies of genuine Egyptian representations drawn by us, and only adapted for this particular purpose. With respect to the first view, I think that a man like Cornelius, if he chose to enter on such a completely new field, would be capable of forming a beautiful and great work out of such a task; but then, the public would most likely be much more interested in the master than in the subject of the representation derived from a history of which they are still so ignorant. The second method would perhaps deserve a trial; it might succeed once, in a single case, and would certainly then not be devoid of interest. But I am firmly persuaded that a series of any length of such bastard representations would not fulfil the requisite demands, presupposing, as they would, a double mastery of two artistic languages, and that they would also be decidedly contrary to the taste of the public. All attempts of this nature that I have occasionally seen have, in my opinion, been completely unsuccessful, and have appeared ridiculous to connoisseurs; although, as I have already said, I do not believe that such an attempt might not succeed in an individual case, if the subject were carefully selected. It therefore appears to me, that the third method is the only one left, although it has least pretension; but it unites so many advantages, that I believe, indeed, it will also meet with your approval.

There can scarcely be any doubt with respect to the subject of the representations. They ought to place before us in characteristic features the highest point of Egyptian history, civilisation, and art, and I was even astonished at the great number of most suitable subjects which immediately present themselves, if we allow all that has been hitherto disclosed of Egyptian history to pass before us. Merely to give you a hasty notion of this, I will communicate the individual points, which I wrote down when I was still doubtful whether one of the two first modes of representation might not be executed. A more diffuse commentary than I can now give ought indeed to be appended to this, but it only refers to a very preliminary notion. The names within brackets indicate where materials could be found for single compositions.

Pre-historical.

The elevation of the god Horus upon Osiris’ gods’ throne. (Dendera.) To be placed with reference to the last number.

Old Monarchy.

Dyn. I. The removal of Menes from This, the city of Osiris.

Foundation of Memphis, the town of Phtha by Menes.

Dyn. IV. The Pyramids built by Cheops and Chephren.

Dyn. VI. The union of the two crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt during the reign of Apappus, which lasted a hundred years.

Dyn. XII. The Temple of Ammon in Thebes, the city of Ammon, founded by Sesurtesen I. in the 12th Dynasty.

Immigrating Hyksos. (Benihassan.)

The Labyrinth and Lake Mœris, the works of Amenemha III. of the 12th Dynasty.

Dyn. XIII. The Invasion of the Hyksos into Lower Egypt, occurring shortly after.

Expulsion of the Egyptian rulers to Ethiopia.

The rule of the Hyksos.

New Monarchy.

Dyn. XVII.-XVIII. Amenophis I. and the black Queen Aahmesnefruari.

Tuthmosis III. expels the Hyksos from Abaris. Jerusalem founded by them.

Amenophis III. Memnon and the sounding statue.

Persecution of the Egyptian gods, and introduction of the worship of the sun, under Bech en Aten. (Amarna.) King Horus, the Revenger.

Dyn. XIX. Sethôs I. (Sethôsis, Sesostris.) Conquest of Canaan. (Karnak.) Joseph and his brethren.

Ramses II. the Great. Miamun. War against the Cheta. (Ramesseum.)

The (brick-making) Israelites (Thebes) build Pithom and Ramses, under Ramses II.

Colonisation of Greece from Egypt.

Menepthes. Exodus of the Israelites to Sinai. Moses before Pharaoh. Commencement of the new Sirius period, B.C. 1322.

Dyn. XX. Ramses III. A battle from Medînet Hâbu.

The king among his daughters. The riches and luxury of Rhampsinitus. (Medînet Hâbu.)

Dyn. XXII. Scheschenk I. (Shishak) takes possession of Jerusalem. (Thebes.)

Dyn. XXV. Sabako, the Ethiopian, rules in Egypt.

Dyn. XXVI. Psammeticus, the friend of the Greeks, elevates art. Removal of the warrior caste to Ethiopia.

Dyn. XXVII. Cambyses rages; he destroys temples and statues.

Dyn. XXX. Nectanebus. (Philæ.)

Alexander, the son of Ammon, conquers Egypt; builds Alexandria.

Ptolemy Philadelphus founds the library.

Cleopatra and Cæsarion. (Dendera.)

Coronation of Cæsar Augustus. (Philæ.)

Christ at Heliopolis.

This selection would not, indeed, be so great, if we had only to deal with existing representations. The Old Monarchy would first commence with the 4th Dynasty, and would entirely omit the Hyksos period, since nothing has been preserved before the former period, or from the time of the Hyksos.

On the other hand, the Egyptian conceptions of art might be more completely represented, and each single representation would at the same time have a scientific interest. The following provisional selection which occurred to me might, however, be increased, and altered in all its parts from the ample supply of subjects in our drawings, which are 1300 in number.

Mythology.

1. The great and minor gods; the 1st and 2nd Dynasty of the gods. (Karnak.)

2. Osiris undertakes the government of the lower world. Horus that of the upper. (Dendera.)

3. Triad of the gods from This and Abydos. Osiris, Isis, Horus.

4. Triad of the gods from Memphis. Phtha, Pasht, Imhotep.

5. Triad of the gods from Thebes. Ammon Ra, Mut, Chensu.

Old Monarchy.

King Chufu (Cheops) beheading his enemies. (Peninsula of Sinai.)

Scenes from private life of the 4th and 5th Dynasties. (Giseh and Saqâra.)

Apappus unites the two crowns. (Kossêr road.)

Sesurtesen I., of the 12th Dynasty, beats the Ethiopians. (Florence.)

Scenes from private life of the peaceful flourishing period of the 12th Dynasty. Asiatic attendants. Precursors of the Hyksos; wrestlers, games, a hunt, &c. (Benihassan.) The Colossus dragged by men. (Berscheh.)

Immigrating Hyksos who seek for protection. (Benihassan.)

New Monarchy.

The working of the stone quarries of Memphis. (Tura.)

Amenophis I. and Aahmesnefruari. (Thebes.)

Tuthmosis III. and his sister. (Thebes; Rome.)

Tuthmosis III. Tribute. Erection of obelisks. (Thebes.)

Amenophis III. (Memnon) and his consort Tii before Ammon Ra. (Thebes.)

March of an Ethiopian queen to Egypt under Amentuanch. (Thebes.)

Amenophis IV. (Bech-en-aten), the Sun-worshipper. His procession with the queen and four princesses drawn in a chariot to the Temple of the Sun in Amarna. (Grottoes of Amarna.)

A favourite is borne on the shoulders of the people before Amenophis IV. Distribution of wreaths of honour among the whole of the royal family.

Horus running to Ammon. (Karnak.)

Sethôs I. makes war upon Canaan. (Karnak.)

Ramses II. Battle against the Asiatic Cheta. (Ramesseum.)

The same in the Tree of Life. (Ramesseum.)

The same triumphant. Royal procession. (Ramesseum.)

Ramses III. Battle against the Robu. (Medînet Hâbu.)

The same among his daughters; he plays with them. (Medînet Hâbu.)

Ramses XII. Procession of great pomp to Ammon. (Qurna.)

Pischem, the Priest King. (Karnak.)

Scheschenk I. (Shishak) brings the prisoners from Palestine before Ammon (Karnak), King of Judah.

Sabako, the Ethiopian. (Thebes.)

Tahraka, the Ethiopian. (Barkal.)

Psammeticus, Amasis. (Thebes.)

Nectanebus. (Thebes.)

Alexander. Philip Aridæus. (Thebes.)

Ptolemy Philadelphus. (Thebes.)

Cleopatra and Cæsarion. (Dendera.)

Coronation of Cæsar Augustus. (Philæ.)

Ethiopian subjects from Meröe.

This selection of representations, or one similar to this, as large as the partitions in the walls permit, executed in the strict Egyptian classic style, with the full, splendid colouring of the original, would have the great advantage, beyond all other methods, of giving the spectator some idea on a great scale of Egyptian art; the subjects would force themselves on his criticism, and the study of them, in conjunction with the smaller and isolated original monuments, would be more complete. For, with the exception of the tombs which we are now taking to pieces, and which only offer the most simple subjects, no monument is of sufficient size to give a notion of Egyptian temples, and of wall decoration in general, in which grandeur of idea and dexterity of composition is frequently displayed with a feeling for general harmony in the distribution and arrangement of the whole, most astonishing to the attentive observer. Such a selection of what is most beautiful and characteristic, in large representations, capable of being easily surveyed, would perhaps be of more service than any other thing in imparting Egyptian science to a larger proportion of the public, and at the same time offers the advantage, which is hardly sufficiently considered at the present day, of averting all invidious criticisms of the representations regarded as modern works. All hasty critics would, by this method, be referred to the original, which cannot be robbed of its most important position in the artistic history of the human race, by a miserable journalist. They would all learn that before venturing to criticise the faithful copy, they must first study the original, for if we can turn the attention of those young artists who have studied for three years to record these things, I am certain that the classic purity of their style will not easily be attacked. The novelty of the idea, and the effect on a large scale, and as a whole, could not fail to make a considerable impression on the learned and unlearned public, and the series of subjects mentioned above, independent of their execution, would afford satisfaction to intellectual men, and more especially to the King. Lastly, in addition to this, it might be executed at a comparatively small expense, on account of the perfect simplicity of the design and colouring, and because all expenditure on the artistic composition has been previously borne by the ancient Egyptians themselves.

The representations should only commence at a certain height, according to the manners of the Egyptians, and as is most convenient to our own purpose, and should rest on a deep band below, the colour of which ought to be an imitation of wood or stone. The lofty walls should probably be partly divided one above the other into several sections, and perhaps the whole series of the Egyptian Pharaohs, or their Name-Shields only, might be introduced in the frieze. The ceilings in the ante-chambers might be blue, with gold stars, the usual representation of the Egyptian heavens; and in the historical saloons there might be the long series of vultures, with outspread wings, the symbol of victory, with which most of the ceilings of the temples and palaces are decorated, in an incomparably splendid manner. Finally, a certain amount of hieroglyphic inscriptions must not be absent, which are so essentially connected with all Egyptian representations, and make a splendid impression in variegated colours. Modern hieroglyphic inscriptions might be easily composed for the doors, and the central stripes of the ceilings, which would refer in the ancient Egyptian fashion to the munificence of the king, the locality, the period, and the purpose of the building. How magnificent the two Egyptian rows of columns would then look in the centre of all, with their simplicity and rich colouring!

Finally, another idea might be carried out, perhaps, in the ante-chambers. Views of the Egyptian localities at the present day might be introduced upon the walls, to give a notion of the country to a person on first entering, and of the state of the buildings from which the ancient monuments, by which they are surrounded, are taken. These views might be also arranged historically, according to the principal places in the different epochs of time. But here we must presume that the spectator possesses some of the historical knowledge which we may hope to see generally diffused. On that account it would be more useful to attempt a geographical sequence, and we might embrace the views of Alexandria, Cairo, the Pyramids of Giseh, Siut, Benihassan, Abydos, Karnak, Qurna, the Cataracts of Assuan, Korusko, Wadi Halfa, Sedeïnga, Semneh, Dongola, Barkal, Meröe, Chartûm, Sennâr, and Sarbut el Châdem, in Arabia Petræa.

Besides all this, a most rich, interesting, and at the same time useful, selection of the subjects and occupations of private life might be introduced in the lateral chambers, all of them copied from the original, on a large scale, by which means we might facilitate and excite both an inviting and effective mode of comprehending that portion of the collection of antiquities which refer to private life.

LETTER XXXVII.

Jaffa, 7th October, 1845.

We proceeded rapidly in taking the tombs to pieces; nevertheless, as was to be expected, the most manifold obstacles were thrown in the way of the transport and embarkation. The export of the whole collection of monuments even then required a special permit from the Viceroy; I therefore set out on the 29th of August for Alexandria, in order to take leave of Mohammed Ali, and availed myself of this opportunity to give an official termination to our mission.

The Pascha received me with his former kindness, and immediately issued the most distinct commands with respect to the export of the collection, which he presented to H.M. our King in a special letter, which was handed to me. As soon as all the preparations were accomplished I returned to Cairo, and there made the last arrangements respecting the transport of the stone-boat to Alexandria, and then, on the 25th September, started with Bethmann for Damietta. On the road thither I visited several ruins of towns in the eastern part of the Delta, such as those of Atrib (Athribis), Samanúd (Sebennytos), Behbét el hagér (Iseum), but except the high mounds of rubbish, composed of Nile mud and potsherds, which generally indicate historical sites, we everywhere found only a few blocks, all that remained of the ancient temples. In San, the ancient renowned Tanis, whither I made a last excursion from Damietta across Lake Menzaleh, the foundation of a temple of Ramses II. alone remains, and about twelve or fourteen small granite obelisks, belonging to the same king, are preserved, some entire and some in fragments.

On the 1st of October we went from Damietta, and embarking in the roads of Ezbe, the following morning set sail for the Syrian coast. We had an almost incessant contrary wind, and cruised for a whole day in front of Ascalon, situated picturesquely on lofty sea cliffs; we only landed yesterday in the Holy Land, on the beach of Joppa.

LETTER XXXVIII.

Nazareth, 9th November, 1845.

You will not, I am sorry to say, receive my last letter of the 26th October from Jerusalem, as the courier of our consul, Dr. Schulz, in whose charge I gave it, with five other letters, was attacked by robbers at Cæsarea, on the road to Berut, maltreated, and robbed of all the despatches, as well as of a small amount of money which he had on his person. There is great disorganisation in this country. The Turkish authorities, to whom the land has been again handed over by Christian valour, are both lazy, malevolent, and impotent, while Ibrahim Pascha knew at least how to preserve order and security, so far as his own government extended.

We spent nearly three weeks in Jerusalem, part of which time I passed in becoming better acquainted with the state of religious matters at the present day, a subject daily becoming of greater importance; partly in making some antiquarian and topographical researches. These delightful days were rendered peculiarly valuable and instructive by the extreme amiability of Bishop Alexander, who overtook us with Abeken from Jaffa, and was willing to impart all that he knew; and by the scientific ability of Dr. Schulz, with whom I had been on terms of friendship since our mutual residence in Paris, in the years 1834 and 1835. An excursion to Jericho, the Jordan, and the Dead Sea, and back by San Saba, formed an interesting episode. My journal of this expedition, which I wrote very fully, was, however, contained in that letter, and will probably never reappear, so that I can but imperfectly restore it now.

The 4th of November we left the Holy City. We had some difficulty in procuring horses or mules on account of the war the Pascha of Jerusalem was carrying on with Hebron, which was assuming a more serious aspect. We spent the first night after leaving Jerusalem in a tent in Bîreh. The second day we proceeded by Bethin (Bethel), ʾAin el haramieh (the Robbers’ spring), and Selun (Silo) to Nablus (Sichem, Neapolis), and the same evening ascended Garizim, the holy mount of the Samaritans, whose remaining population (about 70 men, or 150 souls) we became somewhat better acquainted with the following morning. They still continue to be shunned by the Jews, and have as little communication with the Christians and Mohammedans.

On Garizim we saw the bare rocky surface, surrounded by some remains of an ancient wall, where these Samari still, as in past ages, annually offer up the sacrifice of sheep to their God. The following morning, after we had visited the Samaritan place of worship, in which we were shown the old Samaritan manuscript of the Pentateuch, and had seen Jacob’s well, and Joseph’s tomb surrounded by vine branches, we rode on farther, with an armed attendant of Solimân Bey’s, in whose house we were lodging, and proceeded first to Sebastieh (Sebaste, the ancient Samaria), where we saw the ruins of the beautiful old church from the period of the Crusaders, said to be built over the tomb of John the Baptist. We spent the night in the woody Gennin (Egennin). Thence our road led through the wide and fertile, but nevertheless barren, plain of Jesreel (Esdraelon), the great bloody plain of Palestine, to Zerin and the beautiful spring (Ain Gulut, Goliath’s spring), where Naboth’s vineyard was situated, and where the whole house of Ahab was murdered; then to Gebel Dahʿi, little Hermon, beyond which Tabor (Gebel e’ Tur), distinguished by its cupola-like form and isolated position, rose up and arrested our attention, until we once more rode into the mountains to Nazareth, beautifully situated in a mountain hollow, like an amphitheatre. Yesterday we made an excursion in the morning from this place over Mount Tabor to Tiberias, on Lake Genezaret, and have only just returned. In spite of my endeavours to the contrary, we were compelled to take a body-guard of armed Arabs with us thither, as we did to the Dead Sea; and we, in fact, encountered various groups of low Bedouin rabble in their picturesque variegated costume, whom I should have been sorry to have met alone, most of them in the neighbourhood of beautiful wooded Tabor, where they were lying on the road, or riding past across the plain.

LETTER XXXIX.

Smyrna, 7th December, 1845.

From Nazareth we proceeded down the plain of Jesreel to Mount Carmel, where we passed the night in the magnificent convent which has been newly erected. The following morning we descended from this promontory, commanding the wide ocean and its fragrant coast, to Haipha (Hepha), crossed over the bay to Acca (Ako, Ptolemais), and then rode along the coast on the damp sandy shore, keeping the mountain range constantly in view, and by Sûr (Tyrus) and Saida (Sidon) to Berut (Berytos), where we met with a kind reception from the Prussian consul-general, Herr von Wildenbruch.

On the 15th of November, we started from Berut for Damascus. I left Gabre Máriam behind with Herr von Wildenbruch, and only took with me my faithful Berber, Ibrahim, and a Kawass. The road, after leaving the sand-hills immediately surrounding Berut, rises directly up these glorious mountains, abounding in flowers, trees, and springs of water. We crossed it nearly on the frontier between the territories of the Druses and the Maronites. We ascended all day, part of the time on terribly bad roads cut in the rock, and spent the night on this side of the mountain ridge; we did not reach the summit till the following morning, and now had a wide prospect over the fertile plain of the Leontes, which separates Libanon and Anti-Libanon, and which, with the brief interruption of Gebel e’ Scheikh (Hermon), with its ramifications protruding upwards, it forms one single huge cleft through the whole of the valley of the Jordan, and continues across the Dead Sea, as far as the Gulf of Akaba and the Red Sea. We descended to Mekseh, took our breakfast on one of its flat roofs, and intended to have cut across from this point, in a south-easterly direction, through the valley to Megdel and Aithi, but, in preference, we took a circuitous road towards the north to Zachleh, which is one of the largest and most flourishing towns of Christian Libanon. On the road we met a troop of soldiers, who were escorting some thousands of weapons on asses, which had been taken the previous day from the inhabitants of Zachleh. The disarming of the whole of Libanon by Schekib Effendi had commenced from the south, and, as is well known, was executed with the greatest prejudice against the unfortunate Christians, who were miserably sacrificed to a piece of reckless commercial policy. In order to disarm Zachleh, which is a strong and influential post, it had been besieged by two hundred regular troops, some of whom we still found stationed there, and also a countless multitude of Bedouins had been allowed to encamp in the great valley of the Beqâʾa, whose aid against the Christians they would have availed themselves of in case of necessity; these last, however, had again withdrawn. We inquired in the town, which was still in a state of great excitement, after Bishop Theophilus, who was described to us as both a vigorous and heroic champion in the fight; but unfortunately he had just set off for Beirut. After we had again departed, we met on the road a German Catholic priest, who accompanied us to the adjoining place, Moʾallaqa, and told us much of the cruelties which the Turks had practised here, as elsewhere, on the miserable inhabitants. Several hundred more muskets had been demanded than really existed in the whole place, and the old Sheikhs, who ought to have supplied them, were cudgelled till the missing muskets had been purchased by the inhabitants at a high price, and with great difficulty, in the camp of the Turks themselves.

From Zachleh we went to Kerak, in order to visit the tomb of Noah at that spot. We found a long, narrow building, of well joined square blocks, and beside it a small building with a cupola, surrounded by trees, from which there was a beautiful prospect of the plain, and of Anti-Libanon. Through a window, hung with votive shreds, I saw a tomb built up in the usual Oriental form within the long vaulted room, and I was not a little surprised to see, through the windows in the whole length of the building, a constant continuation of this same tomb, which seemed to have neither a beginning nor an end. At length the door-keeper arrived, and, to my astonishment, I was convinced that the tomb was 40 ells long, by exact measurement 31 metres 77′ (131 feet English), therefore somewhat more than 40 ordinary Egyptian ells.[116] The case assumes an air of probability, as this measurement of the length of Noah’s body is exactly proportionate to the length of his life, one thousand years.

From Kerak we at length turned to our right, into the plain across to Tel Emdieh, we then turned to our left into a valley, which again conducted us directly northward, and at sunset arrived at El ʾAin, a small village near a spring, situated at the upper end of the valley, at a considerable height above the great plain. From our having followed the circuitous road to Zachleh and Kerak, we were somewhat beyond the day that we had calculated on, and therefore determined, to the disappointment of our mule driver, to go on still farther to Zebedêni, which was said to be situated on the eastern declivity of Anti-Libanon, two hours from hence. As none of our people had ever gone this road across the mountains, we took a guide with us, who very soon led us out of our valley, which ascended towards the north, between the lower mountains and the principal ridge, and led us up a steep, toilsome, and endless rocky path on our right hand. The moon rose, hours passed on, and the ardently-desired Zebedêni would never make its appearance. At length we stood on the precipitous border of another deep valley, up which we were compelled to clamber painfully on foot, for another whole hour, leading our animals; and it was not before midnight that we reached Zebedêni, after a march of six hours. All here were plunged in the most profound slumber; we were obliged to knock at several houses to inquire our road to the convent, where we hoped to find some shelter. At length we were told that there was indeed a church, but no room in the adjoining convent to receive us. We therefore quartered ourselves in the last house, which was opened to us after knocking at it for a long time. It only contained one large room, but there was sufficient space for ourselves and our servants, after the whole of the numerous family of men, women, and children, had retired to one corner. The people were, however, friendly and courteous, the next morning received their backshish, and took leave of us, with an invitation to repeat the visit on our return. We now proceeded down the beautiful fertile valley of Zebedêni towards the south, for an hour and a half, when we again turned eastward, into the precipitous rocky defile, where the rippling brook, beside which we had hitherto been marching, swelled into a small river, called Bárada, opening a path for itself, in most beautiful and picturesque cascades, through luxuriant verdure, to the great plain of Damascus. We rode for several hours along its precipitous banks, sometimes in the very bed itself, till we came to a lofty pointed arch, which, as a bridge, conducted us from the left to the right bank. Here the road went up the mountain, and disclosed a number of ancient rock-tombs, opposite the continuation of the steep rock-precipice we had just left. Soon afterwards the wild ravine opened into a broader valley, through which the rushing river winds more quietly, passing several pleasantly situated villages. It had hitherto pierced in an easterly direction, through a mountain ridge, passing from north to south, from which it now issued through a lofty rock-gate. Two single mountain masses rose up like mighty pylons towards the east; on the summit of the one to the south, rising almost perpendicularly several thousand feet, was a small sepulchral edifice, surrounded by trees. This place is worshipped as the tomb of Abel, Nebbi Habîl, who, according to tradition, was buried here. The summit is said to be almost inaccessible, and so it appeared, at least from this side, we therefore omitted to investigate whether a tomb, 40 ells in length, had been also erected to the youth Habel. At the foot of the mount the ancient city of Abila was formerly situated, whose name has probably given rise to the story.

We now quitted for several hours the enchanting valley of the Bárada, and rode over bare rocky plateaus, till at Gedîdeh we again descended to it, and rested a short time upon its bank, in the shadow of tall plane-trees and silver poplars of changing hue. At length we once more quitted the river, which had become gradually fuller, and more rapid, by the addition of various brooks, and ascending a high mountain, we suddenly stood in front of the illimitable plain, which lay spread out before us unbounded by mountain ranges, and covered like one large garden with innumerable leafy green trees, and intersected by roads and streams. In the midst of this garden, and immediately at our feet, lay glorious Damascus, with its cupolas, minarets, and terraces. We knew that we were about to see one of the most celebrated prospects in the world, but we were, nevertheless, astonished, and found our expectations surpassed by the magnificent picture which, like a stroke of enchantment, unfolded itself before us in the direction of the lovely but narrow valleys, alternating with barren, rocky deserts. We lingered nearly an hour at this point, which has been rendered prominent by a magnificent dome, resting upon four isolated pillars, called Qubbet e’ Nasr, the “victorious cupola.”

Damascus is one of the holiest and most lauded cities of the East. The prophet Mohammed considered it thrice blessed, because the angels spread their wings over the city, and at the glorious sight are said not to have taken possession of it for this reason, that one Paradise only is intended for man, and that one he will find in heaven. In the Koran, God swears by the fig and the olive-tree, that is by Damascus and Jerusalem, and the Arabian geographers call it the mole on the cheek of the World, the plumage of the peacock of Paradise, the necklace of beauty, and among the Sultan’s titles, “the Paradise-scented Dimischk.”[117] In accordance with the legend of the Oriental Christians, Adam was here formed out of the reddish earth of the district; and tradition places the spot where Cain slew Abel on Mount Kasiun, near this.

The Bárada, which we had followed from its first source, enters the great plain a little south of Damascus, turns to the left towards the city, through which it flows in seven branches, and then passes into a lake. It was the gold-streaming Chrysorrhoas of the ancients, the much-praised Farfar of the Eastern poets. It was this river that, calling forth the whole idea of Paradise, gave at all times to this most ancient city—known even by Abraham, and conquered by David—its great importance. Damascus was formerly one of the chief seats of Arabian literature and learning, and a disciple of the Prophet is said to have given instruction in reading the Koran to 1600 of the faithful at once (after the method of Joseph Lancaster) in the great mosque of the Ommiads. The city at first seemed but little to correspond with the glorious country surrounding it. We entered streets of considerable breadth, but bare, closed in by low houses, whose mud walls had small doors, and scarcely any windows. None of the beautiful wood-carvings of Cairo, or stone decorations, were to be seen on the windows and doors. Some of the mosques and fountains which we passed were the only exceptions; and the number of single trees in the streets and in the squares had a pleasant appearance. Farther in the interior of the city we came to the long bazaar, consisting mostly of massive building. The well-filled booths, the abundance of fruits of every kind that were heaped up, finally, the crowd of people, of all ages and of every description, in all sorts of costumes, and the endless turnings from one street into the other, impressed us with the feeling that we were in a large and wealthy capital of the East. We first rode to our Prussian consul, who was, however, prostrated with fever. We therefore proceeded still farther, to an inn, lately established. Here also, as in the consul’s house, we passed through a narrow door in a plain outer wall into a small dark court, and out of that into another low and angular passage. But then a beautiful spacious court was disclosed, surrounded on all sides by magnificent shining marble walls, in the centre of which was a fountain, overshadowed by tall trees. On the farther side was a vaulted niche, the entrance-arch of which was five-and-twenty feet high. To this we ascended by some marble steps, and now found ourselves in a somewhat narrow but lofty saloon, which was open to the court, and had commodious divans placed along the inner walls. On the left of this niche was the dining-room; on the right a staircase, by which we ascended to the rooms above, which we occupied. They were wainscoted all round, and the walls, as well as the ceiling, were adorned with a variety of decorations painted in gold and silver. We afterwards saw several more of the finest houses in Damascus, all of which appeared externally almost mean, but in the interior displayed Oriental splendour more like a fairy tale than anything which I have since seen in these countries. And occasionally, even at the present day, they build their houses in this style, at least if we may judge by some of these small palaces, which were only erected between ten and twenty years ago. There is a lavish display of marble, and other costly stones, in these courts, halls, and rooms, such as with us is only seen in royal palaces. The beautiful open hall, which is always formed in front simply by a lofty arch, sometimes appears on two, or even three, sides of the court, and not unfrequently has also a small fountain to itself, independent of the larger one, which is never absent, and is usually shaded by trees, which grow up from the midst of the slabs of marble.

The following day we spent entirely in viewing the city, and especially the rich bazaars, in which beautiful silks embroidered in gold and silver, splendid weapons, and other brilliant articles of Eastern luxury are exposed for sale. We visited the great Khan, with its nine immense domed chambers, a kind of exchange frequented by the most considerable merchants; then the mighty Mosque of the Ommiads, regarded as very sacred, whose Hall of Pillars is 550 feet long and 150 broad. It was formerly a Christian church, which itself was said to have been built on the foundation of a Roman temple to Juno. We were not permitted to enter, and therefore could only survey it through the numerous open gates, and were even prevented from mounting on the roof of a neighbouring house by a fanatical Mussulman, so that we were obliged to defer doing so till our return on the following day. We were shown the enormous plane-tree, thirty-five feet in circumference, standing in the middle of a street near a fountain, called after an old Sheikh, Ali, who is said to have planted the tree. We also stepped into the inviting coffee-houses on the cool bank of the river. Next morning we rode to the southern gate of the city, called Bab Allah, to which a street above an hour long leads in a direct line between magnificent shops, mosques, workshops, and other buildings; this is probably the so-called “Straight-street” (ἡ ῥύμη ἡ καλουμένη εὐθεῖα) in which Saul dwelt when he was converted by Ananias. (Acts ix. 11.)

On the road we stopped at the small cupola building which is usually regarded as the tomb of Saladin, but which is only a place of worship built to his honour by Sultan Selîm. The real tomb is said to be twelve hours to the south of Damascus, near a place called Gibba; this was confirmed by the Sheikh whom we met here. From Bab Allah, the “gate of God,” through which the pilgrims to Jerusalem and Mecca pass, we rode to the left round the city through the pleasant gardens of olives, poplars, mulberries, and gigantic apricot-trees; these last produce those delicious apricots which, when dried, are sent to all quarters of the world under the appellation of Misch-misch. We then came to the cemetery of the Jews, where a corpse was being lowered into the grave; and, according to the custom here, the virtues of the deceased were called to mind and eulogised. Not far off is situated the Christian cemetery, near which the spot is marked where Saul was struck to the ground by the heavenly vision. Thence our road led over a small bridge to the city wall, in which, near a gate now built up, we were shown a window from which Paul was let down. We followed the wall as far as a beautiful ancient Roman gate with three entrances, the porta orientalis, through which we came to the house of Ananias, with the rock-cave, which is now converted into a Latin chapel. We then rode through the gardens of fruit and olive-trees to a neighbouring village, Gôba, where Elisha crowned King Hazael of Syria, and where Elijah was fed by a raven in a chamber of the rock.

On our departure from Damascus we also visited Salhîeh, a place in the neighbourhood, the tomb of the greatest of the Arabian mysticists, the celebrated Sheikh Mohieddin el Arabi, and were here also reminded of his teacher, Schedeli, who invented the beverage of coffee, and who was in the habit of keeping his disciples awake with it.

In Palestine we had wandered among the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, of Joseph, David, Solomon, and the prophets, of Christ, his parents and disciples. Here we came to the tombs of Noah and Abel, and soon after to Seth also, and set foot on the fields of Paradise, which belonged to the first pair. What a strange sensation to travel in these regions, where tradition deals with such materials!

We halted the first night after our departure in Suk el Bárada, at the foot of Nebbi Habîl. From this point we again crossed over the old pointed arch bridge, which, like most early structures in this country, is said to have been built by the Empress Helena; and this time we examined the ancient rock-tombs somewhat more accurately. We reached them by a difficult path, partly by an ancient aqueduct hewn in the rock. Some of these tombs were planned in a singular manner, and appeared to be very old; farther on followed several from the Greek period, with bas-reliefs and gable-ends, and some steles upon the rock, on which we were still able to decipher some Greek words. Not far from this, up the river, we found a mighty Roman work, the great, ancient, now deserted high-road hewn for a considerable distance through the living rock, and two Roman inscriptions, each in two copies, on the flat lofty wall behind. The longer one ran as follows:—IMPerator CAESar Marcus AVRELius ANTONINVS | AVGustus ARMENIACVS ET IMPerator CAESar Lucius AVRELius VERVS AVGustus AR | MENIACVS VIAM FLVMINIS | VI ABRVPTAM INTERCISO | MONTE RESTITVERVNT PER | IVLium VERVM LEGatum PRO PRaetore PROVINCiæ | SYRiæ ET AMICVM SVVM | IMPENDIIS ABILENORVM. The other:—PRO SALVTE IMPeratoris AVGusti ANTONI | NI ET VERI Marcus VO | LVSIVS MAXIMVS | Ↄ (centurio) LEGionis XVI Flaviae Firmae | QVI OPERI IN | STITIT Vota suscepto.[118]

Since that time the rock has no doubt been twice hollowed out and broken away by the torrent, which has certainly great force every spring; for, in the immediate neighbourhood of the second copy of the two inscriptions, the rock-road is terminated by a sudden precipice. By four o’clock we had mounted Anti-Libanon, and at Nebbi Schît, that is Seth, we again entered the great plain of the Leontes. We immediately went in search of the tomb of Nebbi Schît, and were not a little surprised to find here also, as at Nebbi Noëh, a solid ancient Arabian building, with a small cupola standing beside it, and within, a tomb forty ells long. It was even broader than that of Noah, because three steps led up to the height of the monument on either side, the whole way along, which in the former case were wanting. By bestowing on them such an unusual size of body, the legend evidently wished to distinguish these two patriarchs as having lived before the Flood, and the number 40, which is used so frequently both in the Old and New Testament as an undetermined sacred number, has not, as is here exemplified, lost its application among the Arabs.

The same evening we rode on two hours farther, to Britan; and the following morning we started before sunrise for Bâlbeck, the ancient Heliopolis, with its celebrated ruins of the temple of the Sun. I lingered first at the ancient stone-quarries, in front of which the road passed, and there measured a block of building-stone, which was not quite separated from the rock; it was 67 feet long, 14 feet broad, and 13 feet 5 inches thick. Many of the walls in the temple ruins in Bâlbeck are composed of similar, or not much smaller blocks. One which I measured on the spot, and in its original position, without making any particular selection, was 65 feet 4 inches by 12 feet 3 inches and 9 feet 9 inches large. They are, indeed, grand ruins, but the ornamental part of the architecture is heavy, overloaded, and some in a very barbarous taste.

Bâlbeck is associated with a sad recollection. As I approached the scattered houses of the village, immediately adjoining the ancient temple ruins, my faithful servant Ibrahim, who had arrived here before us, met me with the joyful intelligence that Abeken, from whom we had separated in Jerusalem, had just arrived. I found him, in fact, in the house of the venerable Bishop Athanasius situated close at hand; but we had scarcely greeted each other, when I was informed that Ibrahim was lying in the road dying. I hastened out, and found him almost in the very spot where he had shortly before saluted me in so friendly a manner, lying extended with the rattle in his throat; his eyes were already dim. It was in vain that a priest of the neighbouring convent endeavoured to give assistance; in a few minutes he died before my face. His death seems to have been occasioned by a chill. He was a thoroughly excellent man, with a natural nobleness of character not often found among the Arabs. I had taken him with me on my journey to Nubia from Assuan; he wished of his own accord, and from his attachment to me, to accompany me to Europe, and by his knowledge of the Nubian dialect, would have been very useful to me in my studies of the languages of the Sudan. I was anxious to place a tombstone to his memory at the foot of Anti-Libanon, where he was buried on the declivity of the hill, beside a tree, but we found no stone-mason who could execute it. I therefore sent one to Bâlbeck from Berut, with an inscription as follows:—Ibrahimo Hassan Syene Orivndo servo bene merenti P. R. Lepsius. D. xxi. Novemb. MDCCCXLV.

This news made a great impression on Gabre Máriam when I communicated it to him in Berut; he wept bitterly, for they had been excellent friends.

Before we left Bâlbeck, the bishop advised us to take a different road from what we intended, as intelligence had been received that there was much disturbance on the other side of Libanon, and that the population had revolted. But, in fact, as the whole country was in a state of great excitement, and we had notwithstanding found no difficulty, we paid little regard to his recommendation, and told him we should only pass through Christian districts, whose inhabitants would look upon us as friends. We quitted Bâlbeck shortly before sunset, and traversed the narrow plain, in order to spend the night in Der el Ahmar, the “Red Convent,” and the following day, with renewed strength, ascend Libanon almost to its highest point, so that we might again descend by the famous cedar forest. Hitherto we had been favoured, during our whole journey in Palestine and Syria, with the most beautiful weather. From day to day we had been expecting increasing rain, according to the calendar of the weather on other years, and up to the present time had only once been drenched—on our return from the Dead Sea to Jerusalem. The wide plain of Beqâʾa, which we now traversed for the second time, is quite impassable after rain at this season of the year, and the numerous mountain streams of Libanon, so abounding in springs, generally swell these to such a degree that, with the frequent absence of bridges, they can only be crossed with extreme danger. The sky clouded over in a threatening manner this evening, the obscurity of the night was impenetrable, and at length, after we had already seen some of the lights of Der el Ahmar in the distance, we lost our way on a barren piece of ground rent by rugged clefts. At length, we had hardly arrived, when the rain poured down in torrents. Here again we shared a large room with the whole of a Christian peasant family, but we spent a most restless night. There were constant groans and lamentations among the women and children, who appeared to be sick. In a short time the incessant rain had soaked through the flat roof of the house, and trickled upon the beds; people were now sent up to throw fresh sand upon the roof, and to ram it firm with pieces of stone pillars, which are ready for this purpose on the top of all the houses; but this operation sent down so much lime and dirt upon us, that we were at length compelled to request they would discontinue this well-intentioned repair. In a small shed near the door lay a dog with a numerous progeny, whose bed seemed also to have been invaded by the rain, for they began to whine and yelp in the most wretched manner. At length our hosts were roused by repeated loud knocks, to furnish a horse for a soldier, who was carrying letters farther on at the utmost speed for the Pascha. Thus we got no rest the whole night through; and if an Arabian proverb says, that the king of the fleas keeps his court in Tiberias, the holy city of the Jews, I have now every reason to suppose that he has since then transferred his residence hither from that spot, where we had found good and undisturbed lodging.

The rain subsided towards morning, and gave place to a thick mist which, continuing still in single large clouds, seemed sometimes wholly to cut off the ascent to the mountain fronting the lofty ridge of Libanon, but also often charmed us by its magic play with the penetrating light of the cool morning sun round the nearer and the more distant wooded hills and points of rock. When we reached the first elevations, which are separated from the principal chain by a level valley, we suddenly burst upon an indescribably beautiful and astounding prospect. The sight of the chain of Libanon, covered in its whole extent and far down with fresh dazzling snow, was a real Alpine landscape on the grandest scale, rising majestically above the eternal spring of this blessed land, though now indeed so miserably trodden down by the hereditary enemy the Turk. I thoroughly enjoyed this unusual spectacle, which roused a true home-like joy in my heart, and I endeavoured to imbibe all that I could of the clear, white, quiet light. I drove my little Egyptian horse in front of me, which had lost its rider in Bâlbeck, and now bore on its back the small possessions he had left behind him. I thought how, a few days previously, I had been enjoying the thoughts of seeing my good Ibrahim’s surprise when he should pass through the snowy region of Libanon along with us. The deep parts of the snow which soon after we were obliged to ride through, did not seem to annoy the ass; it frequently stood still astonished in the midst of the snow, and no doubt viewed it all as salt, soft white fields of which it had known near the Red Sea and elsewhere. We rode zig-zag up the extremely steep mountain precipice between seven and eight thousand feet high. It is not rocky at this point, but covered with earth, and terminates in a sharp ridge. “El hamdu l’illah,” exclaimed the old guide when he had attained the summit, and “Salâm, salâm,” resounded in one chorus of voices. We had almost ascended the highest point of Libanon, but the prospect over land and sea was unfortunately hidden from us by clouds and layers of mist, although we had blue sky above us. After a short ride downwards from the summit, our guide pointed out the ancient venerable forest of cedars at our feet in a great level bay of the mountain range, from which King Hiram had sent the huge stems to Solomon for the building of the Temple; it looked as small as a garden from this lofty point. For a long while it was considered the only remains of those ancient forests, till, in recent times, several more tracts of cedar forest have been discovered in some of the northern parts of Libanon. We soon again lost sight of the cedars as we descended deeper among the layers of cloud, which excluded all prospect. Suddenly the dark shade of these gigantic trees rose like mountain spirits, close beside us, out of the grey mass of mist. We rode to the chapel of the hermit, who usually presents the stranger here, with a good glass of wine of Libanon, but we found it closed; just then the clouds dissolved into a most prosaic rain, from which we were scarcely able to shelter ourselves beneath the wide roof of needles of the noble cedars. I found a beautiful cedar cone hanging down sufficiently low for me to break it off and take it away with me as a keepsake. Single stems of these cedars are 40 feet in circumference, and 90 feet high; and as one cedar, which they pretend they know to be 100 years old, is only half a foot in diameter, the largest cedars are stated to be 3000 years old, which would go back as far as the time of Solomon. The rain increased, and we had still several thousand feet to descend before reaching the nearest village, Bscherreh. The lower we came, so much the more slippery and dangerous grew the narrow, sometimes rocky, sometimes soaked footpath, which led along the precipitous side of the valley with an abrupt precipice to our right. Turning an angle of rock, we at length gained sight of the night quarters we so longed to reach. The wealthy, inviting, and important village of Bscherreh, which gives a name to the whole district, is well known from its powerful and influential, but wild, uncontrolled, and often cruel inhabitants.

The rain had abated, the white houses, with their terrace roofs, between which a number of silver poplars, plane-trees, and cypresses, rise up singly, or in rows, were placed one above the other in a semicircle, on a hill projecting from the right side of the valley, and shining after the rain, they looked as if they had just emerged from a bath. Nothing was stirring in the village; it seemed as if it were perfectly dead. I rode in advance of the rest of our party, with our old guide, up a narrow path beside vineyard walls, when suddenly, at a bend in the road, a strong voice called out to me, and when I looked up, over the terrace of the vineyard, which was about a man’s height, to my no small surprise I saw about twenty muskets pointed at me and the guide. He let go the bridle of his horse, stretched out his hands towards heaven, and shouted out to the people. I hastily threw back the cape of my cloak, in order to show the people my European hat, and let them see who we were. When they perceived that we were but a small party, and that we did not put ourselves in any attitude of defence, they came out in hundreds from behind the trees, surrounded us with loud yells, and for a long time would not believe but that we were soldiers in disguise. Some even struck at our horses with staves, downwards from the terrace, while I was endeavouring to explain to those nearest to us who we were. Others had more quickly perceived their error; they came down to the street, and took my horse by the bridle. One especially, an animated boy of about fourteen, with a clear eye, beautiful forehead, and ruddy, fresh cheeks, pressed forwards towards me, calling out in Italian, that we should fear nothing, it was all a mistake, we were their friends, that I had only to ride on and dismount at the house of his brother. Some vehement people continued to accompany us, and called out to us from the wall, with the most angry gesticulations, while the great mass were already satisfied, and uttered a deafening cry of joy; they fired off muskets in the air, and now conducted us in triumph to the village.

All were on foot in Bscherreh, which contains between 1200 and 1500 inhabitants, and there was pressing and pushing to kiss our hands and clothes; the women began their piercing shrieks, clapped their hands, and danced; my honest youth remained constantly by my side, and thus step by step we made our way through the dense crowd, whom we now also greeted as friends, till we arrived in front of the Sheikh’s house, whose youngest brother was my companion and guide. We were led up the stone staircase, and the open hall in front, to the spacious saloon which was to shelter us.

I conversed almost the whole evening with the Sheikh of the village, Jusef Hanna Dahir, a young and handsome man, with a serious, gentle countenance, inspiring confidence. His father had fallen in the war, under Ibrahim Pascha, who will soon be invested here with an odour of sanctity, should the present abominations of the Turks last much longer. Sheikh Jusef was the eldest son of this numerous and ancient family, in which the dignity of Sheikh is hereditary. He related to me with perfect frankness, composure, and intelligence, what was now going on among them, how they had resolved to supply the weapons which were required, but had retracted this determination when they heard of the disgraceful manner in which the Turkish military had behaved in the southern districts; thirty-four villages had now combined, and sworn in their churches not to furnish the weapons, but to use them against the Turkish dogs. When I asked him if they had any prospect of being able to defend themselves successfully against a disciplined army, especially since the death of their common leader, Emir Beschir, he told me that in Bscherreh alone there were 3000, and in the whole of the district which had formed a combination 13,000 armed men—as large a number as the Turkish military in the country. Besides this, they had their mountains, their snow and rain, their passes and lurking holes, which would render all the Turkish cavalry and artillery useless. I nevertheless advised them to apply to a consul at Berut, who was friendly to their cause, to solicit some mediation, and to avoid the last extremity. As I afterwards heard, this has taken place. The French consul-general, Bourré, has treated with the Pascha on their behalf.

But all may have been too late, and I fear that the storm of war has long since broken over my excellent hosts in Bscherreh, and that their wives and children have been even less spared than those of their weaker neighbours.

I was rejoiced to be of some service that evening to the young Sheikh, whose pleasing and composed deportment pre-possessed me much in his favour. I bound up a wound for him better than was possible with the means he had at hand, and provided him with linen and lint. He told me that we could not set out next day, for he must prepare a feast for us, roast a sheep, and show us that he was our friend; but I declined the invitation, which was made with all sincerity.

The following morning we took a servant of the Sheikh with us as far as the next village, Ehden, which we also found in great excitement, but not inimical to us. Outposts had been stationed, and the variegated costume of the population, their bright red and yellow dresses, looked at a distance like a spring flower-garden among the green trees; they surrounded and questioned us, and even here there seemed to be divided opinions as to what we were. One young Amazon ran for a considerable distance beside us, raised her finger in a menacing manner, and upbraided us that we Franks did not openly and vigorously side with them.

We here dismissed our companion from Bscherreh; in his place, a rider, on a magnificent fiery horse, unasked, attached himself to our party; he politely saluted us, and keeping at a certain distance never lost sight of us. In about a couple of hours afterwards, at a more gentle inclination of the mountain, we perceived a troop of armed people in the field, who had planted the red banner of blood to preach war and revolt far away over the plain. The patrol advanced to meet us, and absolutely refused our proceeding any farther. It was only after long negotiations that, by means of a gold piece and the intercession of our companion, who seemed to be the Sheikh of a neighbouring village, we were granted free passage, but the whole troop accompanied us down the hill. When we had passed the next and last village, Zahera, our attendant Sheikh was obliged to employ serious threats to get us safe across the frontiers of the revolted district; he then accompanied us still farther down a valley, as far as a turn of the rock, and then saluting us shortly, rode merrily back among his mountains. We were but a few hours distant from Tripolis, which we reached shortly after sunset; passing the grave Turkish guards, who may have possibly lost some of their stupid indolence, with the prospect of a near and desperate contest with the courageous inhabitants of the mountains.

In Tripolis, now called Tarablus, we stayed in the Latin convent, which is inhabited and taken care of by only two monks. They related to us that the Christians of Libanon had come to them a short time ago, and asked for their spiritual intercessions, whereupon they had not scrupled to dispense the holy sacrament for the space of three days. Unfortunately, the Maronites fail much less in such spiritual intercessions and good wishes than in the corporal provisions of bread and powder, for the Turks cut off their supply.

The following morning we visited the Prussian American consul, who inhabits a handsome house, fitted up in the Oriental style, and afterwards went to the Bazar. Just then a large division of Turkish horsemen, on their road to Libanon, passed over a beautiful old bridge in the centre of the town, dressed in their party-coloured, streaked, dirty uniforms, with their lances ten feet long adorned with black bunches of ostrich feathers, their small war kettle-drums in full beat. Towards noon we again departed, just as the new Turkish general entered by the same gate from Berut, through which we had ridden out. On the road we met the divisions of the troops which had been ordered hither from Zachleh. From this point our road lay along the sea-coast, and almost the whole day we heard the thunder of the artillery in the adjacent mountains.

We spent the night in a Khan on this side of the promontory of Ras e’ Schekab, named after the ancient θεοῦ πρόσωπον; no doubt because the black mountain, which here projects into the sea, assumes the exact form of a bust to those coming from the north. The following day we came to ancient Byblos (Gebel), and then crossed over the Adonis river, which still, after violent rain, is occasionally the colour of blood, mourning over the wounded favourite of Aphrodite. Passing Guneh, generally proceeding along the sea, sometimes even in it, we arrived at Nahr el Kelb, the ancient Lycus, to the south of which the celebrated bas-reliefs of Ramses-Sesostris, and of a later Assyrian king[119], are engraved upon a rock projecting into the sea. In spite of our rapid ride we did not reach the rock-tablets till shortly after sunset, and we spent the night in the Khan beyond.

The following morning I investigated the sculpture more accurately, close to which passed the very ancient, artificial road, which is now destroyed, and I was rejoiced to make an important acquisition, for I was enabled to decipher a date in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Among the three Egyptian representations, which all bear the Shields of Ramses II., the central one is dedicated to the chief god of the Egyptians, Ra (Helios), the southern one to the Theban or Upper Egyptian Ammon, and the northern to the Memphitic or Lower Egyptian Phtha; this Ramses had also dedicated to these same gods the three remarkable rock-temples in Nubia, at Gerf Hussên, Sebûa, and Derr, no doubt because they were viewed by him as the three chief representatives of Egypt. On the central stele, the inscription begins below the representation, with the date of the 2nd Choiak of the 4th Year of the reign of King Ramses; the Ammon stele, on the other hand, was dated from the second, or (if the two strokes above were connected) from the tenth year; at all events, not the same year as the central stele, from which we might conclude that all three representations referred to different campaigns.

We did not leave the tomb of St. George unvisited, and the church dedicated to him near Nahr el Kelb; and as we entered Berut towards evening, we deviated from our path to visit the well where the dragon which he slew was in the habit of drinking. Thus, on the 26th of November, we ended our excursion to, and over the mountain range of, Libanon; justly lauded from its numerous historical recollections, and its rare natural beauties, of which the poet says, “that it bears winter on its head, spring upon its shoulders, autumn in its lap, but that summer slumbers at its feet on the Mediterranean.”

EXTRACTS
FROM THE WORK OF DR. LEPSIUS
ENTITLED
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIANS.
BERLIN, 1849.

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO
THE EXODUS OF THE ISRAELITES.

REVISED BY THE AUTHOR.

EXTRACTS FROM THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATION
TO THE
CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

My chronological work (the first volume of which is now before you), starting from a far more limited point of view, has a less remote aim than your history[120], and will be at most but a supplemental elaboration of the ideas originally laid down in your more comprehensive plan. It is not my task to indicate the position Egypt occupies in the History of the World, but only in its external form in the History of Time; it is therefore chronological, not historical. But to obtain the chronological basis was, with reason in your opinion also, the first and most important point of your inquiry, because upon this must depend every extensive development of history. You derived your information directly from those authors from whom we learn the connection of events, as a whole, and in detail. I obtained mine from the monuments, which establish the authenticity of the Greek account, frequently disclose their meaning, and necessarily correct, complete, and confirm their separate statements. The mutual interchange was intended to have led to a common result. If formerly this was not always the case, the interruption of our intercourse could not but lead us in many points still farther apart. I have never hesitated to express myself freely when I have differed from you, because I well know that, like me, you alone regard the subject before you, and are convinced that truth is finally elicited only by a distinct presentation of opposing possibilities. In the present investigations, also, I have yielded to this conviction, but on that account have felt it still more obligatory to lay them first of all before you, and fulfilling an agreeable duty, dedicate them to you as a public testimony of my gratitude.

In this work I have touched upon the most various provinces of archæology, and have frequently been obliged to oppose, in essential points, the views of men whom I honour and admire as the heroes of science, and as unsurpassed models in criticism and true inquiry. This opposition would be presumptuous were it not that these contested points are mere specialities in the wide domain over which those men rule, to refute which, even successfully, could not abate from their just fame; while, on the other hand, most of them are vital questions in the solution of the present undertaking, and closely connected with the very substance of those investigations, with which I have especially endeavoured to render myself familiar.

Had my vocation placed me in a political position, my motto would have been Reverence and Freedom, and with reverence and freedom (those are your words) science must also be pursued. Reverence, for everything that is venerable, sacred, noble, great, and approved; freedom, wherever truth and a conviction of it are to be obtained and expressed. Where the latter is wanting, there fear and hypocrisy will exist; where the former, insolence and presumption will luxuriate in science as in life.

The investigation of Egyptian history will gradually exercise an extensive influence upon all branches of archæology—upon our whole conception of the past history of man. We must therefore expect a reaction from all these sides. Some of these influential points have been already vindicated, partly by you and partly in the investigations now before us. They will not fail to call forth an animated opposition, and at best elicit discussion, going to the root of the question, and emendation on the part of the learned, to whose opinion I attach the greatest weight.

That section of my volume which endeavours to establish the relation of the Egyptian to the Old Hebrew Chronology, will meet with most opposition. Considering the intimate connection that necessarily subsists between the philological and dogmatical method of examining the Biblical Records, it is perfectly natural, that whenever a step in advance, or an error, strives to obtain a place on the philological side, theological interest, so much more universally distributed, takes a part either for, or against it. Whoever would dispute its right to do this, must deny to theology in general its character as a science. The Christianity, which derives its origin and its sustenance from the Bible, is essentially and intrinsically wholly independent of all learned confirmation. But it is the duty of theology, whose task it is to fathom Christianity in a rational manner, and prove its results, to decide scientifically what are the essential points in the holy Scriptures on which it founds its system of Christian belief. Should its true supports not be recognised, but imaginary ones placed in their stead, it will not injure Christianity, but the theological system, or that portion of it which was built on unstable ground. That truth which is discerned by the sound progress of any science whatsoever, cannot be hostile to Christian truth, but must promote it; for all truths, from the very beginning, have formed a compact league against everything that is false and erroneous. Theology, however, possesses no other means than every other science to distinguish scientifically, in any department, between truth and error, namely, only a reasonable and circumspect criticism. Whatever is brought forward according to this method, can only be corrected, or entirely refuted, by a still better and more circumspect criticism.

I believe that you, my honoured friend, and myself, have only one opinion on these points, I have therefore ventured to refer, at the conclusion of this section, to your excellent words, written on an occasion similar to the present. It seems to me, also, that the practical religious meaning, which the Old Testament possesses for every Christian reader, is very independent of the dates of periods, the exact knowledge of which could only have been known by means of a purposeless inspiration to the authors and elaborators of those writings, many of whom lived several centuries later. Strict science has also very generally decided in this manner for a long time past, and has not failed to exercise its purifying reaction upon the dogmatical comprehension of the matter. So much the more solicitous am I, however, as to whether my views will stand your examination, and the judgments of other far more competent investigators than myself in this department, or will, at any rate, meet your consideration.

The two numbers, namely the 430 years of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, and the 480 years from the Exodus to the building of the Temple, have been entirely abandoned by me, but have been the points on which all the most modern investigations have rested, though they appear to have been quite unknown, at least not brought under the consideration of all the older scholars, as Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, Syncellus, &c. On the other hand, I have clung to the Levitical registers of Generations as a far more certain guide; and thus, in place of a chronological fabric, which had been already long considered untenable, I immediately obtained a true historical foundation, and a chronology bordering, at least, on a perfectly reliable one, as far back as Abraham, and this not only most satisfactorily coincided with all the other historical relations in the writings of the Old Testament, but also with the already established Manethonic-Egyptian computation of time. The path which I have here taken is by no means new. Des Vignoles, Böckh, and Bertheau had already abandoned the number 480 years; you yourself decided against the 430 years, and I find the same path pursued by Engelstoft in the most decided manner in his interesting work, to which, however, too little attention has been paid. Other preparatory labours in the widely extended department of this literature may have escaped my notice, but, at all events, these opinions had hitherto been unable to make themselves properly appreciated, as is evident from the latest works of the most important inquirers; and first among them Ewald’s profound and acute history. Were it only occasioned by this mode of apprehension being hitherto not sufficiently carried out, and requiring especially the essential confirmation of Egyptian chronology, and should the new course which I have adopted on that account win a more general assent, it would be no slight satisfaction to me, and would especially afford me one more guarantee of the genuineness of the Egyptian chronology.

But the real foundation for the Egyptian computation of time, according as, in my opinion, it should be restored, is to be found in the last section of this volume in the criticism upon the authorities which derive their information from Manetho. This is a detailed and complicated investigation, and the superabundant material which is presented, forms a knot which the labour of almost a thousand years, in place of disentangling, has only drawn still tighter, because the wrong ends of the threads were always pulled. It was first of all necessary carefully to pursue these false ends through all their twistings—I mean especially the spurious writings, and the influences exercised by them, and separate them distinctly; but to recognise the true character of the remaining genuine portion, and to fix securely the few principal points. Besides my own preparatory labours, I possessed two admirable researches, upon which I could still further build: your own work, and the one by Böckh upon the Manethonic Computation of Time. The result of the two investigations, which were obtained independently of each other, and published almost simultaneously, deviate very much from one another, since you fix Menes more than 2000 years later than Böckh believes he is placed by Manetho. This discrepancy must be the immediate result of the difference in your fundamental views, which caused Böckh to regard the Manethonic Dynasties as uninterruptedly consecutive, you as partly reigning contemporaneously. Böckh especially cited in support of his view the circumstance, that if we count the Dynasties according to the presentation of them by Africanus in a continuous line, the first year of Menes coincided very nearly with the proleptically calculated year of commencement of an Egyptian Sothis period. He treated the questions under consideration with all the learning and ingenious criticism which is peculiar to this master in archæological investigation, pointing out that the slight deviation between the result which had been arrived at, and the one expected, might be removed by very simple means; and he came to the conclusion, that this agreement was intentionally brought about by the Egyptian annalists, consequently that the Manethonic computation of time was cyclically invented or adapted, not handed down by history. The view that you maintain, which differs very much from this, you founded especially upon the comparison of the Eratosthenic lists with the Manethonic Dynasties of the Old Monarchy; you thus determined the continuous Monarchical Dynasties, whose periods you calculated by the numbers of Eratosthenes, you especially recognised no cyclical element in the Manethonic chronology, and hence believed the accounts of Manetho and Eratosthenes to be a historical tradition, in part the result of learned Alexandrian investigations.

My view corresponds with yours in all essential points. That several of the Dynasties were contemporaneous, appears to me most decidedly attested; and I have been able to obtain a direct, and, as I believe, a genuine Manethonic proof of it. On the other hand, from the beginning I have never been able to lay so much stress upon the list of Eratosthenes, especially upon its individual names and numbers, opposed to the Manethonic statement, as appeared to you justifiable, owing to the important information you obtained from it concerning the Monarchical Dynasties. This is the principal reason why we still differ so much in our determination of the duration of the Old Monarchy down to the entrance of the Hyksos. A cyclical treatment of the Egyptian chronology, which you neither recognised in the History of the Gods, nor in the History of Man, which Böckh, on the other hand, believes he finds in both parts, appears to me, indeed, capable of being demonstrated, but only in the mythical history, before Menes. The result of this has been a confirmation of the sum total of the Manethonic History of Man, which is also considered genuine by you, and upon which I imagine I may venture to place the greatest weight.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

On the previous Conditions necessary for the Origin of a Chronology among the Egyptians, and the Possibility of its Restoration.

| PAGE
Favourable Conditions for an early Egyptian History and Chronology | 368-396
External Circumstances in favour of an Historical Development | 368-374
Influence of the Local Character and Climate upon the Preservation of the Monuments | 368-371
Abundance of Building Stone | 371
Bricks. Papyrus used as a Writing Material | 372
Intellectual Basis and Proofs of Historical Activity | 374-396
National Historical Sense of the Egyptians | 374-380
Earlier and more extended Habit of Writing | 377-380
Books. Libraries | 380
Fame of Egyptian Wisdom and Learning among the Greeks | 382
Sacred Writings of the Egyptians | 387
Remains of Historical Literature | 392
Retrospective View | 397-400
FIRST PART OF THE CHRONOLOGY.
Criticism upon the Authorities.
The Hebrew Tradition | 401-493
Uncertainty of the Hebrew Numbers | 401
The Exodus according to Manetho | 404
The Exodus according to Hecataeus and Diodorus | 408
The Exodus of the Lepers the same as that of the Israelites | 411
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Manetho | 417
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Ptolemy Mendesius, Apion Josephus | 420
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Eusebius | 422
The Pharaoh of the Exodus according to Lysimachus | 423
Intimations concerning the Time of the Exodus in the Old Testament | 424
The Situation of Abaris | 425
The Situation of Heroonpolis | 434
The Situation of Ramses | 437
The Town of Ramses built by Ramses-Miamun (Ramses II.) | 438
Canal Connection between the Nile and the Red Sea | 439
The Towns Pithom and Ramses, on the Canal of Ramses II., built in the Reign of Ramses II. | 446
The Exodus of the Israelites later than Ramses II. | 449
The Exodus in the year B.C. 1314 according to the Rabbinical Chronology | 450
The Date of the Exodus according to the Jewish Generations | 457
The Date of the Exodus according to the Book of Judges | 470
The Period from Jacob and Joseph to Moses | 475-485
The Pharaoh of Joseph in Herodotus and Diodorus | 480
The Period from Abraham to Moses | 485-492
Joseph placed during the Reign of Aphophis | 487
End of Hebrew Tradition | 492
The genuine Manethonic Numbers | 494
Retrospective View | 496
Tables of Egyptian Dynasties | 499

INTRODUCTION
TO THE
CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIANS.

While the beginnings of Greek and Roman history, by the strict investigations of modern criticism, have lost more and more of their historical character, and while cautious inquirers consider it impossible to obtain a fixed date for separate events, earlier than the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, the history of Egypt treats of strictly historical facts, and its chronology contains exact numbers of years, months, and days in the third and fourth millennium previous to our era. This appears such a palpable contradiction, that it is not alone worth while on account of the larger circle of readers who are more out of the scope of these investigations, but it must also be important to the inquirers in this field, to answer for themselves the preliminary question, how it is possible to prosecute the history of Egypt so much farther back than the history of the nations of the West and East, without denying the principles of that criticism which has pointed out limits to the history of classical antiquity, and which must justly be considered the most valuable treasure of modern science?

In order to answer this question, we must first call to mind that it has now become a principle, derived from experience, that the real history of a nation, in the strictest sense of the word, never recedes much farther back than its oldest contemporaneous authorities, and this once expressed, becomes, from its intrinsic necessity, self-evident. This principle applies both to us—since our certain conclusions in historical investigations do not extend much farther back—and also to the nations themselves; for they only obtain historical consciousness and historical experience when they begin to produce monuments, especially written monuments, to bear witness to posterity of what is occurring. Monuments form the dial-plate of history; until they exist, the present alone belongs to a nation, not the past—it exists without a history. If a nation loses its monuments, either through its own fault or through circumstances, it will be unable to preserve its history, which becomes confused and traditionary, and in place of the purely historical account which it has lost, it obtains, at the best, another principle of internal order; a poetic-mythological, as with the Greeks; a philosophic-mythological, as with the Indians; or a religious one, as with the Israelites; but it always loses its original value as a reproduction of a series of real facts.

Now if we start from this axiom, that the commencement of every true history and chronology, as it is scientifically understood at the present day, cannot be carried much farther back than their oldest contemporaneous authorities, and that we find this confirmed in the nations of Europe and Asia to the prejudice of their earliest histories, then it is here precisely that exists the marked superiority of the history of Egypt above all other histories. It is because we have here such very early contemporaneous authorities—not only literary, but the most direct which exist, namely, monumental authorities—that we possess the means of obtaining so early a history of the Egyptians.

If, with reference to this, we first observe the local and climatal conditions of Egypt, we shall at once perceive that they aid in a wonderful manner in preserving all kinds of monuments and other relics of the earliest antiquity. A damp climate generally prevails in the more elevated and northern parts of Asia; and in the more favoured regions, owing to a periodical rainy season, the extensive plains are covered with a fertile soil and luxuriant vegetation (the barren and stony deserts being always deprived of any high cultivation), consequently all, even the most solid, monuments of art, where we might have hoped to find them in considerable numbers, are overpowered and destroyed by the predominating vital power of nature, ever inimical to the works of man; whereas the fertility of Egypt, as is well known, is almost entirely independent of rain. This certainly applies less to the damp air, often pregnant with rain, along the sea-coast, or to the well-watered and marshy low district of the Delta. But it is principally for that reason that there are so few remains of the numerous large and flourishing towns of the Delta, and that these are hardly worth mentioning. Irregular heaps of ruins alone exist now of Memphis, the rich metropolis of Lower Egypt, renowned in the earliest and latest periods of the Monarchy, and of Heliopolis, Sais, Bubastis, and other important towns. The granite obelisks in Alexandria are so corroded by the weather that their inscriptions are hardly recognisable.

In Upper Egypt, where it scarcely ever rains, it is totally different, especially with respect to all the monuments which are situated on the borders of the desert, out of reach of the annual inundation, and this is uniformly the case with the tombs, the richest store-houses for our knowledge of ancient Egyptian life, which in this country alone really fulfil their true destination, by serving as an asylum against destruction and decay. The narrow district of the Nile, annually recreated, borders in its whole length on the wide, rocky, and petrifying desert. The towns and temples were therefore chiefly built on the boundary between the two, partly not to intrench upon the fertile ground, partly in order that the buildings should be upon a drier and more secure foundation. And thus, in fact, we find the numerous temples and palaces in wonderful preservation, so far as they are not mutilated by the hand of man.

Even the black bricks made of Nile mud, and dried in the sun, apparently the most perishable material, have not unfrequently been preserved in the open air for thousands of years, in the form in which they were built up, and with their coating of plaster. A row of great vaulted halls, built entirely of black Nile bricks, and partly covered in the inside with stucco, stands about the celebrated temple of the great Ramses, in Thebes. They date from the same period as the temple itself, the beginning of the thirteenth century before Christ. This is not alone testified by the architectonic plan of the building, but most irrefutably by the bricks themselves, which bear the name of Ramses-Miamun stamped upon them, as a mark of the royal manufacture. At that time, and earlier, during the whole of the 18th and 19th Dynasties, it was a very common practice to line the excavated rock-tombs with Nile bricks, and afterwards to paint upon the stucco, especially wherever the rock was friable, and was therefore hewn into a vaulted roof. But the same custom is sometimes found even in the earliest period of the Pyramids of Memphis. In enclosed places, not only the building material, but the colours, both upon the stone and upon the plaster covering, have almost without exception retained their original freshness and perfection, and also, very frequently, where they have been exposed to the open air.

The peculiar incorruptibility of vegetable and even of animal matter is, however, still more astonishing. Our museums are filled with such remains. In the most ancient tombs of Memphis, a multitude of objects are found made of wood, such as sarcophagi, chests, and boxes of all kinds, chairs, instruments, small ships, likewise grains of corn, and dried fruits, such as pomegranates, dates, the fruit of the Doum Palm, nuts, almonds, beans, grapes; also bread and other food, besides cloth made of bast, a texture of reeds, papyrus, and an incredible quantity of linen. The countless number of mummies, also, are well known, which, though taken out of their tombs, still last for centuries with their skin and hair; also all mummified bodies of animals, with their furs and feathers; even the internal parts of the human body could there be embalmed for ever, and are still found in vases expressly designed for that purpose.

This wonderful conservative property belonging to all ancient Egyptian objects, depends therefore chiefly upon the sky being without rain, and the dry soil of the non-irrigated desert. But the country offered another marked advantage above other lands, namely, the greatest abundance of materials especially adapted for all kinds of monuments.

Chief among these, is an admirable stone of the most varied quality, suited as well to building of all kinds, as to the most delicate sculpture. The mountain range which flanks the valley, and follows the course of the river from the Delta to beyond Thebes, is composed of limestone; in the neighbourhood of ancient Memphis, upon the Lybian side, where the Pyramids stand, it is a solid nummulitic limestone, more adapted for excavations in the rock, and for building stone, than for sculpture; on the opposite side, among the Arabian mountains, it has the finest grain, and is of a uniform density, approaching almost to marble; it is capable of being worked in any manner, and on account of the beautiful polish it takes, was used, among other purposes, for the external covering of the Pyramids, while the interior was made of the Lybian stone off the ground, upon which they were erected. The Theban range of mountains is almost everywhere composed of rock, of such an extremely fine quality, that the sepulchral passages and chambers of the dead, hewn out in the living rock, most of them several hundred feet deep, running in various directions, were capable of receiving everywhere the richest sculptures, in the most delicate bas-reliefs, directly upon the polished surface of the rock. Beyond Thebes there are ranges of sandstone mountains, from Gebel-Selseleh to Assuan. From these, and especially from the enormous stone-quarries of Selseleh, the architects as well as the sculptors of the New Monarchy obtained their chief supply of the most excellent and durable fine-grained sandstone. Finally, the syenite and granite of Assuan are still considered the most beautiful and valuable of their kind, and were also used by the ancient Egyptians not only for their monolithic colossi, obelisks, sarcophagi, statues for entire small temples, &c., but were employed as a building stone, at all periods. In the Pyramid of Chufu, the high walls, the ceiling, and floor of the greatest sarcophagus chamber, are entirely made of polished granite, and the third Pyramid of Mencheres was cased with it up to a certain height.

I shall here pass over all the other more valuable kinds of stone, particularly those of the higher Arabian mountains, abundantly used in ancient Egypt, each in its own way, especially the beautiful yellow alabaster, several very valuable breccias, greenstone, serpentine, and the bluish-red porphyry of Gebel-Dochân, which was much employed at a later period, as they were all reserved rather for purposes of luxury. But we must not omit to mention here, that the abundance of building stone in this country was doubled by the ease of transport from one end of Egypt to the other, upon the great water road of the Nile; therefore, sandstone and granite were used nearly as much at Thebes, and in all that part of the country where limestone rock alone was to be found near at hand, as in Upper Egypt, where it was hewn.

Limestone or sandstone have been always, and in all countries, the most important material for monumental productions. Where this was wanting, or was obtained with difficulty, as in Babylon, or on the Indus, or in the north of Germany, earthen bricks were used as the best substitute, at least for building purposes. But in Egypt also they could be replaced by bricks of the best quality, since the soft, clayey Nile mud was especially adapted for the latter. Thus the wary Egyptians not only did not neglect this expedient, but made the utmost use of it, and with greater results than anywhere else, because here it was not required to take the place of some better material, but only preferred in those cases where the object itself made it appear best adapted. This more especially applies to great dykes, town walls, and those temple enclosures which were to contain no covered rooms, and no delicately constructed parts; therefore, even in the earliest times, Pyramids were also built of bricks. They were employed to fill up the ground and to make elevations, but were more especially everywhere used where large spaces had to be covered in, without incurring the great expense of huge slabs of stone, before the useful principle of concentric stone-cutting was known. This occasioned the remarkably early use of brick-vaulted roofs, along with the imperfect stone arch, which was, as it were, only cut out of horizontal layers of stone. Hence arose the custom connected with this, which we have already mentioned, of lining rock-chambers of crumbling stone with arches of Nile bricks. The external layers of the brick buildings in Babylon and Nineveh were generally made of burnt bricks, and yet they could not resist the climate and time. In Egypt, dried bricks alone were everywhere used; owing to their natural solidity, and to the climate, they answered better for their monumental purpose than the burnt bricks of Babylon, which is still proved by the numerous extant brick buildings, with their stucco and their pictures.

But in the history of a nation, a substance favourable to its book literature is of no less importance than the material for building and sculpture. Egypt possessed also for this purpose an invaluable product of the country, the papyrus plant, from which they were able to obtain a perfect material for writing upon, unsurpassed throughout antiquity. Neither the skins of the Ionians, nor the linen of the ancient Romans, nor the cotton stuff and palm leaves of the Indian, nor the parchment of Mysia, are to be compared with the Egyptian papyrus in pliability, or in the power of extension, in durability and cheapness; therefore its use became gradually more widely spread, and was preserved far down into the middle ages. Even the later discovered paper of our own time has not only retained the name of the ancient plant, but, with regard to its material, can only be looked upon as a continuation and perfecting of the Egyptian paper, since pressed fibres of plants (particularly of flax and hemp) have proved to be the most suitable material, even up to the present day. In ancient times the papyrus plant grew more especially in the marshy ground of the Nile Delta, and is only elsewhere mentioned by Pliny as growing near Syracuse, where to this day it is found in great abundance. Why, on the other hand, it has become almost entirely extinct in Egypt, may be explained by the circumstance that it was artificially cultivated to an extent far beyond its natural powers of growth, and became therefore, like other plants, exhausted. Its use may be traced back to the most ancient times of Egypt; the papyrus roll and the writing apparatus are found upon monuments as early as the 4th and 5th Dynasties, therefore between three and four thousand years before Christ. But this discovery of very ancient Egypt, which may perhaps be considered as the most important, next to the invention of writing, only obtains its full significance in history by the unaltered preservation of those very rolls of writing for thousands of years. For they not only afforded the Egyptian priests the benefit of primeval uninjured archives, but we still obtain from them the instructive contemplation of a multitude of such original documents, written on papyrus, from the prosperous times of the Monarchy.

In addition, however, to the external aid afforded by the climate and productions of Egypt, for the preservation of its history, is to be mentioned the internal and more efficient influence derived from the original direction of the national character—its historical sense. This can by no means be explained solely by the reaction which the facility of immortalising the present, and the peculiarly conservative nature of the neighbouring desert, might produce upon the original tendency of the national mind; as little as we can interpret the striking want of a sense for history, among the Indian people, by the less favourable locality of their country. The ultimate foundation for such national individualities can always alone be sought, in the particular part they are called to play in the general history of the world. But, on a nearer examination, we can have no doubt that such an historical sense existed among the Egyptian people in an unusually high degree, and was cultivated by them in all its stages.

It is first of all demonstrated by the incredible multitude of monuments of every kind, which were at all periods erected by kings, and persons of private fortune. All the chief cities of Egypt were adorned with temples and palaces, and the other towns, frequently indeed more insignificant places, with at least one, often with several sanctuaries; these were filled with statues of the gods and kings of all sizes, composed of the most valuable stone, and the walls externally and internally were covered with coloured sculptures. To erect these public buildings, and to endow them splendidly, was the exclusive privilege and pride of kings. In their turn the richer portion of the people vied with them in their concern for the dead, by erecting monumental tombs. Whilst with reference to public buildings, the passion for building among the Greeks and Romans, in their most prosperous days, can alone be placed beside that of the Pharaonic time, the Egyptian necropoli far surpass those of Greece and Rome, both in extent and in the number of the monuments, as well as in the richness of their execution, especially in their endowment of pictures and inscriptions.

But next to the multitude and splendour of these works, the unsurpassed attention paid to their durability, especially proves the innate historical sense of the Egyptians. That they laid due stress on the great age of their buildings, follows from the annalistic account of Manetho, which is in no respect liable to suspicion, by which we learn that even Tosorthros, the second king of the 2nd Dynasty, and the cotemporary of Menes, commenced building with hewn stones διὰ ξεστῶν λίθων.

And it is hardly necessary to mention the great Pyramids of Memphis, those colossal massive structures, which, solid throughout, and built of strong nicely joined hewn stones, are piled up above the sepulchral chambers, cut out of the living rock, generally without leaving any vacant space, like artificial rocks in the simplest form, as if he who built them had been aware that, in them he laid the foundation of the future gigantic building—the History of Man. This may equally refer to all the other buildings, whether they are destined for the living or the dead; the desire to labour for eternity is imprinted upon all of them.

The belief which was early formed of a life after death, and of a relation continuing to subsist between the soul and the body, was closely connected with this; and along with it the exaggerated care that was bestowed upon the bodies of the dead, embalming them, and swathing them, and shutting them up in double and triple sarcophagi, made of the strongest wood, and the hardest stone, which were buried in deep pits, and in laboriously excavated rock-chambers. Even in the most peaceful times this nation appears always to have anticipated the possibility of future hostile invasions, and of barbarous and rapacious races; for that reason they so ingeniously closed the large granite sarcophagi by means of metal rods, which only fell down into the holes prepared for them in the sides, at the last thrust of the cover, which was driven drawer-like in, so that the sarcophagi could only be opened by the destruction of the colossal masses of stone. They also endeavoured to guard even the passage which led to the sarcophagi chambers by heavy stone trap-doors, and by ingeniously building up the walls, so as to divert the attention, and to protect them in every other possible way from inroad and desecration. For that reason many subterranean tombs are undoubtedly still hidden from us; only a few tombs of kings are known, and many important monuments will still be discovered in the inexhaustible necropoli of Memphis, Abydos, and Thebes.

However, we already possess such an abundant supply of works of art, and other things belonging to daily life, from the earliest, down to the latest times of the Pharaonic Monarchy, that these in themselves alone, considered only objectively, would form an extremely important source of knowledge concerning the mode of life in ancient Egypt. The great work of Napoleon, the “Description de l’Egypte,” has splendidly demonstrated how much in fact may be gained by such an objective examination of the monuments; it contains matter that will always deserve praise, and a rich treasure was collected for the cause of science, although the key to the hieroglyphics had not yet been discovered, and consequently all the monuments being chronologically uncomprehended, or wrongly comprehended, stood beside each other, as in a picture without perspective, on one plane surface.

This very work, however, is an evident proof of what could not be done, even with the greatest expenditure of means and learning, without aid obtained from the inscriptions. The history of the people in all its varied development remained dark and fabulous as before. It is the same with the monuments of all nations, which have come down to us either without any written character, or with it undeciphered, like those of our own heathen ancestors, or of the aborigines of South America, or even of the Babylonians. History profits very little by them.

The Egyptians, however, from the beginning, exhibit, even on this higher stage, their historical sense and vocation. According to the Egyptian annals, it was the same King Tosorthros who gained the highest reputation relative to the perpetuity of the history of Egypt since his time, not only by the introduction of hewn building stones, but still more by the care he bestowed upon the development of the written character; and we see upon the monuments, at least since the time of Cheops, between three and four thousand years before Christ, a perfectly-formed system of writing, and a universal habit of writing, by no means confined to the priesthood. Even at that time the writing was no longer merely monumental; the signs, indeed, when they were rapidly used, sometimes approached the hieratical short-hand. It therefore appears to me undoubted that, even in the time of Menes, in the very commencement of our Egyptian history, the hieroglyphic writing had been long invented, established, and practised, which we must of course presuppose since we hold Menes to be historical; for there can be no history without writing. From the choice of the pictures in hieroglyphics, and from other reasons, it appears indeed justifiable to suppose, that this wonderful picture-writing of the Egyptians was formed, with reference to its peculiar character in Egypt itself, without any other influence from abroad, although they may have brought the first beginning of it with them from their original home in Asia. But that a people should produce anything so perfect as this system of writing, which embraces at once all the stages of human writing, from the most direct ideographical symbolic writing through syllables, to the equally direct notification of sound by means of vowels and consonants, certainly indicates a long previous development.

The application, however, which the Egyptians made of this early invention, from which so much resulted, is of still more importance. For they not only employed it, as often happens among nations of much higher civilisation, in the most necessitous cases, and where it was most immediately advantageous, but to an extent which surpasses everything that we have heard of elsewhere, and which must still astonish any one who considers the matter for the first time. While the Greeks and Romans, at the period when they were most lavish of their writing, only placed a short inscription of a few words on the front of their largest temples and most splendid buildings, for which reason the monumental style still denotes among us a short laconic style, as seems most suitable to the speaking stone; among the Egyptians the temples were almost covered with inscriptions. All buildings, which were erected to the gods, to the kings, and to the dead, had generally representations or inscriptions upon all the walls, ceilings, pillars, architraves, friezes, and posts—inside as well as outside. In place of only giving the most necessary information, the writing here forms in itself at the same time an essential ornament of the architecture, as is the case also with representations on a larger scale. The variegated written columns on the white or grey surfaces, not only express a feeling for ornamental drawing, by the great variety in their lines, which run backward and forward with the utmost regularity, and satisfy the painter’s eye by the brilliancy of the varied colours, but they also excite the observation of the unlearned by the figurative and direct meaning of the written objects, taken from all the natural kingdom, and, lastly, the intelligent curiosity of the inquirer, especially of every cultivated man, by the peculiar signification of their religious or historical purport. Thus hieroglyphics becomes a monumental writing, in a sense and to a degree of perfection, beyond any other written character on earth.

They had also so far overcome the technical difficulty of engraving these signs, both in the most fragile and the hardest kinds of stone, that it seems hardly to have been considered at all, though these signs were not composed of simple mathematical strokes, like the Roman or Greek monumental writing, or the cuneiform writing of the Asiatics, but were at the same time writing and artistic drawing.

Among the Egyptians the written character was not alone the constant and indispensable accompaniment of architecture, and of the larger representations upon the walls of the temples, but was placed with an equal predilection upon all, even the smallest objects of art and of daily life. How precious among other nations of antiquity are those statues, vases, gems, or other objects, which bear upon them inscriptions with respect to their origin, their owners, or their intended use! This is the universal practice in Egypt. There, no Colossus was so great, and no amulet so small, that it should not itself express for what it was designed by means of an inscription; no piece of furniture that did not bear the name of its owner. Not only the temples had their dedications, in which the builder was named, and the god to whom it was consecrated by him, but they were considered of such importance that a particular class of independent monuments were especially devoted to them, viz., the obelisks at the entrance of the gates; and besides this, every fresh addition to the temple, every newly-erected pillar, actually even the restoration of separate representations, which had been accidentally injured upon the old walls, had a written information respecting which of the kings built it, and what he had done for the enlargement, embellishment, and restoration of the temple. We sometimes find the name of the reigning king recorded upon the separate building stones, as the stone-cutter’s mark, and it was usually stamped upon the bricks of royal manufacture.

Finally, however, writing was employed among the Egyptians in its last and highest destination, as book-writing for literary purposes; and, indeed, as we have already mentioned, from the earliest times, for the use of the papyrus goes thus far back, and we frequently see upon the representations from the time of the great Pyramids of Memphis, one or more scribes occupied in registering upon sheets their master’s possessions in flocks, corn, and other treasures. We learn from the historical accounts relative to the first Dynasties, which are still preserved, that even at that time they possessed Annals of the Monarchy.

If we now reflect upon the period from which the original fragments of such annals have come down to us, namely, the beginning of the New Monarchy, we find that this extends one thousand five hundred years farther back than the oldest remains of book literature in the whole of antiquity put together. For it is known that the greater proportion of our manuscripts only go back about as far as the tenth century of our era; previous to this their number rapidly diminishes, and the small fragment of a manuscript of Livy, which was lately brought to Berlin, and was there recognised as probably belonging to the first century after Christ, may be viewed as the earliest remains of a book which can be referred to out of Egypt; even the rolls—which were reduced to coal at Herculaneum—do not go farther back; whereas in Egypt not alone numerous papyri have been preserved from the time of Ptolemy, but a much greater number from the centuries previous to that time, namely from the sixteenth to the thirteenth century, some of them of extraordinary length[121]. The greatest proportion of them were deposited with the mummies, and therefore only contain what relates to death and a future life; but other rolls were interred in the tombs as the most secure places, carefully packed in particular vases or baskets, and they contain laudatory songs upon kings or gods, historical annals, the accounts of the temple, that which relates to the calendar, and many other things with reference to this life, frequently contracts, law-suits, and similar documents from the time of the Greeks, sometimes also with Greek translations or additions.

The large number still in preservation leave therefore no doubt concerning the remarkable fact communicated by Diodorus I. 49, on good authority, that King Osymandyas, i. e. Ramses-Miamun, built a library in his temple at Thebes, as early as the fourteenth century before Christ. The description which he gives us of this splendid building may still be traced from one chamber to the other among its ruins, and at the entrance—behind which, according to Diodorus, the library was situated—Champollion perceived on both sides the representations of Thoth, the God of Wisdom, and of Saf, the Goddess of History; then, behind the former, the God of Hearing, and, behind the latter, the God of Seeing, which significantly reminded the person who was entering of the locality. Several hieratical papyri, which we still possess, are dated from the Rameseion, 𓉐𓐱𓏤𓐰𓈖𓍹𓐼𓇳𓄠𓋴𓇓𓌹𓇋𓏠𓐰𓈖𓐽𓍺 and it is also frequently mentioned in the so-called Historical Papyri. I found in Thebes the tombs of two Librarians of the time of Ramses-Miamun, therefore probably belonging to the library described by Diodorus; they are situated to the south-west of the palace of Ramses, behind Der el Medînet. The occupants were father and son, since this office was hereditary, as most of them were. The father was called Neb-nufre, the son Nufre-hetep, and they bore the titles of 𓇯𓇩𓏏𓐰𓏺𓐰𓏼 her scha· tu, “Superior over the Books,” and 𓉻𓐰𓈖𓇩𓏏𓐰𓏺𓐰𓏼 naa en scha· tu, “Chief over the Books.” In the tomb of the son, Ramses sacrifices to Amen-Ra, and portions of two statues of the deceased are still scattered about. We have good reason to suppose that this library, of which we have incidentally received still further information, was neither the first, nor the only one, and this is inferred, among other things, because the two gods above mentioned bear as one of their fixed titles, not only here, but upon other monuments of all classes, the one the Master and the other the Mistress of the Hall of Books, and that, consequently, the idea of gods of libraries must have been very familiar to the Egyptians.

This also explains how, in the earliest times of the Greek dominion, under Ptolemy Philadelphus, it was possible to fill the library founded in Alexandria in the space of a few years with 400,000[122] rolls, at a time when there was no precedent in the Grecian motherland except the private collection of Aristotle. It is explained, when we remember that Philadelphus found such an abundant store already existing in the Egyptian archives and libraries. It no longer seems anything remarkable when Iamblichus[123], referring to a Seleucus, tells us of 20,000 hermetic books, which we must understand to be a rough computation of all Egyptian literature; the notice does not obtain a mythological character until the introduction into it of the cyclical number 36,525, which Iamblichus quotes from Manetho—of course from the false one.

The fame of Egyptian wisdom[124], which was universally diffused throughout the ancient world, was grounded upon an abundant literature, and the stock of knowledge deposited therein, which increased from year to year like a well-invested capital. This fame was never disputed even by the Greeks themselves; possessing so much higher natural endowments than others, they were more just in this point than many of our modern critics, who would rather consider the genius of the Greeks as auto-didactic, grown up in a barbarous wilderness. Herodotus calls the Egyptians “by far the best instructed people with whom he has become acquainted, since they, of all men, store up most, for recollection.” When the Eleians wished to establish their Olympian games, they sent an embassy to the Egyptians, they being the wisest people of all the earth, to obtain their judgment and their good advice upon this great project[125].

The distinguished series of celebrated men[126] who are said to have carried Egyptian wisdom to the Greeks, begins as early as the mythical times. Danaus brought the first germ of higher civilisation from Egypt to Argos[127], and Erectheus, King of Athens, was considered by some an Egyptian[128], and taught the Eleusinian mysteries according to the manner of the Egyptians. The holy singers of antiquity, Orpheus[129], Musaeus[130], Melampus[131], and Eumolpus[132], thence acquired their theological wisdom; and even to Homer[133] himself Egypt may not have been unknown. The most ancient artists of Greece, Daedalus[134], Telecles[135], and Theodoras[136], are said to have educated themselves in this land of primeval art, and have employed the Egyptian canon of proportions. Lycurgus[137] and Solon[138] introduced into their fatherland all the wise regulations they there became acquainted with; and Herodotus[139] especially tells us that the Egyptian laws relating to the surveying of the land, by which every one was obliged to declare to the monarch his annual revenue, were transferred to Athens by Solon, and were in use even in his time. Cleobulus, the sage of Lindus, is said also to have visited Egypt[140]. It signifies little how much historical foundation there is for these accounts. The general direction taken by tradition, with reference to it, proves even more than separate facts could do, the early and late general universal recognition of Egyptian wisdom. It was considered a glory to participate in it.

But Egypt was especially regarded as a university for philosophy, and for all that could be gained through science and learning. We therefore see philosophers, mathematicians, physicians, historians, resorting to Egypt, each emulating with the other, and studying for many years under Egyptian teachers. The houses in Heliopolis in which Plato and the mathematician Eudoxus had lived for thirteen years, were still shown to Strabo[141]. The observatory of Eudoxus, in which he is said to have made certain observations of the stars, and on Canobus, in particular, bore his name[142] in the time of Strabo. Even Thales[143] was instructed by the Egyptian priests, and as it is expressly said, had besides them, no other teachers. Here he became acquainted with the division of the year into seasons, and into 365 days; and here also he learnt how to take the measurement of high objects, such as the Pyramids by their shadow, at a particular hour of the day[144]. Archimedes[145] invented his celebrated water screw in Egypt, and there applied it, in the establishments which were devoted to the irrigation of the land. Pythagoras[146] was a long time in Egypt, and all that we know concerning the dogmas of this influential man agrees with this account[147]. His doctrine of the immortality of the soul, especially, is very decidedly referred, by Herodotus, to Egypt. He says, “This doctrine is wrongly pronounced by certain Greeks, whom he will not mention, as belonging peculiarly to them[148],” by which he evidently has Pythagoras and his master Pherecydes in view, for it is also related of the latter that he was in Egypt[149]. And it is in fact now sufficiently known, from the monuments, that the Egyptians possessed from the earliest times very distinct ideas about the transmigration of souls, and of judgment after death[150]. The philosophers Anaxagorus[151], Democritus[152], Sphaerus[153], the mathematician Oinopides[154], the physician Chrysippus[155], also Alcaeus[156] and Euripedes[157], are enumerated among the visitors to Egypt. Finally, the same is known of Hecataeus[158], Herodotus, Diodorus[159], Strabo, and many less celebrated Greeks.

All these men did not merely desire to acquire a knowledge of Egypt as eye-witnesses, but went there principally to gain instruction from the learned priests on particular branches of knowledge. This is the light in which those historians regarded it, who give us more detailed accounts of these wanderings of the Greek scholars to Egypt[160]. The Egyptians themselves indeed valued it so highly that the priests, as Diodorus, i. 96, expressly recounts, recorded in their annals the visits of celebrated Greeks. It thence arose that the most distinguished among them, even the individual teachers, remained known by name and descent, and were handed down to us[161]. These names bear upon them a genuine Egyptian stamp, and therefore offer no grounds for any material doubt from this side. Plutarch calls the teacher of Solon, Sonchis, from Sais; of Pythagoras, Onnuphis, from Heliopolis; and of Eudoxus, Chonuphis, from Memphis. Clemens adds to these the teacher of Plato, Sechnuphis; all of them names whose Egyptian form may be easily restored.

It is evident that this instruction must have contained more than an unintelligible knowledge of symbols, a petrified mysticism, and empty dreams, as people have been hitherto frequently inclined to believe. Real knowledge and scientific experiences could only be founded upon a copious literature, carefully fostered for many ages. Its great treasures had indeed been long known and envied before the time of the Ptolemies; the Persians, under Artaxerxes, carried off a portion of them, together with other treasures, from the ancient archives of the temples, and only restored them for a high ransom[162]. But their contents began for the first time to be better known, and more perfectly understood, when the translations appeared, which were extensively made for the Greeks[163] after the time of the first Ptolemies. Strabo, among others, affords us a valuable proof of this, where he speaks of the thirteen years’ residence of Plato and Eudoxus in Egypt[164]. “These priests (he says) were versed in astronomy, but, mysterious and far from communicative, it was only after the lapse of time and by polite attentions that they allowed themselves to be induced to communicate some of their doctrines; but still the most part was kept concealed by these barbarians. For instance, to complete the perfect year, they added that portion of the day and night which goes beyond the 365 days; nevertheless, the perfect year remained unknown to the Greeks, as well as many other things, until the later astronomers learnt it from the treatises of the priests, which were translated into Greek; and they still refer to the writings of the Egyptians, as well as to those of the Chaldeans”[165].

But, in order to view more distinctly the multiplicity of the Egyptian branches of learning, I shall mention the forty-two Hermetic books, probably chiefly sacred, described to us by Clemens of Alexandria, from a genuine ancient authority[166]. We learn from it that the ten first and principal books, those of the Prophets, called the Hieratical, or Priest Books, treated of the laws and the gods, namely, of the highest theological education, which embraced at once divine and human laws[167], and philosophy[168]. To this was appended, as an immediate and necessary complement, the ten books of the Stolistes—liturgical in their contents—containing ordinances about the sacrifice, and the offering of the first-fruits, of hymns, prayers, processions, feasts, &c.

To these twenty writings, which were in a stricter sense sacerdotal, succeeded fourteen others, treating of more secular learning, what we should call the exact sciences, which were indeed indispensable to the priests, but in themselves bore no theological character. These also were again divided into two divisions; of which the first, consisting of ten books, belonged to the hierogrammatist[169], and not alone embraced the wide field of hieroglyphics, i. e. writing and drawing; but also all that fell within the department of the measurement of space and of geometry, commencing with the more general, cosmography, universal geography, the chorography of Egypt, and the course of the Nile; then, also consequent upon that, the topography of the temple-sites; and lastly, the most local arrangements of the furniture of the temple, as it were, or naography. The remaining four books, the astrological, more properly called by us the astronomical, were committed to a particular class of scholars—the horoscopi, or time seers. This portion of their science, so peculiarly important to the Egyptians, and therefore kept distinct from the rest, entered into everything that it was necessary to be acquainted with for the calculation of time, both in detail and on a large scale, therefore more especially with the heavenly chronometers, the stars, and indeed, above all, the position of the fixed stars (and the constellations); then the arrangement of the planets (and their revolutions), the conjunctions and phases of the sun and moon; lastly, the rising of the stars. The practical purpose was indicated by the symbols of the horoscopes, the horologium, and the palm-branch of the years and periods.

After the strict sciences, there followed the two books of the Chanter. He represented the only art—at least, the only one which was recognised as such, by its separate position—that of music. Architecture and the art of drawing were practised, and even with a feeling for art, but they had not emancipated themselves as independent arts, from the rule and line condition of the hierogrammatist. Even music, which was apprehended, and came into the world for the first time through the Greeks, was not considered by the Egyptians as an independent art, in our sense of the word, neither could it be regarded a science like drawing, as if it were equally an efflux of the horoscopical chronology, to which it was externally attached. It was on that account necessary to keep them apart. We must, therefore, look upon the chanter only as a precentor—a practical leader of the religious and festive songs. His two books contained hymns to the gods, and (encomiastic-poetical) observations upon the royal life, but only as the subject-matter of the religious chorus. It cannot be known how far real music was here brought into consideration; but certainly the ᾠδός had nothing to do with the theological purport of his hymns—information concerning this must be derived from the prophets and the Stolist.

The contents of the last six books were medicinal, and treated of the structure of the body, of diseases, the organs, curatives, for the eyes especially, and of female cases. They are assigned by Clemens, probably from a misunderstanding, to the Pastophori, i. e. the watchers of the temples[170].

This survey of the forty-two ancient sacred books deserves here especially, our full consideration, because it brings clearly to light an intelligent, thoughtful, general view of the universe, straining after inward perfection and conscious arrangement, and also the necessity of giving this a prominent form by literature, and of introducing it practically into life. Proceeding from the general to the individual, from the spiritual to the external, from the theoretical to the practical, as well in the succession of the general sections as in the arrangement of the separate books, this code forms a defined whole, which we nowhere find repeated among any of the nations of antiquity, not even among the Indians. Unfortunately, the ten first and most important books, which contained their fundamental ideas on religion, philosophy, and law, and therefore the highest and most spiritual department of their contemplation, are not so fully described as the following sections, as regards the detail of their contents; therefore the enumeration of the separate branches of knowledge with which the hierogrammatists, the real scholars, and the horoscopi, next to them, occupied themselves, and which comprehended the whole visible and measurable world, is so much the more worthy of our notice.

At the same time we must remember that in the construction of this canon there was no intention of giving the chief features of an encyclopædia of their sciences. Every scientific purpose was necessarily laid aside, only the thoroughly practical aim of a sacerdotal compendium was contemplated, in which learning only formed part of the education of a priest, and merely occupied a third place after theology and the liturgical forms, and was only represented so far as a direct practical use could be obtained from it. Philosophy was therefore not at all separated from theology; human law was only an efflux of divine law. The knowledge of geometry was necessary for the surveying of the land, the division of the produce, the building and decoration of the temples; the knowledge of astronomy for the calendar of festivals, and the civil calculation of time; singing formed a part of the Liturgy. Nor is proof wanting that the knowledge and literature of Egypt far surpassed what was required by the hierarchy, that the thirty-six or forty-two books were also the earliest and original centre, to which later progressive improvements might everywhere attach themselves.

We frequently read in other authors about the “Sacred Writings[171]” of the Egyptians, or of their Hermetic books, but it would be wrong to refer all these notices to the forty-two books named by Clemens. It seems to me by no means improbable that the above-mentioned precepts on the life of the king, in Diodorus, which for Egypt bear a thoroughly classical stamp on them, formed a portion of the sacred law-books of the prophets, and that the laudatory song upon the deceased king, mentioned at the end of that passage, might have been composed in imitation of the ἐκλογισμὸς βασιλικοῦ βίου, in the last of the thirty-six books, and have only been employed in the last case. But it is not to be supposed the forty-two books themselves contained separate laudatory songs on particular kings, although such songs, understood in a wider sense, certainly belonged to the sacred books.

We read in the same passage of Diodorus, that wise sayings and actions of the most distinguished men were read aloud to the king after the sacrifice by the hierogrammatist from the “Sacred Books,” ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν βίβλων. We still possess ancient papyri which contain proverbs of a similar kind, some of them even put into the mouths of certain celebrated kings belonging to the Old Monarchy, such as Amenemha I., the head of the 12th Dynasty[172], resembling somewhat in their form the proverbs of Solomon. For the sake of the reader, and the one who reads out loud, they are divided by red points recurring at nearly stated intervals into short verses, according to the sentences, like the Hebrew scriptures. But these could not have belonged to the ten rolls of the hierogrammatists, nor to the priests’ canon in general.

It were more easy to suppose that the first book of the singer may have consisted of single hymns and prayers addressed to particular divinities, such as we still possess several instances of, e. g. to Ra, Amen Ra, Mut[173], to Thoth[174], to Osiris[175], Atmu[175], &c., yet probably it likewise only contained the daily litanies, which belonged to every temple service, and which were also expressly mentioned[176]. I can as little agree with the opinion[177] that the great Book of the Dead of the Egyptians was one of the ten books of the Stolistes, although I consider it to be also[178] a sacred book ascribed to Hermes. Even its extent forbids the former supposition. And, moreover, it is by no means a liturgical book, which one belonging to the Stolistes must have been, nor a book of Rituals, as Champollion appears to have regarded it, but essentially a history of the soul after death, therefore it was placed in the tomb with the deceased. The theological basis of this work, however, was undoubtedly included in the hieratical books of the prophets.

Bunsen[179] justly makes a distinction between the civil law-book, and the sacred law-books of the prophets. It was impossible that the regulations and precepts of the six law-givers, who are mentioned by Diodorus[180], could have been received into the canon, this can only be supposed of the most ancient portion of them—the laws of Menes, which were ascribed to Hermes by himself, and probably were the foundation both of the religious and of the civil law.

We shall now more easily understand why still less space was afforded in the canon of Clemens for the historical literature. It presented neither a speculative nor a practical side to the object which Egyptian theology had in view, and regarded in this light, therefore, it must appear subordinate. But on that account it no less existed. This is proved as well by the authors[181] themselves as by the original remains, which we still possess. Historical facts of all kinds, related both by means of pictures and writings, covered the walls of the temples in the principal towns; single battles and whole wars were described, with their exact dates, and with all the living details of an eye-witness, upon the stone surfaces of the pylons and the surrounding walls. As long as these lasted, the remembrance of those actions must have remained living and true in the mind of every cultivated Egyptian. And, in fact, we find these representations at a late period used as a direct authority in history.

Tacitus[182] recounts to us the visit of Germanicus to the “great remains of ancient Thebes. And Egyptian inscriptions were still extant upon the enormous buildings which declared the former riches. One of the most distinguished of the priests, who was required to explain the language of the country, related, that at one time 700,000 men, capable of bearing arms, dwelt here, and that King Ramses with this army had conquered Libya, Ethiopia, the Medes and Persians, the Bactrians, and Scythians, and that he held under his dominions the countries of the Syrians, the Armenians, and the neighbouring Cappadocians, and thence to the Bithynian and the Lycian Sea; the tribute laid upon the people was also read aloud, the weight of the silver and gold, the number of the weapons and horses, and the presents to the temple, of ivory and frankincense, and how much corn and other objects had been remitted by each nation, which was not less than what is now imposed upon the people by the might of the Parthians, or the power of the Romans.”

This is as strictly an historical notice from the reign of Ramses II., in the fourteenth century before Christ, as was ever related to us by the Greeks from the life of Xerxes or Alexander: for we read this statement now in the present day upon the same walls, before which Germanicus stood with wondering eyes. The Greeks and Romans seldom derived their knowledge from such a direct source as Germanicus did here, and Tacitus was quite unconscious that he was speaking of the same King Ramses, when shortly before he related of King Sesostris, that the bird called the Phœnix appeared for the first time in his reign. We still read the name Ramses upon the monuments, as the priest read it to Germanicus; Sesostris was the name of Sethôs I., who was so often confused with his son Ramses, and was carried down by a Greek mistake, since the time of Herodotus (ⲥⲉⲑⲱⲥⲓⲥ, ⲥⲉⲥⲟⲱⲥⲓⲥ, ⲥⲉⲥⲱⲥⲧⲣⲓⲥ).

Who can well doubt that along with such a historical literature engraven in stone, which to this day fills the whole of Egypt from Alexandria to Mount Barkal, far in Ethiopia, a corresponding historical book literature must have existed, of course much richer and more complete, even though we may not be able at present to point out the remains of it. But in fact we still possess papyrus rolls, one of which accidentally refers to the identical warlike deeds represented, with their annotations, upon the walls of the Theban temple. This is one of the important documents which the British Museum purchased in the year 1839 from M. Sallier, in Aix, after Champollion had already, in the year 1828, recognised and communicated several passages in it which related to the war of the great Ramses against the people of Cheta[183]. In 1838 I found at Leghorn, in a collection of Egyptian antiquities belonging to M. D’Anastasi, a series of papyri very similar to this, which mention other warlike features of that glorious period. They appear to come originally from the same tomb as those of Sallier, since they proceed, partly, indeed, from the same scribe. Other similar pieces are found in the Egyptian collections at Turin, Leyden, and Berlin.

It is evident, partly from the express date of the author or scribe, partly from the kings mentioned in the text, that the largest proportion of them belong to the 19th Dynasty. The most ancient date in the London papyrus is from the ninth year of the Great Ramses II.; the latest is from the first year of King Set-Necht, the third successor of the former. The Turin Royal Annals also belong to this or the next Dynasty. Other papyri are certainly not older than the 20th; e. g. one of those which I obtained in Thebes repeatedly mentions the name of Ramses IX., and is dated, upon the reverse side, from the 13th of Pachon—the sixteenth year, probably, of this king.

Another of these rolls contains, on the other hand, a portion of a composition which belongs to the time of Tutmes III., the conqueror of the Hyksos in the 18th Dynasty; a roll in Turin treats of the same king. We have as little reason to doubt that the first paragraph in the Pap. Sallier, No. 1, pl. i.-iii., which treats of two kings at the end of the Hyksos period, was also composed in their time, or soon after their death.

Two remarkable papyrus rolls, which I obtained in London for the Berlin Museum, mention the first kings of the 12th Dynasty, Amenemha I. and Sesurtesen I. Their writing is very different from the rest of those that I am acquainted with, and they belong to the very rare exceptions which, in place of horizontal lines, are written in vertical columns, after the manner of hieroglyphical writing; so that it would not surprise me, if by penetrating more deeply into the contents, the result should be, that they were composed, even this very copy, during the Old Monarchy. But the most ancient of all the hieratic royal names are found in a papyrus in my own possession[184]. Here the name of Chufu (Cheops) is frequently mentioned, also King Snefru in the 3rd Manethonic Dynasty, and three other kings, who probably belong to the same Dynasty. These kings are, indeed, all cited as dead, but since the whole of them belonged to that ancient period, its contents could hardly be placed much later. Among a people who were at all times surrounded by so many contemporaneous monuments and historical authorities, reaching as far back as their first royal Dynasties, it must have been generally much more difficult to supplant, or essentially to alter the existing genuine history of ancient times by fabulous tales and poetical inventions of later times.

In spite of the astonishing number of monuments, and in spite of the rich literature, whose original remains are confirmed by the accounts we find in different authors, it would, however, have been impossible to the Egyptians themselves, how much more so to us, to obtain a correct and clear insight into the course and connection of their history, if from its commencement a chronological sense had not been so early developed among them. Without chronology we should obtain no history, even from the most varied literature; the Indians, especially, give us a striking proof of this. History first obtains a perfect self-consciousness through chronology. With the growing civilisation of a people, the necessity increases for a sharper division of time both in small and large periods. From the earliest era of their history, the Egyptians have known how to satisfy this necessity, inherent in every higher state of civilisation.

But a chronology which is well arranged and established must always proceed from astronomy. We cannot conceive the existence of the former, in any nation, without the latter being to a certain degree developed. It will not, therefore, appear superfluous if we enter here more minutely into the astronomical knowledge of the Egyptians, before we turn our attention to their computation of time. We shall here, also, commence with the information we obtain from authors, and afterwards see how far it is confirmed and completed by the monuments.

[The author here proceeds to the astronomical basis of Egyptian chronology, and the chronological knowledge possessed by the Egyptians, and concludes his Introduction with the following words:]

Taking a retrospective survey of the path we have hitherto pursued in our discussions, I believe I have essentially fulfilled the task we undertook at the commencement, namely, to point out the possibility of the existence of such an early history of Egypt.

We have seen how, contrasted with the most ancient Asiatic nations, the Egyptians (pre-eminently favoured by their climatal and geographical conditions) were destined, as it were by nature, to be a monumental nation. These external conditions correspond with the innate bias of their feelings, which is shown by the innumerable multitude of their monuments, and by the extreme care they bestowed upon their preservation. From their desire to retain the fleeting present, may be explained the early development of their system of writing (so rich and significant in its organism, owing to its important origin), as well as the excessive use which was made of this writing, especially for the monuments, beyond any other nations of antiquity, so that it soon attained its highest destination by its application to a many-sided book literature. We have been able to refer to a Theban library as early as the fourteenth century before Christ, and have found reason for considering it neither the most ancient, nor the only one in Egypt. It was this very ancient literature and hereditary learning, which a later antiquity, and more particularly the Greeks, abundantly acknowledged, praised, sought out, and studied. Among the various branches of knowledge we have surveyed, especially the sacred codes of the priests—the forty-two Hermetic books described by Clemens, we have however particularly attempted, to indicate more closely from the monuments, the early study of astronomy, because the arrival at a more fixed chronology depends especially upon its development. We have likewise endeavoured to point out that, under the favourable circumstances of an Egyptian sky, and especially since the introduction of the variable sun-calendar (calculating as it were, and forming periods for itself), astronomy was cultivated in the most elaborate and most complete manner, and this we have been able partly to confirm by the monuments of the 4th and 12th Dynasties of the Old Monarchy. We have discovered a division of time, less than an hour, to the sixty times sixtieth part of a minute, and above an hour to the period of 36,525 years. Between these there were the greatest variety of cycles, such as no other ancient nation, except the Egyptian, has been able to produce in equal perfection. They were acquainted with the civil hours of day and night, also with the twenty-four equal or equinoctial hours of the complete day, νυχθήμερον.

From days they formed the decades, or Egyptian weeks, and from these the thirty-day month; they also knew the lunar months, and solemnised the new and full moon. Their season consisted of four months. They recognised as forms of years, and carried out in the calendar, both the oldest lunar year, as well as the solar year of 365 days, and the Sirius year, which is a quarter of a day longer. The civil solar year, after twenty-five years, namely at the Apis period, agreed again with the lunar year; in the same way, calculating by the day, it agreed with the Sirius year, at the lustrum of four years; and in the space of 1461 years, it agreed completely with the Sothis period. The Phœnix period, of 1500 years, was employed to make the civil year agree with the tropical year, which was afterwards divided according to the three seasons into three parts—500 years each. Finally, the Sidereal year, or the slow receding of the ecliptic to the west, became known, and it was expressed, although with an imperfect comprehension of the direction and velocity of the movement, by its greatest astronomical period of 36,525 years.

We have gained the principal purpose we had in view if we have succeeded in pointing out that, in Egypt, from the time of Menes, to whose reign the historical accounts go back, there existed to an extraordinary degree all the conditions necessary for the growth and the perfect development of the self-conscious and historical life of a nation, and for a chronologically-arranged historical literature, formed by the monuments and contemporaneous records. These circumstances have placed it in our power to investigate and restore, from such early times, the experienced and recorded history of the Egyptians. As far as our present knowledge extends, the conditions that we have named only appear complete among the most ancient Asiatic and European nations at a much later period, namely, during the last millennium before Christ, therefore an historical investigation, which refers back as far as that of Egypt, has hitherto been impossible with respect to those nations, except so far as in the Egyptian history itself new points of information may be found respecting the oldest history of nations, not Egyptian.

But it may very possibly be imagined that we have been compelled to stop at the indication of this possibility, being deficient in the means to raise this historical treasure from the depths in which we behold it. We can only restore true history with the assistance of an historical literature, and this must either be contemporaneous, and so far possess in itself a monumental value, or if it is a later literature, referring to what has long gone by, it must be accompanied by contemporaneous and intelligible monuments to enable us to prove and correct it by them. Hitherto we have certainly possessed one of the necessary means for the restoration of the Pharaonic history, namely, the Greek accounts, and extracts from an ancient Egyptian historical literature. But they remained useless and confused, because the monuments and the literary remains of the country were still mute and unintelligible. However, since Champollion’s praiseworthy deciphering of the hieroglyphical writing has rendered it possible to make an historical use of the monuments of the country, the second means for historical investigation has been placed in our hands. It was now for the first time possible to gain some advantage from the literary authorities, and to make a critical examination of them, which would necessarily demonstrate the general connection that subsists between the monuments. Only a correct all-sided combination of the means offered on both sides can here lead to the aim we have in view.

THE HEBREW TRADITION.

We can best exhibit the relation that subsists between the Hebrew and Egyptian records, by endeavouring to determine chronologically, and by such means as are extant, the most important point of contact in the two histories—namely, the Mosaic period—and thus to prove the value of the several numbers stated. We shall thereby perceive that the Hebrew accounts, in so far as they are connected with Egypt, may be held to be of more historical value than several modern inquirers are inclined to accord to them, and that they are by no means wanting in a fixed chronological principle, without which history cannot subsist; but that a more exact chronology, which might serve as a point of support to the Egyptian, is not to be sought in them, and it is rather this last which supplies the most certain chronological explanation of those times to the history of the Israelites. The genuine chronological character of the Jewish history is pretty well acknowledged by every one as far back as the division of the kingdom, or the building of the temple, whereby, indeed, the individual chronological difficulties, which frequently occur during this epoch, are not considered, but only the chronological value of those numbers generally which form the basis of these separate investigations; but the strictly chronological character of the Hebrew determinations of time before this epoch is disputed, and, indeed, in those very numbers which contain in themselves alone the threads of an exact chronology. A critical examination of the value of these numbers generally is thus necessary, and therefore this discussion becomes appropriate here. It is, in fact, of the greatest importance to us, because it determines whether it be possible to solve some marked contradictions which have at all times keenly engaged the attention of historians and theologians, and still continue to do so; it will, besides, enable many people to decide upon the value of the Manethonic, consequently of the Egyptian chronology generally, so far as it is made to depend on its agreement with the accounts obtained from the oldest source, the only one indeed not Egyptian, which here, at all events, admits of a comparison.

There are, especially, two numbers which have hitherto formed the turning points of the chronology of the Old Testament for the Mosaic period, because, passing over the uncertain individual statements, they fixed the limits to great spaces in time, and appeared to lay down a rule for more special investigations. I mean the 480 years[185] which are calculated to be the period between the Exodus and the building of the temple, and the 430 years[186] for the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. Both numbers very early created difficulty, and are partly modified, and partly refuted by other statements of time in the Old Testament. The 480 years ought to correspond with the sum of the individual numbers in the Book of Judges, which last is, however, considerably greater. The genealogies of that same period would, on the other hand, lead to the conclusion that the number of years was much fewer. The Seventy themselves differ in their statement of the number, since they write 440 in place of 480 years; and in the Acts of the Apostles (xiii. 20), 450 years are calculated for the Judges only to the time of Samuel; and this again differs from all other statements. Lastly, we find that Josephus also, even if he knew the number 480, still did not consider it as binding, since he never mentions it, but accepts different numbers, and far higher ones[187], which, nevertheless, do not agree with the Book of Judges. It thereby at least follows, that the number 480 by itself cannot claim any decided authority. But there is a still greater difference in the acceptation of the 430 years which the Israelites are said to have passed in Egypt. For, setting aside that in an earlier prophecy[188] the round number 400 alone is given, the Seventy understand the whole statement to mean, not from the entrance of Jacob into Egypt, but from the entrance of Abraham into Canaan, and they therefore translate the words in Exodus xii. 40, “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years;” by ἡ δὲ κατοίκησις τῶν υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ, ἣν κατῴκησαν ἐν τῇ γῇ Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ ἐν γῇ Χαναὰν, ἔτη τετρακόσια τριάκοντα (Now the dwelling of the children of Israel, which they dwelt in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years). The Apostle Paul[189] also reckons the 430 years from the promise of Abraham, and Josephus[190] does the same, so that for the sojourn in Egypt, which is understood in the Hebrew text, only 215 years are reckoned, the remaining 215 being assigned to the time from Abraham to Jacob. Lastly, if we compare the number of generations in this period, we shall only find four generations for the four centuries, so that for this, even half of the time stated would still be far too great.

Finally, if we consider along with these contradictory statements the intrinsic character of the numbers given in the original text, namely, the arithmetical relation of the 215 years from Abraham to Jacob, to the 430 or 215 years from Jacob to Moses, the frequent return also of the indeterminate number 40, both in the first[191] and still more in the second period, and lastly the nature of the numbers 480 or 440 as a multiple of 12 or 11 generations of 40 years each, it appears to me very natural that either a higher providential meaning, and in spite of all other opposing considerations, the only correct chronological expression would be seen in this play of numbers, or that this external garb of numbers would be regarded as unessential for the religious—indeed, in part, also, for the historical import of those narrations, but that in the latter case all more exact chronological investigation of this period must be relinquished.

The latter view must gradually prevail in stricter science. A criterion was wanting in the investigation of the Old Testament, which might decide upon a definite choice among its self-contradictory statements. Each claimed for itself a like authority. If we believe that we may now attempt a new solution of the difficulty, we rely upon the fresh point of view which we can occupy for that purpose, since we now possess a positive scale that may be relied on (independent of the investigations of the Old Testament), by which we can estimate the Hebrew statements, namely, the authentic history and chronology of the Egyptians, which more than equals the Hebrew in point of age.

Now if it should appear that they can in no way be harmonised, science would then, indeed, remain in its former uncertainty concerning the times before Solomon, and we should lose one of the most important and most acceptable corroborations of Egyptian chronology. But the result of our investigations is more favourable, since the Egyptian order of time, resting upon perfectly independent foundations, most decidedly determines that there is a chronological principle throughout the historical relation of the Old Testament, and not an arbitrary selection of Hebrew numbers. By this means a firm foundation is given to the critical examination of the latter, and both histories reciprocally afford each other a support that cannot be shaken.

We must first of all show that the Egyptian account of the expulsion of the Lepers, given by Manetho, refers really to the same event as that narrated in the Old Testament, as the Exodus of the Israelites. We shall afterwards determine the epoch which is recognised in the Egyptian tradition, and, lastly, attempt to show how every other time is in like manner excluded by the historical purport of the Hebrew narrative; that there exists, also, a chronological thread which leads us to the same result, and, indeed, that the authentic tradition concerning the year of the Exodus has never been entirely lost among the Jews. From this fixed point we shall then look back still farther into the times of Joseph, and the accounts of the Greeks appertaining to that period, to which will be added our views regarding the visit of Abraham to Egypt.

The following is the account of the Mosaic events which Josephus gives us from Manetho, and partly in the words of Manetho himself[192]. After describing the expulsion of the Hyksos, whom Josephus considered to be the ancestors of the Jews, and giving an account of the kings who succeeded that event, as far as Rampses, the son of Sethôs, he continues: “After he (Manetho) had therefore related, in conformity with his earlier narrative, that our ancestors[193] (the Hyksos) had departed from Egypt so many years earlier, he then says that King Amenophis, whom he here inserts, desired to become a beholder of the gods, like Horus, one of his predecessors. He communicated this desire to one Amenophis, son of Paapis, who, on account of his wisdom and penetration into futurity, was believed to partake of the divine nature. Now this namesake of Amenophis told him that if he cleansed the whole country of the Lepers and other unclean people, he would then be able to behold the gods. The king thereby rejoiced, collected together all who were smitten with this bodily disease, throughout the whole of Egypt 80,000 in number, and cast them into the stone-quarries, which are situated east of the Nile, in order that they should there work, apart from the other Egyptians. Among them were some learned priests, who had been attacked by the leprosy. But that wise and prophesying Amenophis began to fear the anger of the gods, for himself as well as for the king, if they, the priests, were seen at such compulsory labour; and he foretold, moreover, that others would hasten to the assistance of the unclean, and would govern Egypt for thirteen years. He did not, however, venture to express this to the king, but, leaving behind him a written record, he killed himself. Upon that the king became very much dejected. Then he (Manetho) continues verbatim, thus: ‘Now, when these people had suffered sufficiently by the hard work in the stone-quarries, the king yielded to their entreaty, and gave up to them, for their deliverance and protection, the town of Abaris, which had at that time been forsaken by the shepherds (Hyksos). But this town, according to traditions of the gods, had always been a Typhonic town. Now, when these people had entered into this town, and found the place favourable for revolt, they appointed as their leader a priest of Heliopolis, by name Osarsiph, and swore to obey him in all things. He established as their first law that they should worship no gods, and that they should not abstain from those animals which, according to the law, are considered most holy in Egypt, but that they might sacrifice and consume them all; also, that they should associate only with their fellow-conspirators. After he had established these and many other laws, which were entirely opposed to the Egyptian customs, he commanded them all to set to work to build up the town walls, and to prepare themselves for war against King Menophis. But, whilst he consulted some of the other priests and infected persons, he sent messengers to the shepherds who had been expelled by Tethmosis to the town of Jerusalem, and, after he had let them know what had happened to himself and to the others who had been injured along with him, he invited them to make war against Egypt in unison with his followers. He would first of all conduct them to Abaris, the town of their forefathers, and amply provide the troops with what they required; but, if it were necessary, he would protect them, and easily subject the country to them. Greatly rejoiced, they readily brought together as many as 200,000 men, and soon arrived at Abaris. But when Amenophis, the Egyptian king, heard of the invasion of these people, he was not a little disturbed, for he remembered what Amenophis, the son of Paapis, had prophesied. He first collected the Egyptian troops, conferred with his commanders, desired those sacred animals which are the most honoured in the sanctuaries to be brought to him, and commanded the individual priests, more especially to conceal the images of the gods most securely. But he sent his son, Sethôs, who was five years old, and was also called Ramesses, from Rampses, the father of Amenophis, to his friend (the King of Ethiopia). He himself, indeed, went forward with the remaining Egyptians, who amounted to 300,000 fighting men; however, when the enemy advanced to meet him he did not engage in battle, but returned hastily to Memphis, because he believed he was fighting against the gods. There he carried off the Apis and the other sacred animals which had been brought thither, and repaired immediately with the whole army and the remaining baggage of the Egyptians to Ethiopia. The King of Ethiopia was, in fact, beholden to him; he, therefore, received him, supplied his troops with all the necessaries of life which the country afforded, assigned to them as many towns and villages as would suffice for the predetermined thirteen years, in which they would be compelled to be deprived of his government, and even placed an Ethiopian army on the borders of Egypt as a protection to the people of King Amenophis. Thus it stood in Ethiopia. But the Solymites who had come into the country, and the unclean among the Egyptians, treated the people so shamefully, that the period of their government appeared to all who then beheld these impieties the worst of times; for they not only burnt towns and villages, and were not satisfied with plundering the sanctuaries, and abusing the images of the gods, but they continually made use of those venerated and sacred animals which were fit to be eaten, compelled the priests and prophets to become their butchers and destroyers, and then sent them away destitute. It is said, however, that the priest who gave them a constitution and laws, who was a native of Heliopolis, and called Osarsiph (from the god Osiris in Heliopolis), went over to these people, changed his name, and was called Moses.’ This and much more, which for the sake of brevity I must omit, is what the Egyptians relate concerning the Jews. But Manetho says further, that Amenophis afterwards returned out of Ethiopia with a great force, that he and his son Rampses, who had also an army, gave battle to the shepherds and the unclean, conquered them, killed many, and pursued the remainder to the borders of Syria. Manetho wrote this and similar things.”

Next to this Manethonic account, we shall place the Greek conception of the matter as we find it in Diodorus, xl. 3, taken from Hecataeus of Abdera (and also in an earlier passage, xxxiv. 1, without his authority being given).

“When,” says Hecataeus, “a plague once broke out in Egypt, most people believed that it was a punishment sent by the gods. For since many strangers of divers races dwelt among them, who practised very anomalous customs, with respect to the sacred things and to the sacrifice, it came to pass that hence their own ancient worship of the gods declined. Therefore the natives feared there would be no end to the evil, if they did not remove those who were of foreign extraction. The foreigners were therefore quickly expelled. The best and the most powerful of them united together, and, as some people say, were driven away to Greece and other places, under distinguished leaders, of whom Danaus and Cadmus were the most famous. But the great mass withdrew to the country which is now called Judea, situated not far from Egypt, which was at that time barren and uninhabited. The leader of this colony was Moses, who was distinguished by the power of his mind, and by his courage. He captured the country, and besides other towns, built Hiersolyma, which has now become so famous. He also founded the temple, which was so peculiarly holy in their eyes, taught them the worship and the service of the Deity, gave them laws, and regulated their constitution. He divided the people into twelve tribes, because this is the most complete number, and agrees with the number of months in the year. But he set up no image of the gods, for he did not believe God had a human form, but that he is one God, who embraces heaven and earth, and is Lord of all things. He regulated the sacrifices and the usages of life very differently from those of other nations; since, in consequence of the banishment which they had themselves experienced, he introduced a misanthropical mode of life, hostile to strangers.”

The statement in the earlier passage of Diodorus, xxxiv. 1, sounds far more bitter, where he says “that they (the Jews) alone among all nations scorn any intercourse with others[194], and look upon every one as their enemy. Their forefathers, also, were driven out of Egypt as disgraced and hated by the gods; and in order to cleanse the country, those attacked with the white sickness and leprosy had been collected together and cast beyond the frontiers as an accursed race. But the expelled people had conquered the country round Jerusalem, had formed the nation of the Jews, and transmitted to their descendants their hatred of mankind. On that account also they had adopted perfectly anomalous laws, neither to eat with any other people, nor to show them any kindness.” “Antiochus Epiphanes, after he had conquered the Jews, entered into their holy of holies, into which only the priests were admitted; he there found a stone image of a bearded man, who sat upon an ass, and held a book in his hand. He took this for Moses, who had founded Jerusalem, organised the people, given them laws, and introduced the disgraceful and misanthropical customs.”

Now if we compare these relations, which evidently refer to Egyptian and not to Jewish statements, with the representation we meet with in the Hebrew conception of the matter, we cannot mistake the general agreement of the most essential features.

Differing entirely from the former Exodus of the Hyksos, the description of which is likewise preserved to us by Manetho, here, it is not an open enemy who is to be subdued, but people of foreign descent, peaceably dwelling in the land, increasing, however, to a dangerous extent, and who inspired the Egyptians with fear and hatred. It is true that neither Manetho, nor any one of the authors we have named, expressly say that the expelled people were of a different race from the Egyptians; but the cause of this may have been that the entrance of the family of Jacob into the country which was so important to the Jews, probably passed unnoticed by them. The influx of emigrants from the eastern and north-eastern Semitic countries was apparently much greater in those flourishing times of the Egyptian kingdom than it was thought necessary to recount in the detached history of the house of Israel. The influence of those people from Palestine who had been driven back under Tuthmosis, must only have increased the former importunity of that people to enter the blessed land of Egypt. But so long as they came singly and peacefully, and did not shrink from entering into all kinds of intercourse and alliance with the Egyptians, they must have been considered by the natives as belonging to the country—as Egyptians. It is certainly a mistake to suppose the Israelites were the only strangers in Egypt. They dwelt in the land of Goshen, situated on the eastern border of the Delta, but of course only a very small body in the midst of Egyptians, and many Philistines and Arabians, from whom the Egyptian could not distinguish them. The immense increase in their numbers, of which we read, is only to be understood in this manner. How could there have been so distinct a division of the one race from their Semitic companions, as is usually understood, when their chief men themselves frequently did not shrink from mingling with the Egyptians?

Even Ishmael had an Egyptian mother and an Egyptian wife[195]. Joseph becomes so completely Egyptian that he is able to occupy the highest position under the king, does not eat at the same table with his brethren, and speaks to them through an interpreter. He also takes an Egyptian woman as his wife[196], even the daughter of a Priest of Heliopolis; and Moses himself marries an Ethiopian[197]. The same intermingling between the races is afterwards still more frequently mentioned, without being considered as anything remarkable or forbidden, e. g. Leviticus xxiv. 10; 1 Chron. ii. 34, 35; and the same with respect to other foreigners, the Tyrians, e. g. 1 Kings vii. 14. The immigrants also did not limit themselves to the land of Goshen, which had been first assigned to them, but “filled the land,” and appeared “to grow greater and mightier than the Egyptians.” That the single race of Jacob is not here meant, but all who had allied themselves to it, as to a powerful centre, is again made evident in the Exodus, where it is said[198], “And a mixed multitude went up also with them.” There may even have been many Egyptians among the mixed multitude; indeed the whole population continued to cling, even long after the Exodus, so firmly to Egyptian customs, and even to the religious practices of the Egyptians, that they were constantly inclined to fall back again to the old form of worship. Is it surprising that the Egyptians should have considered those people as Egyptians—and called them so in their traditions—who, even at the foot of Sinai, made an image of the holy bull, Mneuis, and solemnised it with festivities, thus proving that the greater proportion of them had adopted the Egyptian religion?

This was naturally the reason why the Jews were so frequently viewed as an Egyptian colony, e. g. by Strabo[199], Apion[200], and others; and in this at least there is no contradiction between the Egyptian and Hebrew accounts; they rather both assist in completing a more perfect picture.

The emigrating people were described especially by Manetho, and by all the other Egyptian traditions, as a race of “unclean, leprous Egyptians, godless, and hated by God.” It is evident that the people designated here were of foreign extraction, differing in faith, consequently godless settlers in Egypt, the shepherd families, who, on account of their occupation, in remembrance of the old hereditary enemy, were hated by the genuine Egyptians, especially by the priests, “for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians[201].”

The Mosaic account also corroborates the opinion that the leprosy and the white sickness (λεύκη, ἀλφός), which resembles it, were very prevalent in those times, and particularly among the Jews, and that they were most dangerously infectious. This is intimated by the strict laws of separation issued by Moses against those attacked by the leprosy, among whom, however, his own sister Miriam[202] is found; also by the miracle of Moses, who draws his own hand out of his bosom white as snow with leprosy[203], and afterwards afflicts the land with the plague and with noxious boils[204], and finally with the sudden death of all the first-born. This perfectly explains the Egyptian account of the universal plague of the leprosy, which had more particularly broken out among the poorer and more uncleanly settlers, and which threatened the whole Egyptian nation[205]. To this is to be added the belief of the strict Egyptians that inward uncleanness and godlessness of the heart must necessarily be inseparably connected with outward uncleanness and with the leprosy, the most abhorred of the diseases sent by God.

It is said, by Manetho, that among these infected people there were some learned priests. Possibly these were of the Egyptian race, and yet were cast together with the unclean strangers. But there is nothing to prevent our assuming that these priests were also of foreign descent, and perhaps themselves Israelites. It is not, indeed, an improbable assertion, that Moses himself was brought up as a priest of Heliopolis. It is evident that Joseph could not, as a Hebrew, have been first minister of Pharaoh, but that he must, at the same time, have possessed both the rank, learning, and outward consecration of the Egyptian priests, with whom he had also united himself by marriage; and that Moses likewise, brought up in the house of the king, could only be instructed, in all the wisdom of the Egyptian priests, through the same medium of outward fellowship. Contrasted with the Egyptian prophets and hierogrammatists, who equally convert their staffs into serpents, change water into blood, and fill the land with frogs, he appears before Pharaoh only as a wiser, and more highly endowed man, than those sages. The name Osarsiph, is of little importance here, for even the name of Moses is expressly declared to be Egyptian, as it could not have been otherwise. But yet on this very account it is worthy of notice, because it is interpreted as being expressly derived from Osiris at Heliopolis. As the principal god in that place was Ra, i. e. Ἥλιος, the service of Osiris was undoubtedly most closely united with the holy sun-bull of Osiris[206], the white bull represented in the paintings gold[207] 𓈖𓐰𓏠𓇋𓃒 Menes, or Mneuis, the same whom the people adored in the desert, and whose worship was even introduced into Palestine by King Jeroboam I., when he was recalled from Egypt[208]. A particular local worship in Heliopolis had been dedicated to this bull since the time of Menes; and this very town, in which, according to the Egyptian tradition, Moses is said to have been the priest of Osiris (therefore of the golden calf), is, besides, always considered specially connected with the Jews. From that town Joseph took his wife, and On—so Heliopolis was called by the people—according to the Septuagint, was even built by the Israelites[209]. This cannot mean that they first founded the town, for it had been already mentioned as the native town of Joseph’s wife, and is also named upon the monuments even in the Old Monarchy, and in the annals as early as the time of Menes; but it cannot also be explained alone by saying that Heliopolis was probably the principal town of the eastern province of Goshen, it certainly can only be understood to mean that the Israelites completed the elevation and damming off of the town against the inundations, of which we shall say more hereafter. The Manethonic account is therefore important for this reason also, that it makes Moses come from Heliopolis, and thence indicates his connection with the golden bull.

It further follows, from the Egyptian recital, that the sudden persecution of the unclean people had a special cause, and this appears always to proceed from the advice which the priests give the superstitious kings, as to how the distress of the leprosy, and the degeneration and desecration of their religious services were to be remedied. But in the desire not to expel this whole race, but to destroy them by hard labour in the country itself, or to let them perish in the desert, or even to drown them[210], we at the same time perceive another reason for the persecution, namely, the fear lest they should rise up as open enemies of the country, and unite themselves with the banished shepherds for a new subjugation of the land, a fear so well founded, that what was expected, was soon most completely fulfilled. Here again there is the silent acknowledgment that those unclean Egyptians were principally of foreign extraction, and had a natural bias to their Palestinian hereditary enemies, whom they afterwards called to their assistance. And the Mosaic account also exactly agrees with this[211]: “Let us deal wisely with them,” says Pharaoh, “lest they multiply, and it come to pass that when there falleth out any war they join also with our enemies, and fight against us.” Therefore, taskmasters were placed over the land, and the people tormented with building and all kinds of hard service, to which undoubtedly the working in the stone-quarries had reference, which is made particularly prominent in the Egyptian relation. The chief feature in both recitals is the design of oppression and destruction, by means of exorbitant taskwork.

All accounts are also agreed upon the great number of the enemy, which had grown up in the country, and even if only 280,000[212] had departed, as the Egyptians related, while in the Hebrew accounts 600,000 are mentioned, it was at any rate a great event, on which the Egyptian annals could not possibly preserve silence.

These are all features of the Egyptian narrative, which place beyond doubt the identity of that insurrection of the Lepers under Osarsiph, with the Exodus of the Israelites under Moses, even if we set aside the far more direct, but in the view of some perhaps, on that very account, less trustworthy evidence, which consists in what is added concerning the laws of Osarsiph, that the Egyptian gods should no longer be worshipped, and that they should never again hold intercourse with any other race, also concerning the name of Moses itself, which Osarsiph is said to have adopted. For I certainly consider it as more than probable that the name of Moses was not originally found in the Egyptian narrative; that the latter was only connected with a rebellious priest Osarsiph, and that Manetho first changed the name in consequence of the comparison with the Hebrew accounts, which had been made long before his day. But this assumption only upholds still more the age and the independence of the Manethonic narrative, whose genuine and ancient Egyptian character is besides apparent to the attentive reader through all its other parts. With reference to this, I shall only mention the peculiar feature of beholding the gods, and its connection with an earlier king, further the name of the town Abaris, which was entirely lost in later times, and could not therefore have been orally preserved by the people, but must have been taken from old writings. Also the unfortunate and ignominious turn of the event for the Egyptians, the cowardly flight of the king to Ethiopia, and the revolting usage to which the whole lower country, and especially the priesthood, were exposed for thirteen years, but, above all, the complete absence of all allusions and attacks upon the Jews as such, sufficiently proves that the whole was a simple, faithful account from the old writings. Therefore, when Josephus, in order to maintain his wholly untenable opinion that the Hyksos were the Jews, asserts that Manetho did not derive this narrative from genuine ancient sources, but that he only relates incredible fables, and declares besides that Manetho himself granted the uncertainty of his account, when he says, he will now write what is mentioned in the tradition of the Jews—γράφειν τὰ μυθευόμενα καὶ λεγόμενα περὶ τῶν Ἰουδαίων—(to write the mythical and legendary accounts concerning the Jews), this is only one more of the forced and ingenious accusations of which his controversial work is composed. The words of Manetho, as they are extant, nowhere support this assertion of Josephus, except the last, which are to this purport:—λέγεται δ’ ὅτι τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ τοὺς νόμους αὐτοῖς καταβαλόμενος ἱερεύς, τὸ γένος Ἡλιουπολίτης, ὄνομα Ὀσαρσίφ, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐν Ἡλίου πόλει θεοῦ Ὀσίρεως, ὡς μετέβη εἰς τοῦτο τὸ γένος, μετετέθη τοὔνομα καὶ προσηγορεύθη Μωυσῆς—(It is said that a priest who founded their polity and laws, a Heliopolitan by race, named Osarsiph, when he went over to this nation from the service of the god Osiris in Heliopolis, received a change of name, and was called Moses). This contains the honest acknowledgment of Manetho that the ancient sources whence he derived his information neither mention the Jews nor Moses, which is confirmed by his own narrative. Therefore it was only a λεγόμενον (tradition), if it were not indeed a μυθευόμενον (mere fable), as Josephus adds, which applied that account to the Jews. Manetho evidently did not intend to say more. The account of the banishment of the Lepers bears exactly the same stamp as the earlier account of the banishment of the Hyksos, and even an entirely superficial critical examination would only lead us to conclude, from the mention in both accounts of the city of Abaris (which at Manetho’s time had long since passed out of remembrance), that he made use of the same ancient authorities for the one as for the other. Therefore, instead of the reproaches of Josephus, Manetho rather deserves all our gratitude for so strictly abstaining from introducing his own views, however correct they may have been, into the long-approved historical relations. He leaves the decision in the hands of his readers. And it seems to me that we can now make ours upon good grounds, not depending upon his opinions, but upon the documentary evidence he lays before us, to the effect, namely, that the identity of the two occurrences, recognised even before the time of Manetho, must actually be accepted.

Josephus, however, is equally groundless and frivolous in his reproach to the Egyptian historian, when he asserts that he has only of his own accord inserted the king here, under whom he places the event—Ἀμένωφιν εἰσποιήσας ἐμβόλιμον βασιλέα—(Having inserted Amenophis as king), and that he has not therefore ventured to assign a fixed number of years to his reign. As Josephus before made a great confusion between the kings Ἄμωσις and Τέθμωσις, and since here also, he has not remarked, that he has named the same king once before in a former extract (c. 15) in his right place, and ascribed to him the correct nineteen years and six months as the period of his reign, the reproach is at once removed from the Egyptian historian, and falls back upon himself.

Let us now see what place in the Egyptian annals is assigned to the King of the Exodus. Here again we are first referred to Josephus. We shall investigate in its proper place more minutely, how far he had the true account of Manetho before him, or only extracts from it. But it is easy to perceive from a cursory comparison of his extracts, which are partly given verbatim, and partly summarily, that in the two principal passages upon this portion of Egyptian history, he had two different authorities before him, who, in the writing of the names, and in certain details, somewhat differ from one another, and thence caused no little confusion to the inconsiderate critic.

If we now place these two authorities of Josephus beside one another, and compare with them the corresponding portion of the lists of Africanus and of the monuments, we obtain the following general view. (See next page.)

LISTS OF JOSEPHUS AND AFRICANUS.

MANETHO. | MONUMENTS.
JOSEPHUS. | AFRICANUS.
c. Ap. i. 15. | c. Ap. i. 26.
| | | Y. | M. | | | Y. | M. | | | | |
| 1. | Ῥαμέσσης | 1. | 4. | 1. | | | | 1. | Ῥαμέσσης | 1. | 1. | Rameses I.
| 3. | Ἀρμέσσης Μιαμμοῦ | 66. | 2. | | | | | | | | |
| 4. | Ἀμένωφις | 19. | 6. | | | | | (4. | Ἀμενωφάθ | 19.) | |
(5) | 2. | Σέθωσις ὁ καὶ Ῥαμέσσης | 2. | Σεθώς (59 l.) | 50. | 9. | 2. | Σεθὼς | 51. | 2. | Sethôs I.
| 3. | | | | 3. | Ῥάμψης | 66. | | 3. | Ῥαψάκης (61 l.) | 66. | 3. | Rameses Miamun
| 4. | | | | 4. | Ἀμένωφις | | | 4. | Ἀμενέφθης | 20. | 4. | Menephthes
| 5. | | | | 5. | Σεθὼς ὁ καὶ Ῥαμέσσης | 5. | Ῥαμέσσης | 60. | 5. | Sethôs II.

The first thing to be remarked is that the last column, that of the monuments, is authentically determined, because it is entirely borrowed from several monumental catalogues, and taking it in details, the testimony of numerous contemporaneous monuments puts it beyond a shadow of doubt. The lists of the authors may therefore be judged with the greatest safety, according as they agree with it, but not the reverse. Hence it follows, that in the first authority of Josephus, either one has been lost between the first and second names, or the second and third names are incorrectly anticipated, since they should have come after the fourth. The numbers placed beside the reigns leave no doubt of this. The last of the two mistakes has evidently been committed by Africanus with regard to the Ἀμενωφάθ; therefore, in the comparative columns, the same has also been assumed to belong to Josephus. Furthermore, we read in the text of Josephus, chap. 15, Σέθωσις καὶ Ῥαμἑσσης (Sethôsis and Rameses), but we learn from the context, and chap. 26, that we ought to read ὁ καὶ (who is also). In the second authority of Josephus, the addition ὁ καὶ Ῥαμέσσης (who is also Rameses), is entirely wanting, which is undoubtedly correct, since neither the names of these two, or any other kings, are seen in connection on the monuments. The mistaken connection appears to have been occasioned by the confusion that existed at a much earlier period, in the ideas of the people, about these two kings; whereas, the surname of the second Ramses, Μιαμμοῦ, is evidently founded on the constant addition of 𓌹𓇋𓏠𓐰𓈖 Miamun, on the monuments of this king.

Without entering into further details, it is now undeniably evident from the same comparative list, that Ἀμένωφις, or Μένωφις, the third king of the second authority of Josephus, to whom the banishment of the Lepers was ascribed, is no other than the corresponding Ἀμενέφθης, with 20 years, and the Μενέφθης (Menephtha) of the monuments; lastly, no other than the anticipated Ἀμένωφις, with 19 years and 6 months of the first authority of Josephus, the son of Ἀρμέσσης Μιαμμοῦ, with 66 years 2 months, i. e. of Ramses-Miamun, whose sixty-second year appears upon the monuments. The King of the Exodus therefore belongs, according to the Egyptian accounts, to the 19th Manethonic Dynasty, and it seems to me impossible any longer to admit the opinion of those who believed him to belong to the previous 18th Dynasty[213]. It is true that in this Dynasty we find three different kings named Amenophis, which caused the confusion with the similarly sounding name Menephthes, but none of them have a Ramses for a father, and a Sethôs for a son and grandfather; for the two last names never appear in the 18th Dynasty.

We find, indeed, a king of the 18th Dynasty mentioned in the Manethonic relation in Josephus, viz. King Horus. But this incidental quotation contains so much the more an impartial and convincing proof, that the king with whom we are concerned, belonged to the 19th Dynasty, and that the whole account was taken from an ancient authority, to whom the same chronological connection was perfectly well known. It is said, namely, that Amenophis desired to become a beholder of the gods, like one of his ancestors, King Horus. Now this notice is in itself remarkable, and testifies its genuine character, since King Horus is not otherwise known to us through the popular tradition, probably because he, like most of the others, had left no monuments behind him which had attracted any particular notice in Memphis. But with regard to the time of his reign, it is apparent that he was certainly a predecessor, namely, the fourth of Menephthes, but a successor of all the three Amenophises of the 18th Dynasty, which he terminated.

It is of minor importance that, according to Diodorus (34, 1), the banishment of the Jews is connected with the emigration of Danaus to Greece, and that this also is placed, according to the Egyptian tradition at least, in the 19th Dynasty. But we thereby see that the Egyptian tradition with regard to dates did not deviate much, even when it was connected with foreign elements.

If we now compare the clear Egyptian statements that we have cited, concerning the period of the Exodus with what is said about it by the later, particularly the Jewish and Christian chronologists, it would be difficult to comprehend why they differed so exceedingly, if we did not find the fundamental error fully explained in the writings of Josephus against Apion, where he asserts that the Jews were no other than the Hyksos. The perfectly untenable grounds for this opinion, which, nevertheless, has been shared even by some modern scholars, although the Mosaic narrative is entirely contradictory to it, both as a whole and in its details, may be gathered from Josephus himself, since a refutation of them here would be superfluous. But Josephus was by no means the first who started this opinion. It was already held by Ptolemy Mendesius[214] and Apion[215], perhaps even by Polemon[216]. From this, also, originates the other misunderstanding, that it was not Tuthmosis, but Amosis, the first king of the 17th Dynasty, who drove away the Hyksos; and therefore in Josephus[217] the name Τέθμωσις is inserted in place of Ἄμωσις, and in Syncellus[218] both names appear united as Ἄμωσις ὁ καὶ Τέθμωσις—(Amosis, who is also Tethmosis). The reason of this confusion lay simply in this, that Amosis is found placed by Manetho at the head of the Dynasty which immediately follows the Dynasties of the Hyksos; he must, therefore, have driven away the Hyksos, who by them are understood to be the Jews.

We find a different opinion in Eusebius. In his Manethonic list[219], beside King Chencheres, therefore in the middle between the true Exodus of the Hyksos and that of the Israelites, he writes as follows:—κατὰ τοῦτον Μωυσῆς τῆς ἐξ Αἰγύπτου πορείας τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἡγήσατο—(During this reign Moses conducted the journey of the Jews out of Egypt). But the reason for this deviation from the usual statements concerning the Pharaoh of the Exodus does not here lie in the name, which perhaps Eusebius had found somewhere mis-stated, but in his assumption (to which we shall afterwards return) that the first year of Abraham was also the first year of the 16th Manethonic Dynasty. He only counted, as he himself states, 75 years[220] from this year to Abraham’s removal to Haran, and then the 430 years of bondage in Egypt. By that means he obtained the year of the Exodus of Moses from Egypt. This happened, according to his Egyptian list, in the sixteenth year of Chencheres; consequently, in his annals, he entered the Exodus under this king.

The most fabulous recital of the Exodus is in Lysimachus, who appears to have written about the time of Christ’s birth, shortly before Apion. It is not, therefore, worth while to investigate whether the name of the King Bocchoris, in whose reign he makes Moses depart, was arbitrarily imagined, or whether it originated in some great misunderstanding. His romance appears, however, to have found acceptance, since we again meet with the fable of Lysimachus in Tacitus[221], with some new and additional facts. Tacitus says, that according to some the Jews wandered to Palestine during the reign of Isis, led by Hierosolymus and Judah; according to others, they were descendants of the Ethiopians, and departed during the reign of King Cepheus; but most people said, that at the breaking out of a plague, King Bocchoris had cleared the land of them, according to the sentence of an oracle.

But Josephus has rendered the narrative of Lysimachus still more confused, and by that means has also led astray later scholars. He relates, namely, as follows, in the second book of his controversy with Apion: “Manetho says that the Jews wandered out of Egypt in the reign of Tethmosis, 393 years before the flight of Danaus to Argos; but Lysimachus makes it under King Bocchoris, that is, 1700 years ago; Molon and others make it as it seems best to them; but Apion, the one most to be depended upon of all of them, placed the Exodus exactly in the seventh Olympiad, and in the first year of it, in which, as he says, the Phœnicians founded Carthage.”

It was impossible that Josephus could place Bocchoris 1700 years before his own time, for that would make him nearly cotemporary with the first kings of the Egyptian succession, whose names he cites, without, however, mentioning a Bocchoris among them. This king lived, rather, according to Manetho, about 750, and not about 1650 before Christ. If, furthermore, it is asserted that Apion placed the Exodus at the Olympiad 7. 1., namely, B.C. 752, that is most decidedly contradicted by Clemens of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, and Africanus, in passages above referred to, who, on the contrary, agree in relating that Apion followed Ptolemy Mendesius, and placed the Exodus under Amosis, therefore about 1650 years before Christ. It is evident that Josephus has here in his careless way confused the authors and the numbers with one another. He meant to say, or ought to have said, that Manetho fixed the Exodus (not of the Jews, indeed, but of the Hyksos) 393 years before Danaus, i. e. 1700 years before Josephus, and Lysimachus fixed it, during the reign of Bocchoris. The fabulous narrator, Lysimachus, could hardly have affixed any statement of time to the name of Bocchoris, or he would certainly have discovered his error; but Apion, the grammatist and hyper-critic, had probably subjected the opinion of Lysimachus to his own critical examination, and reckoned that if he assumed Bocchoris to be the king under whom the Exodus was made, he must intend to fix his date at Olympiad 7. 1. At any rate there is no doubt that the Olympiad calculation belonged to Lysimachus, and the 1700 years to the Manethonic statement. The latter point might be remedied if we could place the words τουτέστι πρὸ ἐτῶν χιλίων ἑπτακοσίων (That is one thousand seven hundred years) after Δαναοῦ φυγῆς (The flight of the Danai). But we should certainly be wrong to change the number 1700, as Böckh[222] has done, into 700; or with Ewald[223] and Bunsen[224], to accuse Apion of the confusion of which Josephus alone is guilty.

If it is therefore impossible to place the Exodus of Moses, regarding it from the Egyptian point of view—which has been singularly misunderstood by all the ancient and modern authors we have mentioned—under any other Pharaoh than Menephthes, the son of the great Ramses, in the 19th Dynasty, nothing remains to the opponents of this view than to attack the truth of this statement from the standing point of the Hebrew authorities, and to show that there are irrefutable grounds in the Mosaic accounts which prove the falsity of the Egyptian annals. But, upon a closer consideration, this is so little the case that, on the contrary, the Hebrew account confirms in the most unequivocal manner the Manethonic disposal of this event in the Egyptian history.

There are certainly very few features in the Mosaic account of the Exodus from which we could obtain in a direct manner any information about the condition of Egypt at the time of its occurrence. Whatever Egyptian manners and customs are occasionally mentioned, are generally little characteristic of any particular epoch of time; greater events, such as wars, change of government, the erection of famous buildings, are still less mentioned, everything is so exclusively apprehended and rendered in an Israelitish point of view. The great change which was introduced by Joseph in the agrarian condition of the country is almost the only exception made here, because it happens to be so closely connected with him personally. Farther on we shall consider the historical inferences which may be founded upon it concerning the time of Joseph. The complete absence of Egyptian proper names, which might so frequently be opportunely mentioned, is particularly striking. Neither the name of the Pharaoh in whose reign Abraham came into Egypt, nor he of whom Joseph was the minister, nor, finally, the one in whose house Moses was brought up, or his successor, in whose reign he left Egypt, are mentioned. This undoubtedly shows a total indifference about chronological points of union for the special history of the Israelites of those times, which is remarkably opposed to the very exact dates, apparently avoiding all breaks, from which our current chronology of the Old Testament is summed up.

Only a few geographical names of Egyptian towns and localities enable us to contemplate, at least in some degree, the theatre of that great event. But there are two among them of peculiar importance to us here, because they also throw a light which was much needed upon Egyptian relations of time, and interpret in a remarkable manner sundry accounts of the old authors.

It is said in Exodus i. 2: “Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses.” The Hebrew name of the latter town is ‎‏רעמסס‏‎, and is therefore exactly the same as that of King Ramses in hieroglyphics, 𓂋𓐰𓂝𓄠𓋴𓋴. Now it is difficult to believe that this king’s name was given to a town before any King Ramses had reigned. We could not, therefore, on account of its name, place the building of this town earlier than under the 19th Manethonic Dynasty, because this dynastic name first appears here.

It seems to me, that we may now point out the historical relation of this town Ramses, with a particular King Ramses, among the many kings of that name. We shall, then, for the first time, learn the full significancy of the passage. But it will be necessary for this purpose to examine more closely the geographical conditions at that time of the Isthmus of Suez, which formed the boundary between Egypt and Asia, and was therefore the theatre of the Exodus.

Since the Israelites departed from Ramses, this town must have been their central point and place of meeting. According to Manetho, the lepers, as the Hyksos before them, were finally driven out of Abaris. We might therefore be inclined at first to consider these two towns as one and the same. This was also the opinion of an old abbreviator of Eusebius[225], who says of Jacob: καὶ παροικεῖ ἐν τῇ Ῥαμέσῃ τῇ πάλαι Ἀβάρῃ καλουμένῃ—(And he sojourns in Ramses, which was formerly called Abare). Many scholars are of the same opinion[226]; Rozière[227] also, the great traveller, but who seldom hits on the right point, places Abaris in the spot where we at least believe we ought to place Ramses; and the same opinion, although given with hesitation, is found even in the masterly researches of D’Anville[228]. It is still more extraordinary that Ewald[229] holds Abaris to be Baal Zephon, and therefore seeks it in the immediate neighbourhood of the Red Sea.

The situation of the town of Abaris can only be decided by the accounts of Manetho; for all other authors, who mention this town, refer to the same passages in the work of Manetho, which we find most fully communicated by Josephus[230]. The first mention of the town occurred in the account of the invasion of the Hyksos, who entered the country from Syria about 2100 years before Christ, and governed it for many centuries. The easy success of this invasion, owing to the hitherto unfortified state of the eastern boundary, immediately directed the attention of Salatis, the first king of the Hyksos, to the necessity of closing the gate, which had stood open to them, against every future invader. He therefore did not delay, as Manetho relates[231], to make use of his experience: “He resided in Memphis, collected tribute from the Upper and Lower country, and left garrisons in the most suitable places. But he fortified the eastern boundaries, especially, as a precaution against the Assyrians, who were at that time very powerful, and who might afterwards be desirous like them to invade the same kingdom. Now he found a town particularly suitable for his purpose, situated to the east of the Bubastic arm in the Sethroitic Nome; and, according to the old tradition of the gods, it was named Abaris. This he built up and fortified with strong walls, and placed as a guard within a garrison of 240,000 armed men. Thither he came, in the summer season, partly on account of the harvest and to issue the pay, partly in order to practise the garrison diligently in arms to the terror of the foreigners.” But when at the termination of the rule of the Hyksos, in the reign of Misphragmuthosis, these hereditary enemies were driven back out of the whole country, “the king finally enclosed them in that place called Abaris. It was 10,000 arura in extent, and (according to Manetho) the Hyksos surrounded it with a great and strong wall.” Since he could not capture them by a siege, he came to an agreement with them, and permitted them to depart with all their property to Syria.

Abaris is mentioned for the last time at the Exodus of the lepers, as we have seen above. It is here called an old Typhonic town, which had been uninhabited since the departure of the Hyksos, and was given up to the unclean after they were delivered from their oppression. But they fortify it again, call the Hyksos from Jerusalem to their assistance, and from this firm point for many years maintain the upper hand over the feeble king, until he, with the aid of an Ethiopian army, drove them back to the borders of Syria.

In these accounts there is an explicit statement about the geographical situation of Abaris, which determines it to have been placed in the Sethroitic Nome. For it has been long acknowledged that we should read it so, instead of the Saitic Nome, as it is in our present text. This is also shown by the reading of Eusebius, which, indeed, is still incorrectly written in the Armenian translation[232], but evidently purports to say, in nomo Methraite in place of Sethraite, and by many other passages in which this town, though without a name, is mentioned by Manetho, and is placed in the Sethroitic Nome[233]. But even if this correct reading had not been preserved to us by others, we must still have rejected the Saitic Nome, because this is situated in the western part of the Delta, while Abaris ought to be placed to the east of the Bubastic arm of the Nile.

There can be no doubt about the general situation of the Sethroitic Nome, from the statements of Strabo[234], and of Ptolemy[235], who was born in Egypt. It lay eastward along the northern part of the Bubastic, or Pelusaic arm of the Nile. Its capital was Heracleopolis Parva, and Pelusium, from its position, must also have belonged to this Nome, although this is never expressly said. Abaris must accordingly be situated there.

The object also which was to have been gained, by the original founding of Abaris, directs us to this province, and to its most north-eastern portion in the neighbourhood of Pelusium. It was to serve as a boundary fortification against Syria. In all times, ancient as well as modern, there was only one military entrance from that country. The road led from Gaza, along the sea-coast by Raphia (Refah), Rhinokolura (El Arisch), Mons Casius, along the Lake of Serbon, to Pelusium, which is situated at the mouth of the eastern arm of the Nile. This part of the Nile, which extended far out towards the east, was the first within reach; therefore, although the destination of most travellers lay considerably to the south, the northern circuitous route by this road was rendered necessary, and for the march of armies indeed it was quite unavoidable. When Sesostris led home his conquering army from Asia, he returned by this road. According to Herodotus[236], Δάφναι αἱ Πηλούσιαι (Daphni of Pelusium) was the place where his treacherous brother met him; according to Manetho[237] and Diodorus[238], it was Pelusium itself. It is said that from this place the same Sesostris fortified the eastern frontiers as far as Heliopolis[239]. Hither Sethôs, the priest of Ptha, came to meet Sanherib, because, as Herodotus[240] adds, “here was the entrance into Egypt.” In this neighbourhood, at the Pelusaic mouth, below Bubastis, the Ionians and Carians brought hither by Psammeticus were stationed undoubtedly as frontier guards, at a place which afterwards bore the name of Στρατόπεδα[241]. In the strong town of Pelusium, Psammenitus waited for Cambyses, and by losing this position, lost besides all Egypt to the Persian conqueror[242]. In later times, the great Macedonian entered by Pelusium[243]. In Strabo’s time, also, Pelusium, to which point according to him Phenicia extended[244], was the frontier post in the direction of Syria and Arabia, and the road to Egypt led through this “inaccessible” country, not only from Phenicia, but also from the Nabatain Arabia[245]. Amru (Amr ebn el As) also took the same road with his 4000 Arabs, when he conquered Egypt from the side of Syria, A.D. 639, having first taken the strong town of Pelusium by a thirty days’ siege; even down to the latest times, we see the Egyptian armies marching to and from Syria by this road.

It appears accordingly undoubted that Abaris, which during the time of the Hyksos, and in the reign of Menephthes, was destined for the same purpose as Pelusium at a later period, could not have been far removed from it also in point of situation. To me, indeed, it seems very probable that it was the ancient name of Pelusium. According to the accounts we receive, both towns were of considerable extent, and it cannot be supposed that there were several of such a description in that neighbourhood. No proof is required to show that Πηλούσιον was not, as the Greeks imagined, formed from πηλός, although the Arabs in their translation of Tineh—i. e. Lutetia—accepted the quibble. It is much more probably referred to the Philistine name Pelistim, which is already proved in the above-mentioned tradition of its heros eponymos Παλαιστινός, or Πηλούσιος. We must, therefore, explain Pelusium by “Philistine” or “Palestine-town.” It appears to me that Ewald[246] has successfully attributed a similar origin to the name of the town Ἄβαρις[247], as the “town of the Hebrews,” of the Abarim. A peculiar historical epoch may, perhaps, be indicated in this change in the name. Ewald’s searching investigations concerning the history of the Israelites, have demonstrated that the term Hebrew nation had originally a far more comprehensive signification than has been hitherto commonly accepted. It comprised the most south-westerly Semitic tribes[248], and extended to the gates of Egypt, therefore as far as our frontier town. But we afterwards find in these very same countries the immigrated race of the Philistines, who had driven back the Hebrews from that spot. Ewald[249] does not place this change before the time of the Judges. Therefore, if our town had formerly been an advanced frontier-post in the land of the Hebrews, and afterwards in the land of the Philistines, and was undoubtedly each time filled with a large Semitic population, it may have exchanged its earlier name Ἄβαρις, Hebrew town, for the later Πηλούσιον, Philistine-town.

Abaris has frequently been identified with Heroonpolis, by D’Anville[250], Larcher[251], Champollion[252], Gesenius[253], Jomard[254], and others. The only apparent reason which is cited for this opinion is that Stephanus, of Byzantium, quotes the otherwise unauthenticated tradition, that Typhon was struck with lightning at Heroonpolis; and that Manetho called Abaris, according to an old tradition, a Typhonic town[255]. This comparison does not at all overbalance the distinct geographical statement of Manetho, that Abaris was situated in the Sethroitic Nome, to which Heroonpolis, as we shall see, could not belong. That tradition, indeed, seems only to be founded upon a misunderstanding of Stephanus; namely, upon the unauthentic information that Ἡρώ was also called Αἷμος. Greek tradition[256], namely, connected Αἷμος (not a town, however, but the Thracian mountains), as it did other mountains, with Typhon, and probably, only on account of its name, imagined that it was here he was killed, and shed his blood.

On the other hand, this tradition about Typhon refers us again to the idea that Abaris was the most ancient name of Pelusium. Typhon was always considered as the particular god of the hereditary enemy of the Asiatic Hyksos. The mythological evidence of this assertion, which is far from new, does not belong here. But this was, perhaps, the reason why this god, according to tradition, was also brought into local connection with that important point on the frontier, the only entrance into the kingdom of Osiris from the land of Typhon. Herodotus related[257], probably, therefore, from a native Egyptian tradition, that it was there—namely, in the Lake of Serbonis, so dangerous to all travellers, which stretched out directly from Pelusium eastwards, that Typhon, who was struck by lightning, lay chained; and others, also, make him fly away from Jupiter out of Syria, as far as Pelusium[258].

But, perhaps, another Typhonic trace may still be referred to Pelusium. It might have been expected, namely, that the town of Abaris, or Pelusium, had, besides these signs which were deduced from its origin or from its population, a real Egyptian name; still more, because we find that most Egyptian towns had a double name—the popular name which usually appears in the Coptic and Arabic writings, and the sacred name derived from the local gods, which the Greeks generally, though not always, retained in their translations. Πηλούσιον undoubtedly answered to the popular name of the town. The sacred name, according to report, could only be derived from Typhon. Now we find the Nome to which Pelusium belonged always called Σεθρωΐτης, or Σεθραΐτης, not Ἡρακλεοπολίτης, as we should have expected, since Ἡρακλέους πόλις is cited as its capital. This denomination necessarily presupposes a town, which in Greek would have been Σεθρώη, Σεθρώ, Σεθραΐς. Stephanus, of Byzantium, also mentions such a town, and calls it Σέθρον. Perhaps, instead of reading ⲥⲉⲑⲣⲟⲛ, we should read, with Salmasius, ⲥⲉⲑⲣⲟⲏ[259].

It is, however, extraordinary, that we should find the town which gave its name to a Nome, only once mentioned. But this is explained, if we admit that the denomination of the Nome was taken from the sacred name of a town, which was unfamiliar to the Greeks, as in Διὸς πόλις, Ἡλίου πόλις, Πανὸς πόλις. If we may now venture to admit, that the beginning of the name Σεθρώ, signified the god Seth, or Set, i. e. Typhon[260], it is not improbable that this was the sacred name of the Typhonic town Pelusium, which had once been of greater importance, and had given the name Σεθρωΐτης to the Nome.

The only reason which could be employed against Abaris and Pelusium being identical places, and which is really given by D’Anville is, that it would have been mentioned by Manetho. But this reason may be used against every other town, and in that case we must suppose that the enormous town had afterwards been entirely deserted, and that no traces of its ruins remained, which is more than improbable. It is more likely that either Manetho did not know himself to what modern town the ancient name ought to be applied, which he only met with in old writings, or that he mentioned it in a passage which Josephus has not preserved. For Josephus himself at least supposed, that by Abaris, Pelusium was meant, as his words show in the 29th chapter, where he even puts the last name in the mouth of Manetho: τοὐναντίον γὰρ αὐτὸς εἴρηκεν ὡς ὁ παῖς τοῦ Ἀμενώφιος τριάκοντα μυριάδας ἔχων εἰς Πηλούσιον ὑπηντίαζεν—(For, on the contrary, he said that the son of Amenophis, having thirty myriads, advanced to Pelusium)—and Chairemon[261] had no doubt about it, since he does not name Abaris, but makes the lepers march to Pelusium.

Now, if it is certain that Abaris was the ancient name for Pelusium, or at any rate was situated in the neighbourhood of this town, it is impossible at the same time to consider it to be Heroonpolis; but neither could it be Ramses. On the contrary, both these latter towns are brought into close connection with each other, even by the Seventy, since they placed the town of Heroonpolis in the district of Ramses, in which undoubtedly the town of Ramses must have been situated[262].

Scholars also hold the most different opinions about the situation of Heroonpolis, it will therefore be necessary to examine this question next.

Strabo[263] says that the town was situated “in the angle of the Arabian Gulf,” and thence people concluded that it must have been situated in the neighbourhood of the present Suez[264], and on that account assert that the gulf itself was called after it κόλπος Ἡρωοπολίτης[265], and cites the statement of Ptolemy[266], according to which Heroonpolis is placed at 30° north latitude, which corresponds nearly with the present Suez. These reasons appear to be of great importance. Nevertheless we cling, without hesitation, to the opinion of those scholars who place Heroonpolis far more north, namely, on the ancient Nile canal, west from Birket e’ temsah, in the neighbourhood of the valley Seba-Biar. D’Anville was also of this opinion, though he was not then aware of the ruins of ancient towns which are found there. The French expedition pointed out two of them. Adjoining Seba-Biar, at the west end of this low district, lie the ruins which are now called Mukfâr, and farther west those of Abu-Keshêb[267]. The latter are considered by Et. Quatremère[268], Champollion[269], Du Bois Aymé[270], and others, as the remains of Heroonpolis. I am more in favour of those at Mukfâr.

With regard to the general situation of Heroonpolis in this country, we must next remark, that it would be singular if three towns, Arsinoë, Klysma, and Heroonpolis, had been crowded together at the head of the gulf, while the ruins of two only are to be seen. But it is a still more important consideration, that we find the meeting between Joseph and Jacob placed at Heroonpolis not only by Josephus[271], but also by the Seventy, who must undoubtedly have known the situation. Heroonpolis existed in their time, indeed it appears to have been first mentioned by them. But it was impossible that they could have made Joseph go to Suez, if he wished to meet his father, who came out of Syria. It must have been situated on the road from Syria, and they undoubtedly mentioned it, because in their time it was the capital of that province, which they considered to be the district of Goshen and Ramses. But the situation which the Itinerarium Antonini[272] gives to the town Hero, which is Heroonpolis, is decisive, since it places it XXIV. mille passus from Thoum, XVIII. from Serapiu, and the latter L. from Klysma. But Et. Quatremère[273] has most completely pointed out that Klysma was situated at the head of the gulf opposite Arsinoë, as it is marked in the tablet of Peutinger. But Thoum, i. e. Pithom, was situated on the Nile, in the neighbourhood of Bubastis[274]. Thereby the situation of Heroonpolis is placed somewhere near the above-mentioned ruins.

This was a convenient situation for the capital of that part of the country to which it gave its name[275]. But the province, which extended as far as the gulf, might have been suitably named after it. The account given by the Seventy also agrees very well with this, since the road from the north to Cairo still passes in this neighbourhood[276]. But the question is, how can Strabo, who places Heroonpolis in the angle of the gulf, be made to accord with this? In consequence of these different statements, Du Bois Aymé believed he was justified in the supposition[277], which he has fully stated, that in earlier times the gulf extended much farther north, and filled up all the low districts of the now dry so-called Bitter lakes, but afterwards being covered by sand, withdrew itself within its present shore. I do not think that it is necessary to believe in such a physical change; and the idea of it seems to me most completely set aside by the remains of an artificial canal, more than four leagues in length, which runs from Suez towards the north, and which was pointed out by the French expedition, for no canal could be cut where there was sea; the utmost that was necessary was to render the passage navigable when it was filled up with sand. But the opening of this canal must have had nearly the same results as those which may be derived from the belief in the extended sea. The wide basins of the Bitter lakes were filled by the canal, as well as the adjoining lakes to the north, and the low district of Seba-Biar, which extends even to the ruins of Mukfâr. Here first commenced the real Nile canal, which received its water from the west. Here was the harbour, as Strabo expressly says[278], in which they embarked for a voyage on the Red Sea. On account of the natural and extensive shore of the lake, the notion of a sea voyage was here imparted to the traveller; and, therefore, this part artificially drawn into the gulf might naturally be called the μυχὸς τοῦ κόλπου, the innermost angle of the gulf. Strabo, or Eratosthenes, whom he cites, even says expressly in one place, that Heroonpolis was situated on the Nile, that is to say, on a canal of the Nile, and yet calls the town itself at the same time the μυχὸς τοῦ Αραβίου κόλπου (The innermost part of the Arabian Gulf)[279].

Ptolemy also says, that the Trajanic river (as the canal was called, which was afterwards cut from Babylon) flowed through Heroonpolis. On account of the sharp angle so far removed to the east, which is formed here by the Nile canal and the extended gulf, this provincial capital was particularly adapted for the more general geographical determinations of those countries, for which purpose it had been especially used by Strabo, and earlier, also, by Eratosthenes[280].

With regard to the statement of numbers given by Ptolemy, the longitude agrees very well with our acceptation, and also prevents us placing the town still farther west. But the latitudes, according to which Ἡρώων πόλις would fall under 30° (others give 29° 50′), the μυχὸς τοῦ κόλπου (innermost part of the gulf) under 29° 50′, and Ἀρσινόη under 29° 30′ (or 29° 10′, also 29° 20′), certainly contain an error, wheresoever we place the μυχός, because Arsinoë, which was undoubtedly situated in the neighbourhood of Suez, is placed 30′, or even 50′, too far south. It is, therefore, more probable, that we ought only to consider the distances of the three places from one another as correctly fixed, somewhat in the order, 29° 50′, 29° 50′, 29° 10′, exactly as they are given in the codex Mediceus, but that there is an error easy of explanation throughout the numbers, by which they have all been placed 50′ too far south. For the true position, according to other proofs, demanded for Heroonpolis (Mukfâr), and for the μυχός (Seba-Biar), bordering on it, 30° 40′, for Arsinoë (not far north of Suez), 30°.

Thus the statements of Ptolemy also appear to me to be no longer opposed to our acceptation. We decide, therefore, for Mukfâr, rather than for Abu-Keshêb, because the first was in reality situated close to the μυχός of Seba-Biar, while Abu-Keshêb lay about an hour and a half farther west on the canal, and not on the lake.

There is, besides, the additional reason, that we believe we have found in the ruins of Abu-Keshêb the still more ancient town of Ramses, which must have been situated in this neighbourhood, and yet can hardly be the same as Heroonpolis. The Seventy say that Heroonpolis was situated in the province of Ramses. Thence follows that in their time at least the town no longer bore the name of Ramses. This last name, moreover, is nowhere found except in the Old Testament. The town had therefore undoubtedly been already forsaken and forgotten, and appears to have been exactly supplanted and replaced by Heroonpolis, which was afterwards built in its neighbourhood; whilst no reason could be discovered wherefore the old Egyptian name of Ramses should have been changed into the later Egyptian name of Heroonpolis.

But that we may really seek for Ramses in the ruins of Abu-Keshêb is most decidedly confirmed by a monument which was found upon those very ruins as early as the time of the French expedition. It is a group of three figures cut out of a block of granite, which represents the gods Ra and Tum, and between them the King Ramses II. The shields of this the greatest of the Pharaohs are repeated six times in the inscriptions on the back[281].

It was therefore King Ramses-Miamun who built this town, and was worshipped there, as is shown by this monument, and he it was who gave his name to the town[282]; for it is not easy to believe that it was founded by his grandfather, Ramses I., who only reigned about one year.

This leads us to the history of the remarkable canal on which the town was built. It is known that this canal afterwards served to connect the Nile and the Red Sea. Concerning this connection, we read in Herodotus[283] that it was first undertaken by Nekôs, who also caused Africa to be circumnavigated, but that it was interrupted before its completion. Darius then took up the work. The connection actually existed in the time of Herodotus, as we learn from his words. The assertions of Aristotle, Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny appear to contradict this, who some of them fix the period of the first plan of the connection much earlier than Herodotus, since they ascribe it to Sesostris, and some make the completion of the work later than him, namely, that it was only finished in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus.

Aristotle[284] says that both Sesostris and afterwards Darius commenced the work, but gave it up because the sea was discovered to be higher than the land, and it was therefore feared that the Nile water might be spoilt by the rushing in of the sea. Aristotle does not mention Nekôs; it therefore appears that in his day the connection which existed in the time of Herodotus had again ceased.

We can thus understand why Diodorus[285] ascribes the final completion of the canal to Ptolemy Philadelphus. He makes no more mention of Sesostris, than Herodotus did. But according to him, Nekôs as well as Darius are prevented from completing it, lest by that means they should overflow the country. This does not weaken the testimony of Herodotus concerning the existing connection. Ptolemy Philadelphus did not only re-open the connections, but he built an artificial sluice at its extreme point, at Arsinoë, from which this canal received the name of the Ptolemaic.

Strabo[286] says, that Sesostris began it, but desisted, being afraid of the higher level of the Red Sea. It was not finished by the son of Psammeticus (Nekôs), on account of his premature death. Darius also discontinued the almost completed work, because he feared that he should overflow Egypt; the Ptolemies at length finished the opening, and made a sluice at Arsinoë. By that means, the salt-water of the Bitter lakes became sweet, and abounded with fish.

Of the more ancient kings, Pliny[287] only mentions Sesostris and Darius, but he says of Ptolemy Philadelphus, that he cut a canal 100 feet wide and 40 feet deep, as far as the Bitter lakes, called it amnis Ptolemæus, and built Arsinoë upon it. He discontinued cutting the canal, being afraid of an inundation.

Lastly, we must again cite here what has been already casually mentioned in a former place, that a Τραϊανὸς ποταμὸς is named by Ptolemy[288], which ran through Babylon and Heroonpolis.

The contradictions which these different statements of the ancient authors appear to contain, have been frequently brought forward, but even the full deliberation which Letronne has bestowed on this interesting subject[289], does not appear to me to have given a perfectly true picture of the history of this connecting canal. It has everywhere been forgotten, that the question is not about one, but two canals.

The first and the oldest canal was only conducted from the Nile to Seba-Biar, in an exact easterly direction. This canal was undoubtedly cut by Ramses (Sesostris), because, as has been remarked, in the neighbouring ruins of Abu-Keshêb, a granite group has been found, which represents this king, and which must have stood in the temple of the place. Letronne, who appears to have been unaware of this circumstance, is therefore wrong, when (p. 7) he considers the information given by Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, that Sesostris commenced the connection, but did not restore it, as a later tradition, only arisen since the time of Herodotus, in order to enhance still more the name of Sesostris. This canal, like many others cut by this king, had its own particular purpose; he acquired thereby a considerable portion of the desert. But if we consider the especial attention which Sesostris also paid to ship-building, since he first navigated the Arabian Gulf with war ships[290], it could not have appeared to him a very strange idea to cut through the narrow isthmus between the Arabian Gulf and the Bitter lakes. The Egyptians had for ages possessed the art of levelling in the greatest perfection, and practised it more than ever in the time of Sesostris, therefore there was nothing extraordinary at that time in the reasons given by Aristotle and Strabo why the opening was not ventured upon, because it was discovered that the Red Sea was too high[291].

Nekôs, however, undertakes it, but leaves it off again, according to Herodotus, influenced by an oracle, who told him he worked for the barbarians (a danger which likewise has always made the calculating Mehemet Ali disinclined to the undertaking), and according to Strabo, because he died. Diodorus attributes this scruple to him in place of to Sesostris, but incorrectly, because the levelling must have been made before the section could have been commenced. It was necessary, however, to dig through a double elevation of the ground, and distinct traces of both these connecting trenches may still be found upon the careful map of the French engineer, who took the level of this part of the country[292]. The first cutting which restored the connection between Seba-Biar and the Bitter lakes, was insignificant, and only consisted of about 7000 metres; the second, between the Bitter lakes and the sea, was the most important, and almost four times as long as the former. Now, it is possible that Nekôs undertook the first cutting either with the intention of fertilising the extensive land round the Bitter lakes by the pouring in of the Nile water, or thus to prepare for the second more difficult cutting. We can easily imagine that the idea of connecting the two seas must have been a very natural one to that same Nekôs, who, according to Herodotus[293], caused Africa to be circumnavigated, and triremes to be constructed for various enterprises, both on the Mediterranean Sea, as well as on the Arabian Gulf[294]. The opinion of Letronne seems to me, therefore, of little value, who imagined that he first borrowed the idea from the plan of his cotemporary, Periander, for cutting through the Isthmus of Corinth. The reverse is evidently a much more probable supposition, since the Greek plan was much more difficult to accomplish, was less called for by necessity, and was conceived at a time in which, probably, Egyptian hydraulic architects would have been employed, since this profession had flourished for ages in Egypt, but nothing similar to it had been accomplished in Greece.

Darius must have certainly cut through the district between the sea and the Bitter lakes, and thus have restored the first real connection by water, between the sea and the Nile, for it existed in the time of Herodotus, whatever Aristotle, Diodorus, and Strabo may say to the contrary, who again transfer the old tradition about the fear of an inundation from Sesostris to Darius. It was never possible, indeed, to make a perfectly free connection, on account of the different height of the water, and the ebb and flow of the Red Sea. I conjecture, therefore, that Darius constructed a sluice at the inner extremity of the new canal, where it discharges itself into the Bitter lakes, in order to protect the inner waters and the adjacent fertile lands from the overflowing sea. This was undoubtedly the most suitable point for such a work, since it would not be so difficult as immediately on the sea. The passage through, would be regulated by the level of the sea, which changes with the ebb and flow of the tide, as must be the case with a simple sluice.

But it is in the monuments that we again find the opinion most certainly confirmed, that a passage existed here as early as the times of the Persians. During the French expedition, the chief engineer, De Rozière, discovered, on a military excursion from Suez, a heap of ruins in a district which is not accurately defined, but which cannot have been far from the southern extremity of the Bitter lakes, upon which were scattered the remains of the statue of a Persian king, and several fragments of cuneiform inscriptions, all in red granite[295]. It appears that no traveller has since visited this spot[296]. But how can the existence of Persian ruins in this part of the isthmus be explained, if they were not connected with the opening of the canal, situated there? Besides this, the largest portion of the cuneiform writings mentioned above contains precisely the name of King Darius, followed by the addition narpa vas-(arqa), princeps magnus, which is also found in other inscriptions, from which we may deduce with certainty that this king, whom the image also undoubtedly represented, took an active part here. At all events it was only a narrow canal, and not constructed for large ships. Therefore it might afterwards be again filled up with sand, and fall into disuse, and, indeed, be so far forgotten that Aristotle might imagine it had never been completed.

Ptolemy Philadelphus undertook its restoration. He appears to have had the magnificent intention of restoring a connection by water between the two seas for ships of war also. This alone explains the grand idea of constructing a canal to the Bitter lakes, 100 feet wide, and 40 feet deep, which would have been quite unnecessary for common ships of burden. At the same time he constructed an artificial sluice, probably at the point where the sea entered, where he also built the town Arsinoë. But as Pliny expressly says, he only carried this work from the sea to the Bitter lakes. It is only this canal that we must undoubtedly understand by the ποταμὸς Πτολεμαῖος, amnis Ptolemæus, which, according to Diodorus and Pliny, received its name from the second Ptolemy. The immense difference between this canal and the two northern ones, is visible in the plan of the French engineer[297], therefore it does not even require the ingenious explanation of Letronne in order to understand that it was impossible for Cleopatra, after the battle of Actium, to cause ships of war to be brought from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, except by land.

With reference to this last work, Strabo mentions the Ptolemaic kings, this, connected with the fact that the town of Arsinoë, since the time of Strabo, is also mentioned under the name Κλεοπατρίς, leads to the supposition that one of the last Ptolemies, or Cleopatra herself, completed the workings on this canal, perhaps the sluices.

The name ποταμὸς Τραϊανός, by which Letronne also understands the whole connecting way as far as the sea[298], was undoubtedly as limited as the name ποταμὸς Πτολεμαῖος. Ptolemy designedly neither mentions Arsinoë or the sea; he says that Trajan’s canal flowed through Babylon and Heroonpolis. This, therefore, refers to the canal, of which traces are also still extant, which received its water much higher up than the ancient one of Sesostris, namely, at Babylon, and was afterwards conducted into it, and discharged itself with it into the basin of Seba-Biar at Heroonpolis[299].

This geographical digression, whose length may be excused owing to the peculiar interest of the subject, allows us now, as it seems to me, to judge confidently on two points, which are important in a critical examination of the Exodus of the Israelites. From the position of the two towns, Abaris and Ramses—the former situated on the Mediterranean Sea, near the mouth of the Pelusaic arm of the Nile, the latter half a degree more to the south, and almost as much more west—it follows that the Israelites, according to the Mosaic accounts, marched out of a different town, as well as in a different direction, from that taken by the unclean in the Manethonic narration.

On the other hand, we have found that the town of Ramses derived its name from the King Ramses-Miamun (Sesostris), by whom it was built, and that the ancient Nile canal, on which it was situated, was constructed, according to the Greek accounts, by Sesostris, i. e. Ramses-Miamun. It is evident that these two works, that of the canal and that of the town, are connected, and reciprocally corroborate each other. The new town was occasioned by the canal being cut. This connection will be still more apparent by two other facts.

In the western part of the Delta there is a village which to this day bears the same name as the town we are speaking of, namely, Ramses. This village also, and its name, are of ancient date, which is proved by the mound of ruins at that spot; and, what is still more important to us, it is situated, like the eastern Ramses, on the border of an ancient canal, which was conducted from the Canopic arm, and brought the water of the Nile to Hermopolis Parva (Damanhur)[300]. The existence of these ruins of Ramses appears to me alone to justify the very probable supposition that this great western canal was also cut by Ramses-Miamun, and that the royal constructor was worshipped as the eponymous divinity in the town which was there built. It is evident that the Israelites would not have been sent hither from Goshen in order to build this town[301].

Besides the eastern Ramses, the Israelites also built the town of Pithom. The situation of this town cannot easily be mistaken. It has been long recognised in the town of Πάτουμος, of which Herodotus speaks when he says that the eastern Nile canal, which was conducted a little above Bubastis, flowed past it[302], the Arabian town[303]. It was probably situated opposite Bubastis (Tel Basta), on the border of the desert, and at the entrance of the Wadi, through which the canal is led. The ancient ruins of a town are found there under the name of Tel el kebir, and the Itinerarium Antonini places the town of Thoum, which has certainly been properly recognised as the ancient town of Tum Πά-τουμος[304], exactly in that place, namely, upon the road from Heliopolis to Pelusium, on the edge of the desert between Vicus Judæorum (Tel Jehudeh) and Tacasartha (Salhîeh?). Now if the Coptic translation in the passage which is cited from Gen. xlvi. 28, writes ⲡⲓⲑⲟⲙ in place of Heroonpolis, as is translated by the Seventy, it does not mean that Pithom was believed to be discovered in Heroonpolis, but that it was thought better to fix the place at which Joseph went to meet Jacob at Pithom rather than at Heroonpolis.

Pithom, therefore, was situated at one end, and Ramses at the other, of the ancient Nile canal, which was constructed by the great Pharaoh, Ramses-Miamun, in the land of Goshen. Both were founded in consequence of the new canal, and their direct connection in the Mosaic narrative, as well as the statement that they were built by the Israelites, is most decidedly confirmed by the geographical circumstances which have been exhibited. Taking it in a general point of view, there can be no doubt that the Israelites were chiefly settled in that very country, namely, below Heliopolis, in the neighbourhood of Bubastis (Tel Basta) and of the modern Belbês, where ruins are still extant called Tel Jehudeh; and the Itinerarium Antonini cites a place called Vicus Judæorum, where, finally, the Jewish temple of Onias was built, probably at the Ὀνίου of Ptolemy[305].

The inference we have arrived at, that if the Israelites built these towns, they must have been still in Egypt in the reign of King Ramses, who founded them, and that they could not have departed several centuries previous, no longer rests upon the name of one single town, which might be explained by an accidental inexactitude of the writer, or by a confusion in dates[306], but upon the close connection of a series of facts, which reciprocally support and explain one another.

Hence the oppression took place more especially under Ramses, and the Exodus resulting from it under his son and successor Menephthes. According to the Mosaic narrative also, the Pharaoh by whom the towns were built was a different one from that of the Exodus[307]. Moses only returned from Midian upon hearing of the death of the first, and it seems that the event of the Exodus was directly connected with the change of government.

Another proof of the correctness of our opinion, that, according to the history of the Israelites, as recorded in the books of the Old Testament, the Exodus cannot be fixed before the reign of the second Ramses, is afforded by the accounts of the settlement of the Jews in Palestine. It is well known, and most thoroughly confirmed by the monuments, and the nearly contemporaneous Egyptian papyrus rolls, that Ramses-Miamun attacked and conquered a great part of Asia, and probably during his whole reign held under his dominion the adjoining lands, the peninsula of Petræa, and all Palestine. We also see his father, Sethôs I., represented upon the monuments in victorious warfare against the people of Syria, among whom the Canaanites are expressly named. These were the most glorious times in the whole Egyptian history. That they are nowhere mentioned in the books of Joshua and Judges, while the numerous far more transitory subjugations of the Israelites by the nations bordering upon them are so fully recorded, appears, in fact, to be a fresh proof that those warlike expeditions happened before the Exodus of the Israelites[308].

But it even appears as if the true epoch of Egyptian history in which the Exodus of the Israelites occurred, has been preserved in late Jewish traditions. I will at least bring forward one circumstance from Rabbinical chronology, which deserves, perhaps, to be followed up by those who are more familiar with this literature.

This Jewish chronology, namely, deviates in a most striking manner from every other, and as late as the times of the Persian kings it differs no less than about 160 years from the recognised numbers. The different authorities present few deviations among themselves. They reckon by the years of the world, a mode of reckoning which, as Ideler[309] also considers, most probably was first discovered, and gradually introduced, by the Rabbi Hillel Hanassi, in the year 344 after Christ, simultaneously with the whole of the present arrangement of the year among the Jews. They place the Creation 3761 years before Christ, and till the time of Joseph they agree perfectly with the customary mode of reckoning in the Hebrew text. They fix the Flood 1656 years after Adam; Abraham’s birth 1948; Isaac’s 2048; Jacob’s 2108; Joseph’s 2199; Jacob’s march to Egypt 2238; Joseph’s death 2309. It is only when they come to Moses that they immediately deviate about 210 years, because, following the precedent of Josephus and others, they reckon the 400 years of the sojourn in Egypt from the birth of Isaac, and not from the entrance of Jacob[310]. They fix the birth of Moses at 2368, and his Exodus at 2448 after the Creation.

But this year 2448 of their era corresponds with the year 1314 [-1313] B.C.[311], and therefore, according to the Manethonic chronology, occurs in the time of King Menephthes, who reigned nineteen years, therefore the same king whom the Egyptian annals called the King of the Exodus. Besides this, the latter tell us of a flight of thirteen years which the king made into Ethiopia. If this flight took place, as it probably did, in the first or second year after the change of government, he must have returned and driven away the lepers in the fourteenth or fifteenth year of his reign. But the year 1314 is exactly the fifteenth year of Menephthes, according to the Manethonic calculation.

This coincidence is certainly striking, but might possibly be only accidental, if other circumstances were not added to it. For instance, the same Jewish chronology places the building of the temple by Solomon, according to the 1 Kings vi. 1, about 480 years after the Exodus, therefore 2928 = 834 B.C., the march of Shishak against Rehoboam 2969 = 793, that of Zerah against Asa 2998 = 764, the banishment of Israel 3205 = 557, the destruction of the first Temple by Nebuchadnezzar 3338 = 424, Darius (Hystaspes) 3406 = 356, the building of the second Temple 3408 = 354. These, as well as the intervening numbers, which I omit here, are all of them about 165 years too late. But from this place the correct dates are suddenly restored; Alexander of Macedon is placed 3442 = 320, therefore only sixteen years too late; his government of the world, and a march which he is said to have made to Jerusalem, 3448 = 314; his death 3454 = 308, and so forth.

About this time, the Jews being subject to the Syrian government, adopted the Syrian Era of the Seleucidæ, which was called by them the “Era of the Greeks,” or, on account of its being used in civil affairs, “the Era of Contracts.” Its commencement happens, as is well known, in the year 312 before Christ, and we find it adopted in the Book of the Maccabees[312]. This era is also mentioned in the rabbinical chronology, and is quite correctly placed by the more ancient authorities in the year of the world 3450 = 312 B.C.[313] If Ganz[314], in place of this, gives the year 3448 = 314, it is evidently either an arbitrary change, or perhaps first devised by him for the sake of the exact period of a thousand years between the Exodus (2448) and the new era (3448). This connection that subsisted between the two numbers to form a monarchy of a thousand years’ duration, was not in fact very remote; we should only have expected that the number of the Exodus would rather have been advanced two years, in conformity with the fixed and universally introduced era of the Seleucidæ, and not, on the contrary, that the latter should be sent so far back. But the number 2448 was left standing, which still more indicates a determinate selection of this year, independent of a cyclical or arbitrary arrangement.

There is proof also that the Rabbis did not alter the commencement of the Seleucidic Era, in the circumstance, that it has retained its correct place in chronology, in spite of the universal displacement in the chain of events. According to that displacement, Alexander first began to reign 3442 = 320, and died in 3454 = 308. The beginning of the new era, therefore, according to this, happened in the reign of Alexander himself, who in reality had been dead twenty-one years at the time of the battle of Gaza, which occasioned the new era. In consequence of these contradictions the number was retained, and the event was changed to agree with it, since the introduction of the era of Seleucus was transferred to Alexander, and connected with an account of his presence in Jerusalem, which is otherwise only mentioned by Josephus[315], and the so-called Barbarus of Scaliger[316].

But the question is, how we can reconcile the remarkable displacement of events with the true numbers? Ideler has shown that we must refer the first establishment of the era of the world, and consequently the foundation of the whole chronological system that we are considering, to the author of the Moleds, or new moons, and particularly of the late Jewish calendars, therefore to the Rabbi Hillel, in the first half of the fourth century. In the time of Eusebius, and Theon of Alexandria, people could not possibly be so completely ignorant of the history of the last centuries before Christ, as the rabbinical chronology supposed. It was least to be believed of such a learned mathematician, astronomer, and chronologist, as we imagine the reformer of the Jewish calendar to have been, who founded it upon the nineteenth-yeared cycle of Meton and Calippus[317].

It appears to me, therefore, that the following acceptation is alone possible, which I would at least recommend to the closer examination of well-versed labourers in Jewish antiquities. The Talmud contains very few chronological dates, and nothing justifies us in the belief that the learned Hillel had already given a chronological view of the events, as we afterwards find them. But he must have necessarily had some resting points for his technical chronological works, if he desired to connect his present with the past, and even with the Creation. It could not have been difficult to find these resting points at that time, so soon after Africanus; the best authorities were still open to him. But the Exodus from Egypt must have been his most important point, for previous to that event the numbers in the Pentateuch were clear, and without mistakes. It was only necessary for him to decide between the two different views concerning the period between Jacob and Moses. The numbers after the Exodus were much more uncertain, as the calculations of Josephus have already proved. On the other hand, the well-known era of the Seleucidæ, which was at that time still in use, naturally formed another fixed point which he could not avoid. Under these circumstances, every clever and mathematically educated chronologist, would be compelled to connect the date of the Exodus with the only certain and astronomically verified Egyptian chronology. If the era of King Menephthes, and the exact year of its commencement was familiar to the mathematician, Theon of Alexandria, who lived at a later period, must it not have been equally well known to the astronomer Hillel? But nothing more was necessary to determine the date of the Exodus, which took place under the same King Menephthes[318].

We should not therefore be surprised to see, even at that time, the perfectly correct acceptation of the year 2448 for the Exodus. It was, at all events, impossible to determine the year of the Creation without having obtained the two periods of the Seleucidic Era, and of the Exodus.

On the other hand, it is very improbable that Hillel set to work as Ideler[319] imagines he did. He says “that Hillel evidently started from the beginning of the Seleucidic Era, which was at that time still universally employed by the Jews, the autumn of the year B.C. 312. Reckoning from this point backwards, he made the next epoch the destruction of the first Temple, and placed it only 112 years earlier than the Seleucidic Era, counting about 150 years too little, so that he advanced Nebuchadnezzar to the times of Artaxerxes I. Whilst he thus went back still farther to the building of the first Temple, to the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt, to the Flood, and to the Creation, following partly the express statements of time in the Bible, partly his own explanation of it, he found the beginning of the year, 3450 of the world, to be the epoch of the Minjan schtaroth.” As we said before, it was perfectly impossible for a scholar of the fourth century to make such a gross mistake of nearly 160 years at that late period. But it is easily explained, if we believe that after the great gap in Jewish literature, which commenced at the conclusion of the Talmud, about the year 500, and which lasted to the eighth century, the Rabbis had adopted those few correct chronological periods fixed by Hillel, and now first undertook to fill up their history of the world, which comprised 5000 years, according to the statements of the Old Testament. In fact, we find neither in the Talmud, nor even in the first writings of the rabbis, which succeed the Talmud, e. g. in the Seder Olam Rabah, one of the oldest of those writings, the full chronological details, some extracts of which we have seen above. It appears to have been first completed in the twelfth century, therefore in the period of a scientific barbarism, which had been long introduced. It was only necessary to follow the numbers of the Pentateuch from the Creation to the Flood, and to the Exodus, in order to obtain the given year 2448 = 1314. The convenient number 480 years, down to the building of the Temple, in the first Book of Kings, was afterwards immediately adopted, and the chronology of the times of the Judges adapted to it. But hereby the historical event next following was at the same time displaced to about the 160-170 years we have mentioned, and drew with it the displacement of all the succeeding events. It first became apparent at the next fixed point, about the year 3450 = 312, that the chain of events was far too long for the stated interval, from the building of the first to the second Temple. Therefore, the period from the erection of the second Temple, built under Darius Hystaspes, to the time of Alexander, to which was given the name of the Grecian Era[320], was cut down without ceremony from 184 years into 34 years. This raised no obstacle at first, but afterwards occasioned many difficulties, until these also were got rid of by the simple expedient of taking Darius II. and III for one and the same person. Only thus can we explain the peculiar phenomena of an entirely displaced and afterwards mutilated chronology, in which, however, there appears two fixed points alone correct, and which afford us at the same time the important, and probably the most exact, determination of the Exodus by a truly learned chronologist of the fourth century[321].

Viewing it, therefore, from this side, we return to the opinion, that the great stumbling-block to the whole of the chronology hitherto adopted for the Old Testament was the number 480 years, which was calculated as the period between the Exodus and the building of the Temple mentioned in the first Book of Kings[322]. As soon as we set this aside, regarding it only as a supplementary multiple of twelve generations, or segments of 40 years each, the Hebrew and Egyptian chronologies are no longer opposed to each other with reference to the time of the Exodus. All the other intimations we meet with in the Hebrew accounts, and their whole connection, demand, on the contrary, precisely the same time, which we find unequivocally stated in the Egyptian annals of Manetho.

The question now is, whether along with this number 480, to which we can attribute no greater importance than to the simple number forty, so often repeated in the history of Israel at that period, we must also give up as valueless every other chronological measure of the events immediately succeeding the Exodus. But this is so little the case, that, on the contrary, in the true chronological scale which the Mosaic writings furnish, we find a fresh refutation of the opinions hitherto adopted, and a confirmation of the Egyptian statements. We look upon the Register of Generations as this scale.

I am not aware whether these numerous family records have ever been fully placed under one point of view, and estimated as a whole in their great chronological significance, in the same way as they have certainly frequently been used for separate purposes and divisions of time. Such a survey would very much increase the importance of the separate lists, and facilitate their application to chronological determinations.

It is well known how in the East at all times, and even to this day, the register of generations and genealogies is orally transmitted, with a wonderful fidelity and completeness, through the memories of perfectly illiterate and frequently even now nomadic races. The Arabian races are especially noted for this, and their historical recollections are often almost entirely limited to this dry register. I have met with many such pedigrees in the upper districts of the Nile, south of the province of Dongola, among the Arabs who immigrated there from the west, these being the only written remains of their past, which inform us of their immigration and distribution in those districts. But these lists of names are still more to be depended upon among those nations of antiquity, who, like the Egyptians and the Hebrews, were a literary people, and were accustomed to preserve in writing these sacred bequests of individual families. On the rock of the Kosser-road, in the eastern desert of Egypt, I found a hieroglyphical inscription belonging to the time shortly before the first Persian dominion, in which a chief architect of the country, named Ranumhet, carries back his direct ancestors as far as the twenty-fourth generation, to an ancestral mother Nofratmu, who, according to a rough calculation, must have lived about the end of the 19th Dynasty, therefore about the time of Moses.

But the Israelites particularly, above all the nations of antiquity, appear to have laid the greatest stress upon the register of generations, lists of names, and general enumerations of tribes and generations. The writings of the Old Testament are full of them, especially all the historical books; and the care and exactitude which was expended upon the general preparation of these lists, is evident to the reader. The peculiar destiny of the Israelitish people, firmly bound together, always separating themselves most rigorously from strangers, yet frequently transplanted in masses from one country to another, and settled amidst other nations, enables us perfectly to comprehend this universal attention to an authentic register of generations. We find it stated that they were already twice numbered[323] in the desert; for which purpose the whole people were collected together, and were entered in the registers of the births “by their generations, after their families, according to the number of the names, from twenty years and upwards, and by their polls.” On their return from exile it is particularly observed that some of the wanderers could not trace their genealogy[324]. Among these were several priests’ families, of whom it is said, “These sought the register of their generations, but it was not found, and, therefore, they were rejected from the priesthood[325].” It follows from this that the priests of the tribe of Levi were obliged by law to preserve and continue the register of their generations. This law must naturally only have existed since the Exodus, and, therefore, when Josephus[326] asserts that the High priests possessed written registers of their generations, as far back as 2000 years, this is, indeed, connected with his opinion about the early epoch of the Exodus; it shows, however, that they were brought down to his time, which is, indeed, also confirmed by the register of the generations of Jesus Christ[327].

We need no further justification, therefore, for placing great value upon the successive generations, and for discovering in them the true chronological thread for those times during which more exact reliable statements are wanting. We fortunately possess a whole array of genealogies for the period between the Exodus and the building of the Temple; and, indeed, principally generations of priests, which go back as far as Levi, and are, therefore, from the reasons we have stated above, the most to be depended upon. Altogether, five different generations of the Levites may be distinguished; some obscurities have crept into our text, which probably happened at the time it assumed its present form, since they are found also in the Septuagint; it seems, however, that they may easily be removed[328].

The following is a survey of the principal genealogies, in which the Levitical generations preserve the order in which they are cited, 1 Chron. vii.[329] This is preceded by the genealogical succession, according to Josephus, from Levi to Zadok, and by his series of High priests from Aaron to Zadok. Lastly, there follows a table of the generations of Judah. On the other hand, we have excluded other genealogies; e. g. the three of Ephraim; Num. xxvi. 35; 1 Chron. vii. 20, 21, 24-27[330]; because they are evidently confused, and lead to no result[331].

THE GENERATIONS OF THE JEWS FROM ABRAHAM TO DAVID.

The Heads of the People from Abraham to David. | The Succession of the High Priests to Zadok, according to Josephus, A. J. 5, 11, 5. | The Ancestors of Zadok, according to Josephus, A. J. 8, 1, 3.
1. | Abraham | 100 | or | 30 | | | | | |
2. | Isaac | 100 | | 30 | | | | | |
| | 200 | | | | | | | |
3. | Jacob | 100 | | 30 | | | | | |
| | | | 90 | | | | | |
1. | Levi | 100 | | 30 | | | | 1. | Λευί. |
2. | Kohath | 100 | | 30 | | | | 2. | Κάαθος. |
3. | Amram | 100 | | 30 | | | | 3. | Ἀμαράμης. |
| | 400 | | 90 | | | | | |
1. | Moses | 40 | | | 1. | Ἀαρών | 30 | 1. | Ἀαρών | 30
2. | Joshua | 40 | | | 2. | Ἐλεαζάρης | 30 | 2. | Ἐλεαζάρης | 30
3. | Othniel | 40 | | | 3. | Φινεέσης | 30 | 3. | Φινεέσης | 30
4. | Ehud | 40 | | | 4. | Ἀβιεζέρης | 30 | 4. | Ἰώσηπος | 30
5. | Shamgar | 40 | | | 5. | Βουκί | 30 | 5. | Βοκκίας | 30
6. | Barak | 40 | | | 6. | Ὅζις | 30 | 6. | Ἰώθαμος | 30
7. | Gideon | 40 | | | 7. | Ἠλεί | 30 | 7. | Μαραίωθος | 30
8. | Jephthah | 40 | | | 8. | (Φινεέσης) | 30 | 8. | Ἀροφαῖος | 30
9. | Samson | 40 | | | 9. | Ἰοχάβης | 30 | 9. | Ἀχίτωβος | 30
10. | Eli | 40 | | | 10. | Ἀχιμέλεχος = Ἀχίας | 30 | 10. | Σάδωκος | 30
11. | Samuel Saul | 40 | | | 11. | Ἁβιάθαρος with Σάδωκος | 30 | | |
12. | David | 40 | | | | | | | |
| | 480 | | | | | 330 | | | 300

I. | II. | III. | IV. | V. | VI. | VII. | VIII. | IX. |
The Generation of Aaron. 1 Chron. vii. 1-9, 50-53. Ezra vii. 2-5. | The Generation of Gershom-Libni. 1 Chron. vii. 20, 21. ( = VIII.) | The Generation of Kohath-Amminadab. 1 Chron. vii. 22-24. ( = VI.) | The Generation of Elkanah-Amasai. 1 Chron. vii. 25-28.( = VII.) | The Generation of Merari-Mahli. 1 Chron. vii. 29-30. | The Ancestors of Heman | The Ancestors of Asaph from Jahath, 1 Chron. vii. 39-43. (= II.) | The Ancestors of Ethan from Mushi. 1 Chron. vii. 44-17. | The Ancestors of David from Judah. Ruth iv. 18. 1 Chron. ii. 4-13. Gos. Matth. i. 3-6. Luke iii. 32, 33.
from Izhar. 1 Chron. vii. 36-38. (= III.) | from Amasai. 1 Chron. vii. 33-36. (= IV.)
1. | Levi | | 1. | Levi | | 1. | [Levi] | | 1. | [Levi] | | 1. | Levi | | 1. | Levi | | 1. | [Levi] | | 1. | Levi | | 1. | Levi | | 1. | Judah |
2. | Kohath | | 2. | Gershom | | 2. | Kohath | | 2. | Elkanah | | 2. | Merari | | 2. | Kohath | | 2. | Elkanah | | 2. | Gershom | | 2. | Merari | | | |
3. | Amram | | 3. | Libni | | 3. | Amminadab | | 3. | Amasai (and) | | 3. | Mahli | | 3. | Izhar | | 3. | Amasai | | 3. | (Jahath) | | 3. | Mushi | | 2. | Pharez |
1. | Aaron | 30 | 1. | (Jahath) | | 1. | Korah | 30 | 1. | Ahimoth | 30 | 1. | Libni | | 1. | Korah | 30 | 1. | Mahath | 30 | 1. | Shimei | 30 | 1. | Mahli | 30 | 1. | Hezron | 30
2. | Eleazar | 30 | 2. | Zimmah | | 2. | Assir | 30 | 2. | Elkanah | 30 | 2. | Shimei | | 2. | [Assir] | 30 | 2. | Elkanah | 30 | 2. | Zimmah | 30 | 2. | Shamer | 30 | 2. | Ram | 30
3. | Phinehas | 30 | 3. | Joah | | 3. | Elkanah | 30 | 3. | Elkanah Zophai | 30 | 3. | Uzza | | 3. | [Elkanah] | 30 | 3. | Zuph | 30 | 3. | Ethan | 30 | 3. | Bani | 30 | 3. | Amminadab | 30
4. | Abishua | 30 | 4. | Iddo | | 4. | Ebiasaph | 30 | 4. | Nahath | 30 | 4. | Shimea | | 4. | Ebiasaph | 30 | 4. | Toah (Thohu) | 30 | 4. | Adaiah | 30 | 4. | Amzi | 30 | 4. | Nahshon | 30
5. | Bukki | 30 | 5. | Zerah | | 5. | Assir | 30 | 5. | Eliab | 30 | 5. | Haggiah | | 5. | Assir | 30 | 5. | Eliel (Elihu) | 30 | 5. | Zerah | 30 | 5. | Hilkiah | 30 | 5. | Salmon | 30
6. | Uzzi | 30 | 6. | Jeaterai | | 6. | Tahath | 30 | 6. | Jeroham | 30 | 6. | Asaiah | | 6. | Tahath | 30 | 6. | Jeroham | 30 | 6. | Ethni | 30 | 6. | Amaziah | 30 | 6. | Boaz | 30
7. | Zerahiah | 30 | | | | 7. | Uriel | 30 | 7. | Elkanah | 30 | | | | 7. | Zephaniah | 30 | 7. | Elkanah | 30 | 7. | Malchiah | 30 | 7. | Hashabiah | 30 | 7. | Obed | 30
8. | Meraioth | 30 | | | | 8. | Uzziah | 30 | 8. | Samuel | 30 | | | | 8. | Azariah | 30 | 8. | Shemuel | 30 | 8. | Baaseiah | 30 | 8. | Malluch | 30 | 8. | Jesse | 30
9. | Amariah | 30 | | | | 9. | Saul | 30 | 9. | Vashni | 30 | | | | 9. | Joel | 30 | 9. | Joel | 30 | 9. | Michael | 30 | 9. | Abdi | 30 | 9. | David | 30
10. | Ahitub | 30 | | | | 10. | (Jonathan) | 30 | 10. | | 30 | | | | 10. | [Heman] | 30 | 10. | Heman | 30 | 10. | Shimea | 30 | 10. | Kishi | 30 | | |
11. | Zadok | 30 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 11. | Berachiah | 30 | 11. | Ethan | 30 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 12. | Asaph | 30 | | | | | |
| | 330 | | | | | | 300 | | | 300 | | | | | | 300 | | | 300 | | | 360 | | | 330 | | | 270

The first column contains after the patriarchs from Abraham to Amram, the 12 heads of the people, commencing with Moses, who appear to have been regarded as the representations of 12 generations of 40 years each, and thence to have occasioned the calculation of 480 years. Ewald[332], as well as Bertheau[333], gives another list, because, on the whole, the subject admits of no exactitude; the common acknowledgment of the division of the period into twelve parts is alone of importance to us. But one (VIII.) of the genealogies we have quoted (1 Chron. vii. 39-43[334]) contains twelve generations of one and the same family[335]. It is possible, therefore, that this succession, rather than that uncertain division, gave occasion to the 480 years. It was, besides, distinguished from the others by being continued through Gershom, the First-born of Levi. But the principal lineage of the Levites was that of the high priests, who were descended from Aaron and Kohath (I.); this contains, as well as that of Mushi (IX.), only 11 generations. This might therefore be the reason why the Seventy only reckoned 440 years[336].

In the Chronicles the second succession of Levites is closely connected with the third[337]. But in the Hebrew as well as in the Greek text a distinct pause is made at verse 22, after Jeaterai. The author begins again: “The son of Kohath; Amminadab, his son; Korah, his son[338];” and so on. The Seventy even write the plural υἱοὶ Καάθ. A new succession therefore undoubtedly begins here, and we must consider the portion from Gershom to Jeaterai as an incomplete genealogy inserted here, which evidently runs parallel to the first part of our eighth Levitical series[339]. Kohath, who succeeds Jeaterai, was also a son of Levi, and the names which follow, clearly show that it ought to be the same series as our sixth. That the third and sixth series are really identical follows from the name of the grandson of Kohath being Korah, which recurs in both, and also from the three successive names, Ebiasaph, Assir, Tahath, also recurring. The eighth name, Uzziah, is also undoubtedly the same name as Azariah in the other text; for the very same change of both names is again found afterwards in the King of Judah, the son of Amaziah, who is called Azariah eight times in the same chapter (2 Kings xv.) and is afterwards three times called by his usual name, Uzziah[340]. I have not, therefore, hesitated to fill up the two names of Assir and Elkanah which were wanting after Korah[341] in the sixth series, as the third series is, on the whole, most to be depended on. It has undoubtedly been retained on account of the last name of Saul, whom we must consider to be no other than King Saul, whose generation indeed is usually (1 Sam. ix. 1) carried back through Kish and Aphiah, with an interruption, to Benjamin, but here again also presents difficulties and appears in general to have been disputed.

But the sixth series does not conclude in the Chronicles with Joel, but is continued into our seventh, and no text appears to indicate that there is a pause. Yet the correctness of our division here also, will hardly be found doubtful. It would be quite impossible to believe that among six genealogies one alone could have been as long again as all the others; for if we omitted the two restored members of the sixth series, we should still retain nineteen members in place of ten or eleven, as in the other genealogies. We should therefore still feel obliged to believe there was a mistake, even though unable to point it out. But, upon a further investigation, it explains itself.

It is very apparent that we have the same genealogies in the fourth series as in the seventh, although there appears to be several deviations in the manner the names are written, and in some passages completely different names. Let us now see how the fourth series is introduced in the Chronicles. The first part of the seventh chapter (in the Hebrew text made the sixth) brings prominently forward, apart from the other genealogies, that of the generations of the high priests, which goes back through Aaron, Amram, and Kohath, to Levi. The generations of the other Levites are afterwards designated, and indeed in two divisions. The first proceeds from the first-born of the sons of Levi, in which, nevertheless, in the race of Kohath, Amram has already been removed from the series, and Amminadab, i. e. Izhar, takes his place; the second goes upwards from the three songsters of David, Heman, Assaph, and Ethan, as far back as the grandchildren of Levi. The ancestors of Heman come first, because a first-born grandson of Levi stands at the head, Izhar, i. e. Amminadab, whose generation was therefore already mentioned among those of the first-born grandsons (III.). The ancestors of Assaph and of Ethan succeed, because later-born grandsons of Levi stand at the head, who are again arranged in the succession of the sons of Levi.

There is here a strict and duly considered rule, which is made evident by the following survey:

This certainty presupposes what has been already assumed here, that Elkanah was a son of Levi, and, indeed, the third son, although in former passages he is not cited as among the sons of Levi. Little is proved by this omission, for there are many such cases, and in this very chapter, v. 43, Jahath is called a son of Gershom, although in v. 17 he is not cited among the sons of Gershom[342]. In such cases, certainly, the conjecture still remains which we admitted above, p. 464, in the case of Jahath, that one name has been substituted for another, as, without doubt, occurs in many cases; and therefore some might prefer here to suppose Elkanah the same person as Kohath, Zuph (VII.) as a later Elkanah (IV.), Toah (VII.) as Nahath (IV.), Azariah (VI.) as Uzziah (III.), Joel (VII.) as Vashni (IV.), Laadan as Libni, &c. However, this seems very improbable here. In the chapter we allude to the children of Gershom-Libni are first stated in the series of the first-born, then the children of Kohath-Amminadab, then the children of Elkanah-Amasai, lastly the children of Merari-Mahli. Elkanah is, therefore, evidently also placed between Kohath and Merari, as one of the first-born. If Elkanah, the head of this family, were no other than the Elkanah previously mentioned in v. 23, the son of Assir, this whole genealogy would not belong here, which is evident from the arrangement we have given above.

But the same arrangement proves that the first part of the genealogy of Heman, our sixth series[343], concludes with the same Joel who in the second part in our seventh series appears as the father of Heman; that, consequently, we have to complete the end of the sixth series with the name of Heman again; in short, that we have before us, in place of one of double length, two single genealogies of Heman, which spring from his father by different grandfathers[344].

So much for the generations of Levi from the Hebrew text. With respect to the genealogical succession from Levi to Zadok, according to Josephus, it corresponds with our first Levitical series, but does not entirely agree with it. According to Josephus, the generations belonging here would be as follows:

But the Hebrew series is not only supported by three passages, but it has also more internal probability than that of Josephus. For Βοκκίας and Βουκί seem to differ but little, and since Zadok and Abiathar are cotemporary, a name appears to be wanting in the series of Σάδωκος, which is given in the Hebrew series[345].

In our series of the successions of the High priests φινεέσης is an interposition, because the pontificate passed immediately from Eli to his grandson.

The genealogy of Judah, which we have added, is at the same time the table of the generation of David. It is the shortest of all, but ought not therefore to be regarded with suspicion. We must place Hezron equal with Moses, although only one generation is given between him and Judah, for it is said of him (1 Chron. ii. 24) that he died at Caleb-Ephratah, therefore after the entrance into Palestine, and that his wife, Abiah, had a son after his death. Therefore there only remains Judah and Pharez for the Egyptian time. This need not surprise us, since Pharez was only born to Judah by Thamar after she had been already the wife of his sons; Pharez is, therefore, both the son and the grandson of Judah. There remain nine generations for the period from the Exodus to the building of the Temple; but here, also, we know at least concerning the last name, David, that he was the seventh son of his father.

If we now review the collected series of our table, we find among them eight different and complete series, namely, besides six tribes of Levi, the tribe of Judah, and the series of the High priests. Of these, one contains 12 names, three of them 11, three 10, and one 9. This gives as a mean number exactly ten and a half generations.

If we inquire the mean number for the years of a generation, we must not think of the Hebrew number 40. It is evidently too high a number, and was only sometimes conferred by the Hebrews on the generations, because it had been long used by them for undetermined quantities as a round and sacred number.

The 33⅓rd years also of the Egyptian generations, according to Herodotus (ii. 142), was rather a subdivision of the century than a calculation of the real succession of generations. The longest series, from which we could obtain a mean number, are the series of kings. But we can obtain no scale even from them. The kings of Judah only reigned on an average nineteen years, those of Israel only twelve years. Successions of reigns are, however, always shorter than generations, and in Judah seven out of twenty kings were killed, or expelled; in Israel, fully half out of twenty. We shall therefore approach much nearer the truth if we adopt the Greek acceptation[346] of thirty years for a generation, in which we only follow most of the modern scholars.

Admitting this, ten or eleven generations would amount to 300 or 330 years, and if we place Solomon about the year 1000, the genealogies would lead us to 1300 or 1330 years before Christ, which most perfectly agrees with our earlier results, since, according to Manetho, we believe we ought to place Menephthes 1328-1309. The Rabbinical date of the Exodus is B.C. 1314, exactly between 1300 and 1330, upon which of course no more importance is to be laid than is allowable by the indeterminate factors of the calculation. At any rate the whole discussion leads to this, that the genealogies, the only trustworthy although less exact chronological thread of those Hebrew times, speak as decidedly against the calculation hitherto adopted of 480 years, as in favour of our calculation of, about, 300 years. This agreement appears to me of the greatest importance in judging both the Egyptian as well as the Jewish history.

But if, finally, we look at the numbers in the Book of Judges, we have already seen that, according to the usual mode of reckoning, they are by no means found to agree immediately with any other chronological acceptation; still the chronological character of many separate numbers cannot be mistaken, and we may at least expect that, from our point of view also, a simple solution must present itself, which would release the statements of numbers in the Book of Judges from the contradictions in which, as hitherto interpreted, they have stood with the Manethonic chronology.

Bunsen[347] gives us a survey of this period. He compares the “Time of Foreign Rule and Anarchy” with the “Time of the Judges and of Peace.” For the former he puts 3 x + 111 years, for the latter, including the monarchical time to the building of the Temple, 4 x + 442 years. He considers the first, less historical than the last (p. 212), and supposes that the number 480 is perhaps formed out of the latter 442. At all events, he believes we must start from this number. But I should prefer an entirely different combination, which promises to lead sooner to a result. If we place the uncertain and round numbers upon one side, and the remaining on the other side, we shall obtain the following survey[348]:

INDETERMINATE NUMBERS. | HISTORICAL NUMBERS.
40. | Years in the Desert. | |
x | Joshua (25, according to Josephus, A. J. V. 1, 29). | |
x | Successors to Joshua (Joshua xxiv. 31). | |
40. | Othniel (Judg. iii. 11). | 8. | under Mesopotamia (Judg. iii. 8.)
| | 18. | under the Moabites (Judg. iii. 14).
80. | Ehud (Judg. iii. 30; according to the Seventy 40). | |
x | Shamgar. | |
| | 20. | under the Canaanites (Judg. iv. 3. This Period happens, according to Judg. iv. 4, perhaps under Deborah).
40. | Deborah (Judg. iv. 4) and Barak (Judg. v. 1, 31). | |
40. | Gideon (Judg. viii. 28). | 7. | under the Midianites (Judg. vi. 1).
| | 3. | Abimelech (Judg. ix. 22).
| | 23. | Tola (Judg. x. 2).
| | 22. | Jair (Judg. x. 3).
| | 18. | Philistines (Judg. x. 8).
| | 6. | Jephthah (Judg. xii. 7).
| | 7. | Ibzan (Judg. xii. 9).
| | 10. | Elon (Judg. xii. 11).
| | 8. | Abdon (Judg. xii. 14).
40. | Philistines (Judg. xiii. 1). | 150 |
20. | Samson (in the time of the Philistines, Judg. xv. 20, xvi. 31). | |
x | Anarchy (Judg. xvii. 6, xviii. 1, xix. 1, xxi. 25). | |
40. | Eli (1 Sam. iv. 18). | |

20.

Saul (1 Sam. vii. 1, 2; compare iv. 18, vi. 1; 2 Sam vi. 3; 1 Chron. xiv. 3. According to Acts xiii. 21, Jos. A. J. VI. 14, 9, Saul reigned 40 years).

40. | David (2 Sam. v. 4, 5; 1 Kings, ii. 11). | |
14 times x × 12 years = 168. | 150 + 168 = 318 years.

From this juxtaposition alone we obtain a threefold division of the whole period. In the first division we see from the time of Joshua the determinate and indeterminate numbers alternating almost regularly (for Shamgar appears to be included in Ehud’s higher number, and therefore to have no number himself), and the historical numbers are certainly not ascribed here to the separate personages, but to the period of the oppression, therefore the whole time appears to have been one of contest and startling revolts, which, by means of a succession of powerful men, ends at length in a victorious assertion of their own dominion.

This second period commences with Abimelech, and is only once interrupted by the government of the Philistines. Here there is a real succession of events and separate governments, and therefore no round numbers.

The third division begins with a new, and, as it appears, a far longer oppression by the Philistines, in which the narrative of Sampson only forms a passing episode. It seems to me that the anarchical times, which are entirely omitted by others, are connected with this oppression, and, although there is no date, that they were of considerable duration. They form, in a certain degree, the real conclusion of the time of the Judges. The new, the regal time, begins with Eli, which is always alluded to in the time of the anarchy. Before the time of Eli the historical thread was broken; from his time it continues uninterrupted. Eli prepares the way for the kings. Samuel grows up under him, and his first action after the death of Eli seems to have been to anoint Saul as king. He appears to have continued his office of judge under Saul, whom he has rather chosen as a general, as he also afterwards anoints David as king. This may be the reason why no time is ascribed to him; the Ark of the Covenant, which was taken as booty in the conquest of Mizpah by the Philistines, and was retained for seven months (1 Sam. vi. 1), was thus brought to Kirjath-Jearim, shortly before Saul’s elevation; remained there twenty years (1 Sam. vii. 2), and was first brought away from that place at the elevation of David (2 Sam. vi. 3), “for we inquired not at it in the days of Saul” (1 Chron. xiii. 3).

If we now add up the historical numbers, we shall obtain 150 years, so that there is on an average 12 years for each of the twelve governments. Now if we apply this mean number (which is best adapted to the purpose, and which was also that of the kings of Israel) to the fourteen governments, whose numbers are uncertain, we shall obtain 168 years, which, together with the 150, gives 318 years. Now if we count these backward, beginning at Solomon, about 1000 years before Christ, we come to the year 1318 before Christ, therefore again under the government of Pharaoh Menephthes.

We thus obtain, also, from this side a simple confirmation of our former results. It is at least evident, that the numbers in the Book of Judges can no longer be employed as a refutation of the Manethonic calculation. But this agreement between the chronology of the time of the Judges, and the genealogies of the Chronicles, is of manifest importance to Jewish history.

As soon as we may consider the chronological importance of the genealogies established, we are enabled to rise still higher on the same path in the history of Israel, and to obtain a chronological view concerning the period of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt.

If in the 40 years of the later generations we can only perceive a chronological garb, without on that account supposing that the substance of the narratives are unhistorical, still less should we see in the hundred and more years of the generations from Abraham to Moses, the true chronological relation upon which these perfectly credible narratives are founded. The whole array of numbers is rather, as we have indicated above, to be judged from a perfectly different point of view, the closer investigation of which does not belong here.

When, for the sake of judging the chronology of the times from Moses to Jacob, and from Jacob to Abraham, we start from the historical importance of the genealogies, this period becomes extremely contracted, and we are led to new historical comparisons, which appear to throw a clear light upon those times.

In all registers of generations we only find three generations from Joseph or Levi to Moses. In the pedigree of Judah, indeed, we only saw two, which was however explained by the unnatural alliance of Thamar. But Aaron himself, and Moses, on the father’s side, stood in the third degree from Levi, but from the maternal side in the second; for their father, Amram, the grandson of Levi, took to wife in Egypt his aunt Jochabed, the daughter of Levi (Exod. vi. 20; Num. xxvi. 59), who bore him Moses and Aaron. Thus one event explains and confirms another, and allows us still less to doubt the historical reality and the natural relations which the successive generations bear to each other.

Therefore, unless we wish to regard all the narratives of those times, and all the accounts, which afterwards refer to them, as mythical and unhistorical, for which there is not the slightest ground, we must also here separate the chronological garb from the subject itself, and recognise, as a necessary conclusion, that only about ninety years intervened from the entrance of Jacob to the Exodus of Moses, and about as much from the entrance of Abraham into Canaan, to Jacob’s Exodus[349], so that from Abraham to Moses only about 180, or if we wish to make the most of it, 215 years passed, which alone, according to the present calculation, are reckoned from Abraham to Jacob.

But even this result is by no means only founded upon the internal impossibility of the numbers hitherto adopted, nor upon the genealogies alone, but upon a much more general historical connection of the events, as we find them both in the Egyptian and Israelitish history of those times.

All the views hitherto adopted from Josephus, and from those who before his day held the same opinions, down to the most modern scholars, must, on the supposition that the Jews were the Hyksos—which we have rejected above (p. 422), as not worth refutation—or at least that they departed with them, and further that they lived in Egypt from the time of Jacob, 215 or 430 years, necessarily have led them to the conclusion that Joseph and Jacob came to Egypt during the dominion of the Hyksos. But an attentive and impartial consideration of the passages bearing upon this point, show beyond doubt that this could not be the case according to the Biblical accounts, and therefore that either this representation, or the accepted chronology, must contain errors.

“And Joseph,” it says, Gen. xxxix. 1, “was brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down thither.”

Here, as in all the other passages where the Egyptian king is mentioned, he is called Pharaoh. This is an Egyptian designation and not a Semitic one, as we should have expected if the Semitic Hyksos[350] had still ruled in Egypt. In that case we should have been everywhere compelled to admit in this designation, throughout the history of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, an anachronism which cannot easily find a parallel. The captain of the king’s body-guard was also an Egyptian, as is proved by his name Potiphar, ‎‏פוטיפר‏‎[351], which is written by the Seventy Πετεφρής, i. e. Petphra. Still an Egyptian in so important a situation at a Semitic court might as well form an exceptional case, as the Hebrew Joseph, according to our opinion, at an Egyptian court. “And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen[352], and put a gold chain[353] about his neck. And he made him to ride in the second chariot[354] which he had, and they cried before him, Bow the knee; and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name ‎‏צפנת פענח‏‎ (Ψονθομφανήχ), and he gave him to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On.” (Gen. xli. 42, &c.) The fact that the distinctions here conferred upon Joseph are in perfect accordance with Egyptian manners[355], would still not be sufficient to prove that he lived at an Egyptian court, for the Semitic rulers might possibly have brought with them the same customs, or might have adopted them. But if such were our belief, it would be impossible to combine with it the circumstance that Joseph received from Pharaoh expressly an Egyptian name. For even if the older Hebrew commentators have attempted to derive the name from the Hebrew, these attempts have long been rejected by modern scholars[356]. We should be able to decide with more complete certainty about the Egyptian signification of the name if we found it written in hieroglyphics. It sounds in Hebrew Zepnet-ponch (Zaphnath-phaneach). It appears to me that the last portion can hardly be referred to any other word than the hieroglyphical 𓋹𓈖𓐰𓐍 anch, Coptic ⲱⲛϩ, ⲁⲛϩ, with the article ⲡ ⲱⲛϩ, the life; the first part is obscure. Since the Seventy write Ψονθομφανήχ, it is generally supposed that the two first letters in the Hebrew text have been misplaced, and that the uniting genitive —n (before the labial —m) has been omitted. Both are possible, but not probable. It seems to me that the Seventy cannot claim any more authority on this point than any other interpreter. It is not surprising that, without understanding the hieroglyphical writing, they were as little capable as we are of explaining the old name from the popular language. But that they wrote Ψονθ in place of Zepnet, or Zpent, seems to prove that they explained the name something like ⲡ ⲥⲱⲛⲧ ⲙ ⲫⲁⲛϩ creatio (creator) vitæ.

But how is it possible that a Semitic king, who, like the six in the lists of the so-called shepherd kings, must undoubtedly have himself borne a Semitic name, would have given Joseph an Egyptian name, in order to do him honour.

Asenath is of course an Egyptian name like that of her father, Potiphra, i. e. Petphra, and his being called a High priest of On (Heliopolis) is an additional and more certain proof that the Semitic nation of the Hyksos were not reigning here, for they would have destroyed all the Egyptian temples; and they would hardly have permitted the worship of Ra (Helios) to continue in the neighbourhood of Memphis, whose High priest must give his daughter to Joseph for a wife, in order to show him particular honour, and to naturalise him completely.

It is equally evident, from the meeting of Joseph with his brethren, that he lived at a really Egyptian court. Distrust towards their Phœnician neighbours was continually kept alive among the Egyptians, therefore it was easy to form a pretext to attack the Hebrews. “Ye are spies, to see the nakedness of the land ye are come.” (Gen. xlii. 9, 12, 14.) When the brethren talk among themselves of the act which they perpetrated against Joseph, they speak out loud in the presence of Joseph: “They knew not that Joseph understood them, for he spake unto them by an interpreter.” (Gen. xlii. 23.) Joseph had become so completely an Egyptian, and the Egyptian language was so exclusively spoken at the court of Pharaoh, that the brethren could not conjecture any one was near them who understood their language.

When, therefore, on their second visit to Joseph’s house, they were about to take their meal, it is said, “And they set for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him, by themselves: because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” (Gen. xliii. 32.) The native Egyptians could never have expressed this horror, and regulated their manners accordingly, under the dominion of a Semitic reigning family. Lastly, it is equally improbable that Joseph would have advised the immigrating family to call themselves shepherds in order to obtain from Pharaoh a country set apart for themselves. “And it shall come to pass when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, What is your occupation? That ye shall say, Thy servant’s trade hath been about cattle from our youth, even until now, both we, and also our fathers; that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” (Gen. xlvi. 33.) If the shepherd people of the Hyksos reigned in Egypt, how could the shepherds be an abomination to them?

If it is therefore evident that Joseph lived at an Egyptian, and not at a Semitic court, the old tradition of the Jewish interpreters that Joseph came to Egypt in the reign of a shepherd king, Apophis, is entirely destroyed, as well as the view taken by more modern scholars concerning the Hebrew chronology of that time.

But according to Manetho, the Exodus happened in the reign of Menephthes, and according to all the Hebrew genealogies, Jacob’s entrance could only have happened 90 or 100 years earlier. Therefore Sethôs, the father of the great Ramses, must certainly be the Pharaoh under whom Joseph came into Egypt. This is most indubitably confirmed by the unmistakeable agreement which exists between the Hebrew account of the Pharaoh of Joseph, and what is related by others of King Sethôs. It is said by the former, “And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh’s. And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof. Only the land of the priests bought he not; for the priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them: wherefore they sold not their lands. Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land. And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own.... And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh’s.” (Gen. lxvii. 20, &c.)

We find the same great alteration in the agrarian conditions of the country, and connected with it the introduction of a general ground-tax, from which the priests alone were excepted, ascribed by Herodotus and Diodorus to the King Sesostris-Sesoosis.

We read in Herodotus, ii. 1081, that the king intersected the country with canals, because the places which were remote from the Nile suffered, when it retreated, from a scarcity of water. It appears from what has been observed above, that it was chiefly Ramses who completed the Egyptian system of canals, although it is very probable that the great transformation in the condition of the ground which it occasioned had been already commenced by his father, Sethôsis. It is well known that the fertility of Egypt alone depends upon the proper and well-maintained regulation of the overflowings. Since the time of Möris-Amenemha, who was the first to bestow any considerable attention upon it, the country had degenerated, owing to its long foreign rule, and had but just risen again to complete independence under the mighty Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. It is quite conceivable that such comprehensive and tedious undertakings for increasing the general prosperity, as a universal construction of canals, especially in the Delta, could only have been first undertaken by the earlier kings of the 19th Dynasty, Sethôsis and Ramses, who were both of them favoured by long reigns. Therefore until that time, a general failure of the crops and a famine might have very frequently occurred, at a low or even a moderate rise of the water, and perhaps happened for several successive years. Strabo[357] relates that, before the time of the Prefect Petronius, owing to the water-works being neglected, famine broke out in Egypt if the Nile only rose 8 ells, and 14 ells were necessary for a particularly good year; whereas, by his improvements, it was only necessary for the Nile to rise 10 ells to produce the best harvest, and if it rose but 8 ells no scarcity ensued. Famine broke out in Egypt in the Arabian times also from the same reason[358]. Thus the famine-years in the time of Joseph may be explained to have occurred in the reign of Sethôs; this event may even have called attention to the necessity of a better water regulation in the country.

In the following chapter Herodotus says, that the King Sesostris “divided the land between all the Egyptians by giving an equal-sized square portion to each, from which he afterwards derived his income by laying an annual tax upon it. But when the river carried away a part of any person’s portion, he showed it to the king, who sent people to inquire and measure how much smaller the piece of land had become, in order that he might pay the tax for the remainder according to the commands.” This is essentially the same arrangement which is ascribed to Joseph, the minister of Pharaoh. Herodotus had already[359] mentioned in an earlier passage that the priests paid no taxes, but even received their daily sustenance besides, exactly as it is related in the Mosaic accounts.

Diodorus[360] says of Sesoosis, that he “divided the whole country into thirty-six parts,” which the Egyptians called Nomes; over these he placed Nomarchs, who had the charge of the Royal Revenues, and “ruled everything besides in their provinces.” Therefore here again there was an entirely new division and government of the country, in which the taxes to the king are not forgotten. Afterwards (c. 57) he adds also, that he raised many great mounds, and upon them transplanted the towns which were situated too low (μετῴκισεν). The fresh regulations in the country, and especially the new canals, necessarily created a great number of towns and villages for the management of the grounds which were portioned out, and were now partly cultivated for the first time. To this we may most naturally refer the remark in the Hebrew account that Pharaoh “removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.” (Gen. xlvii. 21.) Diodorus (c. 56) also mentions the hard taskwork which thence became necessary, and that in consequence of it the “Babylonian prisoners, who could no longer bear the toilsome labour, rebelled against the king.”

In the very valuable description of the manner in which the Egyptian administration had subsisted under the old[361] kings of the country, which is drawn from the most ancient sources, Diodorus again mentions (c. 73, 74) the arrangement of the Nomes, and a division of the property, by which one-third belonged to the priests, one to the king, the other to the warriors; and how all the cultivators of the soil, for a small reward, only performed task-service for the three orders who possessed land. It is here also expressly mentioned, that the priests were exempt (ἀτελεῖς) from taxation[362]. But it seems that it is only from the Mosaic narrative we learn that the universal statute of the taxes imposed on the remaining possessors of the land was fixed upon exactly the fifth part of the produce; this narrative here, as well as in other points, confidently completes our knowledge of those circumstances.

Now if the arrangements we have cited, which in fact so essentially changed Egypt, that their introduction could not fail to occupy an important place in the monuments of that time, and to be thus handed down to posterity, were ascribed in the Greek account to Sesostris-Sesoosis, we should, in the next place, be uncertain whether Sethôs or his son Ramses was meant. It is not in itself improbable, that works demanding so much time, and the extensive alterations in the political circumstances, might fully occupy two such long reigns as those of both the kings mentioned; and of the canal works especially, we know that at least two particular canals of considerable importance were completed by Ramses, east and west of the Delta, and towns were built beside them. But since it can now hardly be disputed that those events could not have taken place either earlier or later than under these two reigns, which embraced more than a century, it appears to be perfectly justifiable to suppose that the first and most essential steps to this reform were taken in the reign of Sethôs, because, according to the genealogical calculation of time in the Bible, Joseph must have lived and acted in the first half of the reign of Sethôsis. The succession of kings in the Mosaic accounts also perfectly agrees with this. We here read of only three Pharaohs during that time. Joseph came to Potiphar in Egypt in the reign of the first, and rose by his wisdom to be first minister of the king. This Pharaoh was Sethôsis I., with whom the Manethonic lists begin a new Dynasty. By means of the new improvements introduced and regulated by him, the country was saved from the years of famine which had hitherto been constantly dreaded, and the power of the king was increased and strengthened.

“And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and his whole race.” “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph[363].” Sethôsis had reigned more than fifty years, and Joseph must have lived in the first part of his reign. It is therefore conceivable that the new King Ramses II. knew nothing more of him, or wished to know nothing more, and therefore might not on his (Joseph’s) account have favoured the rapidly increasing population of the Israelites in Egypt. We therefore see that it was incorrect to explain the words of the account, which are only correct when taken in their simplest signification, that a new king arose—by understanding that by this the commencement of a new royal house is intended after a long and indefinite period. The birth of Moses, and his education at the court of Pharaoh, happened under this King Ramses II., and indeed in the latter part of his reign of sixty-six years, in which the times of Joseph were still more forgotten, and the hard oppressions and persecutions of the Jews prevailed. This king, although of a Theban family, resided equally, and perhaps in those times, even more at Memphis than at Thebes, as the later Saitic, Bubastic, and other dynasties also by no means forsook the old palace in Memphis. There exists, therefore, no grounds for imagining the youth of Moses to have been spent at Thebes rather than at Memphis.

But when Moses had slain the Egyptian, he fled to Midian. “And it came to pass in process of time, that the King of Egypt died; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage[364].” The third king, therefore, succeeded the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Menephthes, the son of the great Ramses, the same under whom, as we believe we have pointed out, the Exodus really happened, and from whom the new Sothis period, which began in his reign, likewise received its name.

If, in the same manner, we go still farther back in the Hebrew accounts from Joseph to Abraham, we find this period also only occupied by three generations, which would fix it, according to the views we have exhibited, to about 90 or 100 years.

According to the chronology hitherto adopted, Abraham’s visit to Egypt would also have happened in the time of the Hyksos. But this is partly opposed by the same objections which we mentioned when speaking of the immigration of Jacob. Abraham also comes to the court of a Pharaoh, therefore of a native Egyptian ruler, and, in accordance with the Manethonic chronology, the visit of Abraham would have happened under Tuthmosis IV. or Amenophis III., therefore in the middle of the 18th Dynasty, after the Hyksos had been already expelled by the 17th Dynasty, first into the lowest country of the Delta, and then from their last fortress, Abaris.

Therefore only about 200 years had passed between Abraham’s journey into Egypt and the time of the Exodus. But what gave occasion to the number four hundred and thirty years, so expressly stated in Exodus xii. 40, and which appears, in comparison with the round statement of 400 years in Gen. xv. 13, as more exact, and, at all events, not an unmeaning number? We have already expressed our opinion that the round and indeterminate numbers, as well as the larger calculations, were only adopted at a later period in the writings of the Old Testament. The number 480 or 440 years between the Exodus and the building of the Temple appeared to us to depend upon a calculation of 12 or 11 generations of 40 years each. But in the 430 years may, perhaps, lie the first indication of the early-conceived idea mentioned above, that the Israelites were the Hyksos. For the number would, in fact, be most perfectly explained if it was referred to the residence of these Semitic races in Egypt.

We shall, namely, point out, in the second part of the chronology, that the long contest between the Egyptians and the Hyksos, mentioned by Manetho, occurred during the 17th Dynasty from Amosis to Tuthmosis III. The former completely broke the foreign dominion, and drove back the Hyksos to the northern part of the Delta; but it was Tuthmosis who first succeeded in sending them out of their last stronghold of refuge, Abaris. Thence arose the confusion that has so generally prevailed concerning these two kings. The one as much as the other might be regarded as the conqueror of the Hyksos. Manetho specified the whole time of the residence of the Hyksos in Egypt, up to their departure from Abaris, to be 511 years. But it must also have appeared from his narrative, and have been a fact specially known to the priests from their history, that the real dominion of the Hyksos in Egypt was terminated by Amosis. If we now subtract the time from Amosis to Tuthmosis, which was 80 years, from 511[365], exactly four hundred and thirty years remain for the dominion of the Hyksos in Egypt[366]. If, therefore, in the present day, the opinion can in any way be maintained and defended that Abraham (or Jacob) was King Salatis, and entered Egypt not as a petitioner, but as a powerful and conquering enemy, and that his seed was first conquered and driven away in the time of Moses by the native kings, the relation of the above-mentioned numbers would certainly appear as one of the most important proofs of it. It cannot, however, be argued that an admission which appears, according to our present criticism, perfectly impossible, must have appeared equally so in ancient times. An impartial apprehension of the present, and a faithful rendering of the past, was the vocation of an ancient annalist or historian; it is only thus that they are of importance and worthy of consideration in our inquiry. Criticism was completely out of their sphere, historical as well as philological; and when, nevertheless, we do meet with it, it is generally very unsatisfactory, and even from the most distinguished writers, astonishingly feeble. The school of professional Alexandrian critics is by no means excepted. We find the most striking examples of this, particularly in the Christian chronologists, who were not wanting either in abundance of authorities, nor in extensive learning and honest intentions. But we have actually seen, from the example of Josephus, as well as from earlier and later authors, how the opinion above mentioned, of the identity of the Hyksos with the Jews, really gained admittance from various very superficial foundations, and yet Josephus belonged undoubtedly to the most learned antiquarians who we can place under our observation here. We ought not, therefore, to be surprised even if we find this view again stated at an earlier period in the arrangement and combinations of the Hebrew historical books; and this appears, in fact, to be very probable, by the number 430 years, which can neither be applied to the three generations of Jacob, nor to the six from Abraham to Moses.

The calculation also verifies itself still further. It was an early opinion that Joseph came to Egypt in the reign of the shepherd King Aphophis. This is expressly said by Eusebius and Syncellus; and the various changes in the position of Aphophis, who is differently placed both by Josephus and Africanus, appear, upon a closer investigation, always to originate from the same reason, namely, in order to place Joseph under Aphophis. The correct position of Aphophis, according to Manetho, was undoubtedly at the end of the 16th Dynasty, as we find it stated by Africanus[367]. Joseph stood, according to the generations, exactly between Abraham and Moses. According to the Egyptian chronology, the first Dynasty of the Hyksos reigned 259 years, the second 251 years, therefore Aphophis, the last king of the 1st Dynasty, reigned in the middle of the time of the Hyksos. This was probably the first idea which supported the opinion of the exact division of the 430 years into two equal halves, and the belief that Jacob came to Egypt in the time of Aphophis. Jacob’s entrance, or the end of the first 215 years, accordingly happened in the seventeenth year of the Aphophis; Joseph was exalted by Pharaoh 9 years earlier, therefore in the eighth year of Aphophis.

But the correct Egyptian statement, that the Hyksos first departed in the reign of Tuthmosis, had been already misunderstood in the time of Josephus. He placed the Exodus of the Hyksos and of the Jews under Amosis, and made the whole 17th Dynasty of 251 years precede Amosis. It was impossible, therefore, that he could place Joseph under Aphophis. He could as little make the entrance of Abraham happen at the same time as that of the Hyksos, for he gave 511 years for the residence of the Hyksos, 430 for that of the Jews. But he nowhere says either that the Jews entered with the Hyksos, as they departed with them, or that Jacob or Josephus came to Egypt in the reign of Aphophis. He appears rather to have believed that the first and not the second entrance of the Jews into Egypt, therefore the entrance of Abraham happened in the time of Aphophis; and thus that the tradition, which was no doubt known to him, was so to be understood. He must, at least, have thought that the entrance of Abraham really took place in the first Hyksos Dynasty, although, indeed, not under the last, but under the fourth king. According to my opinion, this was the reason why Josephus made Aphophis the fourth king of the Dynasty.

Africanus, the most faithful among the reporters, did not admit all these calculations, or seek to explain the Manethonic calculation, and to make it agree with his own, but let the contradictions stand, and therefore simply gave the Manethonic tradition, even when he did not understand it, and could not correct the mistakes which were handed down to him. We therefore find the correct position of Aphophis retained by him.

Eusebius on the other hand, and his uncertain authorities, again wished to mediate and to explain. In his account we find the first year of the 16th Dynasty placed contemporaneous with the first year of the life of Abraham, which is evidently an arbitrary proceeding, and one that necessarily drew other changes along with it, which are met with plentifully in the numbers substituted for those of Manetho. His 17th Dynasty names the four first kings of the Manethonic 16th Dynasty, and Amosis follows immediately after. In order to fit in again with the later history, it was necessary to abridge considerably the 16th and 17th Dynasties. The numbers of Eusebius, as they appear in the Canon, clearly state that he only counted seventy-five years from the first year of Abraham to his entrance into Canaan and Egypt, and again 430 years from that time to the Exodus of Moses. This happened, therefore, in the last year of Χενχέρης. The same is given in the codex A of Syncellus, p. 72, D. If we here again calculate 215 years to the entrance of Jacob, or 224 to the exaltation of Joseph, we arrive at his reign of Aphophis, as was intended. But in codex B, and in the Armenian translation, the two kings, Athoris and Chencheres, who are correctly placed in the Eusebian Canon, are omitted, and undoubtedly by the oversight of Eusebius himself, not of Syncellus. Thence the Exodus was placed in the reign of Achencheres, in place of Chencheres. The similarity in the names themselves appears to have led to the oversight; thus Syncellus found the text. Now, if we count back from Achencheres 215 or 224 years, we come to Archles, the predecessor of Aphophis. Syncellus knew of no better way than to transpose Archles and Aphophis, as we find to be really the case in his text of Eusebius, p. 62, A; this of course can no longer be reconciled with the emendations of the codex A, which were added in a later passage out of Eusebius. No doubt seems to be left by this explanation of the numbers.

Lastly, Syncellus, who follows the false Sothis, places the Exodus in the last year of Misphragmuthosis, calculates from here backwards 215 years, and passing over the 2nd Hyksos Dynasty, which Sothis and Eusebius had already placed before the 1st Hyksos Dynasty, arrives at the fourth king of the latter. Therefore, as in Josephus, Aphophis is placed there.

All these circumstances are easily explained when the aim and the issue of the matter is known. But the original grounds why Aphophis, the last king of the 1st Manethonic Hyksos Dynasty, was regarded as the Pharaoh of Joseph and Jacob, is alone apparent by the simple relation which we have found subsisting between the Hebrew and the Manethonic numbers.

I do not believe that a sound critical examination can consider so many and such universal agreements and confirmations to be accidental, or the result of an artificial correction, which, at all events, would of necessity be easily pointed out, the more so as, with the exception of a few individual points, my restoration of the Manethonic chronology was principally determined before my journey to Egypt.

We therefore believe, that by means of a new path, namely, the Manethonic chronology, we have found the key to the relative portions of time in the Old Testament, so far as these are connected with Egypt; and in an inverse manner we may now consider the agreement that subsists between the chronology of the Hebrew history (both the true chronology represented in the genealogies, and the false one, which was afterwards erroneously adopted) and the Egyptian numbers upon which the chronology was originally founded, to be indeed strongly confirmatory of the authenticity of these last, as they appear according to our restoration of them.

It is very evident that our carrying back the Old Testament chronology to its natural relations, as far back as Abraham, must be not merely of chronological, but of truly historical importance in the highest meaning of the term. The prolongation to above a hundred years, contrary to all historical experience, of the thirty-yeared generations of the immediate ancestors of Moses, who lived in the midst of the Egyptians, the length of whose lives was exactly like our own, must either appear an intentional miracle, or make us doubt the simple historical reality of the persons themselves, and of the events concerning them. The superhuman duration of life, considered as a miracle, would appear to be entirely without a purpose; besides, in the Old Testament itself it is never viewed as such. The Psalmist[368], on the contrary, considered as we do, a life of eighty years as a great age. Therefore the most distinguished, and most earnest inquirers of the present day were led to the opinion, evidently from the numbers, that the history of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was less strictly historical, but only brought before the reader, as it were, three representations of long epochs of about a century each[369]. It was likewise necessary to regard the register of generations in the time of the Judges as defective, and extremely shortened, because in no other manner could they fill up the long period of 480 years. In order to make this abbreviation more probable, the genealogy of Haman was referred to as the only one which was preserved perfect[370], while we, on the contrary, consider it a double one.

Now according to our view of the subject, this apparently so well-founded doubt of the real continuity of the events, and of the historical character of the contents, in as far as they depend upon the chronology, entirely disappears, and I see no longer any reason to consider the accounts of the great personality of Abraham, of the non-prominent activity of Isaac, the opulent life of Jacob, and the remarkable fate of Joseph, chiefly as typical, and as it were only slightly connected with the historical reality[371]. For although we must still make a considerable difference between the character of the history of Israel before and after the building of the temple, yet it cannot be denied that the agreement we have pointed out between the true chronological thread, as it is represented to us by the genealogies, and the Egyptian history, as well as the confirmation of so many notices respecting Egypt, from the time of Moses and Joseph, establish a far greater historical character for the Hebrew accounts, as far back as Abraham, than would have ever been allowed them by a strict criticism, had we been obliged to ascribe to the old authorities themselves the numbers which were inserted at a later period.

[After some notice concerning the times before Abraham, the author concludes this section as follows:]

If, however, our entire view of the Old Testament chronology, regarding it as founded upon accurately preserved dates, only so far back as the separation of the kingdom, but nevertheless attached from that epoch up to the time of Abraham to an evidently authentic thread of historically reliable genealogies, offering, however, before the Egyptian period, only cyclical instead of historical numbers and genealogies, and mainly confined to Babylonian sources and traditions—if, I say, this general view of the character of the chronological data which leaves untouched the significance of their contents, should, on theological grounds, arouse scruples in the mind of any one, I would refer him to the introduction which Bunsen has prefixed to the third section of his first book on Egypt, as full of talent as of meaning, and from which I would more especially extract the following passages[372].

“Whoever adopts as a principle that chronology is a matter of revelation, is precluded from giving effect to any doubt that may cross his path, as involving a virtual abandonment of his faith in revelation. He must be prepared, not only to deny the existence of contradictory statements, but to fill up chasms; however irreconcileable the former may appear by any aid of philology and history, however unfathomable the latter. He who, on the other hand, neither believes in an historical tradition as to the eternal existence of man, nor admits an historical and chronological element in revelation, will either contemptuously dismiss the inquiry, or, by prematurely rejecting its more difficult elements, fail to discover those threads of the research which lie beneath the unsightly and time-worn surface, and which yet may prove the thread of Ariadne.

“The assumption that it entered into the scheme of Divine Providence either to preserve for us a chronology of the Jews and their forefathers by real tradition, or to provide the later commentators with magic powers, in respect to the most exoteric element of history, may seem indispensable to some, and absurd to others. Historical inquiry has nothing whatever to do with such idle, preposterous, and often fallacious assumptions. Its business is to see whether anything—and if so, what—has been transmitted to us. If it fulfil this duty in a spirit of reverence as well as of liberty, sooner or later it will obtain the prize, which, if the history of the last 2000 years prove anything at all, Providence has refused to both the other systems.”

[After the two first sections of The Criticism upon the Authorities, of which the first, upon Herodotus and Diodorus, has been omitted in this translation, while the second, upon the Hebrew tradition, has been strongly dwelt upon, the author proceeds to the third and last section, which treats of the historical works of Manetho and the authorities which refer to him. Now, although this section contains the really critical restoration of the Manethonic chronology, considered by the author as the only one to be relied on in its general features, it has not been considered compatible with the object of the present work to communicate at full length this difficult research, which was only written for the profound investigator. We think it sufficient to give the two passages in which the whole extent of the Manethonic history, down to the second Persian conquest, according to a statement obtained from Manetho himself, is said to amount to 3555 years, and the connection is pointed out between this time, considered as strictly historical, and the cyclically discovered History of the Gods.]

The number 3555 is, however, alone essential and important, and, in spite of all the uncertainties and revisings of the text, there cannot be the slightest doubt about it. It led undoubtedly to the termination of the reign of Nectanebus II. If we can, therefore, determine this end in other more certain ways, we need no longer trouble ourselves about the calculation of Syncellus; since this, as every one allows, is, at all events, incorrect. But it cannot be doubted that Manetho knew, and correctly stated, the true year of the conquest of Egypt by Ochus, which very likely happened during his lifetime.

The calculation of this concluding year has, however, been so fully and convincingly proved by Böckh (p. 125-133), that I consider it would be superfluous to return to it again. I assume with him that the year 340 B.C. is perfectly ascertained to be the concluding year of the Egyptian dominion. Calculating back from this stated terminating point 3555 Egyptian or 3553 Julian years, we come to the year 3893 before Christ, as the first of Menes. We consider this to be established as perfectly historical, in as far as the Manethonic relation founded upon the annals of the kingdom may generally be regarded as historically correct.

But long before the cyclical system of the government of the gods could be founded upon the Sothis periods, which were established in the course of history, Menes had already been admitted into the Egyptian annals, and was maintained to be the fixed chronological commencement of Egyptian history, especially of the history of Lower Egypt. His epoch could be no more altered. What happened before his time was ante-historical, and might be adjusted to the cyclical necessities of mythology. The only historical fact was, that other kings had reigned before Menes, and indeed in This. In order to distinguish them from the later kings as being ante-historical, a designation was selected, which we are not yet acquainted with in hieroglyphics, but which was translated in Greek by Νέκυες, the deceased; here also undoubtedly establishing the idea that they were deceased Men.

We may, however, certainly regard it as the most welcome confirmation of the whole of our restoration of the Manethonic chronology, that this ante-historical Dynasty of man of the ten Thinitic kings, the invention of whom could have no other aim than the extension of the history of man to the commencement of the current Sothis period, most accurately indeed fulfils the purpose that was designed. For while we add to the first of the 3555 Manethonic years, namely, to the year 3893 (3892) B.C. (Julian), the first of the reign of Menes, the 350 civil years of the Thinitic Νέκυες, the year 4242 is the result, which was, in reality, the necessarily expected commencement year of the current Sothis period. This immediately explains why the number 350, although it was ante-historical, and was therefore invented, is still in itself no cyclical number, and is in no way related to the Sothis period. It could just as little be a Sothic number as the number 3555, which it completed. But, on the contrary, it thence proves both the truthfulness as well as the historical character of the important and genuine Manethonic number 3555, and further proves that the establishment of the first historical year, or the Menes epoch, which is directly given by the number 3555 years, cannot first proceed from Manetho, but must be at least as old as the invention of the cyclical system of Egyptian mythology inseparably united with it, which no one will or can ascribe first to Manetho, because we have pointed out the same numbers belonging to the gods before his time. But the establishment of the discovered Menes year must indeed be still older than the formation of the whole cyclical system, since this is first appended to that number, and presupposes it; that is to say, the Menes epoch designated by Manetho was one which had been given from the beginning, and was handed down historically, and was combined in the following manner, with the cyclical system of the history of the gods.

PERIOD OF THE GODS.
Gods | 13,870 | years. | | |
Demi-gods | 3,650 | ” | | |
| 17,520 | ” | = | 12 | Sothis periods.
PERIOD OF MAN.
Ante-Historical Dynasty | 350 | years. | | |
30 Historical Dynasties | 3555 | ” | | |
Foreign dominion to the time of Antoninus | 478 | ” | | |
| 4383 | ” | = | 3 | Sothis periods.

Thus the history of the thirty Manethonic Dynasties, which began with Menes and comprised 3555 Egyptian years, was between two Sothis periods, without coming in contact with them, an evident proof that they were not formed with reference to the Sothis periods.

In order to take a general survey, we shall now repeat, in a few words, the result of our investigations.

Manetho apparently added himself to his detailed history, which was comprised in three Books, a Review of the Dynasties, in a continued series, in the style of the old Egyptian annals. These were more often transcribed than the work itself, which seems, indeed, to have been less widely distributed, owing to this convenient compendium. Separate narratives, however, from the work itself have been adopted by later authors, and were thereby preserved to us, although not without some alterations, after the complete work itself was lost, which must have happened at an early period, perhaps when the Alexandrian library was destroyed.

It was at least unknown to Josephus in the first century of our era; but the more copious, and certainly chiefly literal extracts communicated by him, he has borrowed from other works. Along with these, he either himself combined, or found combined, another partial list of kings, which only included the names from Amosis down to Menephthes (Amenophis), and which was drawn up specially and solely for the learned purposes of the Jews, at all events before the time of Josephus.

Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, in the second century, communicated the same list with slight deviations, and probably not from the writings of Josephus.

The complete Dynastic lists of the Manethonic work, which by a different method have also themselves been preserved, seem to have been unknown to both. These were first preserved to us by Africanus in the third century. They had undoubtedly before this time passed through several hands, and assumed forms partly deviating from one another. The partial Jewish list which we find in Josephus and Theophilus, was already adopted, in the time of Africanus (though hardly by himself), in the same series with the others, as one peculiarly authenticated, and apparently complete; because it contained no subdivision in itself, it was regarded as one single Dynasty, the 18th, although it really corresponded with the 17th and 18th and half of the 19th Dynasty taken together. Thence arose the confusion which now exists here.

The necessity for an agreement between the Christian-Jewish and the Egyptian computation of time produced, towards the end of the third, or the beginning of the fourth century, two spurious writings; first, the Old Chronicle, which retained the Egyptian cyclical point of view, that, namely, of the history of the gods, and even extended it, yet in such a manner that the means of reduction was suggested, by which these large numbers might be compressed into the period assumed as that given by Moses for the time since Adam. With the same end in view the first 15 Dynasties of man were transformed into 15 Generations.

The second spurious work, the Sothis, professed to be Manethonic; and could do this more easily, because a long time had elapsed since the genuine history had been lost. This writing proceeded still further upon the same road as the Old Chronicle. By means of alterations and abbreviations it reduced the Egyptian numbers to certain epochs, which were considered as Biblical, and on the other hand partly abandoned the Cyclical basis.

Eusebius, who wrote in the fourth century, was deceived by both these writings, and endeavoured to make their statements agree with the genuine Manethonic Dynastic lists. He had these lists before him in a form which was rather different from, and at all events more negligently drawn up, than that of Africanus. He followed it for the Old Monarchy, which was almost entirely omitted in the two spurious writings. In the New Monarchy he adopted principally the Dynastic numbers of the Old Chronicle. In other points he followed the Sothis. His numbers of the gods, like those of the spurious writings, are upon the whole founded on the genuine Manethonic numbers, which he nevertheless combined in a mistaken manner.

In the commencement of the fifth century the speculative chronologists, Anianos and Panodorus, laboured with subtle ingenuity at Egyptian chronology, but necessarily entirely failed in discovering the truth, because they considered the two spurious writings as the true basis. They endeavoured by ingenious arithmetical calculations to bring the numbers of the Old Chronicle and of the Sothis to agree more exactly with their acceptations of the Biblical chronology, than it had been the intention of these writings themselves.

Lastly, in the eighth century, Georgius Syncellus delivered his compiled, but on that very account for us most important work, by which we first became acquainted with almost all the earlier authorities. Through him alone we possess especially the most valuable basis for our Manethonic chronology, the Dynastic lists of Africanus. He himself decided nevertheless likewise in favour of the two spurious writings, and indeed as they were worked out by Panodorus; upon this last he founded his own system, which therefore is only so far of value to us as we thereby become acquainted with his authorities.

TABLES OF EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES,
COMPILED FOR THIS TRANSLATION.

As many of the readers of this work may not be acquainted with the several Dynasties which successively reigned over Egypt, and the approximate dates which have been assigned to them, the following Tables have been compiled for their convenience, on the authority of the Chevalier Bunsen[373] and Dr. Richard Lepsius[374], and of Kenrick’s “Egypt under the Pharaohs.”

Manetho, High Priest of the Temple of Isis at Sebennytus, in Lower Egypt, in the reign of the first Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, surnamed Soter, 322 to 284 B.C., a man of the highest reputation for wisdom, and versed in Greek as well as in Egyptian lore, published various works for the purpose of informing the Greeks. Although his history is lost, we have the Dynasties tolerably entire. His excellence as an historian is placed in the clearest light by the monuments which are now made accessible to us; and the notices concerning him transmitted by Greek and Latin authors, are in no respect contradictory. The writers by whom the works of Manetho have been preserved to us, are:

Julius Africanus, Bishop of Emmæus, or Nicopolis, in Judæa, a man of learning, research, and probity, who wrote in the beginning of the third century, A.C.;

Eusebius, Bishop of Cesarea, in Palestine, about a hundred years later than Africanus; and

Syncellus, a Byzantine monk, of the beginning of the ninth century.

The lists of Manetho comprise 30 Dynasties. Egyptian history is divided into three periods—the Old Monarchy, which comprised 13 Dynasties; the Middle Monarchy, which included the 14th and 17th Dynasties; and the New Monarchy, which, commencing with the 18th, ended with Nectanebus, the last of the Pharaohs, 339 years before Christ.

“The result of our chronological investigations (Bunsen and Lepsius) has been, to carry us up to the foundation of an empire in Egypt, and to a series of kings whose names have not only been registered and transmitted to us by the Egyptians themselves, but which are now legible on Egyptian monuments, most of them erected in the lifetime of the kings whose names they record.”—Bunsen.

Dynasty. | Origin. | Names of the Kings in the Lists of Manetho, or of Eratosthenes. | Names of the same Kings in other Authors. | Approximate Dates B.C. of beginning of Dynasty. | REMARKABLE EVENTS.
Bunsen. | Lepsius.[375]

I.

Thinite.

Menes

Menaios, Herodotus

3643

3893

Menes, born at Abydos, or This, in Upper Egypt. Several States existed in the Thebaid and Delta before his time, and he united them in one Monarchy. He founded Memphis. Under Semempses, the building of the Pyramid at the Labyrinth in the Fayoum, the oldest existing in Egypt.

| | Athothis | | |
| | Kenkenes | | |
| | Menephis | Mnevis, Pliny | |
| | Semempses | { Ismandes, Strabo | |
| | { Osymandyas, Diodorus | |

II.

Thinite.

Boethos

Under Kaiechos, the introduction of the worship of the Bull,—Apis at Memphis, and Mnevis at Heliopolis, and of the Mendesian Goat.

| | Kaiechos | Choos-Kechoos | |
| | Binothris | | |
| | Tlas | | |
| | Sethenes | | |
| | Chaires | | |
| | Nephercheres | | |
| | Sesochris | | |
| | Cheneres | | |

III.

Memphite.

Sesorcheres

3453

3640

Under Sesortosis the introduction of building with hewn stones; also improvements in the art of writing. Building of the Pyramids of Dashour.

| | Toichares | | |
| | Sesortosis | Ægyptus, Diodorus | |
| | Mares | Sasychis, Herodotus | |
| | An-Soyphis | | |
IV. | Memphite. | Saophis | { Cheops, Herodotus | 3229 | 3426 | Builder of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh.
| | { Chufu | |
| | Saophis II. | { Chephren | | | Builds the second Pyramid.
| | { Schafra | |
| | Mencheres | { Menkera | | | Builds the third Pyramid.
| | Mencheres II. | { Mykerinus | |
| | Pammês | | | |
V. | Elephantine. | Usercheris | | | c. 3150 |
| | Snephres | | |
| | Nephercheres | | |
| | Sisires | | |
| | Cheres | | |
| | Rathures | | |
| | Mencheres | | |
| | Tancheres | | |
| | Onnos | Unas | |
VI. | Memphite. | Othoes | | 3074 | | Phiops (Mœris) formed out of the desert, the fertile district of the Fayoum.
| | Phios | | |
| | Methusuphis | | |
| | Phiops | Apappus, Eratos., the Mœris of the Greeks and Romans | |
| | Menthesuphis | | |
| | Nitokris (a queen), widow of Phiops, resigned after the death of her son Menthesuphis | | |
VII. to XI. | Manetho does not give the names of the Kings of these Dynasties; none between Nitokris and Amenemes. | 2967 | c. 2960 |

XII. & XIII.

Theban.

Amenemhe I.

{ Osirtasen

2801

c. 2330

Sesortesen I. conquers Ethiopia; erects the Obelisk of Heliopolis. Amenemhe III., the builder of the Labyrinth in the Fayoum. Foundation of Thebes by Sesortesen I.

| | Sesortesen I. | 2654 | c. 2120
| | Amenemhe II. | | |
| | Sesortesen II. | The Great Sesostris of the Greeks | |
| | Amenemhe III. | Mares Amenemes Memnon of the Greeks | |
XIV. | } The Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings. |
XV.
XVI.
XVII.

XVIII.

Theban.

Amos

Aahmes

1638

Under Tuthmosis III. the temple on the eastern side of Thebes was built—Drove the Hyksos from the frontier—The Israelites sorely oppressed. Erection of the obelisks at Alexandria by Tuthmosis III.

| | | Amasis | |
| | Amenophis I. | Amenatep | |
| | Tuthmosis I. | Tuthmes | |
| | ” II. | ” | |
| | ” III. | ” | |
| | Amenophis II. | Amenatep | |
| | Tuthmosis IV. | Tuthmes | |
| | Amenophis III. | Amenatep | |
| | Horus | Her | |

XIX.

Theban.

Ramesses

Ramses

1409

c. 1440

Ramesses II. built many of the chief monuments now existing. Formed the Cave Temples at Abu-Simbel. His monument, the Colossus at Mitrahenny, on the site of Memphis. Great extension of Thebes under Sethôs I.

| | Sethôs I. | Seti | |
| | Ramesses II. | Sesostris | |
| | Miamun | | |
| | Menophthah | Menophres | 1322 |
| | Sethôs II. | Seti | |

XX.

Theban.

Merr-Ra

Phuoro, Nilus

1297

c. 1270

Ramses III. leads great armies into Asia, and is a conqueror nearly equal in renown to Sethôs I. and his son Ramesses II. Built the Temples of Medînet-Hâbu.

| | Ramses III. | | |
| | ” IV. | | |
| | ” V. | | |
| | ” VI. | | |
| | ” VII. | | |
| | ” VIII. | | |
| | ” IX. | | |
| | ” X. | | |
| | ” XI. | | |
| | ” XII. | | |
| | ” XIII. | | |
XXI. | Tanite. | Smendes | Smen-Titi | 1112 | |
| | Phusemes | Pi-Scham | |
| | Nephercheres | Nefru-ke-ra | |
| | Menophthes | Menephthah | |
| | Osochor | Peher-Se-Amen | |
| | Phinaches | Pianch | |
| | Phusemes | Pi-Scham-Miamn II. | |
XXII. | Bubastite. | Sheshonk I. | Sesonchis | 982 | | Sheshonk I. takes Jerusalem about 970, and many cities in Judæa. He is the Schischak of the Bible.
| | Osorkon I. | Usuken, Userken, Oserkan | |
| | Peher | | |
| | Osorkon II. | | |
| | Sheshonk II. | | |
| | Takelet I. | Takiloth | |
| | Osorkon III. | | |
| | Sheshonk III. | | |
| | Takelet II. | | |
XXIII. | Tanite. | Petubastes | Pet-subast, Pet-Pacht | 832 | |
| | Osorcho | Oserkna, Userken | |
| | Osorcho | P-Si-Mut | |
| | Zet, Sethôs | | |
XXIV. | Saite. | Bocchoris | | 743 | |
XXV. | Ethiopian. | Sevech I. | Shabak, Sabako | 737 | | Schabak and Tahraka are the So and Tirhakah of the Bible.
| | Sevech II. | | |
| | Tirhaka | Tahraka, Taheika | |
XXVI. | Saite. | Stephinales | | 687 | c. 680 | Arches in the tombs near the Pyramids of Gizeh.
| | Nechepsos | | |
| | Necho I. | | |
| | Psammetik I. | Psammetichus | |
| | Necho II. | | |
| | Psammetik II. | | |
| | Psammetik III. | | |
XXVII. | Persian. | Cambyses | | 525 | 525 | Conquest of Egypt by Cambyses.
| | Darius I. Hystaspes | | |
| | Xerxes I. | | |
| | Artabanos | | |
| | Artaxerxes | | |
| | Xerxes II. | | |
| | Sogdianos | | |
| | Darius II. Nothus | | |
XXVIII. | Saite. | Amyrteos | | 414 | |
XXIX. | Mendesian. | Nepherites | | 408 | 399 |
| | Achoris | | |
| | Psammuthis | | |
| | Nephorites | | |
XXX. | Sebennytic. | Nectanebus I. | | 387 | 378 | Nectanebus I. builds a temple at Philæ.
| | Teos | | |
| | Nectanebus II., last of the Pharaohs | | |
| Persian. | Alexander conquers Egypt | Ochus | 340 | 340 |
| | Arses | 338 | 338
| | Darius | 336 | 336
| | | 332 | 332

AGE OF THE PTOLEMIES. | Lepsius.
I. | Ptolemy Lagus, Soter I. | 305
II. | ” Philadelphus | 285
III. | ” Euergetes I. | 247
IV. | ” Philopator I. | 222
V. | ” Epiphanes | 205
VI. | ” Eupator | 181
VII. | ” Philometor | 181
VIII. | ” Philopator II. | 146
IX. | ” Euergetes | 146
X. | ” Soter II. | 117
XI. | ” Alexander I. | 107
XII. | ” Alexander II. | 81
XIII. | ” Neos Dionysos | 81
| Cleopatra VI. Philopator. |
| With Ptolemy XIV. | 52
| With ” XV. | 48
| With ” XVI. Cæsar | 45
| With Mark Antony | 37
| Egypt a Roman province | 30

APPENDIX.

(A, p. 239.)

Observations on the Discovery, by Professor Lepsius, of Sculptured Marks on Rocks in the Nile Valley in Nubia; indicating that, within the historical period, the river had flowed at a higher level than has been known in Modern Times. By Leonard Horner, Esq., F.R.S.S. L. & E., F.G.S., &c. (This paper is here reprinted[376] at the request of Professor Lepsius.)

The recent archaiological researches of Professor Lepsius in Egypt, and the Valley of the Nile, in Nubia, have given a deserved celebrity and authority to his name, among all who take an interest in the early history of that remarkable portion of the Old World. While examining the ruins of a fortress, and of two temples of high antiquity at Semne, in Nubia, he discovered marks cut in the solid rocks, and in the foundation-stones of the fortress, indicating that, at a very remote period in the annals of the country, the Nile must have flowed at a level considerably above the highest point which it has ever reached during the greatest inundations in modern times. This remarkable fact would possess much geological interest with respect to any great river, but it does so especially in the case of the Nile. Its annual inundations, and the uniformity in the periods of its rise and fall, have been recorded with considerable accuracy for many centuries; the solid matter held in suspension in its waters, slowly deposited on the land overflowed, has been productive of changes in the configuration of the country, not only in times long antecedent to history, but throughout all history, down to the present day. Of no other river on the earth’s surface do we possess such or similar records; and, moreover, the Nile, and the changes it has produced on the physical character of Egypt, are intimately associated with the earliest records and traditions of the human race. Everything, therefore, relating to the physical history of the Nile Valley must always be an object of interest; but the discovery of Professor Lepsius is one peculiarly deserving the attention of the geologist; for he does not merely record the facts of the markings of the former high level of the river, but he infers from these marks that since the reign of Mœris, about 2200 years before our era, the entire bed of the Nile, in Lower Nubia, must have been excavated to a depth of about 27 feet; and he further speculates as to the process by which he believes the excavation to have been effected.

It will be convenient, before entering upon the observations I have to offer upon the cause assigned by Professor Lepsius for the former higher levels of the Nile indicated by these marks, that I should give the description of the discovery itself, by translating Dr. Lepsius’s own account of it, in letters which he addressed to his friends, Professors Ehrenberg and Böckh of Berlin, from the island of Philæ, in September, 1844[377].

“You may probably remember, when travelling to Dongola on the Lybian side of the Nile, and in passing through the district of Batn el hagér, that one of the most considerable of the cataracts of the country occurs near Semne, a very old fortress, with a handsome temple, built of sandstone, in a good state of preservation; the track of the caravan passing close to it, partly over the 4000-year-old artificial road. The track on the eastern bank of the river is higher up, being carried through the hills; and you must turn off from it at this point in order to see the cataract. This Nile-pass, the narrowest with which I am acquainted, according to the measurement of Hr. Erbkam, is 380 metres (1247 English feet) broad[378]; and both in itself, and on account of the monuments existing there, is one of the most interesting localities in the country, and we passed twelve days in its examination.

“The river is here confined between steep rocky cliffs on both sides, whose summits are occupied by two fortresses of the most ancient and most massive construction, distinguishable at once from the numerous other forts, which, in the time of the Nubian power in this land of cliffs, were erected on most of the larger islands, and on the hills commanding the river. The cataract (or rapid) derives its name of Semne from that of the higher of the two fortresses on the western bank; that on the opposite bank, as well as a poor village lying somewhat south of it, is called Kumme. In both fortresses the highest and best position is occupied by a temple, built of huge blocks of sandstone, of two kinds, which must have been brought from a great distance through the rapids; for, southward, no sandstone is found nearer than Gebel Abir, in the neighbourhood of Amara and the island of Sai (between 80 and 90 English miles), and northward, there is none nearer than the great division of the district at Wadi Halfa (30 miles distant).

“Both temples were built in the time of Tutmosis III., a king of the 18th dynasty, about 1600 years before Christ; but the fortresses in which they stand are of a more ancient date. The foundations of these are granite blocks of Cyclopian dimensions, resting on the rock, and scarcely inferior to the rock itself in durability. They were erected by the first conqueror of the country, King Sesurtesen III., of the 12th Dynasty, in order to command the river, so easily done in so narrow a gorge. The immediate successor of this king was Amenemha III., the Mœris of the Greeks: he who accomplished the gigantic work of forming the artificial lake of Mœris, in the Fayoum, and from whose time—the most flourishing of the whole of the old Egyptian kingdom—the risings of the Nile in successive years, doubtless by means of regular markings, as indeed Diodorus tells, remained so well known, that, according to Herodotus, they were recorded in distinct numbers from the time of Mœris. It appears that this provident king, occupied with great schemes for the welfare of his country, considered it of great importance that the rising of the Nile on the most southern border of his kingdom should be observed, and the results forthwith communicated widely in other parts of the land, to prepare the people for the inundations. The gorge at Semne offered greater advantages for this object than any other point; because the river was there securely confined by precipitous rocky cliffs on each side. With the same view he had doubtless caused Nilometers to be fixed at Assuan and other suitable places; for without a comparison with these, the observations at Semne could be of little use.

“The highest rise of the Nile in each year at Semne, was registered by a mark, indicating the year of the king’s reign, cut in the granite, either on one of the blocks forming the foundation of the fortress, or on the cliff, and particularly on the east or right bank, as best adapted for the purpose. Of these markings eighteen still remain, thirteen of them having been made in the reign of Mœris, and five in the time of his two next successors. These last kings discontinued the observations; for, in the mean time, the irruption of the Asiatic pastoral tribes into Lower Egypt took place, and well-nigh brought the whole kingdom to ruin. The record is almost always in the same terms, short and simple: Ra en Hapi en renpe ... mouth or gate of the Nile in the year.... And then follows the year of the reign, and the name of the king. It is written in a horizontal row of hieroglyphics, included within two lines—the upper line indicating the particular height of the water, as is often specially stated—

“The earliest date preserved is that of the sixth year of the king’s reign, and he reigned 42 years and some months. The next following dates are, the years 9, 14, 15, 20, 22, 23, 24, 30, 32, 37, 40, 41, and 43; and include, therefore, under this king, a period of 37 years. Of the remaining dates, that only of the 4th year of his two successors is available; all the others, which are on the west or left bank of the river, have been moved from their original place by the rapid floods which have overthrown and carried forward vast masses of rock. One single mark only, that of the 9th year of Amenemha, has been preserved in its original place on one of the building stones, but somewhat below the principal rapid.

“We have now to consider the relation which these—the most ancient of all existing marks of the risings of the Nile—bear to the levels of the river in our own time. We have here presented to us the remarkable facts, that the highest of the records now legible, viz., that of the 30th year of the reign of Amenemha, according to exact measurements which I made, is 8·17 metres (26 feet 8 inches) higher than the highest level to which the Nile rises in years of the greatest floods; and further, that the lowest mark, which is on the east bank, and indicated the 15th year of the same king, is still 4·14 metres (13 feet 6½ inches): and the single mark on the west bank, indicating the 9th year, is 2·77 metres (9 feet) above the same highest level.

“The mean rise of the river, recorded by the marks on the east bank, during the reign of Mœris, is 19·14 metres (62 feet 6 inches) above the lowest level of the water in the present day, which, according to the statements of the most experienced boatmen, does not change from year to year, and therefore represents the actual level of the Nile, independently of its increase by the falls of rain, in the mountains in which its sources are situated. The mean rise above the lowest level, at the present time, is 11·84 metres (38 feet 8 inches); and, therefore, in the time of Mœris, or about 2200 years before Christ, the mean height of the river, at the cataract or rapid of Semne, during the inundation, was 7·30 metres (23 feet 10 inches) above the mean level in the present day.”

Such are the facts recorded by Dr. Lepsius; and then follow, in the same letter, his views as to the cause of the remarkable lowering of the level of the river.

“There is certainly no reason for believing,” he says, “that there has been any diminution in the general volume of water coming from the south. The great change in the level can, therefore, only be accounted for by some changes in the land, and these must also have altered the whole nature of the Nile Valley. There seems to be but one cause for the very considerable lowering of the Nile; namely, the washing out and excavations of the catacombs (Auswaschen und Aushölen der Katakomben[379]); and this is quite possible from the nature of the rocks themselves, which, it is true, are of a quality that could not well be rent asunder, and carried away by the mere force of the water, but might be acted upon directly by the rising of the water-level, and the consequent effects of the sun and air on the places left dry, causing cracks, into which earth and sand would penetrate, which would then give rise to still greater rents, until, at last, the rocks would of themselves fall in, by having been hollowed out, a process that would be hastened in those parts of the hills where softer and earthy beds existed, and which would be more easily washed away. But that, in historical times, within a period of about 4000 years, so great an alteration should take place in the hardest rocks, is a fact of the most remarkable kind—one which may afford ground for many other important considerations.

“The elevation of the water-level at Semne must necessarily have affected all the lands above; and, it is to be presumed, that the level of the province of Dongola was at one time higher, as Semne cannot be the only place in the long tract of cliffs where the bed of rock has been hollowed out. It is to be conceived, therefore, that not only the widely-extended tracts in Dongola, but those of all the higher country in Meröe, and as far up as Fasogle, which, in the present day, are dry and barren on both sides of the river, and are with difficulty irrigated by artificial contrivances, must then have presented a very different aspect, when the Nile overflowed them, and yearly deposited its fertile mud to the limits of the sandy desert.

“Lower Nubia also, between Wadi Halfa and Assuan, is now arid almost throughout its whole extent. The present land of the valley, which is only partly irrigated by water-wheels, is, on an average, from 6 to 12 feet higher than the level to which the Nile now rises; and although the rise at Semne might have no immediate influence upon it, yet what has occurred there makes it more than probable that at Assuan there was formerly a very different level of the river, and that the cataracts there, even in the historical period, have been considerably worn down. The continued impoverishment of Nubia is a proof of this. I have no manner of doubt that the land in this lower part of the valley, which, as already stated, is at present about 10 feet above the highest rise of the Nile, was inundated by it within historical time. Many marks are also met with here, that leave no doubt regarding the condition of the Nile Valley antecedent to history, when the river must have risen much higher; for it has left an alluvial soil in almost all the considerable bays, at an average height of 10 metres (32 feet 9 inches) above the present mean rise of the river. That alluvial soil, since that period, has doubtless been considerably diminished in extent by the action of rain. On the 17th of August Hr. Erbkam and I measured the nearest alluvial hillock in the neighbourhood of Korusko, and found it 6·91 metres (22 feet 7 inches) above the general level of the valley, and 10·26 metres (33 feet 7 inches) above the present mean rise of the river. That rise, which at Semne, on account of the greater confinement of the stream between the rocks, varies as much as 2·40 metres (7 feet 10 inches) in different years, varies at Korusko less than 1 metre (3 feet 3 inches).

“Near Abusimbel, on the west bank, I found the ground of the temple 6·50 metres (21 feet 2 inches) above the highest water-level. This temple, it is well known, was built under Rameses the Great, between 1388 and 1322 years before Christ. Near Ibrîm there are, on the east bank, four grottoes excavated in the vertical rock that bounds the river, which belong partly to the 18th and partly to the 19th Dynasties; the last, under Rameses the Great, is also the lowest, and only 2·50 metres (8 feet 1 inch) above the highest inundation; the next in height is 2·70 metres (8 feet 9½ inches) above the former, and was made 250 years earlier, under Tutmes III. Although I only measured the present level of the valley near Korusko, nevertheless it appears to me that, during the whole of the new kingdom, that is, from about 1700 years before Christ to this time, the Nile has not reached to the full height of the low land of the valley.

“It is, however, conceivable that, at the time when the present low land of the Nubian Valley was formed, the cataracts at Assuan were in a totally different state; one that would, in some degree, justify the overcharged descriptions of the ancients, according to whom they made so great a noise that the dwellers near them became deaf. The damming up of the inundation at Assuan could have no material influence on Egypt, any more than that at Semne, or the land from thence to Assuan.”

It appears, therefore, from the above statements, that at the time mentioned, the Nile, during the inundations, stood 26 feet 8 inches higher than the highest level to which it now rises in years of the greatest floods; and that, to account for this, Professor Lepsius conceives that, between the time of Mœris and the present day, the bed of the Nile, from a considerable distance above Semne to Assuan, must have been worn down to that extent. In the index to the volume of the Berlin Monatsbericht, in which the letters of Professor Lepsius are inserted, there is the following line:—

“Nil, senkung seines Bettes um 25 Fuss seit 4000 Jahren.”

“Nile, sinking of its bed about 25 feet (Paris) within the last 4000 years.”

Rivers are, undoubtedly, among the most active agents of change that are operating on the earth’s surface; the solid matter which renders their waters turbid, and which they unceasingly carry to the sea, afford indisputable proof of this agency. But the power of rivers to abrade and wear down the rocks over which they flow, and to form and deepen their own bed, depends upon a variety of circumstances not always taken into account; and although the great extent of that power, in both respects, is shown in the case of many rivers, to conclude, as some have done, from these instances, that all rivers have excavated the channels in which they flow, is a generalisation that cannot be safely assented to. The excavation of the bed of a river is one of those problems in geological dynamics which can only be rightly solved by each particular case being subjected to the rigorous examination of the mathematician and the physicist. The solid matter which rivers carry forward is in part only the produce of their own abrading power; and the amount of it must be proportional to that power, which is mainly dependent on their velocity; they are the recipients of the waste of the adjoining lands by other combined agencies, and the carriers of it to the lower districts and to the sea. They often afford the strongest evidence of the vast lapse of time that must be included between the beginning and close of a geological period; and, when they flow through countries whose remote political history is known to us, they supply a scale by which we may measure and estimate that lapse of time. This is especially so in the case of the Nile.

When so startling an hypothesis as that now referred to, viz., that the entire bed of so vast a river as the Nile, for more than 250 miles, from Semne to Assuan, has been excavated, within historical time, to a depth of 27 feet, is made by a person whose name carries so much weight in one department of philosophical inquiry, the statement involves such important geological considerations, that it becomes the duty of the geologist to examine, and thoroughly test, the soundness of the explanation, in order that the authority of Professor Lepsius for the accuracy of the facts observed, may not be too readily admitted as conclusive for the correctness of his theory of the cause to which they owe their existence. That there has been such an undoubting admission, appears from the following passage in the work of one of the latest writers on Nubia:

“The translation of the name of this town (Aswán) is ‘the opening;’ and a great opening this once was, before the Nile had changed its character in Ethiopia, and when the more ancient races made this rock (at the first cataract) their watch-tower on the frontier between Egypt and the south. That the Nile has changed its character, south of the first cataract, has been made clear by some recent examinations of the shores and monuments of Nubia. Dr. Lepsius has discovered water-marks so high on the rocks and edifices, and so placed as to compel the conviction that the bed of the Nile has sunk extraordinarily by some great natural process, either of convulsion or wear. The apparent exaggerations of some old writers about the cataracts at Syene may thus be in some measure accounted for. If there really was once a cataract here, instead of the rapids at the present day, there is some excuse for the reports given from hearsay by Cicero and Seneca. Cicero says, that ‘the river throws itself headlong from the loftiest mountains, so that those who live nearest are deprived of the sense of hearing, from the greatness of the noise.’ Seneca’s account is: ‘When some people were stationed there by the Persians, their ears were so stunned with the constant roar, that it was found necessary to remove them to a more quiet place[380].’”

The learned author of an article on Egyptian Chronology and History in the “Prospective Review” for May, 1850, in referring to the contributions of Professor Lepsius to Egyptian history, says: “He has discovered undescribed pyramids, equal in number to those known before; has traced the Labyrinth, and ascertained its founder. He has detected inscriptions on the banks of the Nile, which show that its bed has subsided many feet in historic times.” 9th June, 1850.

In the assumption of an excavation of the bed of the river, we have no small amount of wear to deal with, for the distance from Semne to Assuan, following the course of the river, is not less than 250 miles; and if, as Professor Lepsius supposes, the excavation extended to Meröe, we have a distance, between that place and Assuan, of not less than 600 miles.

Although these records of a former high level of the Nile at Semne had not been noticed by any traveller prior to Professor Lepsius, we may rest fully assured of the accuracy of his statements, from the habitual care and diligence, and the established character for fidelity, of the observer. The silence of other travellers may be readily accounted for by this, that none of them appear to have remained more than a very short time at this spot—not even the diligent Russegger—whereas we have seen that Professor Lepsius passed twelve days in the examination of this gorge in the Nile Valley.

The theory of a lowering of the bed of the river by wearing, involves two main considerations, viz., the power of the stream, and the degree of hardness of the rocks acted upon. The power depends upon the volume and velocity of the river—the velocity on its depth, and the degree of inclination of the bed: the hardness of the rocks we can form a tolerable estimate of when we know their nature. To judge, therefore, of the probability of the hypothesis of Professor Lepsius, we must inquire into the physical and geological features of the Nile Valley, in Nubia.

In the observations I have now to offer, my information has been derived of course entirely from the works of other travellers, particularly those of Burckhardt, Rüppell, and Russegger[381], and especially the latter, who travelled in Nubia in 1837; for he not only enters far more into the details of the natural history of the country, but he is the only traveller in Nubia who appears, from previous acquirements, to have been competent to describe its natural history with any degree of accuracy—I refer more particularly to the physical and geological features of the country. Besides full descriptions in his volumes, he has given a geological map of Nubia, and also several sections, or what may more properly be called vertical sketches—a term that would, perhaps, be a more appropriate designation for all sections that are not drawn to a true scale, or at least when the proportion of height to horizontal distance is not stated.

The Physical Geography of Lower Nubia[382].

Russegger informs us[383], that he believes he was the first traveller who had succeeded in making a series of barometrical measurements along the Nile Valley, from the Mediterranean to Sennaar and Kordofan, and thence to the 10th degree of north latitude. He gives the following altitudes, above the sea:

| Paris Feet. | | English Feet.
The upper part of the Cataract of Assuan | 342 | = | 364·37
Korusko, on the right bank of the Nile, in Nubia | 450 | = | 479·43
Wadi Halfa | 490 | = | 522·00
New Dongola | 757 | = | 806·52
Abu Hammed | 963 | = | 1026·00

I shall now give the length of the Nile along its course from Abu Hammed to the island of Philæ, at the head of the cataract of Assuan. I employ for this purpose the map in the atlas which accompanies the work of Russegger, which bears the date of 1846, and which, doubtless, was constructed on the best authorities. He mentions a map of General von Prokesch with great praise[384]. It flows:

| German M. | | English M.
From NE. to SW., from Abu Hammed to Meröe, about | 31 | = | 150
It makes a curve between Meröe and Old Dongola, of about | 16 | = | 77
It flows between Old and New Dongola, from SE. to NW., about | 16 | = | 77
Then, with some short windings, nearly due north to the island of Sais, for about | 30 | = | 145
And from Sais to the island of Philæ, from SW. to NE., about | 68 | = | 327
Making the whole length of the course, from Abu Hammed to Philæ, about | 161 | = | 776

Ascending the river, we have, between Philæ and Korusko, a distance of 24 German, or 115½ English miles, and without any rapid, except one near Kalabsche. Korusko being 115 feet above the head of the cataract of Assuan, at Philæ, we have an average fall of the river between these two places of a foot in a mile.

Between Korusko and Wadi Halfa there is no rapid. The distance being 20 German, or 96⅓ English miles, and the difference of altitude being 42½ feet, we have an average fall throughout that part of the river’s course of not more than 5·3 inches in a mile.

This very inconsiderable fall need not surprise us; for the average fall of the Nile in Lower Egypt, at the lowest water, is little more than one-third of that now stated. At the time of the highest water the surface of the Nile, at Boulak, near Cairo—that is, about 116 miles in a direct line from the coast—is only 43·437 English feet above the level of the Mediterranean, and at the time of the lowest water, only 17·33 feet. Thus, in the first case, there is an average fall of about 5·00 inches; in the second, of not more than 1·80 inches in a mile[385].

Between Wadi Halfa and Dale, a distance of about 94 miles, six cataracts, or schellals, as they are called in the language of the country, are marked in Russegger’s map. And here, it may be as well to notice, that there are no cataracts, in the ordinary sense of the term, on the Nile; no fall of the river over a precipice; all the so-called cataracts are rapids, where the river rushes through rocks in its bed; the rapids varying in their length and degrees of inclination. We have no measurements of their lengths or of their falls, except as regards the first and second cataracts. The former, according to Russegger, has a fall of about 85 English feet in a distance of about 8 miles; and he describes the latter as extending from 5 to 6 stunden; that is, from 12 to 14½ miles, but he does not give the height. Speaking of the schellals above Semne, Russegger says, that all may be passed in boats without difficulty for about six weeks, or two months in the year. This is the case also at the cataract or rapid of Assuan. But between Wadi Halfa and Dale, with some inconsiderable spaces of free navigable water, in the ordinary state of the river, there is an almost uninterrupted series of rapids. We have no measurement of the height of Dale above Wadi Halfa, near to which the second great cataract of the Nile occurs; but this is the part of the river’s course where the fall is greatest, and from Semne to Dale there are about 45 miles of this more rapid fall.

From Dale to New Dongola, a distance of 35 German, or about 168 English miles, only three rapids are marked on Russegger’s map—the highest being at Hannek, about 26 English miles below New Dongola. New Dongola being 806 English feet above the sea, and the distance from that place to the rapid of Hannek being 26 miles only, we may with probability estimate the surface of the river at the rapid of Hannek at 780 feet above the sea. Now, Wadi Halfa being 522 feet, we have a difference of height, between these two last-named places, of 258 feet; and the length of the river’s course between them being 236 miles, we have an average fall of 13·12 inches in a mile; that is, in the part of the river’s course where nine rapids occur, in the provinces of Batn-el-Hadjar, Sukkôt, and Dar-el-Mahass, where the river flows over granite and other plutonic rocks; gneiss, mica-schist, and other hard rocks, which Russegger considers to be metamorphic. But between Semne and the head of the second cataract at Wadi Halfa, there is not a continuous rapid stream; for Hoskins says, that about two miles above that cataract, the river has a width of a third of a mile, and, when he passed it, the water was scarcely ruffled[386].

From the rapid of Hannek to Abu Hammed the distance is 329 English miles, and the difference of altitude is 246 English feet. We have thus an average fall in that distance of 9·00 inches in a mile.

Thus, in the 776 miles between Abu Hammed and Philæ, we have an average fall of the Nile

Of | 9·00 | inches in a mile, | for a distance of | 329 | miles.
Of | 13·12 | ” | ” | 236 | ”
Of | 5·30 | ” | ” | 96 | ”
Of | 12·00 | ” | ” | 115 | ”

Of the Breadth, Depth, and Velocity of the Nile, in Nubia.

Our information is very scanty respecting the breadth and depth of the river, either at the time of lowest water or during the inundations. About two miles above Philæ, it is stated by Jomard[387] to be 3000 metres, or nearly two English miles wide. At the second cataract, or rapid of Wadi Halfa, it spreads over a rocky bed of nearly two miles and a quarter in width (2000 klafter)[388], but contracts above the rapid to a third of a mile. Russegger also states, that the Nile, near Boulak, in Lower Egypt, is 2000 toises, nearly two-and-a-half English miles in breadth, and yet that it is considerably wider in some parts of Southern Nubia; but Burckhardt says that the bed of the Nile in Nubia is, in general, much narrower than in any part of Egypt. Near Kalabsche, about 30 miles above Philæ, the river runs through a gorge not more than 300 paces wide, and its bed is full of granite blocks. It shortly afterwards again widens for some distance; but near Sialla, 78 miles above Philæ, it is contracted by the sandstone hills on both sides coming so near each other, that the river’s bed is again not more than from 250 to 300 paces wide. It is about 600 yards broad about two miles above the second cataract near Wadi Halfa, but is again very much contracted in the rocky region of Batn-el-Hadjar. At Aulike it is only 200 paces broad[389].

I have not met with any measurements of the depth of the river in any part of its course in Nubia; but Hoskins describes it as being so shallow at the island of Sais, 327 miles above Philæ, on the 9th of June, which would be before the commencement of the inundation, as only to reach the knees of the camels[390]. Near Derr, about 86 miles below the Cataract of Wadi Halfa, Norden, in January, found the river so shallow that loaded camels waded through it, and his boat frequently struck the ground. In May, Burckhardt found the river fordable at Kostamne, 53 miles above Philæ; and Parthey states, that between Philæ and the island of Bageh, to the west of it, the river is so shallow before the commencement of the inundation, that it may be waded through[391]. Burckhardt says, that from March to June the Nile-water, in Nubia, is quite limpid[392]. Miss Martineau, who visited Nubia in December and January, speaking of the river above Philæ, says, that it “was divided into streamlets and ponds by the black islets. Where it was overshadowed it was dark-grey or deep blue, but when the light caught it rushing between a wooded island and the shore, it was of the clearest green[393].” At the second cataract she describes the river as “dashing and driving among its thousand islets, and then gathering its thousand currents into one, proceeds calmly in its course[394].”

Although we have no accurate measurements of the velocity of the Nile in Nubia, we may arrive at an approximate estimate of it by comparing its fall with that of a river well known to us.

I have stated the fall of the Nile in different parts of its course to be 5·30, 9·00, 12·00, and 13·12 inches in a mile. The fall of the Thames from Wallingford to Teddington Lock, where the influence of the tide ends, is as follows:

Length
of
Course.

Fall.

Fall in
Inches
per Mile.

| Miles. F. | Feet. in. |
From Wallingford to Reading Bridge | 18·0 | 24·1 | 15·72
From Reading to Henley Bridge | 9·0 | 19·3 | 25·68
From Henley to Marlow Bridge | 9·0 | 12·2 | 16·20
From Marlow to Maidenhead Bridge | 8·0 | 15·1 | 22·32
From Maidenhead to Windsor Bridge | 7·0 | 13·6 | 23·16
From Windsor to Staines Bridge | 8·0 | 15·8 | 23·52
From Staines to Chertsey Bridge | 4·6 | 6·6 | 17·28
From Chertsey to Teddington Lock | 13·6 | 19·8 | 17·40
| 77·4 | 125·11 |

“In general, the velocity may be estimated at from half a mile to two miles and three-quarters per hour; but the mean velocity may be reckoned at two miles per hour. In the year 1794, the late Mr. Rennie found the velocity of the Thames at Windsor two miles and a half per hour[395].”

It will thus be seen that the velocity of the Nile is probably greatly inferior to that of the Thames; for it appears that, except during the inundation, for more than half the year the depth is inconsiderable. The average fall when greatest, that is, including the province of Batn-el-Hadjar, where the rapids chiefly occur, is considerably less than that of any part of the above course of the Thames; so that there must be long intervals between the rapids where the fall must be far less than 13 inches in a mile. The breadth of the Nile is vastly greater; but supposing the depth of the water to be the same as that of the Thames, on account of the friction of the bed, the greater breadth would add very little to the velocity. If we assume the average depth of the Thames in the above distance to be 5 feet, and that it flows with an average velocity of 2 miles in an hour, and if we assume the average depth of the Nile in that part of its course where the fall is 13·12 inches to be 10 feet, when not swollen by the rise, the velocity would be 2⅘ miles nearly in an hour[396], if the fall were equal to that of the Thames. We shall probably come near the truth, by assuming the velocity of the Nile on this part at 2 miles in an hour. That it must be considerably less in the other divisions of the course I have named, and especially in that part immediately below the second cataract, where the average fall is only 5·30 inches for a distance of 96 miles, is quite evident.

The power of a river to abrade the soil over which it flows, so far as water is by itself capable of doing so, must depend upon its volume and velocity, and the degree of hardness of the material acted upon. The power is increased when the water has force enough to transport hard substances. But even transported gravel has little action on the rocks with which it comes in contact, when it is free to move in running water, unless the fall be considerable, and, consequently, the velocity and force of the stream great. When stones are firmly set in moving ice, they then acquire a great erosive power, cutting and wearing down the rocks they are forcibly rubbed against; but this condition never obtains in Lower Nubia, as ice is unknown there.

Geological Structure of Lower Nubia.

One kind only of regularly stratified rock occurs in the 776 miles from Abu Hammed to Philæ; viz., a silicious sandstone, similar to that which occurs to a great extent on both sides of the Nile in Upper Egypt, and which Russegger, after a very careful examination of it there, considers to be an equivalent of the greensand of the cretaceous rocks of Europe. The tertiary nummulite limestone, so abundant in Egypt, has not hitherto been met with in Nubia.

The Nile flows over this sandstone for nearly 426 miles of the entire distance, but not continuously. At Abu Hammed, it flows over granitic rocks, and these continue from that place for about 120 miles. There is then about 215 miles of the sandstone, which is succeeded by igneous and metamorphic rocks, that continue for 195 miles without any interruption, except a narrow stripe of sandstone of about 15 miles near Amara. It is in this region of hard igneous rocks that nearly all the rapids occur, between that of Hannek and the great or second cataract at Wadi Halfa. From the latter place there is sandstone throughout a distance of about 196 miles, and then commences the granitic region of the Cataract of Assuan, through which the Nile flows about 35 miles. Thus we have about 350 miles of igneous and metamorphic rocks, and about 426 of sandstone.

The general hard nature of the igneous and metamorphic rocks, over which the Nile flows for about 155 miles above Semne, and for about 40 immediately below it, will be recognised by my naming some of the varieties described by Russegger, viz., granites of various kinds, often penetrated by greenstone dykes; sienite, diorite, and felspar porphyries; gneiss, and clay slate, penetrated by numerous quartz veins.

The siliceous sandstone is very uniform in its character; and in Nubia, as in Egypt, the only organic bodies which it has as yet been found to contain, are silicified stems of wood. Occasionally, as in the neighbourhood of Korusko, interstratified beds of marly clay are met with[397].

When, therefore, we take into account the hard nature of the siliceous sandstone, the durability of which is shown by the very ancient monuments of Egypt and Nubia, that are formed of it, and the still greater hardness of the granites and other crystalline rocks, it is manifest that the wearing action of a river flowing over so gentle a fall, can scarcely be appreciable. If the occasional beds of marly clay occur in the bank of the river, they may be washed out, and blocks of the superincumbent sandstones may fall down; but such an operation would have a tendency to raise rather than deepen the bed of the river at those places; unless the transporting power of the stream were far greater than can exist with so moderate a fall, especially in that part of the river below Semne, where, for 96 miles, it is not more than 5·3 inches, and for 115 miles below that, not more than 12 inches in a mile. Even if we suppose the river to have power to tear up its bed for some distance above Semne and below it, as far as the rapid of Wadi Halfa, it is evident that the materials brought down would be deposited, except the finest particles, in that tranquil run of 96 miles, which may be almost compared to a canal. The drains in Lincolnshire are inclined 5 inches to a mile[398]. When the annual inundations commence, the water of the Nile comes down the rapid at Assuan of a reddish colour loaded with sand and mud only; whatever detrital matter of a larger and heavier kind the Nile may have brought with it, is deposited before it reaches that point.

From all these considerations, therefore, I come to the conclusion, that the bed of the Nile cannot have been excavated, as Professor Lepsius supposes, since the date of the sculptured marks on the rock at Semne. He says, “Es lässt sich kaum eine andere Ursache für das bedeutende Fallen des Nils denken, als ein Auswaschen und Aushölen der Katakomben.” By the word Katakomben[399] he can only mean natural caverns in the rock; but such caverns are rarely, if ever, met with in sandstones, and only occasionally in limestones. If the course of the Nile were over limestone instead of sandstone, we could not for a moment entertain the idea of a succession of caverns for 200 miles beneath its bed, sometimes two miles in width, the roofs of which were to fall in; and where the igneous rocks prevail, this explanation is wholly inapplicable.

But besides the objections arising from the nature of the rocks, and the inconsiderable fall of the river, there is still another difficulty to overcome. It is to be borne in mind, that this lowering of the bed of the Nile, from Semne to Assuan, is supposed to have taken place within the last 4000 years. Between the first cataract at Assuan and the second at Wadi Halfa there are numerous remains of temples on both banks of the Nile, some of very great antiquity. “From Wadi Halfa to Philæ,” says Parthey, “there is a vast number of Egyptian monuments, almost all on the left bank of the river, and so near the water that most of them are in immediate contact with it[400].” We may rest assured that the builders of these would place them out of the reach of the highest inundations then known. Although we have many accurate descriptions of these monuments, the heights of their foundations above the surface of the river are not often given; they are, however, mentioned in some instances. I shall describe the situations of some of these buildings relatively to the present state of the river’s levels, and shall begin with those on the island of Philæ.

This island, according to the measurements of General von Prokesch, is 1200 Paris feet (1278 English) in length, and 420 (447) in breadth, and is composed of granite. Lancret informs us, that, “à l’époque des hautes eaux, l’île de Philæ est peu élevée au-dessus de leur surface: mais, lorsqu’elles sont abaissées, elle les surpasse de huit mètres.” It was formerly surrounded by a quay of masonry, portions of which may be traced at intervals, and in some places they are still in good preservation. The south-west part of the island is occupied by temples. According to Wilkinson, the principal building is a temple of Isis commenced by Ptolemy Philadelphus, who reigned from 283 to 247 years before Christ; and he adds, that it is evident an ancient building formerly stood on the site of the present great temple. Lancret, in referring to this more ancient building, says:—“Il y a des preuves certaines d’une antiquité bien plus reculée encore, puisque des pierres qui entrent dans la construction de ce même grand temple, sont des débris de quelque construction antérieure.” Rosellini considers that it was built by Nectanebus. The first king of Egypt, of the Sebennite Dynasty of that name, ascended the throne 374 years B.C., the second and last ceased to reign about 350 years B.C.[401]

Rosellini[402] informs us, that on the island of Bageh, opposite to Philæ, there are the remains of a temple of the time of Amenophis II., and a sitting statue of granite representing him. He was a king in the earlier years of the 18th Dynasty, which, according to the Chevalier Bunsen[403], began in the year 1638, and ended in 1410 B.C.

Gau[404], in describing a temple at Debu, about 12 miles above Philæ, which he visited in January, and consequently during the time of low water, states that he discovered under the sand, at the edge of the river, the remains of a terrace leading towards a temple.

A short distance north of Kalabsche, about 30 miles above Philæ, at Beil-nalli, Rosellini[405] speaks of a small temple in the following terms:—“Among the many memorials that still exist of Ramses II., the most important, in a historical point of view, is a small temple or grotto excavated in the rock!” and Wilkinson mentions it “as a small but interesting temple excavated in the rock, of the time of Ramses II., whom Champollion supposes to be the father of Sesostris or Rameses the Great[406].” He was the first king of the 19th Dynasty, which began in the year 1409 B.C.[407]

Gau[408] thus describes a monument at Gerbé Dandour:—“La chaîne de montagnes qui borde le Nil est, dans cet endroit, si approchée du lit de ce fleuve, qu’il ne reste que très peu d’espace sur la rive. Cet espace est presque entièrement occupé par le monument, et la rivière, dans ses débordemens, arrive jusqu’au pied du mur de la terrasse.”

Parthey informs us that the temple of Sebûa is about 200 feet distant from the river, in which distance there are two rows of sphinxes, and that the road between them, from the temple, ends in wide steps at the water’s edge; and he adds that Champollion refers this temple to the time of Rameses the Great[409].

It thus appears that monuments exist close to the river, some of which were constructed at least 1400 years before our era; so that taking the time of Amenemha III. to be, as Professor Lepsius states, 2200 years B.C., the excavation of the bed of the Nile which he supposes to have taken place, must have been the work, not of 4000 years but of 800. If the erosive power of the river was so active in that time, it cannot be supposed that it then ceased; it would surely have continued to deepen the bed during the following 3000 years.

At all events, the buildings on the island of Philæ demonstrate that the bed of the Nile must have been very much the same as it is now, 2200 years ago; and even a thousand years earlier it must have been the same, if the foundation of the temple on the island of Bageh, opposite to Philæ, be near the limit of the highest rise of the Nile of the present time; so that there could be no barrier at the Cataract of Assuan to dam up the Nile when they were constructed; and thus the deafening sound of the waterfall recorded by Cicero and Seneca must still be held to be an exaggeration.

The existence of alluvial soil, apparently of the same kind as that deposited by the Nile, in situations above the Cataract of Assuan, at a level considerably above the highest point which the inundations of the river have reached in modern times, to which allusion is made by Professor Lepsius, has been noticed by other travellers, and even at still higher levels than those he mentions. Whether that alluvial soil be identical with, or only resembles the Nile deposit, would require to be determined by a close examination, and especially with regard to organic remains, if any can be found in it. There is no evidence to show that it was deposited during the historical period, and it may be an evidence of a depression and subsequent elevation of the land antecedent to that period. It may not be of fresh-water origin, but the clay and sand, or till, left by a drift while the land was under the sea. For remote as is the antiquity of Nubia and Egypt, in relation to the existence of the human race, it appears to be of very modern formation in geological time. The greater part of Lower Egypt, probably all the Delta, is of post-pliocene age, and even late in that age; and the very granite of the Cataract of Assuan, that of which the oldest monuments in Egypt are formed, and which, in the earlier days of geology, was looked upon as the very type of the rock on which the oldest strata of the earth were founded, is said to have burst forth during the later tertiary period. We learn from Russegger, that the low land which lies between the Mediterranean and the range of hills that extends from Cairo to the Red Sea at Suez, and of which hills a nummulite limestone constitutes a great part, is composed of a sandstone which he calls a “Meeresdiluvium,” a marine diluvial formation, and considers to be of an age younger than that of the sub-appennines[410]. This sandstone he found associated with the granite above Assuan, and covering the cretaceous sandstone far into Nubia. It appears, therefore, that, in the later ages of the tertiary period, this north-eastern part of Africa must have been submerged, and that very energetic plutonic action was going forward in the then bed of the sea. The remarkable fact of the granite bursting through this modern sandstone is thus described by Russegger:

“We arrived at a plateau of the Arabian Chain south-east of Assuan. It is about 200 feet above the bed of the Nile, and consists of the lower and upper sandstone, which are penetrated by innumerable granite cones from 20 to 100 feet in height, arranged over the plateau in parallel lines, very much resembling volcanic cones rising from a great cleft. The sandstone is totally altered in texture near the granite, and has all the appearance as if it had been exposed to a great heat. ‘I cannot refrain,’ he says, ‘from supposing that the granite must have burst, like a volcanic product, through long wide rents in the sandstone, and that, in this way, the conical hills were formed[411].’”

An eruption of a true granite during the period of the sub-appennine formations, one possessing the same mineral structure as that we know to have been erupted during the period of the palæozoic rocks, would be a fact of so extraordinary a kind, that its age would require to be established on the clearest evidence, and especially by that of organic remains in the sandstone.

Having thus ventured—I trust without any want of the respect due to so eminent a person—to reject the hypothesis proposed by Professor Lepsius for the high levels of the Nile at Semne, indicated by the sculptured marks he discovered, it may perhaps be expected that I should offer another more probable explanation. If in some narrow gorge of the river below Semne, a place had been described by any traveller, where, from the nature of the banks, a great landslip, or even an artificial dam, could have raised the bed to an adequate height; that is, proportionate to the fall of the river, as it was more distant from Semne, a bar that, in the course of a few centuries, might have been gradually washed away, I might have ventured to suggest such a solution of the problem. But without any information of the existence of such a contraction of the river’s channel, or any exact knowledge of the natural outlets and dams to running water along the 250 miles of the Nile Valley, from Semne to Assuan, it would be idle to offer even a conjecture. These marks are unquestionably very difficult to account for, in the present imperfect state of our knowledge of the structure of that portion of the Nile Valley; and any competent geologist, well versed in the questions of physical structure involved, who may hereafter visit Nubia, would have a very interesting occupation in endeavouring to solve the difficulty.

7th April, 1850.

Translation of a Letter from Dr. Lepsius to Mr. Horner, dated Berlin the 12th of April, 1853.

Dear Sir,—I observe from a letter of your daughter, that she is desirous of adding to her translation of my Letters a note upon the height of the water of the Nile, with reference to your paper in the “Edinburgh Philosophical Journal.” I wish that you would get reprinted in that note the whole of the small memoir, as it possesses great interest, and abounds in data not easily brought together; for in that case the subject may probably be further discussed.

I will, at all events, avail myself of this opportunity to make some remarks, which you may, if you like, propose to have introduced into the contemplated note.

I must first remark that the word Katakomben was entirely a typographical error for Katarakten, as was unfortunately the case in many other instances in those things which were printed during my absence.

But in respect of the explanation of the observed facts, my views are perhaps less different from yours than you imagine. You imagine a natural or artificial barrier which has broken down, but this appears to me of insufficient magnitude; I too imagine barriers to have existed, and natural ones, but that there must have been several of them. I do not, moreover, regard it as impossible, that at certain periods, when the country was in its most flourishing condition, artificial dams may have been constructed in order to obtain a higher rise of the water within a particular space, such as was necessary for an overflowing. But if we imagine an entire dam thrown across the river, this, if I am not mistaken, could only hold back the current for a very short way, namely, where there is a greater general fall. If, for example, we imagine a barrier at Assuan, it would require to be several hundred feet high to have any effect on the height of the water at Semneh, and then the whole valley from Philæ to Wadi Halfa would be a great lake, as it may indeed have been in geological time.

If we imagine a succession of barriers which would be especially formed where veins existed in the primitive rock, then the present entire physiognomy of the Nile valley seems to be more easily explained. The river-bed, amidst granitic or other upheaved rock, is not level, like a chalk or sandstone channel, but forms sometimes lakes, sometimes barriers. The force of the swollen current at these last, of which there is one at Semneh itself, does not act in the mean proportion of a space of considerable extent, but with immense effects, exceeding all calculation, especially when, in addition, there is a contraction of the sides, as at Semneh. Immediately below this barrier the bed again spreads out, and the rocks disappear in the current. The colossal rock-fragments on that bank, whose inscriptions sometimes show that above 4000 years ago they were still not broken loose, display the Titan force of a current thus hemmed in, and allow us to conceive how at that spot it gradually washed out its bed, sometimes to a great depth, but sometimes also to a greater breadth, which has the same effect, and how all that is broken away, or that during the time of low water splits to a considerable depth in the bed of the river from the summer heat, rolls away, until arrested by falling into hollows. But if these single barriers are only washed away in the course of thousands of years, then the whole river must receive an equable fall, and it will never rise in the very rocky districts, but can only continue to be still more excavated, and will only again deposit the heavier portions it bears along with it, below the cataracts, where every obstruction disappears. The monuments can hardly be cited in opposition to the view of a gradual sinking of the bed of the river in the higher districts. All of them lie tolerably far above the region of the rise of the Nile—for example, the temple on the island of Bigeh, to which there is a considerable ascent. Philæ has only been built upon since the time of Nectanebus, and there is nothing to indicate buildings of an earlier date. The sinking of the surface of the water even at Philæ and Assuan must also have been far less than at Semneh. Nevertheless, special researches with respect to the relative condition of the ancient temple and rock-inscriptions to the present surface of the water would certainly be of the greatest utility.

Herr von Humboldt, after reading some observations on the same subject by Wilkinson in the Nouv. Ann. des Voyages, i., without recollecting my views, wrote to me as follows:

“Breaches in dams, I imagine, cause only temporary rises of water, unless in earlier times (for which I see no reason) there was a greater accumulation of water in the valley of the river, from meteorological causes. Primeval conditions, where broad valleys were filled with waters, are not applicable to periods when there were inscriptions. Does it not seem to you more probable, that the height of the water was at one time at a greater elevation, on account of the bed of the river not having been so much furrowed out, because at an earlier period the bottom of the river was not at c d, but at e f.

“There are rivers whose beds are elevated and rendered more shallow by deposition, others which furrow out their bed qui creusent un lit plus profond.”

With sincere respect, your faithful,

R. Lepsius.

Appendix B. (P. 303 and 318.)—The tradition of Gebel Mûsa being the Mount of the Law, became gradually more decided and exclusive for this view after the time of Procopius in the sixth century; mainly, no doubt, on account of the church founded at that spot in the reign of Justinian. I am not aware that there are any modern travellers and savants who have thrown doubts on the correctness of this assumption. Not even Burckhardt, although from the numerous inscriptions on Serbâl he was led to infer that that mountain might have been at one time incorrectly regarded by the pilgrims as Sinai. The words of this distinguished traveller are as follows: (Trav. in Syr. p. 609.) “It will be recollected that no inscriptions are found either on the Mountain of Moses, or on Mount St. Catherine; and that those which are found in the Ledja valley at the foot of Djebel Catherine, are not to be traced above the rock from which the water is said to have issued, and appear only to be the work of pilgrims who visited that rock. From these circumstances I am persuaded that Mount Serbâl was at one period the chief place of pilgrimage in the Peninsula; and that it was then considered the mountain where Moses received the tables of the law; though I am equally convinced, from a perusal of the Scriptures, that the Israelites encamped in the Upper Sinai, and that either Djebel Mousa, or Mount St. Catherine, is the real Horeb. It is not at all impossible that the proximity of Serbâl to Egypt, may at one period have caused that mountain to be the Horeb of the pilgrims, and that the establishment of the convent in its present situation, which was probably chosen from motives of security, may have led to the transferring of that honour to Djebel Mousa. At present neither the monks of Mount Sinai nor those of Cairo consider Mount Serbâl as the scene of any of the events of sacred history; nor have the Bedouins any tradition among them respecting it, but it is possible, that if the Byzantine writers were thoroughly examined, some mention might be found of this mountain, which I believe was never before visited by any European traveller.”

More recently the remarkable book of travels by E. Robinson form a marked epoch in our knowledge of the Peninsula as well as of Palestine. With reference to the position of Sinai, he for the first time especially urges the favourable vicinity of the great plain of Râha, to the north of Gebel Mûsa, in which there was ample space for the encampment of the people of Israel. (Palestine, vol. i., p. 144, &c.) In his determination, however, of the actual Mount of the Law, he deviates from the previous tradition, since he endeavours to prove that Moses did not ascend Gebel Mûsa, but the mountain ridge jutting out from the south, above the plain, which is now called Horeb by the monks, and whose highest point is named Sefsâf. (Vol. i. p. 176.) Unfortunately he did not visit Wadi Firân and the adjoining Serbâl. In a more recent treatise (Bibl. sacra. vol. iv. No. xxii. May, 1849, p. 381, &c.) the learned author returns to the question with reference to my view of it, with which he had become acquainted, and in opposition he especially mentions the arguments which he had formerly maintained in favour of Gebel Sefsâf. He comprehends these under the three following heads, which he extracts from the Mosaic narrative, as being eminently striking, and which must therefore also now be pointed out: “1st. A mountain summit overlooking the place where the people stood. 2nd. Space sufficient adjacent to the mountain for so large a multitude to stand and behold the phenomena on the summit. 3rd. The relation between this space where the people stood and the base of the mountain must be such that they could approach and stand at ‘the nether part of the mount,’ that they could also touch it; and that further bounds could appropriately be set around the mount, lest they should go up into it, or touch the border of it.” Of these three heads, the first would speak against Gebel Mûsa, and not against Serbâl. This last, says Robinson, is excluded by the second and third head. Now with respect to the second, I must only call to mind that the encampment of the people at Sinai is not related in a different manner from all the previous stations. If, therefore, we take such a circumscribed view of the encampment as to believe that we must provide for sufficient space for the settlement of such a great people, we should then have to indicate a plain of Râha at all the previous stations, especially in Raphidîm (which by almost unanimous opinion was situated at the foot of the Serbâl), because here manifestly they remained for a considerable time, Moses was visited by Jethro, by his advice divided the whole people into tens, and organised them according to a form of law, from which we should be compelled to conclude that there, for the first time, existed a distinct locality for each individual. He who imagines a multitude of two millions of men, about as many as the inhabitants of London, or of the whole of Egypt at the present day, placed in an enclosed camp composed of tents, of which they must have had two hundred thousand, if we reckon one for every ten, like a huge, well-arranged military camp, even to him the plain of Râha would appear too small; but he who assumes that a comparatively small number could assemble round the chief quarters of Moses, but that all the others must have sought for shady places, caves in the rock-precipices, and the scanty herbage of the adjacent valleys, can as easily imagine the camp to have been placed in Wadi Firân, or at any other station. Wadi Firân besides, as far down as El Hessue, even if we only take its most fertile portion (more inviting as a settlement than any other spot), would offer, in combination with the broad Wadi Aleyât, just as large, and at all events a far more habitable space, for a combined encampment than the plain of Râha. Indeed, if it be true that we can gain anything from such single facts, such an encampment would render it still more comprehensible why the people were led out of the camp towards God at the foot of the mountain in the upper portion of Wadi Aleyât, in order to have a complete survey of the mountain. To obtain such a view would be impossible at Gebel Mûsa, and unnecessary at Gebel Sefsâf. Finally, the command not to ascend the mountain, which is expressed still more imperatively, that no one “should touch the border of the mountain,” applies to every mountain, which rises simply before the eyes, and whose means of access can be shut out by a fence. Immediately beyond the fence lies the border of the mountain.

With reference to this last point, Robinson appeals to my own map of Serbâl, and the description of Wadi Aleyât, by Bartlett (Forty Days in the Desert, p. 54, 59). It would be difficult, however, to prove from my map that the people could not have spread themselves out at the foot of the mountain, and Bartlett seems to me rather to share my opinion. As this traveller is so well known by his descriptions of countries, which are both beautifully illustrated and clearly and graphically described, and as he is just one of the few who have examined the localities with his own eyes in reference to the question started by me without holding any previous views on the subject, it may not be inappropriate to insert here those words relating to it, from a book cited by Robinson in favour of his own view; so much the rather, as I could not possibly have placed the chief heads of the question in a more convincing point of view.

He says, p. 55[412]: “If we endeavour to reconcile ourselves to the received but questionable system which seeks to accommodate the miraculous with the natural, it is impossible, I think, not to close with the reasoning advanced in favour of the Serbâl. There can be no doubt that Moses was personally well acquainted with the Peninsula, and had even probably dwelt in the vicinity of Wadi Feirân during his banishment from Egypt; but even common report as to the present day, would point to this favoured locality as the only fit spot in the whole range of the desert for the supply, either with water or such provisions as the country afforded, of the Israelitish host: on this ground alone, then, he would be led irresistibly to fix upon it, when meditating a long sojourn for the purpose of compiling the law. This consideration derives additional force when we consider the supply of wood and other articles requisite for the construction of the tabernacles, and which can only be found readily at Wadi Feirân, and of its being also, in all probability, from early times a place visited by trading caravans. But if Moses were even unacquainted previously with the resources of the place, he must have passed it on his way from the sea-coast through the interior of the mountains, and it is inconceivable that he should have refused to avail himself of its singular advantages for his purpose, or that the host would have consented, without a murmur, to quit, after so much privation, this fertile and well-watered oasis for new perils in the barren desert, or that he should, humanly speaking, have been able either to compel them to do so, or afterwards to fix them in the inhospitable, unsheltered position of the monkish Mount Sinai, with the fertile Feirân but one day’s long march in their rear. Supplies of wood, and perhaps of water, must, in that case, have been brought of necessity from the very spot they had but just abandoned. We must suppose that the Amalekites would oppose the onward march of the Israelites, where they alone had a fertile territory worthy of being disputed, and from which Moses must, of necessity, have sought to expel them. If it be so, then in this vicinity, and no other, we must look for Raphidîm, from whence the Mount of God was at a very short distance. We seem thus to have a combination of circumstances, which are met with nowhere else, to certify that it was here that Moses halted for the great work he had in view, and that the scene of the law-giving is here before our eyes in its wild and lonely majesty. The principal objection to this is on the following ground, that there is no open space in the immediate neighbourhood of the Serbâl suitable for the encampment of the vast multitude, and from which they could all of them at once have had a view of the mountain, as is the case at the plain Er Rahah at Mount Sinai, where Robinson supposes, principally for that reason, the law to have been given. But is this objection conclusive? We read, indeed, that Israel ‘camped before the mount,’ and that ‘the Lord came down in sight of all the people;’ moreover, that bounds were set to prevent the people from breaking through and violating even the precincts of the holy solitude. Although these conditions are more literally fulfilled at Er Rahah, yet, if we understand them as couched in general terms, they apply perhaps well enough to the vicinity of the Serbâl. A glance at the view, and a reference to this small rough map[413], will show the reader that the main encampment of the host must have been in Wadi Feirân itself, from which the summit of the Serbâl is only here and there visible, and that it is by the lateral Wadi Aleyât that the base of the mountain itself, by a walk of about an hour, is to be reached. It certainly struck me, in passing up this valley, as a very unfit, if not impracticable spot for the encampment of any great number of people, if they were all in tents; though well supplied with pure water, the ground is rugged and rocky—towards the base of the mountain awfully so; but still it is quite possible that a certain number might have established themselves there, as the Arabs do at present, while, as on other occasions, the principal masses were distributed in the surrounding valleys. I do not know that there is any adequate ground for believing, as Robinson does, that because the people were warned not to invade the seclusion of the mount, and a guard was placed to prevent them from doing so, that Therefore the encampment itself pressed closely on its borders. Curiosity might possibly enough lead many to attempt this even from a distance, to say nothing of those already supposed to be located in the Wadi Aleyât, near the base of the mountain, to whom the injunction would more especially apply. Those, however, who press closely the literal sense of one or two passages, should bear in mind all the difficulties previously cited, and the absolute destitution of verdure, cultivation, running streams, and even of abundant springs, which characterise the fearfully barren vicinity of the monkish Sinai, where there is indeed room and verge enough for encampment, but no resources whatever. If we take up the ground of a continual and miraculous provision for all the wants of two millions of people, doubtless they may have been subsisted there as well as in any other place; otherwise it seems incredible that Moses should ever have abandoned a spot, offering such unique advantages as Feirân, to select instead the most dreary and sterile spot in its neighbourhood.”

This was the distinct impression, and one frankly offered, after comparing those localities with the Biblical narration, by a man who nevertheless finally remains doubtful whether, in spite of all the reasons cited, it would not be more advisable to follow “the other system,” in accordance with which we must assume it to be an uninterrupted miracle from the beginning to the end, even though this is not expressed in the Bible (see p. 19 of the work cited), whereby, assuredly, all considerations about the most probable human course of that great historical event become worthless. The author then passes to some individual points, which he himself only calls attention to as such; in which he deviates from my mode of comprehension, since, for instance, he feels himself obliged to place the attack of the Amalekites somewhat farther down the valley towards El Hessue. The various possibilities in the explanation of the shorter marches oblige us always to point out again, that it is only by taking a view of the most essential points of the question, as a whole, that we can arrive at a positive conviction; this would necessarily drive those objections into the background, which might arise from regarding it only from any individual point.

Shortly after Robinson, in the year 1843, Dr. John Wilson travelled through Palestine and the Peninsula of Arabia Petræa; he published his extensive travels (The Lands of the Bible, 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1847), but did not by any means attain the high standing point held by his learned predecessor. Nevertheless, I cannot but accord with some of the objections which (vol. i. p. 222, &c.) he makes to Robinson’s assumption that Sefsâf is the Mount of the Law. He coincides with the tradition in recognising the Mount of the Law in Gebel Mûsa. In Serbâl, on the contrary, he believes that he recognises the Mount Paran of the Bible (p. 199), which we could only suppose, if we admit Mount Paran to be another expression for Sinai, and if we identify the last with Serbâl. At the close of the second volume (p. 764, &c.) the author adds a note in the Appendix, in which he guards himself against my different view as to the position of Sinai. He does not, however, here touch upon the most essential arguments which I have everywhere placed in the foreground, but only speaks of individual points, some of which can be easily overcome, and of others which have no influence on the chief question. He places Daphka, which is not once mentioned in the principal account, and therefore assuredly must have been a subordinate spot, in Wadi Firân, and Raphidîm, “the places for rest,” in the barren sandy Wadi e’ Scheikh, because there was no water there. But, that I may use his own weapons, what has become of the spring of Moses? “Few in the kingdom of Great Britain at least,” says the author, “will be disposed to substitute the Wadi Feirân, with clear running water, for Rephidim, where there was no water for the people to drink.” I think he wrongs his countrymen in making them deviate so universally from the almost unanimous tradition, and reject as a rationalistic explanation what is admitted even by the learned Fathers of the Church, who place Raphidîm in Firân, and consequently regard the spring there as belonging to Moses; besides, independently of H. Bartlett, many others of his countrymen have distinctly declared themselves in favour of my view, which includes this point, among whom I may mention Mr. Hogg (see below, concerning his pamphlet about this particular point), the Rev. Dr. Croly, and the author of the Pictorial Bible. If he is of opinion that I had overlooked the fact that the Wilderness of Sin and the Wilderness of Sinai had different meanings, I refer him to my pamphlet, p. 47, where precisely the opposite occurs; I have not either left unnoticed the words “out of the Wilderness of Sin” (p. 39), which has not either been done by Eusebius nor St. Jerome, who equally make the Wilderness of Sin extend as far as the Wilderness of Sinai. The fight with Amalek, as it is related in Exodus, presupposes a universal, obstinate, and probably a prepared contest; that the principal attack of the front was immediately supported by an attack of the rear-guard is not excepted, as it is added besides in Deuteron. xxv. 18; the double attack besides appeared distinctly indicated in the words ‎‏קָרְךָ בַּדֶּרֶךְ וַיְזַנֵּב‏‎ ἀντέστη σοι ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ, καὶ ἔκοψέ σου τὴν οὐραγίαν. At Elim, certainly, twelve springs ‎‏עֵינֹת‏‎ not wells are mentioned; but this does not alter the case, as nevertheless we cannot imagine twelve rushing springs like those in the Wadi Firân, but as the author (vol. i. p. 175) himself observes, only standing water underground, which must be specially dug for—therefore, in fact, wells. Their great number alone remains worthy of consideration, from which we may conclude that it was an important place. I knew the Sheikh Abu Zelîmeh very well; but that would not prevent the existence of a connection between the name and the locality, although I do not lay the slightest weight on such accordance of names.

The author omits some other reasons, which he believes he can prove in opposition to my views; these might perhaps have referred precisely to the chief points of the whole question, which had hitherto remained uncontested. The author now perhaps feels himself obliged to repeat his arguments, with reference to the separate remarks of one of his countrymen, Mr. John Hogg, who handled the subject in a very complete manner, and worked it out still further, first in the Gentleman’s Magazine, March, 1847, and afterwards in the Transact. of the R. Soc. of Literature, 2 Ser. vol. iii. p. 183-236 (read May, 1847, Jan. 1848), under the title: Remarks and Additional Views on Dr. Lepsius’s Proofs that Mount Serbâl is the true Mount Sinai; on the Wilderness of Sin; on the Manna of the Israelites; and on the Sinaitic Inscriptions. This learned author combines the earliest testimonies about the tradition, and from them endeavours to prove, that before the time of Justinian it was in favour of Serbâl, and not of Gebel Mûsa. He seems, in fact, to have succeeded in proving this, but we shall return, to this question below.

Since then the comprehensive work of my respected friend Carl Ritter has appeared, which is executed with his usual mastery of the subject: Vergleichende Erdkunde der Sinai-Halbinsel, von Palästina und Syrien, erster Band, Berlin, 1848. Although he has employed and worked out all imaginable authorities, from the most ancient to those of modern date, and has formed a complete picture of the Peninsula as a whole and in details, with a clear perception and steady hand, both in its geographical bearing and in the historical relations of its population, he has nevertheless not neglected the question now under consideration, in which geography and history are more intimately connected than in any other. Sinai is to the Peninsula of Sinai what Jerusalem is to Palestine, and as it is certain that the erection of the church on Gebel Mûsa in the sixth century, from a belief that it was founded on the spot of the law-giving, caused the historical centre of the Peninsula, which previously coincided indisputably with the town of Pharan and its forest of palms (the natural geographical centre), to be sundered for the first time, and gradually, since the tenth century, from this, and to be removed several days’ journey farther to the south,—so it is equally certain that the decision of the question, whether this was a first or second separation between the historical and geographical centre, must bear most essentially on the comprehension and delineation of the earliest history of the Peninsula, and might even exercise an influence not only on the future form of Sinaitic literature, but even on many relative conditions of the Peninsula itself, which are in no small degree regulated by the objects aimed at by the constantly increasing number of travellers. Ritter’s representation was compelled at the very outset to decide for one of these two views. At the same time, the new view, proffered at the latest termination of the preliminary works of merit, and in opposition to what had been held with implicit faith for the last thousand years, and maintained without exception by all recent writers of travels, now first appeared in the form of an occasional and necessarily imperfect traveller’s account, and might very naturally lay even less claim to a favourable hearing, not having hitherto received critical examination from any quarter, nor been noticed by later travellers. For this reason I so much the more value the careful and impartial examination of the grounds in favour of Serbâl being Mount Sinai, for which Ritter has granted a place in his work.

He does this at p. 736, &c. He here rejects the opinion that the tradition of the convent on Gebel Mûsa, known only since the sixth century, could have any weight in forming a decision; “the tradition of the still older convent of Serbâl, and of the town of Serbâl in Wadi Firân, might be said to have existed just as truly, but has only been lost to us.” Other reasons, therefore, derived from nature and history, must speak in its favour. He then cites the view adopted by Robinson, who places Raphidîm in the upper part of the Wadi e’ Scheikh; but with justice he places in opposition to this, that it then encroaches upon the farther march, and would be mentioned; and shortly afterwards he says, in as convincing a manner, that we cannot then conceive how the people could have murmured for want of water, already one day’s journey beyond the Firân, which was so richly supplied with water, while this can be easily explained on the long way from Elim, as far as the neighbourhood of Firân. Ritter therefore agrees with me and the old tradition in regarding the wonderful brook of Firân as the spring of Moses. He only thinks, if Moses struck the spring out of the rock, it must then have been at the beginning, and not at the termination of the present brook, and he therefore transfers Raphidîm into the uppermost portion of Wadi Firân, whose fertility did not exist before the appearance of the spring. With respect to the position of the Mount of the Law, he evades positive decision for the time. “Already,” he says, “in both the almost contemporaneous narrators, Jerome (Procopius?) and Cosmas, we see the division of the views entertained about these localities, neither of which, even in the most recent double view, it appears by decisive and sufficient grounds, can be preferred, by us at least, alone before the others. Since each of these two modes of explanation of a text so indeterminate in topographical respects, and of a locality still known so imperfectly, can only serve as hypothetical probabilities in a more exact interpretation, allow me to point out cursorily our hypothetical view of this affair, which will perhaps never be placed in a perfectly clear light.”

It amounts finally to this, that the “Mount of God,” where Moses was encamped when he was visited by Jethro in Raphidîm, could have in no case meant the convent mountain of Sinai (i. e. Gebel Mûsa), although this, on a later occasion, is even thus called, as that of the true God, but from which they at that time under every supposition were far removed, though probably it might have been a designation for the overtowering and far nearer Serbâl when they were still in the camp at “Raphidîm.” He afterwards acknowledges that before the 19th chapter there was an interruption of the connection with the preceding chapters, but seeks a reason for this in a gap in the text, while I would rather assume that there was a short interpolation. Let the progress of the people from the Feirân valley into the upper valley of the Scheikh, and to Gebel Mûsa, the true Sinai, be thrown into this gap. This at first is only called “the Mount” (Exodus xix. 2), and becomes a “Mount of God” for the first time after the law-giving (which, however, the following verse, xix. 3, contradicts), while Serbâl might have been called “the Mount of God” from a heathen deity there worshipped. “Both mounts, the Mount of God (Serbâl) in Raphidîm, and the mount in the Wilderness of Sinai, are therefore just as different by name as they appear removed from each other by the last day’s marches between both places of encampment.” He regards the general natural conditions of the country about Gebel Mûsa on account of the greater security and coolness, and from the pasture-land bearing a greater resemblance to the Alps, as more adapted for a longer sojourn of the people. The name of Horeb only, which is already mentioned in Raphidîm, might serve as an objection, yet he sees no sufficient ground not to extend this name to some of the lower mountains attached to Serbâl itself, for already Robinson, Hengstenberg, and others, comprehend it as a general designation.

So far as I know, this is the first time that it has been attempted to prove that there were two Mounts of God, Serbâl and Gebel Mûsa. This, however, certainly is the necessary result, though not yet expressed by others, which all must arrive at who place Raphidîm in Firân. In this, it appears to me, lies a main proof with reference to the criticism of the text, that both Mounts of God are to be recognised in Serbâl. We must not lay too much stress on the greater security of the plain of Râha for a “harnessed” (Exodus xiii. 18) army of 600,000 men, after it had set firm footing in the land, besides Serbâl must have at all times offered an admirable place of reserve. The cold in the high mountain range, which, according to Rüppell and Robinson, freezes the water into ice in the convent (5000 feet above the sea) even as late as February (Ritter, p. 445, 630), would have alone rendered an open encampment on the plain of Râha during the winter impossible, for a population lately accustomed to the Egyptian climate. But with respect to the vegetation in those districts, which has indeed been differently described by different travellers, the idea that not the slightest doubt existed as to this having been at one time the sojourn of the Israelites, may have partly caused many to presuppose the existence of more herbs in the neighbourhood than they momentarily saw; partly, no doubt, the season of the year occasions some variations. I therefore only observe that I visited the Peninsula about the same time of the year in which, according to the Mosaic narration, the Israelites also went thither.

Ritter, finally, has expressed his views on the Sinai question on another occasion in a popular essay, “The Peninsula of Sinai, and the Path of the Children of Israel to Sinai,” in the “Evangelical Calendar,” Almanack for 1852, published by F. Piper, p. 31, &c. Here also he places Raphidîm in Firân, and traces the Mount of God at Raphidîm in Serbâl. But in opposition to the identity of Serbâl and Sinai, he here adduces principally the two following reasons. As it has been now proved that the so-called Sinaitic inscriptions have a Pagan origin, and that they indicate that Serbâl, to which they principally refer, was the “centre of an ancient worship,” then this remarkable mount, if already a holy mount of the idolater, could not have been at the same time a “Mount of Jehovah” (p. 51), and further (p. 52), “Israel’s holy Mount of God was not situated in the territory of Amalek, like Serbâl, but in the eastern and southern territory of Midian, for it is said expressly (Exodus iv. 19), that the Lord commanded Moses in Midian to go to Egypt, and to lead the people to sacrifice to him upon this Mount Horeb and Sinai in Midian” (Exodus iii. 1-12). With respect to these two points however, the first, namely that Serbâl was also a holy mount for the Semitic people ruling over the Peninsula at a later period, seems to me a reason of great weight in favour of Serbâl-Sinai, as indeed also already, before the law-giving, it was not called “Idol Mount,” but Mount of God (Exodus iii. 1, iv. 27, xviii. 5), just as much as after the law-giving (Exodus xxiv. 13, 1 Kings xix. 8), and a heathen readoption at a later period of the worship of this mount must certainly be less surprising. But that Moses dwelt with Jethro in Midian, when the Lord spoke to him, offers no ground to place the Mount of the Law in Midian, for that is nowhere said. We only know that Raphidîm, where Moses was visited by Jethro out of Midian, was situated in the territory of the Amalekites, as these here made the attack. Eusebius, who (s. v. Ῥαφιδίμ, see note, p. 313) expressly places Raphidîm and Choreb in Pharan, says (s. v. Χωρήβ) that this Mount of God lay in Madian. In the Itinerar. Antonini, c. 40, also, Pharan is placed in Madian.

I trust these remarks, in which I think I have touched upon all the essential objections of the respected author, may prove to him how high a value I place on each of his arguments, as being those of one who is more competent to judge in this field than any other person. Ritter’s long proved acuteness for tracing the correct view of such questions, would have excited more consideration in me against my own view of the subject, than all the reasons he has adduced, which, taken singly at least, seem to me refutable, had I not in this case, at any rate, had the advantage of a personal view of the localities, without any preconceived influence; this might render my judgment of earlier narrators more independent than could be the case with him.

Appendix C. (P. 306.)—Robinson gives the distances from Ayûn Mûsa to the point where Wadi Schebêkeh and Wadi Tâibeh meet, vol. iii. Div. ii. p. 804; these accord with Burckhardt, p. 624, 625, who also records the more remote points as far as Wadi Firân; these last are confirmed by mine, if we calculate his circuitous route by Dhafari. Robinson’s calculation, p. 196, does not, however, take into consideration the circuitous route, from four to five hours longer from the Convent, through Wadi e’ Scheikh, for Burckhardt passed over the Nakb el Haui in eleven hours to Firân, while we occupied sixteen, without including the short way round through the Kteffe valley. After this the distances stand thus: From Ayûn Mûsa to Ain Hawâreh 18 hours 35 minutes; then to Wadi Gharandel, 2 hours 30 minutes (not from one hour and a half to two hours from Robinson’s place of encampment as it is calculated above, p. 307); to the outlet of the valley near Abu Zelîmeh, 7 hours 12 minutes; to the sea, 1 hour; to Wadi Schellâl, 4 hours 15 minutes; to Firân, 13 hours 45 minutes; to the Convent, 16 hours. Robinson cannot remove the encampment in the Wilderness of Sin to a more southern point than the outlet of Wadi Schellâl, because the people here, according to him, stept forth out of the Wilderness of Sin. For the same reason he is compelled to place Alus in Firân. On the other hand, in my opinion, not alone is the encampment at the sea not different from that at the outlet of the valley at Abu Zelîmeh, but the Wilderness of Sin mentioned in the Book of Exodus, which extended as far as Sinai, and ended with Raphidîm, is also the same as the two stations mentioned in the Book of Numbers, Daphka and Alus, and therefore in the last passage should as little have been mentioned as peculiar places of encampment, as the Red Sea. The Wilderness of Sin accordingly, like the Wilderness of Sûr, embraced three days’ journey. The stations, and their remoteness from each other, stand therefore as follows:

According to Robinson.
| HOURS. | MIN. | |
I. | 6 | 12 | } | three Stations from Ayûn Mûsa to Ain Hawâreh = Marah.
II. | 6 | 12 | }
III. | 6 | 12 | }
IV. | 2 | 30 | | to Wadi Gharandel = Elim.
V. | 8 | 12 | | to the Sea.
VI. | 4 | 15 | | to Wadi Schellâl = Wilderness of Sin.
VII. | 7 | | } | two Stations to Firân = Daphka and Alus.
VIII. | 7 | | }
IX. | 8 | | } | two Stations to the Plain of Râha = Raphidîm and Sinai.
X. | 8 | | }
According to my assumption.
I. | 7 | | } | three Stations to Wadi Gharandel = Marah.
II. | 7 | | }
III. | 7 | | }
IV. | 7 | 12 | | to the Outlet of the Valley near Abu Zelîmeh = Elim.
V. | 6 | | } | three Stations to Firân, i. e. by Daphka and Alus to Raphidîm at Sinai.
VI. | 6 | | }
VII. | 6 | | }

It is easy to imagine why the latter stations are somewhat shorter than the first, on account of the greater difficulty of the road. According to Robinson, the fourth station would be scarcely explicable. Why did the people murmur so near the twelve springs of Elim? How would precisely that strikingly long journey of more than eight hours, from Elim to the sea, not have been mentioned at all? And how was it possible that the days’ marches should have constantly increased in length amidst the lofty mountains and difficult ground?

Appendix D. (P. 314 and 318.)—The expounders of this passage take the words: ‎‏בַּחֹדֶשׁ הַשְׁלִישִׁ֔י‏‎ “In the third month,” as if it were written, “On the first day of the third month,” and therefore refer the following “the same day,” equally to the first day of the month. See Gesenius, Thesaur. p. 404, b: “tertiis calendis post exitum,” and p. 449, b: tertio novilunio, i. e. calendis mensis tertii. Ewald, Gesch. des V. Isr. ii. p. 189. “The Day (?) of the third month (i. e. however of the new moon, therefore the first day.”) But the Seventy at all events have not understood it in this manner, as they translate: Τοῦ δὲ μηνὸς τοῦ τρίτου τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ταύτῃ. It also appears that the Jewish tradition have not comprehended it thus, as the Law-giving, which according to Exod. xix. 11, 15, occurred on the third day after their arrival, is even now solemnised by the Jews on the fifth or sixth day of the third month, simultaneously with the appointed harvest-feast, on the fiftieth day after the Exodus (Leviticus xxiii. 15, 16); in accordance with this, the arrival at Sinai must have happened on the third day of the third month. We cannot, however, but perceive, how ‎‏חֹדֶשׁ‏‎ without addition, might here be employed for new moon’s day, although in all other passages of customary speech it had lost this etymological signification, and only meant month; even in passages where the new moon’s day itself was spoken of, as in Exod. xl. 2, 17; Numb. i. 1; xxxiii. 38, where everywhere ‎‏בְּאֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ‏‎ is especially added to it, “on the first (day) of the month,” whereas passages like Numb. ix. 1, and xx. 1, cannot naturally be cited, because here, there lies as little reason as in Exod. xix. 1, to understand first of the month, and the Seventy also do not translate, ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ, or νουμηνίᾳ as in the former passages, but only in the simple sense of the words ἐν τῷ μηνὶ τῷ πρώτῳ. Our passage, Exod. xix. 1, therefore, would alone remain, from which it would be possible to conclude that there was such a double and equivocal employment of ‎‏חֹדֶשׁ‏‎, because here certainly the following words, “the same day,” indicate a particular single day, which particular day, nevertheless, cannot be guessed from our present text. But in my opinion this is exactly an additional and not unimportant reason, to assume either a transposition or a later insertion of these two verses. The last is also assumed by Ewald, in so far as he, indeed (Gesch. des V. Isr. p. 75), ascribes the account, xix. 3-24, but not the two first verses, to the oldest sources. I have already mentioned above (p. 316) that Josephus (Ant. iii. 2, 5), who also does not understand the words from the first day of the month, transposes the passage, and indeed to that very place whither I, ignorant of this, had already placed it in my earlier printed account, p. 48, namely, immediately after the battle of the Amalekites, to which “the same day” most naturally refers. If this is correct, then the original text ran thus: that the Israelites at Raphidîm, in Wadi Firân, where they fought the battle, were not only near Horeb, but also near Sinai, that is to say, that both Mounts of God are one; and that, in fact, Moses first at Sinai received the visit of Jethro, and, as appears most natural, first at Sinai organised his people; but at the same time it must be allowed that Sinai, or Horeb, was no other mountain than Serbâl.

Supposing that, in this manner, we have correctly understood the original connection, it did not first of all require any statement of the month; this would probably be only added upon the isolation of the following section referring to the law-giving. In this case, only three exact dates for the journey could exist. The people pass out from Ramses in the first year, the first month, on the fifteenth day; they proceed from Elim, which is half-way, just one month after, in the first year, second month, on the fifteenth day. The days of rest at the stations are unknown, but if we assume that the people proceeded without sojourning, then they came to Raphidîm on the third day from Elim; received the water, and were attacked by Amalek on the fourth, fought on the fifth till after sunset to the commencement of the sixth day, and on the same sixth day (for the Hebrew day began in the evening) encamped at Sinai. This would have been in the first year, in the second month, on the twentieth day. Now as the retreat from Sinai followed in the second year, in the second month, the twentieth day, then the sojourn at Sinai would have lasted exactly one year. This coincidence was perhaps originally as little the result of accident as the duration of just one month between the first departure from Ramses and the second from Elim.

Appendix E. (P. 319.)—Two inscriptions in marble, referring to the foundation of the convent, still exist, which are let into the external wall facing the convent-garden, one in Greek, the other in Arabic. Burckhardt (Trav. p. 545) says: “An Arabic inscription over the gate, in modern characters, says that Justinian built the convent in the thirtieth year of his reign, as a memorial of himself and his wife Theodora. It is curious to find a passage of the Koran introduced into this inscription: it was probably done by a Moslem sculptor, without the knowledge of the monks.” The Arabic inscription is certainly over the small door leading into the garden. But if Burckhardt saw it here, it is inconceivable that he did not see the Greek inscription beside it, let into the wall with a similar border and shelter. Robinson saw neither of them (i. p. 205); Ricci caused the Greek inscription to be copied, and from his copy this has been communicated and translated by Letronne in the Journ. des Sav. 1836, p. 538, with some slight deviations. But as early as 1823, another copy, which escaped Letronne, was published by Sir Fr. Henniker (Notes during a Visit to Egypt, &c. p. 235, 236), which, however, is very inaccurate, although it endeavours to render the written characters themselves. The Arabic inscription, as far as I am aware, is still quite unknown. I have taken an impression of both on paper, and offer a faithful representation of them here. The Greek runs thus:

Ἐκ βάθρων ἀνηγέρθη τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦτο μοναστήριον τοῦ Σιναίου ὄρους, ἔνθα ἐλάλησεν ὁ θεὸς τῷ Μωυσῇ παρὰ τοῦ ταπεινοῦ βασιλέως Ῥωμαίων Ἰουστινιανοῦ πρὸς ἀΐδιον μνημόσυνον αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς συζύγου τοῦ Θεοδώρας· ἔλαβε τέλος μετὰ τὸ τριακοστὸν ἔτος τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ, καὶ κατέστησεν ἐν αὐτῷ ἡγούμενον ὀνόματι Δουλᾶ ἐν ἔτει ἀπὸ μὲν Ἀδὰμ ͵ϛκαʹ ἀπὸ δὲ Χριστοῦ φκζʹ.

“This holy convent of Mount Sinai, where God spoke to Moses, was built from the foundation by Justinian, the lowly king of the Romans, in eternal remembrance of the same, and of his consort Theodora; it was completed in the thirtieth year of his reign, and he placed a chief in the same, one of the name of Dulas, in the year 6021 since Adam, 527 since Christ.”

Letronne read in the second line ἐν ᾧ πρῶτον in place of ἔνθα, and in the seventh line κατέστησε τὸν in place of κατέστησεν. The written characters indicate about the twelfth or thirteenth century. As the Emperor Justinian reigned from 527-565, it is assumed by the writer that the determination to found the convent, and at the same time the appointment of his abbot Dulas, occurred in the first year of the reign of the emperor, although the completion of the edifice is not placed before the thirtieth year of the same, i. e. 556 after Christ. The year 6021 from the creation of the world corresponds to the year 527 after Christ, according to the Alexandrine era of Panodorus and Anianus.

The Arabic inscription is this:

‎‏انثا دير طور سينا و كنيسة جبل المناجاة افقير لله الراجي عفو مولاه الملك المهذب الرومي المذهب يوستيانس تذكارا لى ولزوجته ثاوضوره علي سرور الزسان حني برث اللّه الارض ومن عليها وهو خير الوارثين وتم بناوه بعد ثلاثين سنة من ملكة ونصب له ريسا اسبه ذولاس جري ذلك سنا ٦٠٢١ لادم الوافق لتاريخ السيد المسيح سنة ٥٢٧‏‎

“The convent of Tôr (Mount) Sina, and the Church of the Mount of the Interview, was built by the dependent on God, and hoping in the promise of his Lord, the pious King of the Greek Confession, Justianus (for Justinian), in remembrance of himself and his consort Theodora to last for all times, in order that God might inherit the earth, and who upon it: for he is the best of the heirs. And the building was completed after thirty years of his reign. And he appointed it a chief, with the name of Dhulas. And this happened after Adam 6021, which corresponds with the year 527 of the era of the Lord Christ.”

The written characters of the inscription, according to the learned judgment of the consul, Dr. Wetzstein, who has also most kindly taken upon himself the re-writing and translation of the inscription here communicated, indicate that it did not exist before the year 550 of the Mohammedan era, which thus refers to the period when the Greek inscription was also composed. The passage in the Koran which Burckhardt already mentions, is to be found, Sûr. 21, v. 18.

Another large stone is immured in the same wall, but much higher up, over a far larger gate, now built up, at a spot behind which the kitchen is at present situated, the ornamental part of which might lead us to infer that another still older inscription might still exist here. Unfortunately I was unable to bring a ladder to the spot to examine the stone more accurately. It is to be hoped some future traveller may accomplish this.

Appendix F. (P. 319.)—The history of the Palm-wood of Pharan forms the central point of the history of the whole Peninsula. The accounts of it given by the Greeks and Romans furnish a new proof for this, although their geographical determinations in great measure have not hitherto been correctly comprehended. Thus the Poseidion of Artemidorus, Diodorus, and Strabo, is generally placed at the extremity of the Peninsula, which is now called Râs Mohammed; also by Gosselin, Letronne, and Grosskurd, who nevertheless had already recognised the manifestly incorrect comment of the Strabonic manuscripts (p. 776: τοῦ [Ἐλανίτου] μυχοῦ). As Poseidion was situated within (ἐνδοτέρω) the Gulf of Suez, and here the west coast of the Peninsula was to be described, this altar of Poseidion therefore of necessity was situated either at Ras Abu Zelîmeh, the harbour of Faran, or at Ras Gehan, whence there was a more southern and shorter communication with Wadi Firân through Wadi Dhaghadeh. That the palm-grove (Φοινικών) of those authors is not to be sought at Tôr, but in the Wadi Firân, has been already justly acknowledged by Tuch (Sinait. Inschr. p. 35), although he still places Poseidion at Râs Mohammed (p. 37). It was the Serb Bal, the palm-grove of Baal, from which the mountain first received its name. It appears, in earlier times, while the grove itself was still called by the inhabitants Serb Bal, that the name of Faran was especially employed for the harbour at Abu Zelîmeh, and for a Pharanitic settlement on the site of ancient Elim, near the present Gebel Hammâm Faraûn, still always called Faran by the Arabic authors. (See note, p. 307.) Here also, probably, was the spot where Ariston landed under Ptolemy Philadelphus, and founded Poseidion.

Artemidorus (in Strabo, p. 776) and Diodorus (3, 42) mention Μαρανῖται, in place of which Gosselin, Ritter, Tuch, and others, read Φαρανῖται. As the Maranites, however, inhabited the eastern coast of the Peninsula, and are said to have been totally destroyed by the Garindæes, I cannot see any support for this supposition. The ravine of Phara, mentioned by Josephus (Bell. Jud. 4, 9, 4), in Judæa, does not belong hither.

The name of the Pharanites on the western coast of the Peninsula first appears in Pliny (H. N. 37, 40), for there is no reason to regard the Pharanitis gens, whom he places in Arabia Petræa, as differing from the Pharanitai of Ptolemy. That the northern station Phara (circa ten hours west of Aila) has nothing to do on the tablet of Peutinger with the Pharanitic palm-grove, is placed beyond a doubt by Ritter (p. 147, &c.).

Ptolemy, in the third century, is the first who mentions a place called Pharan (κώμη Φαράν); but on account of the detailed comparison not agreeing, the basis and the connection of his statements deviating widely from the true conditions, they have for that very reason hitherto remained in obscurity. His construction of the Peninsula becomes clear at once, when we take into account that he has evidently taken the blunt angle of the coast at Ras Gehan (whither by his latitude he removes Cape Pharan, instead of to Hammâm Faraûn) to be the most southern point of the Peninsula, from which the more remote coast runs up again towards the north-east. Thereby the Peninsula, according to him, becomes about 50′ too short, although the longitude of his point corresponds with the true one. The real extremity (Râs Mohammed) now corresponds with the point whither he places the bend of the Elanitic Gulf (ἐπιστροφὴ τοῦ Ἐλανίτου κόλπου). The whole of the Elanitic Gulf (Gulf of Akaba) contracts with him into a small angle (μυχός) of 15′, because all is pushed too far to the north. The coast from the “bend” as far as Ὄννη in reality corresponds with that from Ras Furtak (the άκρωτήριον τῆς ἠπείρου of Diodorus and Artemidorus, in front of which was situated the island of Phokes) to ʾAin Uneh, and his Elanitic Gulf, the north part of which (ἐπιστροφή) he places 66° lon., 29° lat., now assumes the form of the gulf whose innermost point is now marked by ʾAin Uneh. He imagines the Bay of Pharan (μυχὸς κατὰ Φαράν) to be from Cape Faran (ἀκρωτήριον Φαράν) to the inland town of the same name, as the angle of Elana, and the innermost angle of Heroonpolis north of Arsinoë. From this same construction of the Peninsula it followed that the Raithenes, who were situated below the Pharanites, on the same coast near Tôr (even now called Ῥαιθοῦ), are now placed on the coast facing Arabia (παρὰ τὴν ὀρεινὴν τῆς Εὐδαίμονος Ἀραβίας), therefore on the eastern, in place of the western coast of the Peninsula; and finally, as the natural result of this, he makes the primitive chain of mountains extending from Faran to Râs Mohammed (ὄρη μέλανα) run towards Judæa, therefore up towards the north-east, in place of down towards the south-east.

From all this, it is evident, that the place Pharan of Ptolemy is identical with the well-known Pharan in the Wadi Firân, and the Phœnikon of Artemidorus and Strabo. Still less can we doubt that the Pharan of Eusebius also (s. v. Ῥαφιδίμ), and of Jerome, which is expressly (s. v. Φαράν) called a town (πόλις, oppidum), and situated (certainly somewhat too near) three days’ journey from Aila, was the town in Wadi Firân, although by a confusion with the Biblical wilderness of Paran, it is added that the Israelites on their way back from Sinai went past this Pharan. (Compare Ritter, p. 740.)

According to the manuscript of the monk Ammonius (Illustr. Chr. Martyr lecti. triumphi ed. Combefis. Paris, 1660), the town of Pharan was converted to Christianity in the middle of the fourth century by a monk Moses, born in Pharan itself, but his narration, which is evidently an invention, and belongs to about 370, must by no means be employed as an historical authority for that period, and seems to rest chiefly on some passages of a romance of Nilus, which was written for an edifying object, and his seems to have been composed with a similar intention. In Nilus, who is placed about 390, but over whose period and writings much uncertainty still hangs, a Christian counsellor (βουλή) of the town of Pharan is mentioned (Nili opp. quædam, 1539. 4ᵒ). Soon after this, since the first half of the fifth century, Le Quien, from authorities of very unequal value indeed (Oriens, Christ. vol. iii. p. 751), cites a list of bishops of Pharan, who can be followed down to the middle of the twelfth century. (See Reland, Palæst. vol. ii. p. 220.) All the monks of the entire mountain range were subordinate to these bishops.

With reference to the foundation of the present convent on Gebel Mûsa, it is indeed ascribed to the Emperor Justinian by Saïd ben Batrik (Eutychius), who wrote about 932-953 (D’Herbelot, s. v.), as well as in the convent inscriptions of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, which have been communicated above; but this is most decidedly contradicted by the far more reliable testimony, peculiarly valuable here, of Procopius, who was the cotemporary of Justinian. He says, in his special treatise about the buildings founded by Justinian (Proc. ed. Dind. vol. iii. de ædif. Just. p. 326), that the emperor built a church to the mother of God, “not upon the summit of the mountain, but a considerable way below it” (παρὰ πολὺ ἔνερθεν, in accordance with the locality, which can only mean on the intermediate space of ground half-way up the mountain, where the chapel to Elijah now stands). Separated from this he had also erected a very strong castle (φρούριον) at the foot of the mountain (ἐς τοῦ ὄρους πρόποδα), and provided it with a good military guard to check the incursions of the Saracens into Palestine. As Procopius directly before and afterwards, as well as throughout the whole paper, distinguishes very exactly between the convents and the churches, and the military guard-houses, it is evident that, according to him, Justinian did not found the present convent together with his church. The military castle was, however, probably at a later period employed, and rebuilt into a convent. Besides, the church founded by Justinian higher up the hill was not dedicated, like the present convent church, to St. Katharine (see Le Quien, vol. iii. p. 1306), but to Mary. What is said by Eutychius (who Robinson first cited, though he placed him somewhat too early, still in the tenth century), both about the building of the convent, and in still more direct contradiction with Procopius, about a church built upon the summit of the mountain, deserves therefore no more credit than the conversation between the emperor and the architect, which is communicated. As little must we ascribe to Justinian, on the statement of Ben Batrik, the foundation of the convents of Rayeh (at Tôr) and of Kolzum (a bishop of Clysma, by name Poemes, is inserted at the Constantinopolitan Council as early as 460; see Acta Concil. ed. Harduin, ii. 696, 786), as in this case he would undoubtedly have been mentioned by Procopius. Pharan is not mentioned by Procopius. On the contrary, he narrates (de bell. Pers. i. 19, 164; de ædif. 5, 8) the important fact, that the Saracen Prince Abocharagos, reigning there, had presented the Emperor Justinian with a large palm-grove (φοινικῶνα), situated in the centre of the land (ἐν τῇ μεσογαίᾳ). On closer consideration of this account, scarcely a doubt can remain that the palm-grove of Pharan is here understood, not the place on the coast Φοινίκων κώμη, mentioned by Ptolemy (vi. 7, 3), or a palm-grove totally unknown to us, also situated in the midst of a solitary wilderness, wholly unprovided with water. According to Ammonius and Nilus all the inhabitants of Pharan had then become Christian, and a church at all events existed there; thereby it is easier to understand the gift made by Abocharagos, which Justinian himself presented to the Phylarch of the Palestinian Saracens. No doubt the foundation of the castle in the higher mountains, for watching over those Saracens, was in connection with this.

Next to Procopius, Cosmas Indicopleustes is by far the most authentic authority of that period. He was not only both a cotemporary of Justinian, but likewise describes (about 540) what he himself saw upon the Peninsula. His work is the only one containing detailed geography belonging to that period, and his unassuming narration bears everywhere the marks of unvarnished truth. It is so much the more remarkable that he neither mentions a convent edifice, nor indeed the localities at Gebel Mûsa, but only Pharan, although he had the path of the Israelites especially in view. (See below more of this.) That on the other hand Antoninus Placentinus, who is held by others to be the b. Antoninus Martyr, nevertheless in his Itinerarium (Acta Sanctor. May, vol. ii. p. x-xviii), which is placed by Ritter about 600, should again speak of a convent at the thorn-bush (Procopius does not yet make mention of the thorn-bush), between Horeb and Sinai, therefore on the site of the present convent, appears rather to lead us back to the opinion so decidedly expressed by Papebroch, who first published the Itinerary, that this narrative, which has excited such various considerations, though so learnedly defended, does not belong to an earlier period than the eleventh or twelfth centuries. At all events, it would be very desirable if the writings of Ammonius, Nilus, and Antoninus, that have been cited, and so many others attributed to the first Christian centuries, were submitted to a more searching and connected criticism than has hitherto been the case.

The earliest bishop of Mount Sinai to whom we can refer, is not to be found before the eleventh century, Bishop Jorius, who dies 1033 (Le Quien, iii. 754). The name in the second Constantinopolitan Council (a. 553), signed Phronimus episc. Synnaii (Acta Concil. ed. Harduin, vol. iii. p. 53), or Synaitanorum (p. 206), and in the fourth council (a. 870), the one named Constantinus ep. Synai (Harduin, vol. v. p. 927), have been incorrectly brought hither (Ritter, Abhandl. der Berl. Akad. 1824, p. 216. Halbinsel Sinai, p. 96), as they belong to Synaus, or Synnaus, in Phrygia.

Appendix G. (P. 320.)—It must be most absolutely denied that an interrupted and distinct tradition about the position of Sinai in the Peninsula was preserved as late as the Christian times. The name Choreb, or Sinai, appears even at a very early period to have been understood for the whole of the lofty range in the Peninsula, which was constantly regarded from a distance as one single mountain. No one before the time of the Christian hermits attached any interest in connecting a fixed geographical notion with the name that had been transmitted. We only read of Elijah that he fled to the “Mount of God Choreb,” and there (1 Kings xix. 9) went into the same cave (for it is presupposed that it is known) in which the Lord had already appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai (2 Exodus xxxiii. 22). The native Arab tribes by degrees became so much changed, that not one of the Old Testament names remained in its original position. The Greeks and Romans only knew one spot on the whole Peninsula, the Palm-wood of Pharan, because this spot only, and the harbour leading to it, was of any importance since the mines of that wilderness had been exhausted. Firân must of necessity have been the earliest central point for the Christian hermits also; that mountainous wilderness, affording necessary means of sustenance, in the greatest retirement, must have appeared better adapted for them than any other district, since here we also find the most ancient church of the Peninsula. When gradually the individual Biblical localities began to be more accurately investigated, people had no other means for forming their determinations than we possess now, and besides understood far less to employ these means, since all acute criticism of the Biblical passages, which could alone give them information, at that time lay far removed. They understood the name Sinai as an indeterminate appellation for the whole range; but when they searched for Sinai in a single mountain, Serbâl then must have immediately presented itself. Thither also points all that we read about the matter in authentic writings during the first centuries, but to these the writing of the monk Ammonius certainly does not belong in the opinion of those who examine accurately, and hardly the edifying romance of Nilus. What Josephus (Ant. iii. 5) says of Sinai (τὸ Σιναῖον) may very well refer to Serbâl, at all events not to Gebel Mûsa, as has been already shown by Hogg (in several passages, p. 207). According to Eusebius, Choreb and Raphidîm were situated at Pharan (ἐγγὺς Φαράν, see note, p. 313), and Sinai near Choreb (παράκειται τῷ ὄρει Σινᾶ, see above). Jerome (s. v. Choreb) regards both mounts as one, which he likewise places at Pharan, and consequently recognises in Serbâl. The account by Nilus also, about the Saracenic attack at Sinai, either does not belong to the time in which it is placed (c. 400), or refers to Serbâl, for here a church (ἐκκλησία) is frequently (p. 38, 46) mentioned, which at that time did not exist at Gebel Mûsa, and Nilus, that very same night in which the scattered slain had been buried, goes down to Pharan, which would have been impossible from Gebel Mûsa. Finally, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who traversed the Peninsula about the year 535, probably immediately before the building of the Justinian church, passes through Raithu, i. e. Tôr, which he regards as Elim, although he only found a few palm-trees there (the present considerable plantations are, therefore, of more recent date), and across the present Wadi Hebrân to Raphidîm, which is now called Pharan. Here he was at the termination of his Sinai journey. From this spot Moses went with the elders “upon the Mount Choreb, i. e. Sinai, which is about 6000 paces (one mile and a half) distant from Pharan,” and struck the water out of the rock; here also the tabernacle of the congregation was built, and the law was given; thereby the Israelites besides received the Scripture, and had leisure to learn it for their application; thence we may date the numerous rock-inscriptions which are still to be found in that wilderness (especially at Serbâl). (Εἶτα πάλιν παρενέβαλον εἰς Ῥαφιδίν, εἰς τὴν νῦν καλουμένην Φαράν· καὶ διψευσάντων αὐτῶν, πορεύεται κατὰ πρόσταξιν θεοῦ ὁ Μωϋσῆς μετὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καὶ ἡ ῥάβδὸς ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ, εἰς Χωρὴβ τὸ ὄρος, τουτέστιν ἐν τῷ Σιναΐῳ, ἐγγὺς ὄντι τῆς Φαρὰν ὡς ἀπό μιλίων ἕξ· (Burckhardt, Trav. in Syr. p. 611, when he descended Serbâl, occupied two hours and a half, from its base to Wadi Firân) καὶ ἐκεῖ πατάξαντος τὴν πέτραν, ἐῤῥύησεν ὕδατα πολλὰ καὶ ἔπιεν ὁ λαός.—Λοιπὸν κατεληλυθότος αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ ὄρους προστάττεται ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ποιεῖν τὴν σκηνήν), etc. (Topograph. christ. lib. v. in the Coll. nova patr. ed. B. de Montfaucon, tom. ii. p. 195, seq.)

This testimony of an unprejudiced traveller is expressed with as much distinctness, as it is worthy of confidence and without suspicion. At the commencement of the sixth century, therefore, according to this eye-witness, it was believed that the law had been given on Serbâl. Cosmas has so little doubt about the matter, that he does not even mention the southern range. Nevertheless, we must admit that the monkish population had already spread over the whole of the mountain range, especially among the districts in a sheltered situation about Gebel Mûsa; and we need not be surprised that a different view was formed among the monks there situated, according to which Moses turned to the south, instead of towards the north, coming from the height of Wadi Hebrân (for the idea that Elim was Raithu was a fixed conviction already cherished by the convent, prematurely founded there). Such changes are of frequent occurrence in Christian topography. But however closely Horeb and Sinai, Raphidîm and the Mount of the Law, appear in the representation, it follows again from this, that associated with Sinai, the rock from which the water flowed was moved farther south. The monks were not deterred by the verses at the commencement of the 19th chapter from transferring the rock of Raphidîm, and consequently Raphidîm itself, as well as the thorn-bush of Horeb, also to Gebel Mûsa, their new Sinai; there in Wadi Leg´a (Robinson, i. p. 184) it is still shown for the admiration of travellers. Thus the unlettered apprehension of the monks that Raphidîm was situated at Sinai, approached nearer to the truth on this head than the more recent verbal criticism.

The legate of Justinian now found it appropriate to found his castle in that secure position, and to build a church at that very spot for the hermits who were dwelling around it. It is quite conceivable that this alone would have contributed to attract many new hermits thither, and to originate a new view about the position of the Mount of the Law, if this had not previously existed. But how both views accommodated themselves to each other during the centuries immediately succeeding, we have absolutely no distinct proofs. At all events, while Mount Sinai is frequently mentioned after the foundation of the bishopric of Pharan, we must be guarded not to understand it to be Gebel Mûsa, unless something further is said. Ordinarily, the lofty range of the Peninsula seems in general to be understood by it. When, for example, as early as the year 536, therefore probably before the erection of the church, at the Concilium sub Mena at Constantinople, one Theonas, presbyter et legatus S. Montis Sinai et deserti Raithu et S. ecclesiæ Pharan (Θεωνᾶς ἐλεῷ θεοῦ πρεσβύτερος καὶ ἀποκρισιάριος τοῦ ἁγίου ὄρούς Σινᾶ καὶ τῆς ἐρήμου Ῥαιθοῦ καὶ τῆς κατὰ Φαρὰν ἁγίας ἐκκλησίας. Harduin, vol. ii. p. 1281) is named, the church of Pharan, at that time the still undoubted, most important central point and bishopric would have been first mentioned, if the monks scattered over the whole range and the plain of Raithu had not been regarded more comprehensive, and on that account placed first. Le Quien (iii. p. 753) mentions the Episcopi Pharan sivi Montis Sinai in succession, and, as the earliest with the last designation, the above-mentioned Bishop Jorius († 1033). Since then, and even since Eutychius (c. 940), the designation of the single Gebel Mûsa, as Sinai, is indeed beyond all doubt.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Chronologie der Ægypter. Vol. i. Berlin, 1849.

[2] On the sudden death of Bishop Alexander, which happened shortly after our departure from Palestine, Gobat, as is known, was selected by H. M. the King of Prussia to be Bishop of the Evangelical Bishopric of Jerusalem, which he has administered, by the blessing of God, efficaciously ever since 1846.

[3] Previous to my departure from Alexandria, the firman of the Viceroy was presented to me, with unlimited permission to make all the excavations which I might think desirable, and with instructions to the local authorities to render me assistance. All the workmen and aid necessary for forming and transporting our collection of antiquities, were demanded in return for money, through virtue of our firman, from the Sheikhs of the neighbouring villages, or the Mudhirs of the provinces, by the Kawass, who had been given us by the government, and they were never refused. The monuments from the southern regions were transported from Mount Barkal to Alexandria on government boats, and three sepulchral chambers near the great Pyramids of Gizeh were also added, which were carefully taken to pieces by the aid of four workmen, sent expressly for the purpose from Berlin, and were put on board a vessel opposite Old Cairo. I also received, before my departure from Egypt, a written permit for the exportation of the collection; and the objects themselves were presented from the Viceroy to H. M. the King of Prussia.

These peculiar favours, at a time when all private travellers, antiquarian speculators, and even diplomatic persons, were expressly forbidden by the Egyptian Government to make any collection, or to export antiquities, have caused many unfavourable judgments to be passed on our expedition. We have been chiefly accused of a thirst for destruction, which, under the given circumstances, would presuppose a peculiarly barbarous feeling to have existed in our party; for as we did not, like many of our rivals, excavate and transport the monuments, the greater part of which had previously been invisible, hurriedly and by night, and with bribed assistance, but leisurely, and with open aid from the authorities, and before the eyes of numerous travellers, all disregard in our treatment of the remaining monuments, of which perhaps they formed a part, would certainly have been so much the more blameable, since it was so easy to avoid it. We might, however, trust to a more correct judgment than what is usually possessed by the greater proportion of ordinary travellers or collectors, with regard to the value of the individual monuments; besides, we were not, after all, in danger of being deceived in this matter by personal self-interest, as we made our selection of the monuments not for ourselves, but commissioned by our government, for the Royal Museum in Berlin, therefore for the benefit of science, and a public eager after knowledge.

The collection, which chiefly on account of its historical value, may be placed on an equal footing with the most important European museums, was incorporated immediately on its arrival with the Royal collections, without my remaining myself officially connected with it; and it is already arranged and exhibited to the public. A more accurate examination is best fitted to place the inconsiderate accusations of more recent, and even German tourists, in their proper light, some of whom have gone so far, for example, very recently, Herr Julius Braun, in the Algemeiner Augsburg Gazette, as to charge us with the mutilation of the gods, which happened more than 3000 years ago, in the temple of El Kab. Besides, it would prove an entire ignorance of Egyptian affairs at the present time, or of that which chiefly lends the monuments of antiquity their real interest to us, if all were not desirous to preserve in the public museums of Europe, as many as possible of the treasures of those countries, which are really as valuable, as they are undervalued in their own home, and numbers of which are still daily destroyed.

[4] The journal of this expedition up the Nile has been since published under the title Expedition zur Entdeckung der Quellen des Weissen Nil, 1840-1841. By Ferd. Werne. With a Preface by Karl Ritter. A map and a table of figures. Berlin: G. Reimer 1848. 8vo.

[5] Abbas Pascha has been Viceroy of Egypt since the death of Ibrahim Pascha in 1848.

[6] This paper—An account of the river Goschop, and of the countries of Enarea, Caffa, and Doko, given by a native of Enarea (with a map)—has been translated by Ritter, and was communicated to the Geographical Society at Berlin on the 7th January, 1843, and was printed in the monthly reports of this society in the latter part of the year. P. 172-188.

[7] On our departure for Upper Egypt, we had minutely examined 130 private tombs, and had discovered the remains of 67 Pyramids.

[8] See my essay, Sûr l’ordre des colonnes piliers en Egypte et ses rapports avec le second ordre Egyptien et la colonne Grecque (avec deux planches), in the ninth volume of the Annales de l’Institut. de Corresp. Archéol. Rome, 1838.

[9] See p. 118.

[10] Proskynemata. “Sometimes travellers who happened to pass by a temple inscribed a votive sentence on the walls, to indicate their respect for the deity, and solicit his protection during their journey, the complete formula of which contained the adoration (proskunéma) of the writer, with the assurance that he had been mindful of his wife, his family, and friends; and the reader of the inscription was sometimes included in a share of the blessings it solicited. The date of the king’s reign, and the day of the month, were also added, with the profession and parentage of the writer.”—Wilkinson’s Ancient Egypt, vol. iii., p. 395.—Tr.

[11] “Every Pharaoh was the Sun of Egypt, and over his name bore ‘Son of the Sun;’ and as the sun was Phra, so each king was called Phra. Each monarch by law inherited his father’s throne in lineal succession, so that the incumbent was Phra son of Phra.”—Gliddon’s Ancient Egypt, p. 32.—Tr.

[12] The colours have now, alas! almost entirely disappeared. Owing to the unequal grain of the stone all the representations were prepared with a thin layer of lime for the groundwork, before they were painted; this lime has peeled off in the transport and by the action of the damp sea air, so that the rough sculpture alone remains. In the Work on the Monuments of the Prussian Expedition (Div. II., sheet 19-22), the colours have been given faithfully, as they were preserved in their original freshness when covered by the sand.

[13] After our return from the south, two entire sepulchral chambers, besides the one here mentioned, were taken to pieces and brought to Europe. All three are now reconstructed, with the other monuments, in the New Museum at Berlin. See Letter XXXV.

[14] A separate essay, Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden, was sent by me to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1843, and it was printed in consequence of a resolution of the 3rd of August of that year. See the Monthly Report (Monats Bericht) of the Academy, 1843, p. 177-203, with three Plates.

[15] I have spoken more at length on this in my Chronology of the Egyptians, vol. i., p. 294.

[16] We have been told on good authority that this statue is not composed of granite, but of limestone from the neighbouring hills.—Tr.

[17] Compare my essay, Ueber die ausgedehnte Anwendung des Spitzbogens in Deutschland im 10 und 11 Jahrhundert, as an Introduction to H. Gally Knight’s Entwickelung der Architectur vom 10 bis 14 Jahrhundert unter den Normannen, translated from the English; Leipzig, 1841, at G. Wigand’s; and my father’s treatise, Der Dom zu Naumburg, by C. P. Lepsius; Leipzig, 1840 (in Puttrich’s Denkm. der Bauk., ii., Lief. 3, 4)

[18] He among them blushes, who cannot show many strokes upon his body, for non-payment of tribute.—Tr.

[19] Kaftan, an open tunic.—Tr.

[20] Tarbusch, red cap.—Tr.

[21] The Germans generally calculate distance by the hour, which corresponds to about three English miles, as this distance can be traversed at a foot pace within that space of time.—Tr.

[22] About twopence-halfpenny English money.

[23] Compare my Chronology of the Egyptians, i., p. 262, &c.

[24] According to Linant, the difference amounts to 22 metres, that is, 70 feet Rheinland (72 English). In June, 1843, an engineer of the Viceroy, Nascimbeni, who was engaged in making a new map, and levelling the Faiûm, visited us in our camp, at the Pyramid of Mœris. He had only found a descent of 2 metres (6 feet 6 inches English) from Illahûn to Medînet, but from thence to Birqet-el-Qorn, 75 metres (246 feet English). I am not aware that anything has been published about this considerable difference of measurements. Sir G. Wilkinson, in his Mod. Eg. and Thebes, vol. ii., 346, states the surface of the water to be about 125 English feet below the bank of the Nile at Beni-suef.

[25] Mémoire sur le lac Mœris, presenté et lu à la Société Egyptienne le 5 Juillet, 1842, par Linant de Bellefonds, inspecteur-général des ponts, et chaussées, publié par la Société Egyptienne. Alexandrie, 1843. 4to. Compare my Chronology, vol. i., p. 262 &c.

[26] The same Domenico Lorda again travelled that year to Abyssinia, and sent six other Abyssinian manuscripts to Herr Lieder from thence, who showed them to me on my return to Cairo. These, also, on my suggestion, were afterwards obtained for the Royal Library. By M. Lorda’s account they contain:

A. Abuscher—Almanacco perpetuo Civile-Ecclesiastico-Storico.

B. Setta Neghest—Codice dell’ Imperadore Eeschias.

C. Juseph—Storia Civile, ed Ecclesiastica. (?)

D. Beraan—Storia Civile, ed Ecclesiastica.

E. Philkisius e Marisak—Due Opere, in un volume, che trattano della Storia Civile.

F. Sinodus—Dritto Canonico.

[27] Sont, or Acacia, Mimosa Nilotica.—Sir G. Wilkinson.—Tr.

[28] This letter, addressed to Alexander von Humboldt, has been already printed in the Prussian Gazette, Berlin, 9th Feb., 1844.

[29] “Dedicated to King Ptolemy and Cleopatra, his sister, benevolent deities.”—Tr.

[30] The emendation, ἀδελφῆς, in this inscription, which dates from the thirty-fifth year of Euergetes (B.C. 136), is of importance in certain chronological determinations of that period. Letronne (Rec. des Inscr., vol. i., p. 33-56) assumed that Cleopatra III., the niece and second wife of Euergetes II., was here meant. Hence alone he concluded that this king, in the official documents written before his expulsion, in the year 132 B.C., only joined the name of his wife, Cleopatra III., to his own, and therefore he fixed the date of all the inscriptions, in which both the Cleopatras, the sister, and the (second) wife are named after the king, in the period after the return of Euergetes (127-117), e. g. the inscriptions on the obelisk of Philæ (Rec., vol. 1., p. 333). In this determination of the time, he is followed by Franz (Corp. Inscr., vol. iii., p. 285), who, for the same reason, fixes the date of the inscriptions (c. i., no. 4841, 4860, 4895, 4896) between B.C. 127 and 117, although he was already aware of my correction of the inscription of Pselchis (c. i., no. 5073).

It is indeed singular that only one Cleopatra is mentioned in the inscription of Pselchis; but as it is Cleopatra II., the first wife of the king, who he always distinguishes from his second wife by the appellation of sister; it cannot thence be concluded that from the very commencement of his second marriage he expressly excluded all mention of the latter in the documents. This also is confirmed in the most distinct manner by two Demotic Papyri belonging to the royal museum, in which both Cleopatras are mentioned, although the one papyrus is as early as the year B.C. 141, the other, a duplicate, is from the year B.C. 136. All inscriptions which, according to Letronne (Rec. des Inscr., tome i., no. 7, 26, 27, 30, 31) and Franz (Corp. Inscr., vol. iii., no. 4841, 4860, 4895, 4896), from the reasons stated, date between the years B.C. 127 and 117, may, therefore, still be placed, with equal probability, in the years 145 to 132.

[31] Compare Letronne, Recueil des Inscriptions Grecques de l’Egypte, tome i., p. 365, &c. Ptolemy Eupator is not mentioned by authors. He was introduced for the first time among the predecessors of Soter II., who were worshipped as divinities, in a Greek papyrus [in Leyden[A]], which was composed in the reign of Soter II., in the year B.C. 105, and he was inserted between Philometor and Euergetes. Böckh, who published the Papyrus (1821), referred the surname of Euergetes to Soter II. and his wife, and considered Eupator to be a surname of the deified Euergetes II. In the same year, Champollion Figeac also wrote about this papyrus, and endeavoured to prove that Eupator was the son of Philometor, who was killed by Euergetes II., on his ascent to the throne. This view was assented to at a later period by St. Martin, Böckh, and Letronne (Rech. pour ser à l’Hist. de l’Eg., p. 124). Meanwhile, the name of Eupator was discovered in a second papyrus from the reign of Soter II., as well as in the letter of Numenius on the Philensic obelisk of H. Bankes, from the time of Euergetes II. In both inscriptions the name of Eupator was mentioned; it did not, however, follow, but preceded Philometor, and therefore could not signify his son. Letronne now conjectured (Recueil des Inscr., vol. i., p. 365) that Eupator was another surname of Philometor. But then it would not have been καὶ θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος καὶ θεοῦ Φιλομήτορος, but καὶ θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος τοῦ καὶ Φιλομήτορος. In a letter to Letronne, of the 1st Dec., 1844, from Thebes, which is printed in the Révue Archéol., vol. i., p. 678, &c., I communicated to him that I had also found the name of Eupator in several hieroglyphic inscriptions, and indeed always before Philometor. The same reason which I had employed against Letronne’s explanation of the Greek name (the passage is not printed along with it in the Révue), namely, the simple repetition of the θεοῦ, did not even permit us in the hieroglyphic list to consider Eupator another surname of Philopator. He must have been a Ptolemy who, for a short time at least, was acknowledged as king, but who is not mentioned by authors; and, indeed, according to Franz (Corp. Inscr., vol. iii., p. 285), and also by the acknowledgment of Letronne (Rec., vol. ii., p. 536), he must have been an elder brother of Philometor, who died in a few months, and therefore was omitted in the Ptolemaic canon.

But the son of Philometor, and of his sister, Cleopatra II., mentioned by Justinus and Josephus, who was formerly believed to have been re-discovered in the Eupator of the [Leyden] papyrus, is particularly mentioned in the hieroglyphic inscriptions among the other Ptolemies, in his place between Philometor and Euergetes, and we thence become acquainted with his name, which had not been added by the authors. He is sometimes named Philopator, sometimes Neos Philopator, and he must therefore also be placed in future as Philopator II. in the series of the reigning Ptolemies. Among fourteen hieroglyphic lists of the Ptolemies, which come down at least as far as the second Euergetes, seven of their number give Philopator II.; in four other lists, in which his name might appear, he is passed over, and these all seem to belong to the first years of Euergetes II., his murderer, when the omission is easily explained. It is natural that he does not appear in the canon, because neither he nor Eupator lived to witness a change of the Egyptian year during his reign; on the other hand, as was to be expected, he is also named in the protocol of the Demotic Papyrus, in which the Ptolemies who are worshipped as divinities are exhibited, and in which Young had also already correctly acknowledged Eupator. In fact, he is here cited in all the lists with which I am acquainted (five in Berlin, from the years 114, 103, 99, 89, one in Turin from the year 89), which are of more recent date than Euergetes II., as well as in a Berlin papyrus from the fifty-second year of Euergetes himself (B.C. 118). A comparison also of the demotic lists shows finally that the transposition of the names Eupator and Philometor in the Greek papyrus from the year B.C. 105 (not 106, as Franz writes—Corp. Inscr., p. 285) is not alone an error of the copyist in writing, as this, and other transpositions also, are not unfrequent in the Demotic Papyrus. The different object of the hieroglyphic and the demotic lists makes it conceivable that such deviations were not admissible in the former, as in the latter lists.

[A] Note.—Leyden in place of Berlin, both here and below, is a correction by the author, April, 1853.—Tr.

[32] Wilkinson (Mod. Eg. and Th., vol. ii., p. 275) considers this Cleopatra Tryphæna to be the celebrated Cleopatra, the daughter of Neos Dionysos; Champollion (Lettres d’Eg., p. 110) thinks she is the wife of Philometor; but the Shields connected with her name belong neither to Ptolemy XIV., the elder son of Neos Dionysos, nor to Ptolemy VI. Philometor, but to Ptolemy XIII. Neos Dionysos, or Auletes, who is always called on the monuments Philopator Philadelphus. Cleopatra Tryphæna was, consequently, the wife of Ptolemy Auletes.

[33] The inscription alluded to is to be found in the rock-grotto of Echmim, and was undoubtedly first engraved before the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He is also named with double shields and the usual royal titles, but without the surname of Soter upon a stele in Vienna, which was erected in the reign of Philopator. Here, however, he bears a different Throne-shield from that in Echmim, and certainly, strange to say, it is the same which even before his time was borne by Philip Aridæus, and Alexander II., under whom Ptolemy, son of Lagus, was governor of Egypt. He is also mentioned upon a statue of the king in the ruins of Memphis, on which the Horus name of the king also appears, and which probably might have been engraved during his reign. Finally, the Soters are also frequently mentioned by their surnames alone at the head of the worshipped ancestors of later kings; as in the Rosetta inscription, and in the bilingual decrees of Philæ (see below, p. 121), 𔌗𓊹𔌗𓊹, while Soter II. is always written 𓊪𓊹𓏌𓐱𓏏𓐰𓏭𓈖𓐰𓈞𓐰𓂡 p. nuter enti nehem, which would correspond to the Coptic ⲡ.ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲉⲧ-ⲛⲉϩⲙ, deus servator. In the demotic inscriptions, the first Soters are also designated by nehem, and in the singular by the Greek word, p. suter.

Although, therefore, it cannot be doubted that the Soters who, according to the Demotic Papyrus, were especially worshipped along with the other Ptolemies, not only in Alexandria and Ptolemais, but also in Thebes, were regarded as the head of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, it is nevertheless so much the more remarkable, that hitherto not a single structure can be pointed out which was erected under Ptolemy Soter when king, although he ruled twenty years in this capacity. In addition to this, the above-mentioned hieroglyphic lists of the Ptolemies commence the series without exception, not with the Soters, but with the Adelphes; and, as was mentioned before, his shields in Echmim bear no royal title; and in Karnak under Euergetes II., in one and the same representation, Philadelphus is designated as king, and the Soter, corresponding to him in space, as no king. In the demotic series of kings, also, of the Papyrus, the Alexandrine series was wont to omit the Soters, till the reign of Philometor, and to make the Adelphes immediately succeed Alexander the Great. The earliest period that I have met with the Soters is in a Papyrus, from the 17th year of Philopator (B.C. 210), the oldest of the Berlin collection; the Theban worship of the Ptolemies seems to have wholly excluded the Soters. Although the commencement of the royal government is therefore fixed in the year B.C. 305, as is specified in the canon, and most undeniably confirmed by the above-mentioned hieroglyphic stele in Vienna, which has been already cited for that purpose by my friend, M. Pinder (Beitr. zur Aelterem Münzkunde, vol. i., p. 201) in his instructive essay, On the Era of Philip upon Coins, it appears, however, to have offered another legitimate opinion, by which not Ptolemy Lagus, but Philadelphus, the first son of the king (if not Porphyrogenitus), was considered the head of the Ptolemies. It may thence be also explained why we find an astronomical Era employed in the reign of Euergetes, that of the otherwise unknown Dionysius, which began from the year 285, the first year of the reign of Philadelphus, while the coins of Philadelphus do not reckon as the commencement of a new era from the beginning of his own reign, nor from the year 305, but from the year of the death of Alexander the Great, or the commencement of the governorship of Ptolemy. (See Pinder, p. 205.)

[34] See Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Abth. II., Bl. 123-133.

[35] See Denkmäl. Abth. II., Bl. 134.

[36] Panegyrics: public religious assemblies which were periodically held in Egypt.—Kenrick’s Ancient Egypt.—Tr.

[37] See Denkmäl. Abth. IV., Bl. 38, 39.—A special essay on these inscriptions is prepared.

[38] The first news of the discovery of these important inscriptions, which had not been noticed by the French-Tuscan expedition, excited some surprise. Simultaneously with the more exact description of them in the Prussian Gazette, a short English notice of them appeared, in which the discovery of a second copy of the Rosetta inscription was mentioned, and, indeed, in Meröe. More recently, when M. Ampère had brought an impression of the inscription to Paris, the learned academician, M. de Saulcy, denied that the decree had anything to do with the Rosetta inscription, and felt himself obliged to ascribe it to Ptolemy Philometor. I therefore took an opportunity to point out more accurately, in two letters to H. Letronne (Rev. Archéol., vol. iv., p. i., &c., and p. 240, &c.), as well as in an essay, in the Papers of the German Oriental Society (vol. i., p. 264, &c.), that the document in question had been drawn up in the 21st year of Ptolemy Epiphanes, and that it contained a repetition of the actual decree of the Rosetta inscription, which referred to Cleopatra, who had meanwhile been elevated to the throne.

[39] The name Cleopatra, instead of Arsinoë, in the hieroglyphic inscription, appears solely to rest on an error of the writer, which was avoided in the demotic inscription, for here Arsinoë stands correctly. The hieroglyphic text of the inscription of Rosetta is also less correct than the demotic.

[40] Such designations appear even at an earlier period. Thus, in Thebes, an “Ammon of Tuthmosis (III.)” is mentioned. It thereby appears that one of the kings named was designated for the newly-established worship of these gods. Ramses II. dedicated three great rock-temples in Lower Nubia, at Derr, Gerf Hussên, and Sebûa, to the three greatest gods of Egypt, Ra, Phtha, and Ammon (See my Memoir on the earliest Cycle of the Egyptian Gods, in the papers of the Academy of Berlin, 1851), and named the places founded there simultaneously after the same gods, accordingly in Greek Heliopolis, Hephaistopolis, and Diospolis. The same Ramses founded a fourth powerful and fortified position, Abusimbel, and called it after himself Ramessopolis, or the Fortress of Ramessopolis, as he also founded two towns in the Delta, and called them after his own name. Now it is, undoubtedly, with reference to these new worships, that the gods there adored were named Ammon of Ramses, and Phtha of Ramses. The king himself was worshipped along with those gods, in these particular rock-temples, especially in that of Abusimbel.

[41] Compare passages in Letters XXIV., XXVI., XXVII. A grammar and vocabulary of the Nuba language, as well as a translation of the Gospel of St. Mark into the Nubian tongue, is ready for publication.

[42] Dhorra. Holcus sorghum. Kenrick, Anc. Eg.—Tr.

[43] I have since then received intelligence of the death of Herr Bauer, which happened only the following year.

[44] Russegger (Reise, 2 Bd., 2 Thl., S. 125) found one specimen of this tree, 95 feet in circumference. He is mistaken when he calls it Gangles; the tree is called Hómara, and the fruit Gungules.

[45] Wakil, or deputy.—Tr.

[46] The poems contain many unusual grammatical forms and expressions, and are composed in a very free, and, as it appears, in some measure, incorrect style.

[47] About six English miles.—Tr.

[48] These monuments are now placed in the Egyptian Museum (Berlin). See the ram and sparrow-hawk in the Denkmäler aus Egypt. und Ethiop., Abth. III., Blatt 90.

[49] By the pods and their kernels, which we brought away with us, Dr. Klotsch has recognised the Moringa Arabica Persoon (Hyperanthera peregrina Forskål). It seems that this tree has hitherto only been known in Arabia, and is indigenous there. The individual trees found near Barkal, which are not mentioned by previous travellers, might perhaps have been introduced from Arabia. This is the more probable, as the immigration of those tribes of the Schaiqîeh Arabs from Heg’âz is still testified in writing.

[50] The expression is, that he has built the Temple 𓂙𓈖𓐰𓏏𓐰𓆑𓋹𓁶𓐰𓇾𓐰𓈅𓐱𓏤𓇳𓐰𓎟𓁧 “to his living image on earth Ra-neb-ma.” The word chent no longer exists in the Coptic language, but is always translated in the Rosetta inscription by εἰκών. The temple, and the locality belonging to it, was also named after the king, but after his Horus name, “The Dwelling of Scha-em-ma.” From this we may trace the origin of the Ram of Barkal and the Lion in the British Museum.

[51] This theory of Dr. Lepsius, of the bed of the Nile having been excavated to a depth of 25 feet in 4000 years, has been examined by Leonard Horner, Esq., F.R.S., in a paper published in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for July, 1850. Dr. Lepsius having in a letter, dated 12th April, 1853, addressed to Mr. Horner, expressed a wish that that paper should be reprinted in the present volume, it will be found accordingly in the Appendix.—Tr.

[52] King of the Noubadœ and the Ethiopians.—Tr.

[53] Denkmäl., Abth. II., Bl. 245, 246.

[54] They are called Salamât, “the Salutations,” by earlier travellers. My attention was called to the correct pronunciation of this word by our old intelligent guide, ʾAuad. The alteration is very great to the Arabs, because ‎‏سَلَامٌ‏‎ salàm, salus, is pronounced with the dental sin, ‎‏صَنَمٌ‏‎ sʾanam, idolum, with the lingual sʾâd. The plural, which usually is expressed by ‎‏أصْنامٌ‏‎ asʾnâm, here assumes the feminine form ‎‏صَنَمَاتٌ‏‎ sʾanamât. It is impossible now to see by the mutilated heads whether they were masculine figures. The stone of which the statues are composed is a particularly hard quartzose friable sandstone conglomerate, which looks as if it was glazed, and had innumerable cracks. The frequent crackling of small particles of stone at sunrise, when the change of temperature is greatest, in my opinion produced the tones of Memnon, far-famed in song, which were compared to the breaking of a musical string.

[55] See note, p. 239.

[56] This King Ai was previously a private individual, and afterwards assumed the priest’s title into his Royal Shield. He not unfrequently appears with his wife in the tombs of Amarna, as a distinguished and peculiarly highly venerated officer of King Amenophis IV., that puritanical worshipper of the Sun, who changed his name into that of Bech-en-aten.

[57] The dimensions here stated have been taken from Wilkinson, Mod. Eg. and Thebes, vol. ii., p. 220.

[58] Apuleii Asclepius sive dialogus Hermetis Trismegisti, c. 24.—(“Oh Egypt! Egypt! fables alone of thy religion will survive, equally incomprehensible to thy descendants; and words cut into stone will alone remain telling of thy pious deeds, and the Scythian, or one from the Indus, or some such neighbouring barbarian, will inhabit Egypt.”)—Tr.

[59] I did not imagine, when I wrote this down, that this crime of blood would so speedily be avenged. See Letter XXXIV.

[60] I have since been informed (Rév. Arch., vol. iv. p. 82) that M. Ampère had been expressly sent to Egypt by the Paris Academy, for the purpose of copying the bilingual inscription at Philæ, which I have noticed in my letters. See above, p. 121. The exceedingly abridged representation of the Demotic text, which was communicated by M. de Saulcy in the Révue Archéologique, is borrowed from the copy which was taken back to Paris, in which, however, the commencement of the Demotic lines, and along with them the date of the decree, are wanting.

[61] Rhamnus nabeca, Wilkinson, Mod. Eg. and Thebes.—Tr.

[62] These places were described for the first time accurately, and in an instructive manner, by Wilkinson. Journ. of the R. Geogr. Soc., vol. ii., p. 28, &c.

[63] “Medicine for the soul.”—Tr.

[64] These are the exact words of my journal, and as they were understood by Ritter, p. 578. In the printed report, p. 8, it might appear as if Robinson had relinquished the ascent of the whole of this part of the mountain; in the memoir of the Bibliotheca Sacra, this is mentioned as a mistake. But I was only speaking of the actual brow of the mountain which projects into the plain, contrasted with the loftier point, though situated on one side, which was ascended by Robinson.

[65] This account, which I addressed to H.M. the King of Prussia, was printed while I was still absent in 1846, under the title of “Reise des Prof. Lepsius von Theben nach der Halbinsel des Sinai, vom 4 März bis zum 14 April, 1845,” Berlin, with two maps—a general map of the Peninsula, and a special map of Serbâl and Wadi Firân, which was drawn by G. Erbkam, from my notes, or statements. This printed pamphlet has not been published, but only distributed to a few persons. Its contents, however, have become better known, by a translation into English by Ch. H. Cottrell (“A Tour from Thebes to the Peninsula of Sinai,” &c. London, 1846), and into French by F. Pergameni (“Voyage dans la Presq’ile du Sinai, etc., lu à la Société de Géographie, séances du 21 Avril et du 21 Mai. Extrait du Bulletin de la Soc. Géogr., Juin, 1847.” Paris).

[66] The Nakb el Haui, “the Saddle of Wind,” is an extremely wild and narrow mountain ravine, the depths of which are impassable, on account of its steep precipices. The road must have been constructed with great skill along the western mountain precipice, and is in many places hewn out of the rock; in others, the crumbling ground has been paved with great flat stones. There can be no doubt that this daring path was only made after the erection of the convent, to maintain closer connection with the town of Pharan, which, till that time, could only be reached by the long circuitous route through the Wadi e’ Scheikh.

[67] The Tamarix Gallica mannifera of Ehrenberg. See Wilkinson, Mod. Eg. and Thebes, ii., 401.—Tr.

[68] The Moringa aptera. See Wilkinson’s Mod. Eg. and Thebes, ii., 404.—Tr.

[69] It seems that this convent has not been visited by any very recent travellers. Even Burckhardt, who calls it Sigillye, did not descend to it, but heard that it was well built, spacious, and also provided with a well, plentifully supplied with water. (Trav. in Syria, p. 610.) It is much to be desired that more exact accounts could be obtained of this convent, situated in the middle of the basin of Serbâl, as it probably is one of the oldest, at any rate one of the most important in the Peninsula, as is proved by the rock-road to it from Pharan, constructed with much skill and difficulty.

[70] Denkmäl., Abth. II., Bl. 2, 116, 137, 140, 152; III., 28.

[71] See Appendix B.

[72] I find all whose judgment is of any weight holding this same opinion. Robinson, especially, has the merit of having cleared away many old prejudices of this nature. But even Burckhardt so little allowed his judgment to be guided by the authority of tradition, that he did not scruple to place his reason for transposing the convent of Sinai to Gebel Mûsa, rather on stratagetical considerations. (Trav. in Syria, p. 609.)

[73] 1 Kings xix. 8.—Tr.

[74] The name of Firân, formerly Pharan, is, indeed, evidently the same as Paran in the Bible; but it is equally certain that this name has altered its meaning with reference to the locality. All other comparisons of names cannot be in the least depended on.

[75] The smaller of the two wells dates as far back as the time of the foundation of the convent. The principal deep well, which supplies the largest amount and the best water, is said to have been first dug by an English nobleman in 1760. (Ritter, p. 610.)

[76] Burckhardt also (Trav., p. 554) observes distinctly that there were no good pasture grounds near the convent, where nevertheless the somewhat numerous small springs, might have led us to expect the ground to have been in a moister condition. With respect to the impression made on Bartlett: see Appendix B.

[77] I was assured of this unanimously by the Arabs. (Compare also Burckhardt, p. 625, and Ritter, p. 769.) Lord Lindsay found “a small wood of Tarfa-trees here, in which blackbirds were singing, and also some plantations of Palm-trees.” It was at the entrance of the same valley “where Seetzen had the pleasure of gathering for himself, and eating for the first time, a great deal of manna from the bushes of Tarfa; he found the ripe produce of the wild Caper shrub growing here in profusion, which was as palatable to the taste as table-fruit.”

[78] Numbers xxxiii. 10.—Tr.

[79] Exodus xv. 27.—Tr.

[80] See Appendix C.

[81] Exodus xvi. 1.—Tr.

[82] These hot springs do not seem to have been originally named Hammâm Faraûn, of Pharaoh, but Faran, from Pharan. For Edrisi names those places on the coast Faran Ahrun, and Istachri Taran, which no doubt ought to be called Faran. (See Ritter, Asien, vol. viii., p. 170, &c.) Macrizi also calls the same spot Birket Faran. (Ritter, Sinai-halbins, p. 64.) The harbour district of Pharan was probably called after the town itself, though distant, and the tradition of Pharaoh’s destruction, so inapplicable to this spot, was perhaps only connected with the alteration of the name of Faran into Faraûn. It remains a striking fact that the Arabian chroniclers, among whom Macrizi himself visited the spot, speak of the town of Faran as of a town on the coast.

[83] That portion of the sandy sea-shore which Robinson regards as the Wilderness of Sin, produces no Tarfa shrubs, much less manna. Compare Ritter, p. 665, &c., with respect to the tracts of country where manna is found. It has been already mentioned that Eusebius maintains that the Wilderness of Sin extended as far as Sinai. (Σίν, ἔρημος ἡ μεταξὺ παρατείνουσα τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης καὶ τῆς ἐρήμου Σινά.)

[84] Robinson, i., p. 173-196. In opposition to what Wilson adduces with respect to the wide prospect from Gebel Mûsa, we must consider that necessarily a great many places may be seen from a point so little elevated above the immediately surrounding country; from which points, however, the mountain cannot be traced independently and distinctly by the eye.

[85] See Robinson, i., p. 118-196.

[86] Ewald—Gesch. des Volkes Israel, ii., p. 86—also assumes that Sinai was held sacred “even before the time of Moses, as a place of oracles, and the seat of the gods.” Ritter (see Appendix B) considered this to be incompatible.

[87] Exodus iii. 1.—Tr.

[88] Exodus iv. 27.—Tr.

[89] This is even proved to exist now by Rüppell, who holds Gebel Katherîn to be Sinai. On his journey to Abyssinia (vol. i., p. 127) he relates, in the account of his ascent of Serbâl in the year 1831, as follows:—“On the summit of Serbâl the Bedouins have collected small stones, and placed them in the form of a circular enclosure, and other stones are placed outside on the shelving rock-precipice, like steps, to facilitate the ascent. When we arrived at the stony circle my guide drew off his sandals, and approached it with religious veneration; he then recited a prayer within it, and told me afterwards that he had already slaughtered two sheep here as a thank-offering, one of them on the occasion of the birth of a son, the other on regaining his health after an illness. From a belief that Mount Serbâl is connected with such things, it is said to have been held in great reverence by the Arabs of the surrounding districts since time immemorial; and it must also at one time have been regarded as holy in certain respects by the Christians, as, in the valley on the south-western side, there are the ruins of a great convent, and of a great many small hermit’s cells. At all events, the wild jagged masses of rock in Serbâl, and the isolated position of the mountain, is far more striking, and in a certain degree more imposing, than any other mountain group in Arabia Petræa, and for that reason was peculiarly calculated to be the object of religious pilgrimages. The highest point of the mountain, or the second pinnacle of rock, proceeding from the west, on which the Arabs are in the habit of sacrificing, by my barometrical measurements is 6342 French feet above the level of the sea.”

[90] With reference to this, compare particularly the admirable pamphlet by Tuch: Ein und Zwanzig Sinaitische Inschriften. Leipzig, 1849. This scholar endeavours to prove from the names of the pilgrims that have been deciphered, that the authors of the inscriptions were native heathen Arabs, who wandered to Serbâl to some religious festivals. And he is of opinion that pilgrimages ceased in the course of the third century at latest. We may also mention that the name itself of Serbâl, which Rödiger (in Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. ii., last page) derives, no doubt correctly from the Arabic ‎‏سرب‏‎ serb, palmarum copia, and Baal, “the Palm-grove (Φοινικών) of Baal,” refers to its heathen worship.

[91] Vol. i., p. 198. See Appendix B.

[92] I thought I might have been able to deduce this indirectly from his narrative, Antiqu., iii., 2. Now it seems to me that there is nothing that we can extract about his views from this; for which reason the above name should be effaced. Abstractedly considered, it is very probable that he entertained the same views as Eusebius and Jerome. Compare note, p. 316, and Appendix G.

[93] Eusebius, Περὶ τῶν τοπικῶν ὀνομ., etc., s. v. Ῥαφιδίμ, τόπος τῆς ἐρήμου παρὰ τὸ Χωρὴβ ὄρος, ἐν ᾧ ἐκ τῆς πέτρας ἐρρύησε τὰ ὕδατα καὶ ἐκλήθη ὁ τόπος πειρασμός. ἔνθα καὶ πολεμεῖ Ἰησοῦς τὸν Ἀμαλὴκ ἐγγὺς Φαράν.

[94] Hieronymus, de situ et nomin., etc., s. v. Raphidîm, locus in deserto juxta montem Choreb, in quo de petra fluxere aquæ, cognominatusque est tentatio, ubi et Jesus adversus Amalec dimicat prope Pharan.

[95] Among the older authors, Cosmas Indicopleustes must be especially named here (about A.D. 535). (Topogr. Christ., lib. v., in the Coll. nov. patr. ed. Montfaucon, tom. ii., fol. 195.) Εἶτα πάλιν παρενέβαλον εἰς Ῥαφιδὶν εἰς τὴν νῦν λεγομένην Φαράν. Antoninus Placentinus, who is placed about the year 600 (while the learned Papebroch, who published his Itinerarium in the Acta SS., month of May, vol. ii., p. x.-xviii., does not place him earlier than the eleventh or twelfth century), came, as he says, in civitatem (which can only be Pharan) in qua pugnavit Moyses cum Amalech: ubi est altare positum super lapides illos quos posuerunt Moyse orante. That the town was enclosed by a brick wall and valde sterilis, instead of which Tuch (Sinait. Inschr., p. 38) proposes to read fertilis. If Pharan is called an Amalekitish town by Macrizi (Gesch. der Kopten, uebers. v. Wüstenfeld, p. 116), then this can only indicate the same view that Moses was attacked near Pharan by the Amalekites, to whom this district belonged. Among more recent scholars we must especially mention Ritter, as is mentioned in Appendix B.

[96] Exodus xviii. 5.—Tr.

[97] Exodus xvii. 6.—Tr.

[98] See below, the complete passage by Cosmas. See Appendix G.

[99] Even the name itself, Raphidîm, i. e. the places of repose, indicate that the place was adapted for rest of some duration.

[100] See Appendix D.

[101] For that reason Robinson and others, who do not allow that any positions of the encampments were omitted, place Raphidîm beyond Firân; and although they make the march through the latter place, they leave it either totally unmentioned, or place Alus there. We have already mentioned above the objections to this opinion, which have been partly proved by Ritter. On the other hand, Ritter, to remove the difficulty, distinctly admits of an omission in our present text. (P. 742.)

[102] Numbers xxxiii. 10-14.—Tr.

[103] Ritter (see Appendix B) is consequently compelled to draw this conclusion; which, in fact, seems to me the most doubtful of all. The present tradition differs from this in holding Horeb and Sinai to be two mounts, situated immediately beside each other but yet apart.

[104] The three possible ways of removing this difficulty have been tried by Robinson, Ritter, and Josephus. The first, places Raphidîm near Gebel Mûsa; the second, assumes there is an omission between Raphidîm and Sinai, and retains two Mounts of God; the third, transposes the separating passage, and does not mention Horeb at all, only Sinai.

[105] See the manner in which Robinson combines, and weighs both views, i., p. 197, &c. All those passages where precisely the same is said concerning Horeb, as about Sinai, are opposed to the more recent opinion that Horeb was the general designation for the mountain range, or for the district, and that Sinai was the individual Mount, while not a single passage requires us to think of a large extent of ground. No mention is ever made of a “Wilderness of Horeb,” as of the Wildernesses of Sûr, Sin, Paran, and others. We might also cite in favour of the opposite opinion Acts vii. 30 compared with Exodus iii. 1.

[106] This view is found already in the above-mentioned (note, p. 313) Itinerarium of Antoninus, who places the convent between Sinai and Horeb. The monks’ tradition of the present day, that the rock projecting into the plain of Râha was Horeb, is well known. The arbitrary character of such assumptions is evident; nevertheless, the latter opinion is maintained by Gesenius (Thesaur, p. 517, Wiener, and others).

[107] St. Jerome expressly says the same thing, since he adds to the words of Eusebius s. v. Choreb: Mihi autem videtur quod duplici nomine idem mons nunc Sina, nunc Choreb vocetur. Even Josephus evidently considered both mountains to be one, for wherever Choreb is mentioned in the Bible, he placed Sinai instead; the same is done by the author of the Acts of the Apostles (vii. 30), and also by Syncellus (Chron., p. 190), who says of Elijah, ἐπορεύετο ἐν Χωρὴβ τῷ ὄρει ἤτοι Σιναίῳ. (The following passage within brackets added by the author, April, 1853.—Tr.) [There has been an attempt to prove, from the Greek termination Σιναίῳ, that Choreb is only meant to designate here part of the range of Sinai. However, the word cannot be understood thus in the sense of an adjective, as there was no other but the Sinaitic Choreb. Τὸ ὄρος Σιναῖον (Syncell., p. 122; Cosmas, p. 195; ἀνὰ μέσον Ἐλεὶμ καὶ τοῦ Σιναίου ὄρους. Joseph. Ant. Jud. 3, 5: ἄνεισι (Μωυσῆς) πρὸς τὸ Σιναῖον; compare the inscription on the convent, Appendix E) is used just as much as Τὸ ὄρος Σινᾶ. But if, which is not the case, Choreb especially was only called Τὸ Σιναῖον, not Τὸ Σινᾶ ὄρος, we could only infer the reverse, namely, that Sinai must have meant a part of the range of Choreb.] Ewald, especially among modern scholars, brings forward the same opinion of the similarity of the two mounts. He says (Gesch. des. V. Isr., ii., p. 84) the two names, Sinai and Horeb, do not change because they designated points in the same range, situated beside each other; but the name of Sinai is clearly the most ancient, for it was used also by Deborah, Judges v. 5, whereas the name of Horeb cannot be pointed out before the period of the fourth narrator (compare Exodus iii. 1; xvii. 6; xxxiii. 6); but it then becomes very prevalent, as is proved in Deuteronomy, and in the passages of 1 Kings viii. 9; xix. 8; Mal. iv. 4; Psalms cvi. 19, while it says nothing against this view when very late authors reintroduce the name of Sinai, merely from their learned acquaintance with the old books.

[108] If we omit the two verses, Exodus xix. 1, 2, the account, xix. 3, follows most naturally after xviii. 27. “And Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went away into his own land. And Moses went up unto God; and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain.”

[109] See Appendix D.

[110] See Appendix B.

[111] See Appendix E.

[112] See Appendix F.

[113] See Appendix G.

[114] Ritter (p. 31), when he mentions that Sinai was almost simultaneously regarded by the Egyptian, Cosmas, to be Serbâl; and by the Byzantine, Procopius to be Gebel Mûsa; adds another supposition, which I will mention here. “Might there not,” he says, “have, perhaps, existed a different tradition or party-view on this matter in convents, and among the monks at Constantinople and Alexandria, which might proceed from a jealous feeling to vindicate the superior sanctity of one or the other locality? It is remarkable that such different views of the matter should be held simultaneously by the most learned theologians of their day.”

[115] This letter, which I have had printed here verbatim, was addressed to the General Director of the Royal Prussian Museum, Privy Counsellor of Legation von Olfers. This communication may perhaps serve to spread a correct estimation of the fundamental principles which has guided the arrangement and decoration of the Egyptian Museum, one of the grandest and latest works that have been executed in Berlin, and which has just been rendered accessible to the public.

[116] Burckhardt must have been mistaken when (Trav. in Syr., p. 5) he states that the tomb of Noah was only 10 feet long, although the same statement is repeated by Schubert (Reise in das Morgenland, vol. iii., p. 340). It is well known how frequently the number 40 is found employed by the Hebrews as an indeterminate multiple. The same custom seems to have been peculiar to all Semetic nations; it may at least be pointed out frequently, and at all periods, among the Phœnicians and Arabians; even the numerical words for 4 and 40 in these languages indicate the universal idea of multitude. See my Sprachvergleichenden Abhandlungen, Berlin, 1836, p. 104, 139, and the Chronologie der Ægypter, vol. i, p. 15.

[117] See V. Hammer, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs, Div. ii., p. 482.

[118] Compare Krafft, Topographie Jerusalems. Bonn, 1846. P. 269, and Plate II., No. 33.

[119] The king here represented is explained by Rawlinson to be the son of the builder of Khorsabad, Bel-Adonimscha. (A Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscr. of Babylonia and Assyria. London, 1850, p. 70.) According to Layard, the same king is found on the buildings of Kuyung´ik, Nebbi Yûnas, and Mossul (Nineveh, Lond., 1849, p. 142-144); who (p. 400) supposes that the cypress monument now to be seen in Berlin belongs to him. (Compare Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces. London, 1852, p. 127.)

[120] Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte. (Egypt’s Place in Universal History. Trans. by C. H. Cottrell.)

[121] The great Book of the Dead, at Turin, is upon a single Roll, 57′ 3″ Rhineland feet in length.

[122] Ritschl. The Alexandrian Libraries. 1838. P. 32, &c.

[123] De Myster. viii. 1. According to Böckh, Manetho, p. 117. J. Firmicus also speaks somewhere of 20,000 books of Hermes. Compare Fabr. Bib. gr. ed. Harl. t. i. p. 85.

[124] 1 Kings iv. 30; Acts vii. 22.

[125] Herod. ii. 160.

[126] See the general accounts in Diodor. Sic. i. 69, 96-98; Plut. de Is. et Osir. c. x.; Clem. Alex. Strom. p. 131; Sylb. Cedren. Hist. comp. p. 94 B.

[127] Herod. ii. 91; vii. 94, &c. [Diod. i. 28.]

[128] Diod. i. 29.

[129] Diod. i. 69, 96; iv. 25. [Justin. Mart. ad Græc. c. xiv.]

[130] Diod. i. 96. [Clem. Protr. p. 12; Uireph. Synes, p. 421.]

[131] Ibid.

[132] Diod. i. 29.

[133] Diod. i. 69, 96. Heliodor. Aeth. iii. 14; Clem. Div. i. p. 130. [Justin. Mart. c. xiv. 17.]

[134] Diod. i. 96.

[135] Diod. i. 98.

[136] Ibid.

[137] Diod. i. 96; Plut. de Is. et Osir. c. x. [Plut. Lyc. i. p. 41; F. Isocr. Laud. Busir. p. 329.]

[138] Plato. Tim. p. 21; Diod. i. 69, 96; Plut. de Is. c. x.; Vita Solon, c. xxvi. [Justin. Mart. c. xiv.; Cyrill. c. Julian. i. p. 15.]

[139] ii. 177.

[140] Diog. Laert. i. 89.

[141] Strab. xvii. p. 806, 807; Cic. de fin. v. 29; Diod. Sic. i. 96; Plut. de Is. c. x.; de genio Socr. p. 578; Clem. Al. Strom. i. p. 131; Diog. Laert. iii. 6.

[142] Strab. ii. p. 119; xvii. p. 807.

[143] Plut. de Is. c. x.; de placit. philos. i. 3; Clem. i. p. 130; Diog. Laert. i. 27. [Theod. Melit. Proem. in Astr. c. xii.; Cyrill. c. Jul. i. p. 15.]

[144] Diog. Laert. i. 27; Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 17.

[145] Diod. v. 37.

[146] Cic. de fin. v. 29; Diod. i. 96; Strab. vii. p. 297; xiv. p. 638; Plut. de Is. c. x.; Diog. Laert. viii. 3, 11; Clem. l. 1. [Justin. Mart. c. xiv. 19; Isocr. Busir. p. 227.]

[147] Herod. ii. 81; Diog. Laert. viii. 24, 33, 34; Diog. Laert. viii. 4.

[148] Herod. ii. 123; Diog. Laert. viii. 14; Cic. Tusc. i. 16.

[149] Clem. Alex. i. p. 129; Cedren. p. 94, B. [Theod. Melit. Pr. in Astr. c. 12.]

[150] See preface to the Todtenbuche der Ægypter, p. 13, &c.

[151] Cedren. p. 94, B.

[152] Diod. i. 96; Diog. L. IX. 35.

[153] Diog. L. VII. 177.

[154] Diod. i. 96.

[155] Diog. L. VII. 186; viii. 87.

[156] Strab. I. ii. p. 37.

[157] Diog. L. III. 6.

[158] Herod. ii. 143.

[159] Diod. i. 44.

[160] Diod. i. 69.

[161] Plut. de Is. c. x.; de genio Socr. p. 578, F; Clem. Al. Str. i. p. 131.

[162] Diod. xvi. 51.

[163] Sync. p. 271, D.

[164] xvii. p. 806.

[165] See respecting this, Letronne. Translation of the 17th Book of Strabo. (Géographie de Strabon. t. i. Paris, 1819. p. 390.) Compare the passage in Herodot. ii. 123, where, though not by name, he accuses Pythagoras and Pherecydes of having ascribed to themselves what they had borrowed from the Egyptians. The same was related by some of Eudoxus. Diog. Laert. viii. 89.

[166] Strom. vi. p. 260, ed. Sylb. See also Bunsen Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgesch., Bd. i. p. 34, &c. (Egypt’s Place in Universal History, book i. p. 9.)

[167] Aelian. Hist. var. xiv. 34, says, that the Egyptians in ancient times had priests as their judges.

[168] Clem. Strom. i. p. 131.

[169] [Sacred Scribe.]

[170] The Pastophori do not appear in the train of the priests, and are expressly separated from the priests (ἱερεῖς) by Porphyrius. They were, as their name implies, the bearers of the small sacred chapels of the gods which formed the principal furniture of the temple. That is probably the reason why they appear in the great processions, where the images of the gods were carried about, not as priests, but as under-officers of the temple; and they are, therefore, rightly placed by Porphyrius along with the νεωκόροι, the sweepers of the temple, and the other servants of the temple (ὑπουργοί). As bearers of the sacred shrines they were also their watchmen, and, therefore, especially the overseers of the temple, the watchmen of the temple; therefore their hieroglyphical sign, according to Horapollo, i. 41, is a house watchman, φύλαξ οἴκου, because the temple is guarded by him, διὰ τὸ ὑπὸ τούτου φυλάττεσθαι τὸ ἱερόν. But what could the temple watchmen have had to do with medicine? There is nowhere even the most distant relation indicated between the pastophori and the physicians; indeed, their occupations appear necessarily to exclude them. I therefore believe that there is either some fundamental error, or a false reading, in the passage of Clemens, which cannot yet be solved. The pastophori were the principal under-officers, and therefore were united by their rank with the chanter, the lowest class of the priests. Was this possibly the reason why the books of medicine, which succeeded those of the chanter in this canon, were ascribed to them? There were many more than forty-two sacred books, and they must have all been lodged among the archives of the temple, without, however, being assigned to any particular class of priests.

[171] [Diod. i. 70, 73, 96.]

[172] I speak here of the first section of the Papyrus of Sallier, No. 2, which is communicated in the Select Papyri in the hieratic character, from the collection of the British Museum. London. 1844. Pl. x.-xii.

[173] I procured in Thebes a number of such hymns for the Royal Museum at Berlin. Several of them were composed in the reign of King Ramses IX., in the 20th Dynasty. There was a hymn to Amen-Ra, upon a roll of eleven pages, in the Egyptian collection of Mr. Sams in London, 1839.

[174] Upon a wooden tablet covered with fine white chalk, in the British Museum.

[175] In the Book of the Dead, c. 128, 134, 139, &c. [Plut. de Is. c. 52.]

[176] Porphyr. de abst. iv. 8.

[177] Bunsen, Bd. i. p. 55. (Eg.’s Pl. in Un. Hist. bk. i. p. 28.)

[178] See my introduction to the Todtenbuche der Ægypter. Leipzig, 1842, p. 17.

[179] Bd. i. p. 47. (Eg.’s Pl. in Un. Hist. bk. i. p. 20.)

[180] i. 94, 95.

[181] [Tatian. or. ad Græc. c. 1.]

[182] Annal. ii. 60.

[183] Champollion, Lettres écrites d’Egypte et de Nubie, p. 21, 426. After the death of Champollion, Salvolini made use of the privately withheld papers of his master for a particular treatise: Campagne de Ramsès-le-Grand (Sésostris) contre les Schéta et leurs alliés. Manuscrit hiératique appartenant à M. Sallier à Aix en Provence. Notice sur ce MS. Paris, 1835, 8.

[184] I am indebted for this valuable present to an English lady, Miss Westcar, who had deposited it a long time ago in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It contains nine sides, of which, unhappily, the first four are very much destroyed. The remainder, also, is very hastily written, and is therefore difficult to decipher. It appears to be poetical, and to be addressed to a king, whose name unfortunately is lost; the example “of his ancestors,” Chufu, Snefru Ser, &c. is held up to him.

[185] 1 Kings vi. 1.

[186] Exodus xii. 40.

[187] Ant. viii. 3, 1: 592; c. Ap. ii. 2: 612 years.

[188] Gen. xv. 13; compare Ap. Hist. 7, 6.

[189] Gal. iii. 17.

[190] Ant. ii. 15, 2; viii. 3, 1. Compare c. Ap. i. 33, where he calculates 170 years from Joseph to Moses.

[191] Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebecca; Moses is 40 years old when he goes to Midian; at 80 years of age he leads the people out of Egypt, and dies at the age of 120.

[192] Contra. Ap. i. 26.

[193] Manetho had only related that the Hyksos were expelled in the reign of Tuthmosis. It is the opinion of Josephus alone that they were the Jews.

[194] Compare Exodus xxxiv. 12, 13.

[195] Gen. xvi. 3; xxi. 21.

[196] Gen. xli. 45.

[197] Numb. xii. 1.

[198] Exodus xii. 38. Compare Numbers xi. 4.

[199] p. 760, 824.

[200] C. Ap. ii. 3. Compare Tacit. Hist. v. 2. Aethiopum prolem.

[201] Gen. xlvi. 34.

[202] Numbers xii. 10.

[203] Exodus iv. 6.

[204] Exodus ix. 3, 9.

[205] The Persians also knew no other way of protecting themselves against this infectious disease of the λέπρη ἢ λεύκη than by driving those who were attacked by it out of the town, and if they were strangers, out of the country. Herod. i. 138.

[206] Plut. de Is. c. xxxiii.

[207] Champollion, Panthéon, pl. xxxviii.

[208] 1 Kings xii. 2, 28, 30, 32; 2 Kings x. 29.

[209] Exod. i. 11.

[210] Similar perhaps to the command of Pharaoh to drown the Hebrew boys.

[211] Exod. i. 10.

[212] This number, which differs from the one in the original, was inserted by the Author, April, 1853.—Tr.

[213] Bunsen. Ægypten. Bd. i. p. 227. (Tr. vol. i. p. 184.) But compare Bd. iii. p. 109, where this opinion appears to be already modified.

[214] Tatian. Paraen ad Græc. p. 129 (Oxon). Clemens Alex. Strom. i 21, p. 138. Justin Martyr ad Græc. p. 10, E.

[215] Justin Martyr. Africanus in Eusebius. Præp. Evang. x. 10. Clemens Alex.

[216] Compare the passages of Justin and Africanus.

[217] Contra. Ap. i. 15.

[218] p. 63, B; 123, D.

[219] Euseb. Armen. Canon, vol. ii. p. 105. Aucher.

[220] According to Gen. xii. 4.

[221] Hist. v. 2.

[222] Manetho, p. 192, 325.

[223] Gesch. Isr. ii. p. 69.

[224] Ægypten, i. p. 127, 234. (Tr. vol. i. p. 91.)

[225] Anecd. græca, Paris, ed. Cramer, vol. ii. p. 174.

[226] They are cited by Gesenius. Thesaur. ling. hebr. p. 1297.

[227] De la géographie comparée et de l’ancien état des côtes de la mer rouge, in the Description de l’Eg. ed. Panckoucke, vol. vi. p. 316.

[228] Mémoires sur l’Eg. p. 126.

[229] Gesch. d. V. Isr. ii. p. 53.

[230] C. Apion. i. 14, 26.

[231] Joseph, c. Ap. i. 14.

[232] Euseb. Chron. in Aucher. vol. i. p. 224.

[233] Africanus in Syncellus, p. 61, B, &c.

[234] p. 804.

[235] iv. 5. 53.

[236] ii. 107.

[237] Jos. c. Ap. i. 15.

[238] i. 57.

[239] Diodor. i. 57.

[240] Herod. ii. 141.

[241] Herod. ii. 154. Compare Diod. i. 67.

[242] Herod. iii. 10, 11.

[243] Diod. xvii. 48. Arrian. iii. 1.

[244] Strab. p. 756, 760, 781.

[245] p. 803.

[246] Gesch. des Volkes Isr. i. p. 451.—‎‏עַבָרִים‏‎, Abarim, is also a Palestinian name. Numb. xxvii. 12; Deut. xxxii. 47, 49, &c.

[247] The supposition of Larcher in Herd. t. viii. p. 62; Champollion, L’Eg. sous les Phar. ii. p. 91; and Gesenius, thes. l. hebr. p. 1297, that Αὔαρις is connected by its sound with Ἡρώ (see below on Heroonpolis) has not even a semblance in itself, even if it were geographically admissible.

[248] Bd. i. p. 328.

[249] Gesch. Isr. Bd. i. p. 290, 291.

[250] Mém. sur l’Eg. p. 124.

[251] Hérod. t. viii. p. 62, 429.

[252] L’Eg. sous les Phar. t. ii. p. 90.

[253] Thes. l. hebr. p. 1297.

[254] In his map of the Delta.

[255] Joseph. c. Ap. i. 26.

[256] Apollodor. i. 6, 3.

[257] Herod. iii. 5.

[258] Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1215.

[259] [This reading is now adopted also by the last eminent editor of Stephanus, Meineke (tom. i. p. 559).]

[260] 𓊃𓐰𓏏𓁣, Set, is the common hieroglyphical name of Typhon.

[261] Joseph. c. Ap. i. c. 32.

[262] Gen. xlvi. 28.

[263] xvii. p. 804.

[264] Rozière, in the Descr. de l’Eg. vol. vi. p. 257, &c.

[265] Ptolem. V. 17. 1. Plin. H. N. V. 11, § 65.

[266] iv. 5. According to other manuscripts, 29° 50′.

[267] Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. i. p. 311, there only heard the name of E’ Saqieh, “the Water-wheel;” but my friend and fellow-traveller, H. Abeken, who was also on the spot, confirmed me in the name which Robinson gives in his map (Abu Keischeib). The French scholars, on the contrary, write Abou Keycheyd.

[268] Mém. sur l’Eg. i. p. 166.

[269] L’Eg. sous les Phar. ii. p. 89.

[270] Descr. de l’Eg. xi. p. 378.

[271] Antiq. Jud. ii. 7, 8.

[272] p. 75, ed. Parthey and Pinder (p. 170, Wess).

[273] Mém. sur l’Eg. t. i. p. 151, &c.

[274] Herod. ii. 158.

[275] Plin. H. N. V. ix. 9.

[276] S. Wilkinson, Eg. and Thebes, vol. i. p. 311.

[277] In his Mémoire sur les anciennes limites de la mer rouge, in the Descr. de l’Eg. t. xi. (Panck.) p. 371, &c.; and in the Notice sur le séjour des Hébreux en Egypte, t. viii. p. 112, &c.

[278] p. 768.

[279] p. 767.

[280] Strabo, ii. p. 85, 86, &c.

[281] The first imperfect copy is in the Descr. de l’Eg. Antiq. vol. v. pl. 29, No. 6-8. The best is given by Wilkinson in his Materia Hieroglyphica, Append. No. 4.

[282] King Ramses was therefore just as much the local god of the town Ramses, as the god Hero of the town Hero.

[283] ii. 158. Compare iv. 42.

[284] Meteorolog. i. 14, p. 352, b (Bekk).

[285] i. 33.

[286] p. 38, p. 804. Compare p. 780.

[287] Hist. Nat. vi. 29, § 165-167.

[288] iv. 5.

[289] L’Isthme de Suez, in the Révue des Deux Mondes, livr. du 15 Juill. 1841.

[290] Herod. ii. 102.

[291] The height of the Red Sea was discovered to be 30 feet 6 inches above the level of the Mediterranean Sea. [By the very latest investigations the difference of 30 feet, which was formerly accepted, has been reduced to 3 feet.]

[292] Descr. de l’Eg. Atlas, pl. 23, 31.

[293] ii. 158, iv. 42.

[294] Herod. ii. 159.

[295] Descr. de l’Eg. (Panck.) Ant. vol. viii. p. 27, &c. Compare vol. v. p. 451, and Jomard, carte de la basse Egypte. A copy of the fragment is given in a copper-plate, Ant. vol. v. pl. 29.

[296] [The spot has now been re-discovered, and marked upon the map of the Société d’Etudes de l’Isthme de Suez. Travaux de la Brigade Française. Rapport de l’Ingénieur. 1847.]

[297] Descr. de l’Eg. Atlas, pl. 23, 31.

[298] Letronne was probably led to this opinion because, as above mentioned, he thought that Heroonpolis was on the sea.

[299] Letronne, in this treatise mentioned, has further attempted to show that the connecting canal between the Nile and the Red Sea continued till about the third century after Christ, but was then interrupted until it was re-opened by the Caliph ʾOmar in the year 639. Since that time it continued till the year 762 or 767, when the canal was designedly filled up by the Caliph El Mansur. The ingenious combinations by which Letronne assumes that the canal was filled up with sand, about the time of Septim. Severus, because at that time the Porphyry quarries of Gebel Dochân appear to have been neglected, is not, however, a sufficient reason for this conclusion. The canal might easily have been deepened again, as in the time of ʾOmar, and many other reasons might be given for the neglect of the stone-quarries in the Red Sea. But there is a positive proof against it in Ibn el Maqrizi (Notices et Extr. des MSS. tom. vi. p. 337, 366), where it is said, according to Langlès: Hadrien dirigea ensuite sa marche vers l’Egypte, où il fit recreuser le canal qui allait du Nil à la mer de Qolzoum; les vaisseaux y passaient encore à l’apparition de l’islamisme: c’est le même que ʾAmrou ben el-ʾAss fit nettoyer; and farther on (p. 340), where Amru says: Je sais qu’avant l’islamisme, des vaisseaux amenaient chez nous des marchandises de l’Egypte. Depuis que nous avons fait la conquête de ce pays, cette communication est interrompue; le canal est encombré et les marchands en ont abandonné la navigation. It is evident from this, that the canal during the rising of the Arabs, shortly before the Egyptian conquest, had been designedly filled up by the Egyptians as an inimical and prudential measure, for the same reason that it was afterwards again filled up by the Caliph El Mansur, when Mohammet ben ʾAbdallah rose against him at Medina, in the year 762 (according to others 767). The year also of its restoration appears to me still doubtful. Maqrizi, indeed, says (p. 334): Lorsque le Très-Haut accorda l’islamisme aux hommes, et que ʾAmrou ben el-ʾAss fit la conquête de l’Egypte, ce général, d’après l’ordre de ʾOmar ben âl-Khaththâb, prince des fidèles, s’occupa de faire recreuser de canal dans l’année de la mortalité. This famine year was certainly the year 18 after the flight of the prophet—i. e. A.D. 639. But in the same year Egypt was also conquered, and it is not very probable that cutting the canal, which would occupy six months, was the first and immediate undertaking of the conqueror, although it was undoubtedly soon called for by the famine in Arabia, which made it necessary to import provisions from Egypt. From the words of Amru also, quoted above, there appears to have been a longer period between the conquest and the cleaning out the canal. I, therefore, think that we ought rather to follow the defined statement of El-Kendi, who is cited by Maqrizi himself (p. 343), and who wrote about 880. He places the restoration of the canal five years later—namely, in the year 23; i. e. 644, the last year of Amru. For the history of the canal, compare, besides the treatises of Letronne which we have cited, what the same scholar said at a former time in his edition of the Dicuil. 1814, 8vo, p. 10, &c., and in his translation of the 17th book of Strabo, p. 382; also Mannert, Geogr. von Africa, Abth. i. p. 503, &c., and Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen, Bd. i. p. 119, &c.; the last of whom likewise places the restoration of the canal after 641.

The result we have arrived at with regard to the whole history of this remarkable connecting canal is, therefore, briefly, the following:

c. 1350 B.C. Ramses II. (Sesostris) digs the canal from Bubastis to Heroonpolis (Mukfâr, near Seba-Biar), and with the assistance of the Israelites builds near it the towns Pithom and Ramses.

c. 600 B.C. Nekô appears to have conducted the canal as far as the Bitter lakes.

c. 500 B.C. Darius, for the first time, makes the whole connection, since he cuts through the elevation between the Bitter lakes and the sea.

c. 350 B.C. In the time of Aristotle the canal appears to have fallen into disuse.

c. 250 B.C. Ptolemæus Philadelphus digs a wide canal, amnis Ptolemæus, from the sea to the Bitter lakes, constructs an artificial sluice, and builds Arsinoë on the sea.

c. 100 A.D. Trajan opens a new canal, amnis Traianus, from Babylon to Heroonpolis.

643 (644) A.D. ʾOmar re-opens the interrupted connection.

762 (767) A.D. Mohammet ben ʾAbdallah fills up the canal.

[300] Jomard, carte de la basse Egypte. Wilkinson, Mod. Eg. and Thebes, i. p. 187.

[301] It is a great mistake if Champollion—L’Eg. sous les Phar. ii. p. 244—considers these the ruins of the town built by the Israelites.

[302] Wilkinson (Mod. Eg. p. 319) misunderstands the passage when he supposes that Patumos was situated at the other end of the canal, on the Red Sea. He appears here to have followed Jomard, who, in his map of the Delta, also places it at the head of the bay, although he places Pithom in the right position.

[303] Compare Steph. Byz.

[304] Πά-τουμος, Pi-thom, ⲡⲓ-ⲑⲟⲙ, means “the (namely the Temple, the Dwelling-place) of the Tum” of the well-known Egyptian god 𓏏𓐰𓍃𓅓𓅱𓀭, who was much honoured exactly in this part of Egypt. He is frequently found upon the Flaminian obelisks, which come from Heliopolis, as well as upon the monuments of Ramses at Abu-Keshêb.

[305] iv. 5, 53.

[306] Compare Böckh, Manetho, p. 293 and p. 229.

[307] Exod. ii. 23.

[308] Ramses III., also, whose reign happened soon after the Exodus of the Israelites, waged war with the northern nations, and therefore undoubtedly passed through Syria and Palestine. But it is not probable that his marches were ever of any considerable duration, or were connected with long periods of possession, so that we may venture to believe that these transitory marches against the powerful nations of this country, to whom the Jews did not at that time belong, could have as yet little effect upon them, unless, indeed, it happened, perhaps, when they were themselves subjugated by the Mesopotamians or the Moabites. Such a supposition would be still less probable if the Jews had departed as early as the reign of Tuthmosis III., or of Amosis, because in that case that Egyptian occupation of the country would have happened when the Jews had already become quite established, and masters of the land.

[309] Handb. d. Chron. i. p. 569, 578, 580.

[310] Josephus, Ant. Jud. II. xv. 2, calculates 430 years from the entrance of Abraham into Canaan to the Exodus of Moses. Compare VIII. iii. 1.

[311] [Ideler, Handbuch der Chron. i. p. 507, 543.]

[312] Ideler, Handb. d. Chron. i. p. 531.

[313] Abraham ben David (about 1161) says, in his book Sepher hakabbala, col. 33, b (Amsterd.): “The second period begins from the great synagogue of Simeon the Just. The Persian empire was destroyed in his time by Alexander, the King of Greece (Javan). He came to Jerusalem ... in the year 40 after the building of the temple ... and commanded that they should commence the reckoning of their contract from this year, which is the year 1000 since their Exodus from Egypt, and the year 3450 since the Creation.” But he placed the year of the Exodus at 2448; therefore the year 3450 is properly the 1003rd, not the 1000th, since the Exodus. R. Isaac Israëli (about 1250), in the book Jesod Olam. Bl. 84, b, says, “And the Talmud was concluded in the year 3949, according to the calculation of the world, which is the year 500 of the Contract.” We thence obtain for the commencement of the era of the Contract the year 3450 = 312.

[314] Semach David (written about 1592), p. 60-65, in the Latin translation by Vorst (Lugd. Bat. 1644), cites several more authorities for the year 3448; among them also Abraham ben David, but who, as we have seen, expressly writes 3450, in spite of the mention of the 1000-yeared period since the Exodus.

[315] Ant. XI. viii. 5.

[316] Thesaur. tempp. Euseb. 1658, tom. ii. p. 72.

[317] S. Ideler, Handb. i. p. 579.

[318] In the year 318 the determination of Easter, according to the different Christian calendars, was transferred from the Nicene Council to the Alexandrian chronologists. S. du Cange, praef. ad Chron. pasch. This difficult work at once presupposed a careful consideration and investigation of the different eras still in use, but especially of the Jewish computation of time, because the feast of Easter was connected with the solemnisation of the Jewish Paschal feast, which was instituted at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. Therefore in those days, when chronological studies were more especially practised, there was a particular cause for obtaining the true date of the Exodus, which, to Egyptian scholars in particular, could not have been difficult.

[319] Handb. i. p. 581.

[320] It was also called “the Era of Alexander.” Ideler, Chron. i. p. 449.

[321] It would be important to inquire when the year 2448 is first mentioned in Jewish literature as that of the Exodus, and which of the Rabbis first clung to this epoch in the outline of history, which was at first probably only marked in the calendar.

[322] We have already seen above, that neither the Apostle Paul nor Josephus recognised the calculation of the 480 years. Africanus just as little, who reckoned 748 years. (Routh, Reliqu. sacræ, vol. ii. p. 313, ff.) Eusebius (reckons 600, or even 610 years; Præp. Ev. x. 14, compare Routh elsewhere; but in his Canon he calculates 480), Clemens Alexandr. (Strom. p. 386, Pott. 567), Syncellus (p. 175, 659), and others. Among modern scholars, Des Vignoles (Chronol. de l’hist. sainte, t. i. p. 172) has especially treated the question in detail. He finally decides upon the acceptation, that the period consisted of 648 years, but that the number 480 arose from a mistake in the text (p. 184), as others before him had declared. Böckh lastly says, that the number appears to him to have been inserted at a later period. (Manetho, p. 190.) Several other numbers of the Old Testament, especially all indeterminate numbers, as the 40 and its multiplicates, as well as the greater sums, e. g. Exodus xii. 40; Judges xi. 26; 1 Kings vi. 1; and in other places, and the whole uninterrupted chain of numbers, originating in them, appear to me to have been for the first time adopted since that early part of the Old Testament was last combined and revised, at all events for the first time after the exile. The opinion also adopted by Bertheau (Richter, p. 34), that this revision proceeds from Ezra, appears to me to be very probable.

[323] Numb. i. 26.

[324] Ezra ii. 59; Nehemiah vii. 61.

[325] Ezra ii. 62; Neh. vii. 64.

[326] Contra. Ap. i. 7.

[327] Gospel Matth. i. 2, &c.; Luke iii. 23, &c. The great differences between the two genealogies have been considered in a variety of ways, but, as it appears, they have not yet been satisfactorily explained. Therefore, they do not permit of any immediate chronological conclusions.

[328] The removal of some of the difficulties indicated in the following table are obvious, and may, therefore, have been expressed long before me, in the critical-biblical literature already published, although I am unable to point it out. But the aim we have in view requires us to examine this subject somewhat more accurately. I see, besides, that Ewald also, Gesch. Isr. i. p. 31, ii. p. 433, and in other passages, considers the two generations from Levi to Saul and to Heman, as the most complete, and, therefore, all the others as incomplete.

[329] According to the Septuagint. In the Hebrew text, chap. v. & vi.

[330] [Hebrew text, 1 Chron. vii. 20, 21, 24-27.]

[331] It is impossible that the descendants of Ephraim, mentioned in 1 Chron. viii. 20, 21, could have been all killed at the same time by the men of Gath (therefore, in Palestine), since they include eight generations. The march to Gath also, which is mentioned, could not have been from Egypt (Bunsen, Æg. i. p. 220) (Tr. vol. i. p. 178), since they went down. It is equally impossible that Non and Jehoshuah can be rightly placed in v. 27, since the latter ought to stand in the ninth in place of the third degree from Ephraim.

[332] Gesch. Isr. ii. p. 371.

[333] Buch. d. Richt. p. xix. xx.

[334] Heb. Text, 1 Chron. vi. 39, 43.

[335] Unless the name of Jahath, the son of Gershom, is to be withdrawn, and Shimei put into its place, by which means this genealogy also would only have eleven degrees from Moses to Solomon.

[336] See above, p. 402.

[337] De Wette, in his translation, makes no distinction in v. 22.

[338] See Luther’s German Trans. of Bible.—Tr.

[339] The names of Levi, Gershom, Jahath, Sima (Zimmah), Adaiah (Iddo), Zerah agree. It only differs in Ethan (Joah), and Ethni (Jeaterai). Shimei and Libni appear to be brothers. But, on that account again, the name of Jahath, as above remarked, ought to be rubbed out of both lists, and perhaps be considered as a common surname of the brothers. For Jahath appears in the 1 Chron. vii. 43 as the father of Shimei, xxiii. 10 as the son of Shimei, vii. 20 as the son of Libni, but, xxiii. 8, not among the sons of Laadan, who nevertheless, xxiii. 7, stands in the place of Libni.

[340] Gesen. Thes. l. Hebr. p. 1011.

[341] The omission may perhaps be explained by Exodus vi. 24, where Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph literally appear beside one another as sons of Korah, while it was probably intended that, as his sons, they should succeed one another.

[342] We should, perhaps, also take into consideration the preference which is given in the genealogical tables of the Old Testament to three sons.

[343] The genealogy was certainly originally brought down from father to son; therefore the names carried up from Elkanah to Heman precede those from Kohath to Joel (and Heman), although Kohath is the elder brother. We follow the correct order.

[344] Azariah appears to have been the true father of Joel; Samuel was, perhaps, his father-in-law, or his uncle, for although, 1 Sam. viii. 2, Joel and Abiah are also stated to be sons of Samuel, our fourth genealogy, 1 Chron. vii. 28, calls them Vashni and Abiah.

[345] In the series of Eli, Ἀχίτωβος must stand in place of Ἰοχάβης, for the ancestors of Zadok and Achimelech were both named Ahitub, which might at all events easily produce confusion. The name Ἰοχάβης seems to be founded upon Ichabod, the brother of Ahitub (1 Sam. iv. 21; xiv. 3).

[346] According to Eratosthenes, Apollodor., Diodor. &c.; see Larcher, Hérod. tom. vii. p. 51, 53, 68, 395, 397.

[347] Æg. i. p. 209-214. (Tr. vol. i. p. 166-171.)

[348] Two points may, perhaps, strike the reader in the survey of the different statements of numbers given here from the Book of Judges, upon which I will subjoin what follows in explanation. I have placed the 20 years under the Canaanites to the right, the 20 of Sampson and Saul to the left; not arbitrarily, but from the following reason: In the first section of this epoch, which ends with Gideon, all the numbers are indeterminate except those exactly which relate to the oppressions by other nations. This does not seem to me to be accidental; why should not the times of the oppression have been firmer fixed in the memory than the other divisions of time, the recollection of which is principally connected only with celebrated persons? The number 20 does not belong to the round numbers; it bears in itself, therefore, the probability of being historical. On the other hand, the 20 years of Sampson and Saul are in the third division, in which all the remaining numbers are unhistorical, as the eight preceding are all historical. The person of Sampson is especially so poetically represented, that it is perfectly adapted to its unchronological neighbourhood. It is possible, also, that it belonged entirely to the preceding Philistine time of 40 years, and ought therefore to be quite omitted. But the 20 years of Saul was even received in the Acts of the Apostles, and by Josephus, as a round number, and was therefore exchanged with 40. The period of Saul also was certainly not better known than that of David and Solomon. The second point is, that it might appear remarkable to see the periods of oppression placed generally together with those of the separate Judges, whilst both classes are however quite heterogeneous. I would have separated them, if by that means the result would have been very different. But it is so circumstanced, that the mean number of the historical statements, if we separate the periods of oppression, amounts to 11 years, in place of 12 years; therefore the total sum is 304 years, in place of 318 years. But this is the same result to us; as we cannot look for an exact sum in the calculation, it therefore appeared more suitable, because more prudent, to leave those statements in their historical order.

[349] By the kind permission of Chevalier Bunsen we are enabled to give the following note, which contains the result he has arrived at on this subject:—Chevalier Bunsen agrees with Dr. Lepsius in the conviction that the arrival of the Israelites cannot have taken place under the Hyksos. On the question whether they arrived before or after them, Chevalier Bunsen differs from Dr. Lepsius, since he believes that Jacob’s family came to Egypt at a far earlier period, viz., in the reign of Sesurtesen (Sesostris) the Second (or Third, according to some), in whose reign he thinks the ancient writers place those changes in the tenure of land which the Bible ascribes to Joseph’s advice as prime minister. This Sesurtesen (Sesostris) reigned, according to the tables of Bunsen, about 2650 B.C., and since he agrees with Dr. Lepsius in placing the Exodus in the reign of Menephthes, 1210 B.C., he allows an interval of 1440 years to elapse between Joseph and the Exodus, more than fourteen centuries.—Tr.

[350] They are called by Manetho Φοίνικες and Ποιμένες, and from the most ancient times the north-eastern neighbours of the Egyptians were never other than Semitic nations. The unfounded opinion that the Hyksos were the Scythians has been long ago refuted.

[351] Evidently the same name as that of the Heliopolitan priest ‎‏פוטיפרע‏‎, which only, being more complete, has the ‎‏ע‏‎ at the end, and which the Seventy likewise write Πετεφρῆ. In hieroglyphics the name would be 𓊪𓐰𓂞𓁛 or 𓊪𓐰𓂞𓇳𓐰𓏤 Pet-Ra, or with the article, which can also be written in hieroglyphics, Pet-Ph-Ra, i. e. “he who is consecrated to the sun.”

[352] This was especially the dress of the Egyptian priests, as well as of the king himself, whose transparent upper garments, of fine linen, are known by the monuments. Compare Herod. ii. 37; Plin. H. N. xix. 2. The elevation of Joseph into the most distinguished class, that of the priests, is shown by this laying on of fine linen garments.

[353] Precious necklaces and chains were bestowed by the Egyptian kings as particular marks of distinction. Several very illustrative representations of this from Thebes and Tel-el-Amarna will be disclosed in the work of the Prussian Expedition.

[354] At festive processions the chariot of the queen used to follow that of the king, and after it the chariot of the princes. Joseph was thus treated like the son of a king.

[355] For other points of comparison, see Hengstenberg, Die Bücher Moses und Ægypten, p. 21-76.

[356] Jablonski, Voc. Æg. s. v. Psonthomphanech; Gesenius, Thesaur. p. 1181.

[357] xvii. p. 788.

[358] Maqrizi in Quatremère. Mém. ii. 318, 401.

[359] ii. 37.

[360] i. 54.

[361] i. 72, 74. Compare c. 71.

[362] Compare also Strabo, xvii. p. 787, upon the taxes to the king.

[363] Exodus i. 8.

[364] Exodus ii. 23.

[365] Even if we take into account the months also, subtracting 80 years and 8 months from 510 years and 10 months, we shall obtain 430 years and 2 months.

[366] I do not, however, lay more importance upon this agreement than it deserves. The coincidence of this number with the Hebrew periods, originating in a different manner, may certainly have first caused it to be believed that the Hyksos were the Jews. I am the less inclined to reject this opinion, as we shall see below that the Hebrew number may also be explained in a different manner.

[367] Böckh is also of this opinion, Manetho, p. 227.

[368] Ps. xc. 10.

[369] So Ewald, Gesch. d. Volks Israel. Bd. i. p. 30, 339 &c. Bunsen, Ægypten, i. p. 215, 225. (Trans. vol. i. p. 171, 181.)

[370] Ewald, i. p. 31. Compare Bunsen, i. p. 220.

[371] Ewald, i. p. 354, 387, &c.

[372] P. 204, 206. (Trans. by C. H. Cottrell, vol. i. p. 161-163.)

[373] Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte. Hamburg, 1845.

[374] Die Chronologie der Ægypter. Berlin, 1849.

[375] These dates were obligingly supplied by Dr. Lepsius himself, in a letter dated Berlin the 5th of July, 1853.

[376] From the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for July, 1850.

[377] Bericht über die zur Bekanntmachung geeigneten Verhandlungen der Königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Aus dem Jahre, 1844.

[378] The breadth of the river itself. See Letter to Hr. Böckh, p. 27.

[379] Dr. Lepsius, after he had seen this paper, informed me that Katakomben was a misprint for Katarakten.—L. H.

[380] Miss Martineau’s Eastern Life, vol. i. p. 99.

[381] Reisen in Europa, Asien und Afrika, in der Jahren 1835, bis 1841. Stuttgart, 1841-1846.

[382] With reference to the object of this paper.

[383] Reisen, Bd. ii. 545.

[384] “Über den Stromlauf und das zunächst liegende Uferland des Nils, von der zweiten Katarakte bis Assuan, besitzen wir eine vortreffliche Karte nämlich:” “Land zwischen der kleinen und grossen Katarakten des Nils. Astronomisch bestimmt und aufgenommen in J. 1827, durch v. Prokesch. Nil Grundrisse der Monumente. Wien, 1831.”—Reisen, Bd. ii. Thl. iii. 86.

[385] Russegger, Reisen, Bd. i. 258.

[386] Travels in Ethiopia, p. 272.

[387] Description de l’Egypte.—Separate Memoir, entitled “Description de Syène et des Cataractes.”

[388] Russegger, Bd. ii. 3 Thl. 85.

[389] Russegger, Bd. ii. 3 Thl. 76.

[390] Travels, p. 257.

[391] Wanderungen durch das Nilthal, von G. Parthey, Berlin, 1840. 378.

[392] Travels, pp. 9 and 11.

[393] Eastern Life, i. 104.

[394] Ib. 144.

[395] Rennie, Report on Hydraulics, in the Fourth Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1834, p. 487.

[396] I state this on the authority of my friend, W. Hopkins, Esq., of Cambridge.

[397] Russegger, Bd. ii. 1 Thl. 569 to 584.

[398] Rennie, Report cited above, p. 422.

[399] See note, p. 511.

[400] Parthey, 318.

[401] Russegger, Reisen, Bd. ii. 300 and 320. Lancret, Description de l’Egypte, Mémoire sur l’île de Philæ, 15-58. Rosellini, I Monumenti dell’ Egitto e della Nubia. Monumenti del Culto, 187. Wilkinson’s Thebes and General View of Egypt, 466. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Arts. Ptolemy, Ph. and Nectanebus.

[402] p. 187.

[403] Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte.—Drittes Buch, 122.

[404] Antiquités de la Nubie, p. 6.

[405] Tome iii. parte ii. p. 6.

[406] Thebes, &c. p. 482.

[407] Bunsen, as above.

[408] p. 9.

[409] Wanderungen, &c. 334.

[410] Reisen, Bd. i. s. 273.

[411] Reisen, Bd. ii. 1 Thl. s. 328.

[412] The italics in the above quotation are thus distinguished by Dr. Lepsius, the capitals by the author himself.

[413] Here follows a sketch of the plan.

INDEX.

A.
Aahmes-nufre-ari, mother of Amenophis I., 246
Ababde Arabs, 140, 154
Abahuda, village of, 240
Abaris, 406, 416, 426, 446
—— situation of, 426-434
—— same as Pelusium, 431-434
Abaton, island of, 123
Abbas Pascha, 45
Abdebab, Nubian Desert, 141
Abd el Qurna, hill of Thebes, 243, 271
Abdîn, or Blue Nile, 174

Abeken, H., 12, 55, 72, 94, 98, 132, 148, 153, 159, 160, 194, 237, 273, 346

Abel’s Tomb, Palestine, 340
Abke, Nubia, 239
Abir, or Qabir Mount, 237
Abocharagos, the Saracen Prince, 557
Abraham, 422, 485
—— ben David, cited, 452
Abu el Abas, village of, 172
—— Dôm, town of, 222, 229
—— Hammed, town of, 17, 141
—— —— arrival at, 143
—— Haras at mouth of Rahad, 148, 167
—— Haschin, province of Berber, 145
—— Keshêb, ruins of, 435, 438

—— Nugara, mountain chain in Nubian Desert, 141

—— Roasch, Pyramids of, 14, 59, 79

—— Schar, coast of Red Sea, 289

—— Senejat, mountain chain in Nubian Desert, 141

—— Sihha, mountain chain in Nubian Desert, 141

—— Simbel, temples of, 20, 240
—— Tlêh, Desert of Gilif, 214
—— Zelîmeh, Gulf of Suez, 22, 302, 365, 547
Abusir, Pyramids of, 13
—— stone inscribed at, 69
—— Sheikh of, 76
Abydos, 17, 23, 101, 116
Acca (Ptolemais), 336

Achencheres, Exodus was placed in reign of, 489

Achmed Pascha, 129, 147, 160, 163, 187, 191, 198

—— Pascha Menekle, 130, 147, 205, 190, 160
Adar Auîb, 141
Adererât, plain of, 141
Adulis, town of, 220
Aennum (Philotera), 22
Africa, certain nations in Central, 45
Africanus, Julius, cited, 419, 423, 487, 488
—— —— lists of, 418
—— —— preserved the works of Manetho, 499
Ag´aïze Arabs, 278
Agamîeh, the Faiûm, 97
Ahmet Pascha, 45
Ai, King, 261
Ain Gulut, Syria, 335
—— el Haramieh, Syria, 334
—— Hawâreh, Peninsula of Sinai, 547, 548
—— Uneh, Peninsula of Sinai, 555
Aithi, Syria, 336
Akaba, gulf of, 554
Akoris, position of town of, 105
Albert, Prince of Prussia, 70
Alabaster quarry, 101, 114
Alabastron, ancient, 115
Alexandria, 13, 41
—— obelisks in, corroded by weather, 42, 369
Alexander of Macedon, 252, 452, 456
Alexandrian library, 382, 496
—— critics, 487
Ali, a Bischâri, 241
Alluvial soil above Cataract of Assuan, 527
Aloa, kingdom of, 163
Altars at Wadi el Kirbegân, 194
Altar, Ethiopian, 223
Alus, Peninsula of Sinai, 547, 548
Amada, near Korusko, 20, 240
Amara, village of, 19, 237
Amarna, valley El, 101, 114, 115, 262, 322
Amasis I., 114
—— —— King, said to be buried in Sphinx, 67
Ambukôl, Nubia, 231
Amen-Ra, 382

—— hymn to, in Egyptian collection of Mr. Sams, London, 392

Amenemha I., 391, 395
—— III., 15, 20, 91, 239, 301, 527
Amenophis, 405, 408, 420, 497
—— I., 246, 248
—— II., 237

—— III., 19, 222, 236, 237, 253, 256, 261, 485

—— IV., 19, 27, 262, 278, 322
Ammon Ra, 126, 223, 248
Amharic language known by Isenberg, 39
Ammonius, the Monk, cited, 556, 557
Amnis Ptolemæus, a canal, 440, 444
Amosis, 424, 486, 488, 497
Ampère, M., cited, 121, 273
Amru entered Egypt with 4000 Arabs, 430
Anianos, 498
Anîbe, village of, 20, 240

Annals of the Monarchy as early as the first Dynasties, 380

Anti-Libanon, 338
Antinoe, ancient, 113
Antiochus Epiphanes, 409
Antoninus Placentinus, 558
Ants, large black, 138
Aphophis, King, 479, 487, 488
Apion, cited, 411, 421, 423

Apis, the, taken by Amenophis to Ethiopia, 407

Apries (Hophre), inscription belonging to Temple of, 43

Arab, Ababde, 140, 154
—— Ag´aïze, 278
—— ʾAuadîeh, 214
—— Schaiqîeh, 214, 229
—— carelessness in cookery, 280
—— discontented with pay for camels, 130
—— explanation of term, 76
—— family, manners of, 276
—— hospitality, 277
—— vengeance, 271, 321
Arabian Gulf, 434, 437, 441, 442

—— races orally transmit register of generations, 458

Arabic characters, 258, 311
—— inscription, 550-552
—— language, 228, 231
—— music, 182
Arbagi, village of, 166
Arch, pointed and round, 73, 74
Archæology of Egypt, 28
Archimedes invented water-screw in Egypt, 384
Architecture in Egypt, 388
Argo, island of, 17, 233
Argonsene, ruins of town at, 235
Ariston, cited, 554
Aristotle, cited, 439, 444
Arnaut soldiers, 198
Arsinoë II., 109
—— town of, 93, 435, 437, 440, 444

Art, canon of proportions in Egyptian, 21, 118, 383

—— Ethiopian more recent than Egyptian, 152
—— in Egypt and Ethiopia, 18
—— history of, in Egypt, 28
Artaxerxes, 279, 386
Artemidorus, 553, 554, 555
Artim Bey, 189
Artists of Greece, educated in Egypt, 383
Asasif, valley of, 254, 264
Asses in Berber, 157
Astronomy of Egyptian priests, 386

—— knowledge of, necessary to chronology, 396, 398

Assuan, 20, 104, 118
—— granite rocks of, 32, 371
Assur, plain of, 150
Astaboras river, 146
Atbara, province of Berber, 146
Atfeh, Nile at, 43
Athanasius in Theban desert, 266
Atrib (Athribis) in Nile Delta, 333
Atschan, range of, 158, 193
Auatêb, valley of, 156
ʾAuad, the guide, 271
ʾAuadîeh Arabs, 214
Axum, Abyssinia, 220
Ayûn Mûsa, Peninsula of Sinai, 547, 548
B.
Baal Zephon, 427
Bab Allah, gate of Damascus, 343
Bab el Meluk, Thebes, 244
Babylon, 437, 440, 445
Babylonian prisoners, 482
Bachît, village of, 230
Bageh, temple of, 526
Bahiuda, desert of, 213
Bahr-bela-mâ, the Faiûm, 95, 136
—— Jussuf, the Faiûm, 15, 92, 96
—— ʾHatab, Nubian desert, 137
—— Scheitan, or mirage, 142
—— Scherkîeh, the Faiûm, 94
—— Wardâni (the Faiûm), 94
Bâlbeck, 346
Ban-tree, 227
Baobab-trees, 166
Bárada river, 339
Barbarus of Scaliger, 453
Barkal, Mount, 18, 220, 222
Bartlett, H., cited, 535
Barquq, Sultan, 94
Batn el Hagér, province of, 237
Basilica in Wadi Gazâl, 218
Bauer, Herr, of Kamlîn, 189, 163

Bech-en-aten (King Amenophis IV.), 114, 262, 278

Bedouin, the, 86
—— explanation of term of, 76
Beg´a language, 31, 242, 244
—— plain of, 348

Begerauîeh, village of, 17, 150, 152, 195, 209, 212

Behbét el Hagér (Iseum), in Nile Delta, 23, 333

Berber, Mudhir of, 131
Bêida, village of, 198
Belbês, Israelites were settled near, 449
Beled Ellâqi, village of, 241
Belled e’ Nuba, village of, 228
Benihassan, tombs of, 16, 101, 110-113
Ben Naga, village of, 153, 154, 194
Beni-Suef, town of, 15, 100, 322
—— Kensi, tribe of, 241
Berscheh, village of, 16, 101, 113, 115
Bertheau, cited, 464
Bet el Ualli, temple of, 124
Berut (Berytos), Syria, 336, 356
Bethin (Bethel), Syria, 334
Bethmann, Dr., 23, 322
Biahmu, monuments of, 96
Bigeh, island of, 20, 120
—— temple of, 531
Bir Ambar, spring of, 277
Birds, collection of, 160
—— on Blue River, 168
Bîreh, village of, 334
Birket e’ temsah, 434
Birqet-el-Qorn, the Faiûm, 15, 92, 93, 95, 97
Biscay, Bay of, 37
Bischarîba people, 244
Bischâris, the, 140
Bischâri language, 241
Bitter lakes, 436, 440, 442, 444
Bischeh, the Faiûm, 97
Blemyes, the, 242
Blue River, 162
—— —— birds, trees, monkeys, &c., 168, 169
Bocchoris, King, 423
Böckh, cited, 107, 242, 424, 494
—— letter to, from Dr. Lepsius, 508

Boghos Bey, confidential minister of Mohammed Ali, 40, 46, 189

Bokty, the Prussian consul, 47

Bonomi, J., travelling companion, 12, 35, 45, 56, 57, 98

Book of the Dead, 381, 392
Braun, Herr Julius, 41
Bricks of Nile mud, 372
Bricks, burnt, of Babylon, 373
Brick-vaulted roofs, 373
Britan, Syria, 340
British Museum, 394
Bscherreh, Syria, reception at, 351
—— Sheikh of, 352
Bubastis, 369, 429, 436, 448, 449
Bubastic arm of Nile, 427, 428
Buêribs, the, 154, 157
Bulaq, harbour of Cairo, 44

Bunsen, Chev., cited, 387, 392, 420, 424, 471, 492, 499, 526

—— —— last friend seen in England, 35
Bujurldis. See Firman
Burckhardt, cited, 338, 532, 551, 561
Burial near Blue River, 176
Burying alive in Fazoql, 202
Byblus (Gebel), 355
C.
Cailliaud, cited, 150, 154, 155, 209
Calippus, cycle of, 454
Cæsar, Augustus, 252, 266
Cairo, 23, 44-46, 80
—— festival in, 70
Cambyses, 251, 279
Camel, explanation of term, 81
—— drivers, imposition of, 216
Camels, want of, 130
Camp, attack on, at Saqâra, 75
—— life in the, 56, 87
—— night in the Egyptian military, 204
Canal between Nile and Red Sea, 441-445
—— Nile, 436
—— Rosetta, 43
Canals in Egypt, 482
Candace, Queen, 196
Canons of proportions, 28, 118, 383
Canopic arm of Nile, 447

Carians, the frontier guard near Pelusium, 429

Carmel, Mount, 336
Castle of Abd el Qurna, 243
—— Abke, 239
—— Hellet el Bib, 226
—— Sêse, 236
Cataract, second, 131
—— country, excursion to, 225
—— of Kalfa, 237

Cataracts in provinces of Schaiqîeh and Monassir, 228

—— 239
Cemetery of Meröe, 212
Cepheus, King, 423
Chafra (Chephyren), Pyramid of, 59
Chairemon, cited, 434
Champion, M., the Austrian consul, 45, 47

Champollion, Figeac, cited, 25, 51, 107, 110, 112, 119, 120, 124, 266, 527

—— —— cited, 381, 394, 431, 435
Chanter, the two books of, 388
Chartûm, 15, 130, 131, 158, 190, 193
Chemmis, 115
Chencheres, King, 422, 489

Cheops, writing on the monuments since the time of, 37

—— (Chufu), Pyramid of, 48, 59, 72, 372
—— —— —— —— —— tablet on, 57
—— King, 110, 114
Chephren. See Schafra
Chôr el Ammer, desert of Gilif, 216
—— Bân, 227
Choreb. See Horeb
—— 559
Chorography of Egypt, 29
Chôsch e’ Gurûf, Nuba village, 228

Christian chronologists on the period of the Exodus, 421

Christianity in Nubia, 231
Christmas at Pyramids, 55
—— —— Thebes, 273
Chronicle, old, 497, 498
Chronology, 396
—— Old Testament, 490, 492
—— Manethonic, 490

Chronological character of Jewish History, 401

Chronologists, Jewish and Christian, 421
Churches and convents, Christian, 230, 267
Church, Coptic, 237
—— of Magal, 231
Churshid Pascha, 163, 195

Civilisation of Egypt during the first Dynasties, 25

Clavis Nilotica, 210
Clemens of Alexandria, 387, 392, 398, 423
Cleobulus, sage of Lindus, 384
Cleopatra, Queen, 444
—— —— inscription referring to, 106
Cleopatra’s Needle, 42
Climate in Peninsula of Sinai, 545
—— 224
—— at Thebes, 103
Clot Bey, M., 32, 246
Clysma Poemes, bishop of, 557
Codex of Syncellus, 489
—— Mediceus, 437
Computation of time, Egyptian, 497
Contracts, era of the, 452
Convent at Gebel Mûsa, 291, 305, 556
—— in Wadi Gazâl, 218
Copper mines in Peninsula, 22, 300, 301

Coptic characters, 27, 94, 109, 117, 123, 158, 277, 394, 426

—— churches, 219, 237, 260
—— —— plan of, 219
—— inscription, 220

—— language encouraged by Lieder’s exertions, 36

—— population near Thebes, 268
—— school, 36
—— settlement, 278
Copts, the, 270
Corinth, Isthmus of, 442

Cosmas Indicopleustes, cited, 313, 320, 558, 560

Costume in Cairo, 80
—— worn by travellers in Thebes, 104
Crocodiles of Blue River, 169
—— eggs, 175
Crocodilopolis, remains of, 15, 97
Croly, Rev. Dr., 540
Cuneiform inscriptions, 443
Customs in southern provinces, 202
Cynocephalus, 172
D.
D’Abadie, cited, 99
Dáhela, village of, 175
Dakkeh (Pselchis), 17, 20, 242
Dal, frontier village, 237
—— Haui, island of, 149
Damascus, 340
—— journey to, 336-340
Damietta, 23
Dams of Lake Mœris, 95

D’Anastasi, M., the Swedish consul-general, 39, 394

Dâmer, village of, 133, 146, 147, 149
Danai, the flight of, 424
Danaus, 383, 408, 421
Danqeleh, village of, 209
D’Anville, cited, 427, 431, 433, 434
Daphka, Peninsula of Sinai, 540, 547, 548
Daphni of Pelusium, 429
Dara-buka kettle-drum, 184
Dar Fûr, 30, 234
—— —— language of, 244
Darius, 439, 440, 442
Darius II., 252, 279
Darmali, village of, 228
Daschûr, Pyramid of, 13, 79, 98
Dedications on Temples, 379
Date of the Exodus, 470-474, 449-457, 490
Debbet e’ Ramleh, plain of, 300
Debôd, 17, 20, 123, 242
Debu, temple at, 526
Decades, or Egyptian weeks, 398
Decius, Emp., 266
Defterdar Bey, 195
Defûfa, tomb of, 234
Delta of the Nile, 369, 483, 486
Dender River, 170

Dendera, temple of, 17, 23, 101, 110, 116, 322

Dendûr, temple of, 17, 20, 124, 242
Der el Ahmar, village in Syria, 348
—— Bachît, convent of, 267
—— Bahri, convent of, 267
—— Medînet, convent of, 267, 381
De Rozière, cited, 443
Derr, temple of, 126, 232, 240, 356
Desert, Nubian, 133, 143
—— journey through, 214
Derut-Scherif, 15
Dhafari, Peninsula of Sinai, 547
Dilêb-Palms, 171
Diméh, in the Faiûm, 15, 97
Dinka tribes, 149
—— language, 161

Diocletian, Emp., inscription in honour of, 42

Diodorus, cited, 123, 202, 260, 381, 383, 391, 408, 421, 429, 439, 480, 483, 553, 554

Diodorus, Exodus according to, 409
Division of time, 398
Doko, country of the, 46
Dongola, province of, 19, 458
—— new, 233
—— old, 232
Dôm-Palms, 137, 218
Doseh, the trampling, 71
Dromedary, explanation of term, 81
—— pace of, 139
Du Bois Aymé, cited, 435, 436
Durra grain, 143, 154
Dynasty, Elephantine, collateral, 60
Dynastic Lists, 497
Dynasties, tables of Egyptian, 499, 506
E.

Echmim, inscription in rock grotto of, 23, 109, 115

Edbai, country of Bischâri tribes, 242
Edfu, temple of, 17, 20, 117
Egypt, archæology of, 29

—— civilisation of, during first Dynasties, 25

—— climatal conditions of, 368, 369
—— famine in, 481
—— geography and chorography of, 29
—— history of, 367
—— history of art in, 27
—— mythology of, 26
—— philology of, 26

—— regarded as a university for philosophy, 384

Egyptian administration under the old kings of the country, 482

—— Museum in Berlin, views respecting its decoration, 324

—— gods, 381, 392
—— annals, King of the Exodus in, 417
—— canon of proportions, 383
—— chronologies not opposed to Hebrew, 457
—— collection of Mr. Sams, 392
—— prophets, 413
Ehden, village of, 353

Ehrenberg, his views respecting luminosity of sea, 37

—— cited, 234, 239, 290
Eileithyia, ancient, 117
El Ain in Libanon, 338
El Akarid, village of, 150
El Ammer, valley of, 216
Elanitic Gulf, 554

El Bosra, alabaster quarries at, 21, 31, 114, 115

El Buêb, hill of, Peninsula of Sinai, 298
El Chôr, province of Berber, 145
El Elâm, in the Faiûm, 95, 96
Elephantine, island of, 20
El Farût, hill of, Nubian Desert, 141
El G´eʾah, plain of, 290, 296
El Gôs, plain of, 215
El Guês, village of, 212
El Hai, well of, 291
El-Harib, tombs of, 16
El Hessue, valley of, 298, 318
El Hibe, monuments of, 23
El Kab, rock tombs of, 20, 117
El Kenissa, castle of, 239
El Orde (New Dongola), 233
El Qorn, mountains of, 277
Elim, 306, 307, 548, 551, 560
Elijah, 559
Eleians, their Olympian games, 383
Em Bey, 289
Emigrants from Semitic countries, 410
Emir Pascha, 131, 146, 159, 186, 189, 192
Enned Mountains, 288
Era of the Greeks adopted by the Jews, 452
—— Grecian, 456
—— of Contracts adopted by the Jews, 452
—— of the Seleucidæ adopted by the Jews, 452
Eratosthenes, cited, 437

Erbkam, G., member of the expedition, 12, 28, 39, 45, 53, 72, 74, 79, 81, 83, 97, 147, 153, 195, 230, 235, 243, 259

Erectheus, King of Athens, 383
Erment (Hermonthis), temple at, 17
E’ Seleha, valley of, 156
Esneh, temple of, 17, 20, 117
—— Mudhir of, 131
E’ Sofra, valley of, 156
E’ Sufr, valley of, 137
E’ Sûr, village of, 209
Ethiopian art more recent than Egyptian, 152
—— civilisation later than Egyptian, 244
—— demotic writing, 207
—— inscriptions, 31
Ethiopians of Meröe, 208
Ethiopia, flight to, 407, 416
Et. Quatremère, cited, 435
E’ Tih, descent of, 300
Eudoxus, 384, 386
Euergetes II., inscription referring to, 105
Eusebian canon, 489

Eusebius, cited, 313, 422, 453, 489, 498, 499, 555, 560

Eutychius. See Saïd ben Batrik
Ewald, cited, 310, 424, 427, 430, 464, 548
Exodus, date of the, 449-457, 470-474
—— according to Diodorus, 409
—— according to Hecataeus, 408
—— according to Manetho, 405-407
—— of the Hyksos, preserved by Manetho, 410
—— of Israelites, 410, 411

—— —— —— same as expulsion of lepers related by Manetho, 404

—— of lepers same as of Israelites, 412-417
Expedition, chief purpose historical, 24
—— French-Tuscan, 24
Ezbe, roads of, 333
Ezbekîeh square, in Cairo, 80
F.
Fadniê village, 154
Fakir in Abu Dôm, 229
—— of Tâiba, 187
—— Daha, his sepulchre, 229
—— Fenti, castle of, 235
Faiûm, the, 14, 92-98
—— journey to, 83
Fall of Nile, 521
—— Thames, 520
Falmouth, scenery about, 36
Famine in Egypt, 481
Faran in Peninsula of Sinai, 31, 554
Fazoql, customs in, 202
Fellah, explanation of term of, 76
—— industrious, 260
Ferhât Pascha, 131
Ferlini, treasure found by, 151, 197
Fidimîn, village of, 97
Finisterre, cape, 37
Firân, in Peninsula of Sinai, 547, 559

Firman of Viceroy, with permit to the Prussian expedition to collect Egyptian monuments, 40, 42

Fishes, Egyptian collection of, 32
Fortress at Bachît, 231
—— of Karat Negil, 230
—— at Tifar, 232

Franke, member of the expedition, 39, 53, 57, 75, 153, 198, 210

Franz, cited, 106
French-Tuscan expedition, 24
French expedition, 436, 438, 443
Frey, J., the painter, 12, 38, 98
Funeral ceremony in Wed Médineh, 183
G.
Ganz, cited, 452

Gabre Máriam, the Abyssinian boy, 181, 187, 275

Gabuschié, village of, 196, 198
Gaqedûl, in Desert of Gilif, 214
Garizim, Mount, 334
Gau, cited, 123, 526
Gauâta, village of, 101, 115
Galba, Emp., 266
Gaza, road into Egypt from, 429
G´eʾah, plain of, 290, 296
Gebel, village of, 209
—— Abrak, 217
—— Abu Gueh, 278
—— —— Schegere, 292
—— —— Senejat, 141
—— —— Sihha, 141
—— Adar Auîb, 141
—— Aschtân, 158
—— Barkal, 18, 220, 222
—— Barqugres, 215
—— Buêrib, 154
—— Dahʿi, 335
—— Dêqa, 231
—— Dochân, 32, 281, 286
—— —— red porphyry of, 288, 372
—— Dosche, 236
—— El Bab, 136
—— Enned, 289
—— Farût, 141
—— Fatireh, 31, 280
—— Graibât, 141
—— Hammâm, hot springs of, 291
—— Katherîn, 292, 293
—— Kongeli, 226
—— Lagâr, 156
—— Maáuad, 277
—— Maqál, 228
—— el Mágeqa, 216
—— Mograd, 141
—— Mûsa, 292, 303, 315, 532, 544, 562
—— —— Mount of the Law, 532
—— —— convent of, 556
—— e’ Naga, 155, 156
—— Nusf, 214
—— Omarda, 214
—— Qermana, 214
—— Qettâr, 292
—— Rauiân, 158
—— Roft, 138
—— Sefsâf, 293
—— Selîn, 115
—— Selseleh, 371
—— Sergen, 214
—— Silsilis, 117
—— e’ Tih, 300
—— e Tur, 335
—— Um Riglin, 292
—— Um Schômar, 292, 297
—— Zeït, 289
Gedîdeh, in Syria, 340
Geez inscription, 208
Geg, province of Berber, 145
Genealogies, registers of, 458, 460
Generations, register of, 458
Genna, village of, 150
Gennin (Egennin), Syria, 335
Geography of Egypt, 29
Geological structure of Lower Nubia, 522
Geometry, the knowledge of, 390
Georgi, O., the painter, 12, 222, 187
Georgius Syncellus, cited, 498
Geraschab, Schellâl of, 158
Gerbé Dandour, monument at, 526

Gerf Hussên, temples of, 20, 124, 126, 242, 356

Gerf e’ Schech, village of, 228

Germanicus, visit to remains of, ancient Thebes, 266, 393

Gertassi, in Ethiopia, 123
Gesch, reed grass, 213
Gesenius, cited, 431, 548
Gezîret-el-Qorn, island of, 97
Ghabîne, village of, 209
Gharaq Lake, 98
Gibba, in Syria, 343
Gibraltar, 38
Gilif, desert of, 213
Gimscheh, or Kebrit, Peninsula of, 289
Girsche, 242
Gism Halfa, 241
Gizeh, Pyramids of, 13, 47, 79
Gôba, in Syria, 344
Gobat, Bishop of Jerusalem, 39
Gods, Egyptian, 381, 392
Gomra, island of, 150
Gorata, near source of Blue Nile, 99
Gôs Basabir, village of, 158
—— Burri, village of, 214
Goshen, land of, 49, 410, 411, 414, 435, 448
Granite of Assuan, 371

Greek inscriptions, 31, 105, 122, 125, 220, 240, 550

—— philosophers, 385
Greeks, era of the, 452, 456
Gulf of Akaba, 554
—— Arabian, 434
Guneh, in Syria, 355
Gungules, fruit of Baobab-tree, 166
H.
Habak herb, 296
Hadrian, Emperor, 113, 288

Hager Mérui, white rock in Province of Robatat, 226

Haipha (Hepha), Syria, 336
Hair, Arab mode of greasing, 144
Halfaï, or Nile, 205
Haluf, Nuba village, 228
Hamâda-trees, 295
Hamdâb, district of, 225
Hamitic languages, 31
Hammâm Faraûn, in Peninsula of Sinai, 554
—— Seidna Solimân, tower of, 237
Hammamât, quarries of, 22, 32, 278, 321
Hammer, von, 341
Hannik, in province of Máhas, 235
Haram el Gizeh, Pyramids of, 47
Hay, cited, 271
Hassan Kaschef, of Derr, 127, 241
—— Pascha, 131, 146, 192, 218, 232, 235
Hathor, temple to, in Dendera, 116
Heathen temples mutilated by Christians, 267

Hebrew Chronologies not opposed to Egyptian, 457

—— commentators, 477
—— numbers, uncertainty of, 402
—— tradition, 401

Hecataeus, of Abdera, Exodus according to, 408

—— —— cited, 260, 408

Heglik-tree, 217

Heliopolis, 46, 369, 384, 406, 408, 413, 414, 448

—— priest of, Joseph marries the daughter of, 411

—— (Bâlbeck), 346
Hellet el Bib, ruins of, 226
—— e’ Solimân, village of, 188, 205
Hengstenberg, cited, 544
Henniker, Sir Fr., 551
Heracleopolis Parva, 429
Hererat, 297
Hermanovich, Dr., 160, 190
Hermes, Book of the Dead ascribed to, 392
—— Trismegistus, citation from, 270
Hermetic books, 382, 387, 391, 397

Hermonthis, ancient (Erment), near Thebes, 117

Hermopolis Parva (Damanhur), 447

Hero, same as Heroonpolis, 435

Herodotus, cited, 119, 383, 384, 429, 432, 439, 442, 447, 480, 481

Heroonpolis, 434, 435, 437, 445, 555
—— situation of, 434, 438
Hierasykaminos, inscriptions of, 125
Hieroglyphical inscriptions on rock, 458
Hieroglyphic writing, 377

Hieroglyphics, 27, 58, 59, 109, 196, 223, 236, 377, 381, 382, 413, 420, 426

Hierogrammatist, the, or Sacred Scribe, 387

Hiersolyma, built by Moses according to Hecataeus, 408

Hieratical, or Priest Books, 387
Hillel, the astronomer, 454
Hippopotamus, 158
—— on Blue River, 170
Historical book literature, 394

—— literature necessary to restoration of true history, 399

—— sense in the Egyptian character, 374
Hobi, island of, 153
Hogg, Mr. John, 540, 560
Hopkins, W., cited, 522
Horeb (Choreb), 293, 304, 314, 533

Horner, L., paper on bed of Nile, Appendix, 507

—— cited, 239
Horoscopi, the, or time-seers, 388
Horus, King, 259, 405, 420
Horus, the god at temple of Edfu, 117
Hospitality, Arabian, 277
Hospital in Wed Médineh, 185
Hoskins, 150, 154, 155
Howara, village of, 84
Humboldt, A. von, 105, 532
Hyksos, the, 395, 406, 421, 476, 479, 486
—— time of, 485
—— Exodus of the, 410
—— banishment of, 417
—— Dynasties of the, 488
—— invasion of the, 427
—— end of rule, 428

Hymn to Amen-Ra, in Egyptian collection of Mr. Sams, London, 392

Hymns to the God, 389, 392
I.
Iamblichus, concerning Hermetic books, 382
Ibrahim Aga (Kawass), 131, 198, 275
Ibrahim Chêr, a Syrian, house of, 160, 191
—— Hassan, death of, in Syria, 346
—— Pascha, 47, 101, 198
Ibrîm (ancient Primis), 20, 125, 240, 241
Ideler, cited, 450, 453
Illahûn, Pyramid of, 83, 93
Indigo factory in Kamlîn, 163
—— —— Tamaniât, 191
Inscription on temple of Begerauîeh, 151
—— on rock grotto of Echmim, 109
—— on obelisk of Heliopolis, 46
—— at Philæ, 120, 243
—— on temple of Pselchis, 105
—— —— of Edfu, 117
—— at Konosso, 120
—— at Naharieh, 43
—— on Pyramids of Gizeh, 52
—— —— of Meröe, 206
—— at Soba, 165
—— of Silco, 242
—— at Talmis, 123
—— Arabic, 232, 550, 552
—— Ethiopian demotic, 223, 237
—— Greek, 240
—— —— in Gertassi, 123
—— —— on Pompey’s pillar, 42
—— —— at Coptic church in Wadi Gazâl, 220
Inscriptions, 30, 245, 379

—— modern hieroglyphics commemorative of Prussian expedition, 57

—— Greek and Coptic, 220
—— Greek and Egyptian, 278
—— hieroglyphic, 114
—— Roman, 345
—— Sinaitic, 291, 294, 299, 311
—— Rock, 239, 560
—— in Untial characters, 267
Ischischi, Island of, 225, 231
Isenberg, missionary, 39, 47
Ishmael had an Egyptian mother, 410
Isis, chapel to, in Mehendi, 126
—— statue of, 223
—— temple to, at Philæ, 120
Ismael Pascha, 161, 195, 205
Israelites, the, 414, 446, 448, 458
—— Exodus of, 410, 411
—— not the only strangers in Egypt, 410
—— journey of the, 305
—— time occupied in journey to Sinai, 548-550
Israelitish people, destiny of the, 459
Isthmus of Suez, geographical conditions, 426
Itinerarium, Antonini, 317, 448, 449
—— situation of Heroonpolis given in, 435
J.
Jacob, meeting between Joseph and, 435
Jaffa, 23
Janni Nicola, 290
Jassur bush, 295
Jericho, 334

Jeroboam I., King, worship of sun-bull introduced into Palestine by, 413

Jerome, St., 313, 317, 555, 560
Jerusalem, 39, 334
Jesreel, plains of, 336
Jewish calendars, 453
—— chronology, 450
—— chronologists, 421
—— generations, 458-470
—— history, chronological character of, 401
—— list, 497
—— temple of Onias, 449
Jews, the account of, by Diodorus, 409
Jomard, 431
Jorius, bishop of Mount Sinai, 558, 562
Joseph, 410, 413, 435, 481, 483
—— in Egypt, 476-484

Josephus, cited, 313, 316, 416, 417, 418, 423, 424, 427, 433, 459, 460, 476, 487, 497, 548, 554, 560

—— lists of, 419
Joshua, book of, 450
Judæa, foreigners in Egypt fled to, 408
Judges, book of, 450
Jussuf, Dragoman, 133, 275

Justinian, convent built by Emperor, 319, 551, 556, 562

Justin Martyr, cited, 423
K.
Kafr el Batran, village of, 76
Kalabscheh, 17, 20, 192, 242, 526
Kalfa, cataract of, 237
Kamlîn, 163, 189
Karabel, rock-picture of, 24
Karat Negil, fortress of, 230
Karnak, 20, 102, 247, 248-253
Kasinqar, village of, 225, 227
Kasiun, Mount, 341
Katârif, village of, 186
Kawass, the, 87
—— Ibrahim, 149, 170
Kebrit, Peninsula of, 289
Keli, funeral ceremony in, 211
Kenes, island of, 120
Kerak, tomb of Noah at, 337
Kermân, village of, 233
Kings of Egypt, succession of, 26
Ki-si-Tuthotep, tomb of, 113
Kisch, or Kischiga, village of, 242
Klotsch, Dr., cited, 227
Klysma, at the head of Arabian Gulf, 435
Koch, Dr., 147, 160
Koï, remains of towns at, 235
Kolzum, convent of, 557
Kôm el Birât, village of, 271, 321
Kongára language, 30, 234
Konosso, island of, 20, 120
Koptos, ancient (Quft), 22
Kordofan, brother of Sultan of, 161
Korte, temple of, 124
Korusko, 17, 105, 127, 130, 240
Kossêr, 22, 279, 321

Kossêr road, hieroglyphical inscription on rock of, 458

Krapf, the missionary, 39, 45, 447
—— on certain nations in Central Africa, 45
Kteffe valley, 547
Kubán (Contra Pselchis), 20, 242
Kûʾeh, territory of, 225
Kûm-Ombo, temple of, 17
Kûm-Ahmar, rock-tombs of, 15
Kummeh, village of, 19, 238
Kumr betá Dáhela, village of, 175
Kungara language, 244
Kurru, Pyramids of, 229
L.
Labyrinth, arrangement of, 90
—— founder of, 15
—— ruins of the, 15, 83

—— payment of people for digging trenches at, 84

Lake of Serbon, 429
Lakes, bitter, 436, 440, 442, 444
Lancret, cited, 525
Language of Taka, 201
Languages, African, 31
Larcher, 431
Leake, 240
Leqêta, village of, 277
Le Quien, 556, 558, 562
Leontes, river, 336
Lepers, expulsion of, 404, 417
—— insurrection under Osarsiph, 416
—— Exodus of, same as of Israelites, 412-417
Leprosy, Egyptian, account of, 412
Letter to Mr. Horner from Dr. Lepsius, 530

Letronne, cited, 105, 107, 121, 123, 387, 440, 442, 444, 445

Levites, generations of, 460
Levi, tribe of, 459
L’Hôte, cited, 105
Libanon, view of, 349
—— war in, 352
Library at Thebes, 381, 397
—— Alexandrian, 382, 496
Lieder, Herr, German missionary, 36, 47, 74

Limestone, nummulitic, mountain range near Memphis composed of, 371

Linant, M., 14, 92, 94, 96
Lions in Berber, 157
Lion, young, 174
Lischt, Pyramid of, 64, 83
Lists, Jewish, 497
—— Dynastic of Manetho, 497
Literature of Egypt, 386, 390
Livy, fragment of a MS. of, 380
Locusts, swarm of, 68
Lorda, Domingo, 99
Loss of road, 282
Luqsor, temple of, 102, 247, 253
Lycopolis, 101

Lycurgus introduced Egyptian customs into Greece, 383

Lycus. See Nahr el Kelb
Lysimachus, on the Exodus, 422, 424
M.
Maccabees, book of, 452
Madian, district of, 546
Magal, church of, 231
Mágeqa, well of, in Gilif mountains, 216
Máhas, province of, 235
—— dialect of, 232
Mahmûd Welled Schauîsch, 188, 205
Mahmudieh canal, 42
Makrizi, cited, 178
Maktaf, or basket, 84
Makrobioten Apappus Pepi, 110
Malta, 38
Mandera, in desert, 130, 162

Manetho, cited, 382, 405, 410, 412, 416, 417, 423, 427, 429, 433, 470, 480, 486, 487, 494, 496, 499

Manethonic chronology, 490, 493, 495
—— Dynastic lists, 498
—— Dynasties, 496
—— history, extent of, 493
—— list of Eusebius, 422
—— numbers, the genuine, 494-496, 498
Manuscripts, Ethiopian, 99
Mara, 307, 548
Maranites, the, 554
Marcellinus, Ammianus, cited, 79
Martineau, Miss, cited, 514, 520
Marûga, village of, 212, 209
Masr, or Cairo, 44
Massaui, island of, 228
Matarîeh, village of, 49
Mechêref, village of, 142, 144
Medamôt, village of, 247
Medik, village of, 125
Medînet el Faiûm, 93, 97
—— Hâbu, 102, 253, 256, 260
—— —— church at, 269
—— Mâdi, ruins of, 98
—— Nimrud, town of, 97
Mediterranean Sea, triremes on, 442
Megdel, in Syria, 336
Meharret. See Hererat
Mehemet Ali, 441
Mehendi, Roman camp of, 125
Meidûm, Pyramid of, 64, 83
Mekseh, village of, 336
Meláh (Arabic for salt work), 194
Melek Idris Adlân, 177, 191
Memnon statue, 257
Memnonia at Thebes, 102, 248, 258
Memphis, 14, 49, 72, 81, 369, 427, 484
—— Pyramids of, 24, 44, 370

Menephthes king during the Exodus, 424, 430, 449, 451, 454, 470, 474, 480, 484

—— rock temple, at Surarieh, dedicated to Hathor by, 100

—— temple in Nubia erected by, 124
Menes, laws of, 392
—— epoch, or first historical year, 495

—— hieroglyphic writings invented in time of, 377

—— year of 3893, B.C., 494
Menkera (Mykerinos), Pyramid of, 59
Menzaleh Lake, 333
Merhet, priest of Chufu, tomb of, 61, 63
Méraui, town of, 194, 223
Meröe, derivation of term, 210

—— district between Nile and Astaboras, 17, 146

—— island of, 225
—— Pyramids of, 206
—— well of, 217
Mesaurât, monuments of, 156
—— el Kirbegân (Ben Naga), 156, 157
—— e’ Naga (Ben Naga), 156
—— e’ Sofra (Ben Naga), 156
Messâid, spring of water, 288
Messelemîeh, town of, 166, 189, 205
Metamme, village of, 154
Meton, the cycle of, 454
Mice in camp, 87
Miglik, in Gilif range, 216
Military band, 186
Minjan schtaroth, epoch of, 455
Mirage, in Nubian Desert, 141

Misphragmuthosis, end of rule of Hyksos, 428, 490

Mitrahinneh, 72
Mneuis, holy bull, 411, 413
Moʾallaqa, Syria, 337
Möris-Amenemha, 481
Mœris Lake, 92, 95
—— dams of lake, 95
Mœris, Pyramid of, 83
Mograd, mountain range of, 141
Mogrân River, 146
Mohammed Ali, 39, 40, 333
—— Saïd, 158
Moie Messâid, spring of, 288
Moleds, or new moons, 453
Molon, cited, 423
Monarchy, Old, 395, 414
Monassir, cataracts in province of, 228
Monkeys on Blue River, 169
Mons Casius, 429
—— Claudianus. See Gebel Fatireh
—— Porphyrites. See Gebel Dochân
Monuments, 368, 375
—— age of Egyptian, 16
—— in Old Monarchy, 414
—— of Biahmu, 96
—— granite, at Mount Barkal, 223
—— Pharaonic, 233
—— at Soba, 18
—— at Thebes, 20
Monumental nation, the Egyptian, 397
—— writing, hieroglyphics become, 379
Moqattam Hills, 47
Mosaic account of Exodus, 425
Mosch, town of, 235
Moses, 310, 408, 411, 449, 484, 486, 491, 546
Mosque at Damascus, 343
—— at Old Dongola, 232
Motmar, 150

Mountains of Nubian Desert, mineral character of, 136

Mud of Nile, bricks made of, 369
Mudhir of Berber, 131
—— Esneh, 131
Mühleisen, a missionary, 39, 47
Mukfâr, ruins of, 435, 436
Mulid e’ Nebbi, festival of, 70
Mummies, durability of, 370
Mundera, plain of, 141
Munfîeh range, 280
Mûsa Bey, 148

Music not considered by the Egyptians an independent art, 388

—— Eastern, 85
—— Arabic, 182
Mustaffa Pascha, 131
Mythology of Egypt, 25
Myos hormos, ruins of, 289
N.
Nablus (Sichem) Syria, 334
Naga in the desert, 17, 153, 156, 210
Naharieh, ruins of town near, 43
Nahr el Kelb (Lykos), 22, 355
Nakb el Egaui, Peninsula of Sinai, 291
—— Haui, Peninsula of Sinai, 291, 294, 547
Names, holy and popular, for towns, 115
Napoleon, Descrip. de l’Egypt, 376
Napata, town of, 18, 223
—— cemetery of, 220

Narrative, Mosaic, contradicts the idea that the Jews were the Hyksos, 421

Nascimbeni, engineer of the Viceroy, 93
Nasr, Sultâna, 176
Natron, crust in desert of, 139

Natural history, collection by Ferd. Werne, bought for Prussia, 42

Nazareth, 335
Nebbi Habîl (tomb of Abel), 340
—— Schît, Syria, 345
Nebek-tree, 277, 298
Nebuchadnezzar, 455
Nechel Delfa, in Gebel Munfîeh, 281
Necropoli, Egyptian, 375
Necropolis of Thebes, 247
Nectanebus, 120, 243, 525, 531
—— II., 494
Negro soldiers, 186
Nehera-si-Numhotep, tomb of, 112
Nekleh, Rosetta arm of Nile, 43

Nekôs begins to cut canal between Nile and Red Sea, 439, 440, 441, 442

Neos Dionysos, Ptolemy XIII., 108
Neslet, village of, 98
Nesnas ape, 164
Neubauer, Herr, apothecary at Chartûm, 160
New Dongola, 233
Nile river, height of, at Semneh, 19, 20
—— gradual levelling of bed, 30
—— at Atfeh, 43
—— waters of, 44
—— crossing the, 211
—— observations on rise of, 239, 259
—— between Thebes and Qeneh, 275
—— narrow district of, 369
—— mud bricks of, 369
—— ease of transport on, 372
—— canal, 436, 448
—— upper districts of, 458
—— rise of, related by Strabo, 481
—— breadth, depth, and velocity in Nubia, 519
—— fall of, 521
Nilometer, 73
Nimr, palace of King, 195
Nilus, cited, 556, 557, 560
Noah’s tomb, 327
Nochol rock, 307

Nofratmu, an ancestor of Ranumhet, chief architect, 458

Nomarchs, who ruled in the Nomes, 482

Nomes, Egypt divided into, 482, 483

Nome, Sethroitic, Abaris situated in, 427, 431

Nuba language, 30, 128, 232, 234
—— dialect, 235
—— villages, 228

Nubia, Lower, phys. geog. of, see Appendix, 516

—— Lower, geological structure of, Appendix, 522

—— breadth, depth, &c., of Nile, Appendix, 519

—— temples in, 124
Nubian language, 171
—— Sheikh, 30
Nubians, character of, 127
Numbers, genuine Manethonic, 494-496, 498
—— Hebrew, uncertainty of, 402
Nummulitic limestone near Memphis, 371
Numt Amen, temple of, 255

Nureddin Effendi, a Coptic Catholic Egyptian, 163, 189

Nuri, Pyramids of, 218, 221
Nus, hieroglyphic name of town, 112
O.
Obelisk at Heliopolis, 46
Obelisks in Alexandria, 369
Ochus, conquest of Egypt by, 494
Okmeh, sulphur-spring at, 237
Old Dongola, 232
Old Testament writings, 459
—— —— chronology, 490, 492
Old chronicle, 497, 498
Olympiad, the seventh, 423
—— calculation, 424
Olympian games, 383
Omar Aga, officer in Turkish army, 198
Omarâb mountains, 209
Ombos, canon of proportions found in, 20, 118
Om Saiale, well of, 218
Om Schebak, valley of, 218
On, same as Heliopolis, 113
Onias, temple of, 449

Osarsiph, priest of Heliopolis, 406, 408, 413, 416

Osiris, tomb of, 122
—— service of, 413
—— statue of, at Kamlîn, 164

Osman Bey, chief in command of army against Taka, 196

Osymandyas, King, 381
—— tomb of, 260
Otho, Emp., 266
P.
Paapis, son of Amenophis, 405
Palms, Dilêb, 171
—— Doum, 137, 218
Pachon, Papyri dated 13th of, 395
Painting on Pyramids, 52

—— Christian, over Heathen representations, 268

Paintings in Thebes, 246
—— on tomb in Benihassan, 111
Panodorus, 498
Panopolis (Chemmis), rock-grotto of, 115
Papyrus rolls, 391, 394, 395
—— of Sallier, 391
—— plant, 373, 380
—— roll on monuments, 374
Paran, 304, 539
Parthey, cited, 520, 525
Papebroch, cited, 558
Pastophori, the watchers of the temples, 389
Patriarchs, the three, 491
Paul, Apostle, on number, 403, 480
Pedigree of architect, 279
Peney, M., French surgeon, 196
Petamenap, tomb of the royal scribe, 265
Pelusaic arm of Nile, 429, 446
Pelusium, town of, 429, 430, 432
Peninsula of Sinai, climate of, 545
Periander, 442
Period from Abraham to Moses, 485-491
Perring, measurement of Pyramids by, 59
—— 13, 79, 114
Petronius, Prefect, 481
Phœnikon, Peninsula of Sinai, 555
Phœnix, period of 1500 years, 398
Phara ravine, 554
Pharan, 297, 304, 313, 546, 555, 557
—— church of, 562
—— palm-grove of, 553, 559
Pharaoh, 413, 480
—— of the Exodus, 421-425
—— the, of Joseph, 477
—— (Sethôsis I.), 484
Pharaonic history, restoration of the, 399
Philæ, island of, 20, 119, 242, 530, 531
—— name of, 120
—— inscriptions at, 107
—— temples on, 525
Philotera, ancient, 289
Philip Aridæus, 252
Philology, Egyptian, 26
Philosophers who visited Egypt, 385
Phokes, island of, 555

Physical Geography of Lower Nubia, Appendix, 516

Pilgrims, German, 302
Pipe, Turkish, pleasure of, 104
Pithom and Ramses, treasure cities, 426
—— situation of, 435, 447

Plague of the leprosy, Egyptian account of, 412

Plato, house he inhabited in Heliopolis, 384
Pliny, cited, 439, 444
—— fable by, of Sphinx, 67
Plutarch, cited, 123, 386
Poems, Arabic, 182
Polemon, cited, 422
Pompey’s Pillar, 42
Porphyry, Gebel Dochân, 372
Poseidion, town of, 553
Potiphar, an Egyptian name, 476
—— of Heliopolis, 411, 413
Priests in Egypt, 385, 386
—— books, the hieratical, 387
—— learned, 412
—— registers of their generations, 459
Primis, ancient, 125, 240
Procopius, cited, 320, 556
Prokesch, Gen. von, cited, 525
Proskynemata, 56, 279
Prophets, Egyptian, 413
—— the, 387
Prudhoe, Lion of Lord, 223, 236
Pruner, Dr., 47, 98
Psalmist, the, on length of life, 491
Psammeticus, 429, 440

—— I., 240, inscription belonging to temple of, at Naharieh, 43

Pselchis, inscription at temple of, 105
Ptah-nefru-be-u, tomb of, 63
Ptolemy Alexander I., temple built by, 117
—— 380, 429, 434, 437, 438
—— Mendesius, cited, 421, 424
—— Eupator, inscription referring to, 107
—— Philadelphus, 382, 439, 440, 444, 525

—— the geographer, 115, 429, 434, 437, 438, 554

Ptolemies, Greek inscription about the, 107

Publius, Prefect, 42

Pyramid of Cheops (Chufu), view from, 48, 49, 59, 72, 372

—— of Daschûr, 79, 98
—— of Gizeh, 47, 56, 79, 323
—— of Howara (Labyrinth), 83
—— of Labyrinth, 90
—— of Mencheres, 372
Pyramids, 47-65
—— age of, 13
—— ascent of, 48
—— view from summit of, 48
—— built of bricks, 372
—— first visit to, 47
—— remains of, 13
—— structure of, 65

—— supposed by Osman Bey to contain treasure, 197

—— of Abu Roasch, 59, 79
—— of Abusir, 69
—— of Beg´erauîeh, 195, 150
—— of Lischt and Meidûm, 64, 83
—— of Illahûn and Mœris, 83
—— of Meröe, 150-152, 206
—— of Memphis, 25, 44, 47-81, 375
—— of Nuri, 221
—— of Rigah, 79
—— of Saqâra, 64, 67
—— of Tanqassi and Kurru, 229
—— of Zauiet el Arrian, 59
—— of Zûma, 230
Pythagoras, cited, 385
Q.
Qala, village of, 209
Qantur, Pyramid of, at Kurru, 229
Qasr Qerûn, town of, 15, 98
—— e’ Saiat, tombs at, 16, 116
Qeneh, village of, 22, 275, 277, 321
Qirre, mountains of, 158, 193
Qirsch, village of, 242
Qsur el Benat, plain of, 278
Quarries, granite, 234
—— porphyry, 288
—— stone, 278
Qubbet e’ Nasr, view from, 340
Qurna, Thebes, 20, 102, 108, 254, 259
Qurnet Murrâi, hill of, 267
Queens preferred in Ethiopia, 178
Quft (Koptos), 277
Qulleh, clay water bottles, 103
—— manufactory of, 276
Qûs, Apollinopolis parva, 277
R.
Ra, figure of the god, 438
Rababa, musical instrument, 182
Rabbis, 453
Rabbinical chronology, 450-455
—— date of Exodus, 470
Rabbi Hillel Hanassi, 453, 450
Races intermingled, 411
Râha, plain of, 293, 545, 548, 553
Rahad river, 148, 167
Rain in Upper Egypt, 119
—— Nubian desert, 137
Raithenes, the, 555
Raithu. See Tôr
Ramadan, Mussulmans’ holy month, 45
Ram of Barkal, 236, 245
Rams, granite, 223
Rauiân, mountains of, 158, 193
Rammius Martialis Eparch, 288

Ramses II. (Miamun), 249, 259, 333, 370, 381, 393, 395, 418, 420, 438, 441, 446, 447, 449, 481, 483, 484

—— his name inscribed on Cleopatra’s Needle, 42

—— statue of, 72
—— temple of, in Thebes, 102, 243, 259
—— temple of, near Kalabscheh, 526
—— bas-reliefs of, 355
—— memorial tablets of, 22
—— III., 250, 260, 450
—— IX., 395
—— town of, 426, 447
Rameseion, 381
Ranumhet, chief architect, 458
Raphia (Refah), 429

Raphidîm, Peninsula of Sinai, 312, 318, 540, 545, 548

Ras Furtak, Peninsula of Sinai, 555
—— Gehan, Peninsula of Sinai, 553, 554
—— Abu Zelîmeh, Peninsula of Sinai, 553
—— Mohammed, Peninsula of Sinai, 553, 554
—— e’ Schekab, in Syria, 355
Rayeh, convent of, at Tôr, 557
Red Sea, 437, 440
—— —— level higher than Mediterranean, 441
Register of generations, 458, 459
Rennie, Mr., cited, 521, 524
Representations at Naga in the desert, 210
Reschraschi, plain of, 278
Rhinokolura (El Arisch), 429
Ricci, cited, 551
Rigah, Pyramid of, 79

Ritter, Carl, 315, 316, 320, 541, 543, 554, 558

—— his views on position of Sinai, 545, 546
Ritschl, 382
Robatat, province of, 226
Robbery at Saqâra, 72, 75
Rock-chambers lined with brick, 373
—— temple at Abu Simbel, 240
—— inscriptions, 560

Robinson, E., measurements of distance in Peninsula of Sinai, 547, 548

—— cited, 308, 309, 315, 316, 533, 545, 551
Roda, island of, 73
Roft, mountain chain of, 138
Româli, village of, 175
Roman camp at Mehendi, 125
—— inscription, 345
Rossafa road, 321
Rosellini, cited, 29, 51, 108, 244, 266, 525
Rosetta canal, 43
—— inscription of, 121
Royal revenues, 482
Rozière, the traveller, 426
Ruins in Wadi el Kirbegân, 194
Rüppell, cited, 290, 310, 545

Russegger, cited, 166, 515, 519, 523, 528, 529

Rustan Effendi, 192
S.
Saba Doleb, village of, 171
Sabagûra, ruins of ancient city, 20, 242
Sacred Books, 391
Sa el Hager, ancient Sais, 43
Sacred Writings, 391
Saffi, island of, 227
Sagadi, village of, 150
Sai, island of, 19, 237
Saïd ben Batrik, cited, 556, 562
Saida (Sidon), 336
Sailors on Red Sea, 289
St. Athanasius in Theban desert, 266
St. George, tomb of, 356
St. Martin, cited, 107
Sais, ancient, 43, 369
Saladin’s tomb, 343
Salamât (Sanamât), 258
Sálame-tree, 217
—— village of, 228
Salatis, King, 486
Salhîeh, Syria, 344
Salmasius, cited, 433
Sallier, Papyrus of, 391, 394
Samanúd (Sebennytos), 23, 333
Sami Bey, 39
Sams’, Mr., Egyptian collection, 392
San (Tanis), 23, 333
Sanab, 221
Sand dunes in plain of El Gôs, 215
Sanherib, 429
Saqâra, 64, 72, 81, 86, 89, 103
—— Pyramids of, 10
—— Sheikhs of, 76
—— trial at, 77
Sarcophagus of white limestone in Thebes, 245
Sarcophagi, 376

Sarbut el Châdem, Egyptian monuments of, 22, 300, 305

Saulcy, M. de, 121, 273
Schabak (So), King of Ethiopia and Egypt, 251
Schaib el Benat, village of, 281
Schaiqîeh Arabs, 214, 229
—— cataracts in province of, 228
—— princes, 227
—— province of, 231
Schataui, village of, 240
Schech-Said, village of, 16
Schendi, town of, 17, 23, 153, 154, 195
Scherif Pascha, the minister, 77, 89
Scheschenk I., 250
Schilluk tribe, 149
Schoa, missionary station of, 39
Schômar. See Gebel Um Schômar
Schôna government store-house, 237

Schafra (Chafra), King, whether represented by Sphinx, 66

—— Pyramid of, 59, 66
Scherif Pascha, 89, 45
Schulz, Dr., 334
Sculptures, Egyptian, 233
Sea, sensations at, 36
—— luminous appearance on, 37
Seba-Biar, valley of, 434, 438, 441, 445
Sebastieh (Samaria), 335
Sebekhoteps, the Kings, 239
Sebekhotep I., 20
Sebûa, temple of, 20, 124, 241, 242, 356, 527
Seder Olam Rabah, the, 456
Sedeïnga, temple of, 19, 237
Sehêl, island of, 20
Seïd Hussên, family of, 275
—— Haschim, 176, 180, 181
Selajîn, village of, 97
Selama, village of, 154
Seleucidæ, era of the, 452, 453, 455
Seleucus, 382

Selîm Pascha, governor of Upper Egypt, 101, 114, 191

Selîm of Assuan, cited, 162
—— guide, 280
Selun (Silo), Syria, 334
Selseleh, sandstone mountains of, 32
Semitic king, 478
—— countries, 410
—— court, 477
—— Hyksos, 476
Semneh, 19, 238, 529, 531
—— Nile at, 30, 239, 529, 531

Senmut, hieroglyphic name for island of Bigeh, 120

Sennâr, capital of the Sudan, 18, 173, 176
Septuagint, 413
Serapiu, 435

Serbâl, Mount, 22, 295, 298, 299, 303, 308, 532

Serha-tree, 217

Sero, on frontier of Sennâr and Fasokl, 148, 175

Sêse, Mount, 236
Sesebi, ruins of, 19, 236
Sesoosis, 482
Sesostris Sesoosis, 480, 483
—— 481, 394, 429, 439
Sesurtesen I., 248, 395
—— on Pyramids of Begerauîeh, 151
—— obelisk erected by, 46
—— Throne-shield of, at Naga, 155
—— II., 112
—— III., 120, 238
Sesurtesens, the, 111
Sethôs, also called Ramesses, 407
—— priest of Ptha, 429
—— I., 15, 48, 236, 249, 259, 394, 449, 481
—— remains of temple erected by, 124
Sethôsis, 418, 481
Sethroitic Nome, 427, 428, 431

Seventy, the, 402, 434, 435, 436, 438, 464, 476

Serbon, lake of, 429
Set-Necht, King, 395
Sheikh Achmed, sheikh of camels, 134

—— Ahmed Welled ʾAuad, in the train of Osman Bey, 196

—— Sandalôba, chief of the Arabian merchants, 173

—— Mohammed Welled Hammed, prisoner of Osman Bey, 201

—— Mûsa el Fakir, prisoner of Osman Bey, 200
—— prisoners, 200
—— Selâm, 280, 286
—— Jusef Hanna Dahir, of Bscherreh, 352
Sheikhs of Saqâra and Abusir, 76
Shields on Pyramids of Gizeh, 58
—— hieroglyphic, 58, 196
—— of the Pharaohs, 438
Sidereal year, 398
Silco, inscription of, 242
Sittere-trees, 295
Sin, wilderness of, 308, 540, 547, 548

Sinai, Mount, true position of, 22, 303-321, 542, 560, 562

—— Ritter’s views respecting, 541-546
—— departure for Peninsula of, 274
—— convent of, 291, 305
—— tradition of, 559

Sinaitic inscriptions, 31, 291, 294, 299, 311, 545

Siut, town of, 16, 101, 114, 115
Slave revolt, 190, 192, 193
Sluice at Arsinoë, 440

Soba, capital of, kingdom of Aloa, 18, 162, 189

Solb (Soleb), temple of, 19, 223, 236
Soldiers, negro, 186
—— under Osman Bey in good discipline, 205
Snefru, King, 396
Sphinx, excavation in front of, 66
Sphinxes at temple in Wadi Lebua, 126
Solimân Pascha, 191
Solon, 383
Solymites, the, 407
Somra-tree, 217
Sont-trees, 101, 213, 217
Sorîba, Sultâna Nasr resident in, 178
Soter I., 108
Sothis, the, a spurious work, 497, 498
—— periods, 398, 494, 495, 496
Statue of a Persian king, 443
Stele between paws of Sphinx, 59
Stephanus of Byzantium, 431, 433
Stolistes, the ten books of the, 387
Stone buildings, 371
Storm near Pyramids, 53

Strabo, cited, 119, 266, 384, 386, 411, 429, 430, 434, 437, 439, 444, 481

Structure of Pyramids, 221
Suez, town of, 434, 435, 436, 443
—— isthmus of, 426
Sugar factory in Kamlîn, 163
Suk el Bárada, village of, in Syria, 344
Sukkôt, province of, 237
Sulphur-spring of Okmeh, 237
Sûr (Tyrus), 336
—— wilderness of, 307, 547

Surarieh, rock temple near village of, 15, 100

Suri, beverage of, 199
Surîe, Abu Ramle, village of, 193
Syenite of Assuan, 371
Syncellus, cited, 489, 490, 494, 499
Syria, 430, 435, 449
T.
Table of Jewish generations, 461, 463

—— —— generations of Levi according to Josephus, 468

—— —— —— —— from Hebrew text, 467

—— —— undeterminate and historical numbers, 472

Tables of Egyptian Dynasties, 499
Tabor, Mount, 335
Tacitus, cited, 266, 393, 423
Tahraka (Tirhakah), King, 18, 222, 251

Tâiba, village inhabited by Fukara (Fakirs), 187

Taka, war in, 186, 199
—— language in, 201
—— tribes of, 201
Talmis (Kalabscheh), 123, 242
Talmud, few chronological dates, 454
Tamaniât, village of, 158, 193
Tamîeh, village of, 95, 98
Tanis (Tan), Nile Delta, 333
Tanqassi, Pyramids of, 229
Tarablus (Tripolis), Syria, 354
Tarfa shrubs, 294, 308
Tehneh, monuments near, 15
Teirieh, ruins near, 44
Tel Emdieh, village of, 338
Tel Jehudeh, 449
Tel-el-Amarna, 23, 27
Temple, building of first, 455
—— dedications, 379
—— at Amara, 237
—— on island of Bageh, 526

—— at Mount Barkal, erected by Ramses II., 222

—— at Bet el Ualli, 124
—— at Debu, 526
—— of Edfu, 117
—— near Kalabscheh, 526
—— at Karnak, 248
—— of Korte, 124
—— of Luqsor, 253

—— near Medînet Hâbu, erected by King Horus, 259

—— of Qurna, 259
—— at Sedeïnga, 237
—— of Sesebi, 236
—— in front of Sphinx, 52
—— at Solb, 236
—— rock at Surarieh, 100
Temples, Ethiopian drawings on, 195
—— erected by the Ptolemies, 266
—— rock at Abu Simbel, 240
—— of Bâlbeck, 346
—— at Ben Naga, 153
—— at Dendera, 116, 322
—— near Gebel Dochân, 287
—— of Gerf Hussên and Sebûa, 124
—— on Philæ, 120, 243, 525
—— at Naga, 154, 155
—— in Nubia, 124
—— at Thebes, 102, 116, 243, 255, 259
—— of Semneh, 238
Testament, Old, 402, 404, 438, 490
Tethmosis, King, 423
Thales instructed by Egyptian priests, 384

Thames, fall of, between Wallingford and Teddington, 520

Thâna, island of, near Gorata, in Ethiopia, 99

Thebes, 14, 102-104, 116, 243-274, 370, 371, 376, 381, 484

—— scenery about, 247
—— origin of name, 248
Theodosius, edict of, 266
Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, 497
Theon of Alexandria, 453
Theory of excavation of bed of Nile, 530
Thinitic kings, 495
This, town of, 494
Thoum, i. e. Pithom, 435, 448

Thutmosis III., Cleopatra’s needle erected by, 42

Tii, wife of Amenophis III., 237
Tifar, village of, 231
Tiberias, on Lake Genezaret, 335
Tomb of Abel, 340
—— of King Bech-en-Aten, 114
—— of Ki-si-Tuthotep, 113
—— of Saladin, 343
—— of Prince Merhet, 61, 63
—— of Noah, 337
—— of Ramses Miamun, 244
—— of St. George, 356
—— at Saqâra, 72
Tombos, island of, 19, 234
Tombs in Thebes, 245, 254
—— in Zauiet el Meitîn, 110
—— removal of, 323
—— rock, of Amarna, 322
—— of Beni Hassan, 16, 111
—— near El Guês, 212
—— of the kings, 261-263
—— of the princesses, 264
—— of private persons, 264
—— round Pyramids, 13
—— at Saba Doleb, 171
Tondub-tree, 217
Tôd, temple of, 20
Tôr, Peninsula of Sinai, 22, 274, 290, 560
Tower of Hammâm Seidna Solimân, 237
Tosorthros, 2nd Dynasty, 375, 377
Tradition of Gebel Mûsa, 532
—— about position of Mount Sinai, 304, 559

Trajanic river, name of canal cut from Babylon, 437, 445

Transmigration of souls, 385
Travellers, visit from, 273
Trees near Gilif mountains, 217
—— on Blue River, 168
Tripolis (Tarablus), 354
Tuch, cited, 311
Tukele, straw huts, 162, 173
Tura, chalk mountains of, 32
Turin, royal annals of, 395
Turk, character of the, 88
Turkish breakfast, 159
—— soldiers, their uniform, 354
Tuthmosis I., 234, 248, 249
—— II., 19, 238

—— III., 24, 124, 236, 237, 238, 249, 256, 259, 300, 301, 486

—— IV., 66, 156, 259, 485

—— IV., stele of, between paws of Sphinx, 59

Tutmes III., conqueror of the Hyksos, 18th Dynasty, 395

Typhon, the god, 432
Typhonic town, 428
U.

Um Schebak, valley of, in desert of Gilif, 218

Um Schômar. See Gebel
V.
Vase at Soba, 189
Venus, small statue of, in Soba, 190
Vermin, 104
Vicus Judæorum (Tel Jehudeh), 448, 449
Village scene in Ethiopia, 174
Visit from travellers, 273
Vyse, Colonel Howard, 13
W.
Wad Eraue, 189
—— Negudi, 171, 173
Wadi Auatêb, 154, 155, 156
—— Abu Dôm, 213, 218
—— Hammed, 214
—— Harod, 216
—— Aleyât, 297, 298, 318
—— el Arab, 241
—— Bahr ʾHatab, 137
—— Delah, 137
—— el Mehet, 216
—— Dhaghadeh, 553
—— e’ Scheikh, 22, 294, 547
—— e’ Siléha, 156
—— e’ Sofra, 152, 156
—— e’ Sufr, 137, 139
—— el Kirbegân, 154, 156, 157, 194
—— el Uer, 216
—— Ellâqi, 241

—— Firân, 20, 295, 297, 298, 299, 304, &c., 535

—— Gazâl, 218
—— Gaqedûl, 215
—— Gharandel, 306, 547, 548
—— Guah El ʾAlem, 215
—— Halfa, 17, 20, 131, 240, 241
—— Hebrân, 22, 290, 291, 312
—— Ibrîm, 241
—— Kalas, 217
—— Kenûs, 241
—— Leg´a, 561
—— Maghâra, 22, 300, 305
—— Mokatteb, 22, 31, 299
—— Murhad, 139
—— Nasb, 302, 305
—— Nuba, 241
—— Qeneh, 300
—— Rim, 295
—— Schebêkeh, 306, 547
—— Schellâl, 547, 548
—— Sebûa, temple in, 126
—— Selâf, 295, 297
—— Selîn, 16
—— Sich, 300
—— Siʾqelji, 296
—— Sittere, 300
—— Tâibeh, 312, 547
—— Teresib, 154
Wagner, von, the Prussian consul-general, 39
War in Taka, 186
Water, search in Nubian desert for, 137
—— search for, 281
Water-works in Egypt, 481
Wed Médineh, 176, 180
—— —— slave revolt in, 190

Weidenbach, Ernest, member of the expedition, 39, 54, 75, 83, 94, 114, 153

—— Max., 153, 275

—— Ernest and Max., 12, 21

Werne, Ferd., objects of natural history collected by, 42

—— H., 32
Wetzstein, Dr., 552
White River, 161

Wild, J., travelling companion, 12, 35, 56, 57

Wilkinson, Sir G., cited, 29, 93, 108, 112, 244, 266, 271, 282, 435, 448, 525, 532

Wilson, Dr. John, cited, 539
Wind, violent, in Chartûm, 191
Women, ancient Egyptian, painted yellow, 208
Wot Mahemût, 157
Writings, sacred, 391
X.
Xerxes, 279
Z.
Zachleh, town in Libanon, 336
Zahera, village of, 354
Zani, on the Nile, 98
Zauiet-el-Arrian, Pyramids of, 59, 79
—— Meitîn, rock-tombs of, 110
Zebedêni, village in Anti-Libanon, 338
Zeitieh, the naphtha pits, 289
Zerin, in Syria, 335
Zûma, village of, 230.

THE END.

C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.

AN
ALPHABETICAL LIST
OF BOOKS CONTAINED IN
BOHN’S LIBRARIES.

Detailed Catalogue, arranged according to the various Libraries, will be sent on application.

ADDISON’S Works. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, Portrait, and 8 Plates of Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

ÆSCHYLUS, The Dramas of. Translated into English Verse by Anna Swanwick. 4th Edition, revised. 5s.

—— The Tragedies of. Translated into Prose by T. A. Buckley, B.A. 3s. 6d.

AGASSIZ and GOULD’S Outline of Comparative Physiology. Enlarged by Dr. Wright. With 390 Woodcuts. 5s.

ALFIERI’S Tragedies. Translated into English Verse by Edgar A. Bowring, C.B. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

ALLEN’S (Joseph, R.N.) Battles of the British Navy. Revised Edition, with 57 Steel Engravings. 2 vols. 5s. each.

AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS. History of Rome during the Reigns of Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian, and Valens. Translated by Prof. C. D. Yonge, M.A. 7s. 6d.

ANDERSEN’S Danish Legends and Fairy Tales. Translated by Caroline Peachey. With 120 Wood Engravings. 5s.

ANTONINUS (M. Aurelius), The Thoughts of. Trans. literally, with Notes and Introduction by George Long, M.A. 3s. 6d.

APOLLONIUS RHODIUS. ‘The Argonautica.’ Translated by E. P. Coleridge, B.A. 5s.

APPIAN’S Roman History. Translated by Horace White, M.A., LL.D. With Maps and Illustrations. 2 vols. 6s. each.

APULEIUS, The Works. Comprising the Golden Ass, God of Socrates, Florida, and Discourse of Magic. 5s.

ARIOSTO’S Orlando Furioso. Translated into English Verse by W. S. Rose. With Portrait, and 24 Steel Engravings. 2 vols. 5s. each.

ARISTOPHANES’ Comedies. Translated by W. J. Hickie. 2 vols. 5s. each.

ARISTOTLE’S Nicomachean Ethics. Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by the Venerable Archdeacon Browne. 5s.

ARISTOTLE’S Politics and Economics. Translated by E. Walford, M.A., with Introduction by Dr. Gillies. 5s.

—— Metaphysics. Translated by the Rev. John H. M’Mahon, M.A. 5s.

—— History of Animals. Trans. by Richard Cresswell, M.A. 5s.

—— Organon; or, Logical Treatises, and the Introduction of Porphyry. Translated by the Rev. O. F. Owen, M.A. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

—— Rhetoric and Poetics. Trans. by T. Buckley, B.A. 5s.

ARRIAN’S Anabasis of Alexander, together with the Indica. Translated by E. J. Chinnock, M.A., LL.D. With Maps and Plans. 5s.

ATHENÆUS. The Deipnosophists; or, the Banquet of the Learned. Trans. by Prof. C. D. Yonge, M.A. 3 vols. 5s. each.

ATLAS of Classical Geography. 22 Large Coloured Maps. With a Complete Index. Imp. 8vo. 7s. 6d.

BACON’S Moral and Historical Works, including the Essays, Apophthegms, Wisdom of the Ancients, New Atlantis, Henry VII., Henry VIII., Elizabeth, Henry Prince of Wales, History of Great Britain, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus Cæsar. Edited by J. Devey, M.A. 3s. 6d.

—— Novum Organum and Advancement of Learning. Edited by J. Devey, M.A. 5s.

BALLADS AND SONGS of the Peasantry of England. Edited by Robert Bell. 3s. 6d.

BASS’S Lexicon to the Greek Testament. 2s.

BAX’S Manual of the History of Philosophy, for the use of Students. By E. Belfort Bax. 5s.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, their finest Scenes, Lyrics, and other Beauties, selected from the whole of their works, and edited by Leigh Hunt. 3s. 6d.

BECHSTEIN’S Cage and Chamber Birds, their Natural History, Habits, Food, Diseases, and Modes of Capture. Translated, with considerable additions on Structure, Migration, and Economy, by H. G. Adams. Together with Sweet British Warblers. With 43 coloured Plates and Woodcut Illustrations. 5s.

BECKMANN (J.) History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. 4th edition, revised by W. Francis and J. W. Griffith. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

BEDE’S (Venerable) Ecclesiastical History of England. Together with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Edited by J. A. Giles, D.C.L. With Map. 5s.

BELL (Sir Charles). The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, as connected with the Fine Arts. By Sir Charles Bell, K.H. 7th edition, revised. 5s.

BERKELEY (George), Bishop of Cloyne, The Works of. Edited by George Sampson. With Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 3 vols. 5s. each.

BION. See Theocritus.

BJÖRNSON’S Arne and the Fisher Lassie. Translated by W. H. Low, M.A. 3s. 6d.

BLAIR’S Chronological Tables. Revised and Enlarged. Comprehending the Chronology and History of the World, from the Earliest Times to the Russian Treaty of Peace, April 1856. By J. Willoughby Rosse. Double vol. 10s.

BLAIR’S Index of Dates. Comprehending the principal Facts in the Chronology and History of the World, alphabetically arranged; being a complete Index to Blair’s Chronological Tables. By J. W. Rosse. 2 vols. 5s. each.

BLEEK, Introduction to the Old Testament. By Friedrich Bleek. Edited by Johann Bleek and Adolf Kamphausen. Translated by G. H. Venables, under the supervision of the Rev. Canon Venables. 2 vols. 5s. each.

BOETHIUS’S Consolation of Philosophy. King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of. With a literal English Translation on opposite pages, Notes, Introduction, and Glossary, by Rev. S. Fox, M.A. 5s.

BOHN’S Dictionary of Poetical Quotations. 4th edition. 6s.

—— Handbooks of Athletic Sports. In 8 vols., each containing numerous Illustrations. 3s. 6d. each.

I.—Cricket, Lawn Tennis, Tennis, Rackets, Fives, Golf.

II.—Rowing and Sculling, Sailing, Swimming.

III.—Boxing, Broadsword, Single Stick, &c., Wrestling, Fencing.

IV.—Rugby Football, Association Football, Baseball, Rounders, Fieldball, Quoits, Skittles, Bowls, Curling.

V.—Cycling, Athletics, Skating.

VI.—Practical Horsemanship, including Riding for Ladies.

VII.—Camping Out, Canoeing.

VIII.—Gymnastics, Indian Clubs.

BOHN’S Handbooks of Games. New edition. In 2 vols., with numerous Illustrations 3s. 6d. each.

Vol. I.—Table Games:—Billiards, Chess, Draughts, Backgammon, Dominoes, Solitaire, Reversi, Go-Bang, Rouge et Noir, Roulette, E.O., Hazard, Faro.

Vol. II.—Card Games:—Whist, Solo Whist, Poker, Piquet, Écarté, Euchre, Bézique, Cribbage, Loo, Vingt-et-un, Napoleon, Newmarket, Pope Joan, Speculation, &c., &c.

BOND’S A Handy Book of Rules and Tables for verifying Dates with the Christian Era, &c. Giving an account of the Chief Eras and Systems used by various Nations; with the easy Methods for determining the Corresponding Dates. By J. J. Bond. 5s.

BONOMI’S Nineveh and its Palaces. 7 Plates and 294 Woodcut Illustrations. 5s.

BOSWELL’S Life of Johnson, with the Tour in the Hebrides and Johnsoniana. Edited by the Rev. A. Napier, M.A. With Frontispiece to each vol. 6 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

BRAND’S Popular Antiquities of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Arranged, revised, and greatly enlarged, by Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.R.S., &c., &c. 3 vols. 5s. each.

BREMER’S (Frederika) Works. Translated by Mary Howitt. 4 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

BRIDGWATER TREATISES.

Bell (Sir Charles) on the Hand. With numerous Woodcuts. 5s.

Kirby on the History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals. Edited by T. Rymer Jones. With upwards of 100 Woodcuts. 2 vols. 5s. each.

Kidd on the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man. 3s. 6d.

Chalmers on the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man. 5s.

BRINK (B. ten). Early English Literature. By Bernhard ten Brink. Vol. I. To Wyclif. Translated by Horace M. Kennedy. 3s. 6d.

—— Vol. II. Wyclif, Chaucer, Earliest Drama, Renaissance. Translated by W. Clarke Robinson, Ph.D. 3s. 6d.

—— Vol. III. From the Fourteenth Century to the Death of Surrey. Edited by Dr. Alois Brandl. Trans. by L. Dora Schmitz. 3s. 6d.

—— Five Lectures on Shakespeare. Trans. by Julia Franklin. 3s. 6d.

BROWNE’S (Sir Thomas) Works. Edited by Simon Wilkin. 3 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

BUCHANAN’S Dictionary of Science and Technical Terms used in Philosophy, Literature, Professions, Commerce, Arts, and Trades. 6s.

BURKE’S Works. 6 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

I.—Vindication of Natural Society—Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, and various Political Miscellanies.

II.—Reflections on the French Revolution—Letters relating to the Bristol Election—Speech on Fox’s East India Bill, &c.

III.—Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs—On the Nabob of Arcot’s Debts—The Catholic Claims, &c.

IV.—Report on the Affairs of India, and Articles of Charge against Warren Hastings.

V.—Conclusion of the Articles of Charge against Warren Hastings—Political Letters on the American War, on a Regicide Peace, to the Empress of Russia.

VI.—Miscellaneous Speeches—Letters and Fragments—Abridgments of English History, &c. With a General Index.

—— Speeches on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings; and Letters. With Index. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

—— Life. By Sir J. Prior. 3s. 6d. each.

BURNEY’S Evelina. By Frances Burney (Mme. D’Arblay). With an Introduction and Notes by A. R. Ellis. 3s. 6d.

—— Cecilia. With an Introduction and Notes by A. R. Ellis. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

BURN (R.) Ancient Rome and its Neighbourhood. An Illustrated Handbook to the Ruins in the City and the Campagna, for the use of Travellers. By Robert Burn, M.A. With numerous Illustrations, Maps, and Plans. 7s. 6d.

BURNS (Robert), Life of. By J. G. Lockhart, D.C.L. A new and enlarged Edition. Revised by William Scott Douglas. 3s. 6d.

BURTON’S (Robert) Anatomy of Melancholy. Edited by the Rev. A. R. Shilleto, M.A. With Introduction by A. H. Bullen, and full Index. 3 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

BURTON (Sir R. F.) Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah. By Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, K.C.M.G. With an Introduction by Stanley Lane-Poole, and all the original Illustrations. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

⁂ This is the copyright edition, containing the author’s latest notes.

BUTLER’S (Bishop) Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature; together with two Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the Nature of Virtue, and Fifteen Sermons. 3s. 6d.

BUTLER’S (Samuel) Hudibras. With Variorum Notes, a Biography, Portrait, and 28 Illustrations. 5s.

—— or, further Illustrated with 60 Outline Portraits. 2 vols. 5s. each.

CÆSAR. Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars. Translated by W. A. McDevitte, B.A. 5s.

CAMOENS’ Lusiad; or, the Discovery of India. An Epic Poem. Translated by W. J. Mickle. 5th Edition, revised by E. R. Hodges, M.C.P. 3s. 6d.

CARAFAS (The) of Maddaloni. Naples under Spanish Dominion. Translated from the German of Alfred de Reumont. 3s. 6d.

CARPENTER’S (Dr W. B.) Zoology. Revised Edition, by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. With very numerous Woodcuts. Vol. I. 6s. [Vol. II. out of print.

—— Mechanical Philosophy, Astronomy, and Horology. 181 Woodcuts. 5s.

—— Vegetable Physiology and Systematic Botany. Revised Edition, by E. Lankester, M.D., &c. With very numerous Woodcuts. 6s.

—— Animal Physiology. Revised Edition. With upwards of 300 Woodcuts. 6s.

CARREL. History of the Counter-Revolution in England for the Re-establishment of Popery under Charles II. and James II., by Armand Carrel; together with Fox’s History of the Reign of James II. and Lord Lonsdale’s Memoir of the Reign of James II. 3s. 6d.

CASTLE (E.) Schools and Masters of Fence, from the Middle Ages to the End of the Eighteenth Century. By Egerton Castle, M.A., F.S.A. With a Complete Bibliography. Illustrated with 140 Reproductions of Old Engravings and 6 Plates of Swords, showing 114 Examples. 6s.

CATTERMOLE’S Evenings at Haddon Hall. With 24 Engravings on Steel from designs by Cattermole, the Letterpress by the Baroness de Carabella. 5s.

CATULLUS, Tibullus, and the Vigil of Venus. A Literal Prose Translation. 5s.

CELLINI (Benvenuto). Memoirs of, written by Himself. Translated by Thomas Roscoe. 3s. 6d.

CERVANTES’ Don Quixote de la Mancha. Motteux’s Translation revised. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

—— Galatea. A Pastoral Romance. Translated by G. W. J. Gyll. 3s. 6d.

—— Exemplary Novels. Translated by Walter K. Kelly. 3s. 6d.

CHAUCER’S Poetical Works. Edited by Robert Bell. Revised Edition, with a Preliminary Essay by Prof. W. W. Skeat, M.A. 4 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

CHESS CONGRESS of 1862. A Collection of the Games played. Edited by J. Löwenthal. 5s.

CHEVREUL on Colour. Translated from the French by Charles Martel. Third Edition, with Plates, 5s.; or with an additional series of 16 Plates in Colours, 7s. 6d.

CHILLINGWORTH’S Religion of Protestants. A Safe Way to Salvation. 3s. 6d.

CHINA, Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical. With Map and nearly 100 Illustrations. 5s.

CHRONICLES OF THE CRUSADES. Contemporary Narratives of the Crusade of Richard Cœur de Lion, by Richard of Devizes and Geoffrey de Vinsauf; and of the Crusade at St. Louis, by Lord John de Joinville. 5s.

CICERO’S Orations. Translated by Prof. C. D. Yonge, M.A. 4 vols. 5s. each.

—— Letters. Translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. 4 vols. 5s. each. [Vols. I. and II. ready.

—— On Oratory and Orators. With Letters to Quintus and Brutus. Translated by the Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. 5s.

—— On the Nature of the Gods, Divination, Fate, Laws, a Republic, Consulship. Translated by Prof. C. D. Yonge, M.A., and Francis Barham. 5s.

—— Academics, De Finibus, and Tusculan Questions. By Prof. C. D. Yonge, M.A. 5s.

—— Offices; or, Moral Duties. Cato Major, an Essay on Old Age; Lælius, an Essay on Friendship; Scipio’s Dream; Paradoxes; Letter to Quintus on Magistrates. Translated by C. R. Edmonds. 3s. 6d.

CORNELIUS NEPOS.—See Justin.

CLARK’S (Hugh) Introduction to Heraldry. 18th Edition, Revised and Enlarged by J. R. Planché, Rouge Croix. With nearly 1000 Illustrations. 5s. Or with the Illustrations Coloured, 15s.

CLASSIC TALES, containing Rasselas, Vicar of Wakefield, Gulliver’s Travels, and The Sentimental Journey. 3s. 6d.

COLERIDGE’S (S. T.) Friend. A Series of Essays on Morals, Politics, and Religion. 3s. 6d.

—— Aids to Reflection, and the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, to which are added the Essays on Faith and the Book of Common Prayer. 3s. 6d.

—— Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and other English Poets. Edited by T. Ashe. 3s. 6d.

—— Biographia Literaria; together with Two Lay Sermons. 3s. 6d.

—— Table-Talk and Omniana. Edited by T. Ashe, B.A. 3s. 6d.

—— Miscellanies, Æsthetic and Literary; to which is added, The Theory of Life. Collected and arranged by T. Ashe, B.A. 3s. 6d.

COMTE’S Positive Philosophy. Translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau. With Introduction by Frederic Harrison. 3 vols. 5s. each.

—— Philosophy of the Sciences, being an Exposition of the Principles of the Cours de Philosophie Positive. By G. H. Lewes. 5s.

CONDÉ’S History of the Dominion of the Arabs in Spain. Translated by Mrs. Foster. 3 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

COOPER’S Biographical Dictionary. Containing Concise Notices (upwards of 15,000) of Eminent Persons of all Ages and Countries. By Thompson Cooper, F.S.A. With a Supplement, bringing the work down to 1883. 2 vols. 5s. each.

COWPER’S Complete Works. Edited by Robert Southey. Illustrated with 45 Engravings. 8 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

I. to IV.—Memoir and Correspondence.

V. and VI.—Poetical Works.

VII. and VIII.—Translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

COXE’S Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough. With his original Correspondence. By W. Coxe, M.A., F.R.S. Revised edition by John Wade. 3 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

⁂ An Atlas of the plans of Marlborough’s campaigns, 4to. 10s. 6d.

—— History of the House of Austria (1218-1792). With a Continuation from the Accession of Francis I. to the Revolution of 1848. 4 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

CRAIK’S (G. L.) Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. Illustrated by Anecdotes and Memoirs. Revised edition, with numerous Woodcut Portraits and Plates. 5s.

CRUIKSHANK’S Three Courses and a Dessert; comprising three Sets of Tales, West Country, Irish, and Legal; and a Mélange. With 50 humorous Illustrations by George Cruikshank. 5s.

—— Punch and Judy. The Dialogue of the Puppet Show; an Account of its Origin, &c. With 24 Illustrations, and Coloured Plates, designed and engraved by G. Cruikshank. 5s.

CUNNINGHAM’S Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters. A New Edition, with Notes and Sixteen fresh Lives. By Mrs. Heaton. 3 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

DANTE. Divine Comedy. Translated by the Rev. H. F. Cary, M.A. 3s. 6d.

—— Translated into English Verse by I. C. Wright, M.A. 3rd Edition, revised. With Portrait, and 34 Illustrations on Steel, after Flaxman.

—— The Inferno. A Literal Prose Translation, with the Text of the Original printed on the same page. By John A. Carlyle, M.D. 5s.

—— The Purgatorio. A Literal Prose Translation, with the Text printed on the same page. By W. S. Dugdale. 5s.

DE COMMINES (Philip), Memoirs of. Containing the Histories of Louis XI. and Charles VIII., Kings of France, and Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Together with the Scandalous Chronicle, or Secret History of Louis XI., by Jean de Troyes. Translated by Andrew R. Scoble. With Portraits. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

DEFOE’S Novels and Miscellaneous Works. With Prefaces and Notes, including those attributed to Sir W. Scott. 7 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

I.—Captain Singleton, and Colonel Jack.

II.—Memoirs of a Cavalier, Captain Carleton, Dickory Cronke, &c.

III.—Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.

IV.—Roxana, and Life of Mrs. Christian Davies.

V.—History of the Great Plague of London, 1665; The Storm (1703); and the True-born Englishman.

VI.—Duncan Campbell, New Voyage round the World, and Political Tracts.

VII.—Robinson Crusoe.

DE LOLME on the Constitution of England. Edited by John Macgregor. 3s. 6d.

DEMMIN’S History of Arms and Armour, from the Earliest Period. By Auguste Demmin. Translated by C. C. Black, M.A. With nearly 2000 Illustrations. 7s. 6d.

DEMOSTHENES’ Orations. Translated by C. Rann Kennedy. 5 vols. Vol. I., 3s. 6d.; Vols. II.-V., 5s. each.

DE STAËL’S Corinne or Italy. By Madame de Staël. Translated by Emily Baldwin and Paulina Driver. 3s. 6d.

DEVEY’S Logic, or the Science of Inference. A Popular Manual. By J. Devey. 5s.

DICTIONARY of Latin and Greek Quotations; including Proverbs, Maxims, Mottoes, Law Terms and Phrases. With all the Quantities marked, and English Translations. With Index Verborum (622 pages). 5s.

DICTIONARY of Obsolete and Provincial English. Compiled by Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A., &c. 2 vols. 5s. each.

DIDRON’S Christian Iconography: a History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages. Translated by E. J. Millington and completed by Margaret Stokes. With 240 Illustrations. 2 vols. 5s. each.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS. Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers. Translated by Prof. C. D. Yonge, M.A. 5s.

DOBREE’S Adversaria. Edited by the late Prof. Wagner. 2 vols. 5s. each.

DODD’S Epigrammatists. A Selection from the Epigrammatic Literature of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern Times. By the Rev. Henry Philip Dodd, M.A. Oxford. 2nd Edition, revised and enlarged. 6s.

DONALDSON’S The Theatre of the Greeks. A Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama. With numerous Illustrations and 3 Plans. By John William Donaldson, D.D. 5s.

DRAPER’S History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. By John William Draper, M.D., LL.D. 2 vols. 5s. each.

DUNLOP’S History of Fiction. A new Edition. Revised by Henry Wilson. 2 vols. 5s. each.

DYER (Dr. T. H.). Pompeii: its Buildings and Antiquities. By T. H. Dyer, LL.D. With nearly 300 Wood Engravings, a large Map, and a Plan of the Forum. 7s. 6d.

—— The City of Rome: its History and Monuments. With Illustrations. 5s.

DYER (T. F. T.) British Popular Customs, Present and Past. An Account of the various Games and Customs associated with Different Days of the Year in the British Isles, arranged according to the Calendar. By the Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, M.A. 5s.

EARLY TRAVELS IN PALESTINE. Edited by Thomas Wright, M.A. With Map of Jerusalem. 5s.

EBERS’ Egyptian Princess. An Historical Novel. By George Ebers. Translated by E. S. Buchheim. 3s. 6d.

EDGEWORTH’S Stories for Children. With 8 Illustrations by L. Speed. 3s. 6d.

ELZE’S William Shakespeare.—See Shakespeare.

EMERSON’S Works. 3 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

I.—Essays, Lectures, and Poems.

II.—English Traits, Nature, and Conduct of Life.

III.—Society and Solitude—Letters and Social Aims—Miscellaneous Papers (hitherto uncollected)—May Day, and other Poems.

ELLIS (G.) Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances. With an Historical Introduction on the Rise and Progress of Romantic Composition in France and England. Revised Edition. By J. O. Halliwell, F.R.S. 5s.

ENNEMOSER’S History of Magic. Translated by William Howitt. 2 vols. 5s. each.

EPICTETUS, The Discourses of. With the Encheiridion and Fragments. Translated by George Long, M.A. 5s.

EURIPIDES. A New Literal Translation in Prose. By E. P. Coleridge, M.A. 2 vols. 5s. each.

EUTROPIUS.—See Justin.

EUSEBIUS PAMPHILUS, Ecclesiastical History of. Translated by Rev. C. F. Cruse, M.A. 5s.

EVELYN’S Diary and Correspondence. Edited from the Original MSS. by W. Bray, F.A.S. With 45 Engravings. 4 vols. 5s. each.

FAIRHOLT’S Costume in England. A History of Dress to the end of the Eighteenth Century. 3rd Edition, revised, by Viscount Dillon, V.P.S.A. Illustrated with above 700 Engravings. 2 vols. 5s. each.

FIELDING’S Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. With Cruikshank’s Illustrations. 3s. 6d.

—— History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. With Cruikshank’s Illustrations. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

—— Amelia. With Cruikshank’s Illustrations. 5s.

FLAXMAN’S Lectures on Sculpture. By John Flaxman, R.A. With Portrait and 53 Plates. 6s.

FLORENCE of WORCESTER’S Chronicle, with the Two Continuations: comprising Annals of English History, from the Departure of the Romans to the Reign of Edward I. Translated by Thomas Forester, M.A. 5s.

FOSTER’S (John) Life and Correspondence. Edited by J. E. Ryland. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

—— Lectures delivered at Broadmead Chapel. Edited by J. E. Ryland. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

—— Critical Essays. Edited by J. E. Ryland. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

—— Essays: on Decision of Character; on a Man’s writing Memoirs of Himself; on the epithet Romantic; on the aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion. 3s. 6d.

—— Essays on the Evils of Popular Ignorance; to which is added, a Discourse on the Propagation of Christianity in India. 3s. 6d.

FOSTER’S Essays on the Improvement of Time. With Notes of Sermons and other Pieces. 3s. 6d.

—— Fosteriana. Selected and Edited by Henry G. Bohn. 3s. 6d.

GASPARY’S History of Italian Literature. Translated by Hermann Oelsner, M.A., Ph.D. Vol. I. [Preparing.

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, Chronicle of.—See Six O. E. Chronicles.

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Table of Contents

- Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai

- TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE.

- AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE LETTERS.

- CONTENTS.

- PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF THE EXPEDITION AND ITS RESULTS.

- LETTER I.

- LETTER II.

- LETTER III.

- LETTER IV.

- LETTER V.

- LETTER VI.

- LETTER VII.

- LETTER VIII.

- LETTER IX.

- LETTER X.

- LETTER XI.

- LETTER XII.

- LETTER XIII.

- LETTER XIV.

- LETTER XV.

- LETTER XVI.

- LETTER XVII.

- LETTER XVIII.

- LETTER XIX.

- LETTER XX.

- LETTER XXI.

- LETTER XXII.

- LETTER XXIII.

- LETTER XXIV.

- LETTER XXV.

- LETTER XXVI.

- LETTER XXVII.

- LETTER XXVIII.

- LETTER XXIX.

- LETTER XXX.

- LETTER XXXI.

- LETTER XXXII.

- LETTER XXXIII.

- LETTER XXXIV.

- LETTER XXXV.

- LETTER XXXVI.

- LETTER XXXVII.

- LETTER XXXVIII.

- LETTER XXXIX.

- EXTRACTS FROM THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATION TO THE CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

- CONTENTS.

- INTRODUCTION TO THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIANS.

- THE HEBREW TRADITION.

- LISTS OF JOSEPHUS AND AFRICANUS.

- THE GENERATIONS OF THE JEWS FROM ABRAHAM TO DAVID.

- TABLES OF EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES, COMPILED FOR THIS TRANSLATION.

- APPENDIX.

- The Physical Geography of Lower Nubia[382].

- Of the Breadth, Depth, and Velocity of the Nile, in Nubia.

- Geological Structure of Lower Nubia.

- FOOTNOTES
- INDEX.
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE