Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

soft sand. On one or two islands I saw what I at first took for millet-patches: but they were only coarse grass and reeds. A sombre brownish tamarisk, or dwarfed mimosa, put up its melancholy head here and there; and this was all the vegetation apparent within that wide horizon. – I doubt whether a more striking scene than this, to English eyes, can be anywhere found. It is thoroughly African, thoroughly tropical, very beautiful – most majestic, and most desolate. Something of the impression might be owing to the circumstances of leave-taking under which we looked abroad from our station: but still, if I saw this scene in an unknown land in a dream, I am sure I should be powerfully moved by it. This day, it certainly interested me more than the First Cataract.

      I was tempted by the invitation of a sort of cairn on the top of a hill not far inland, to go there; and thence I obtained another glimpse of the Libyan Desert, and saw two more purple peaks rising westwards, soft and clear.

      There is a host of names carved on the accessible side of Abooseer. We looked with interest on Belzoni's and some few others. We cut ours with a nail and hammer. Here, and here only, I left my name. On this wild rock, and at the limit of our range of travel, it seemed not only natural but right to some who may come after us. Our names will not be found in any temple or tomb. If we ever do such a thing, may our names be publicly held up to shame, as I am disposed to publish those of the carvers and scribblers who have forfeited their right to privacy by inscribing their names where they can never be effaced!

      The time arrived when we must go. It was with a heavy heart that I quitted the rock, turned my back on the south, and rode away.

      We found our boat prepared in the usual manner for the descent of the river; the mainmast removed, and laid along overhead, to support the awning; the kitchen shifted and turned; and the planks of the decks taken up to form seats for the rowers, so as sadly to restrict our small space. – One of our dishes at dinner was an excellent omelette, made of part of the contents of an ostrich's egg. Two of these eggs were bought for six piastres (1 s. 2 d.). The contents were obtained by boring a hole with a gimlet. The contents of this egg were found to be equal to twenty-nine of the small hen's eggs of this part of the country.

      We began our return voyage about 6 P.M., floating, sometimes broadside down, and sometimes in towards the bank, when it became the business of the rowers to bring us out again into the middle of the stream. The wind was hostile, cold, and strong enough to be incessantly shoving us aside. Our progress was very slow. The first night we moored at six miles only from Wadee Halfa.

      The next evening (January 6th) we were within half an hour of Aboo-Simbil, when duty ordered me to my cabin. When I left the deck, the moon had risen, the rocks were closing in, and the river was like a placid lake.

      In the morning we were to enter upon a new kind of life, as travellers. We were to begin our course of study of the Monuments.

      IX. Historical Sketch, from Menes to the Roman Occupation of Egypt

      Before entering upon the study of the Monuments, it seems necessary to obtain something like an orderly view of the state of the country before and during their erection. At best, our conceptions must be obscure enough; but we can form none unless we arrange in our minds what we know of the history of Egypt, of which these monuments are at once the chief evidence and the eternal illustration.

      The early history of Egypt differs from that of every other explored country in the nature of its records. Elsewhere, we derive all our knowledge from popular legends, which embody the main ideas to be preserved in forms which are not, and were never meant to be, historically true. It is the business of the philosophical historian to separate the true ideas from their environment of fiction, and to mark the time when the narrative, from being mythical, becomes historically true; – to classify the two orders of ancient historians – both inestimable in their way – the Poets who perpetuate national Ideas, and the Historians who perpetuate national Facts. – With regard to Egypt, we are in possession of as much of this early material as any nation has furnished; and we have the monuments besides.

      These monuments consist of buildings or excavations, – of the sculptures upon them, – and of their inscriptions. From the edifices or caves we may learn much of the condition, mind, and manners of the people who wrought them, and, if their dates can be obtained, in historical order. – From their sculptures we may learn much of the personages, divine and human, about whom they thought most; and their inscriptions are of inestimable use in identifying these personages, and in declaring their dates. Being thus in possession of mythical legends, of the writings of historians, and of edifices and excavations covered with sculptures and inscriptions, we are as well supplied with records of the early history of Egypt as we can probably ever be with regard to any ancient people; and better than we yet are with regard to any other of the nations of the old world.

      The legends relating to ancient Egypt are preserved in the works of its historians. It is the business of modern inquirers to separate them from the true historical material, and to extract from them, where possible, the essential Ideas which they embody.

      The chief historians of Egypt are Hecataeus of Miletus, who was at Thebes about half a century before Herodotus, and some fragments of whose writings have come down to us: – Herodotus, from whom we learn more than from any other: – the writer of the book of Genesis: – Hecataeus of Abdera, from whose narrative extracts may be found in the works of Diodorus Siculus: – Manetho, an Egyptian, of whom also we have only extracts in other authors, but who supplies very valuable information: – Eratosthenes of Cyrene, whose writings are at once illustrative of those of Manetho and a check upon them: Diodorus Siculus, who travelled in Egypt and wrote a history of it, rather more than half a century before the Christian era: Strabo, who has left us a full account of what he saw in Egypt, between Alexandria and the First Cataract: and Abdallatif, an Arabian physician, who supplies a valuable report of the state of the Nile Valley and its people when he visited them in the twelfth century. – It is the business of modern inquirers to separate what these historians derived from the depositories of the national mythi from what they personally observed: to compare their works with one another, and to apply them as a key (where this can be done) to the monumental records.

      As to the use of the monumental records, several precautions are necessary. Modern inquirers must beware of interpreting what they see by their own favourite ideas – as travellers do who contrive to see Hebrew groups among the Egyptian sculptures: they must diligently and patiently work out the knowledge of the ancient language and its signs, and beware of straining the little they know of these to accommodate any historical theory they may carry in their minds: and they must remember that the edifice and its sculptures are not always of the same date, and that therefore what is true of the one is not necessarily true of the other.

      Without going into any detail (which would fill a volume if entered upon at all) about the respective values of these authorities, and their agreements and conflicts, I may give a slight sketch of what competent modern inquirers believe we have learned from them.

      For our first glimpse into ancient Egyptian life we must go back upon the track of Time far further than we have been accustomed to suppose that track to extend. People who had believed all their lives that the globe and Man were created together, were startled when the new science of geology revealed to them the great fact that Man is a comparatively new creation on the earth, whose oceans and swamps and jungles were aforetime inhabited by monsters never seen by human eye but in their fossil remains. People who enter Egypt with the belief that the human race has existed only six thousand years, and that at that date the world was uninhabited by men, except within a small circuit in Asia, must undergo a somewhat similar revolution of ideas. All new research operates to remove further back the date of the formation of the Egyptian empire. The differences between the dates given by legendary records and by modern research (with the help of contemporary history) are very great; but the one agrees as little as the other with the popular notion that the human race is only six thousand years old.

      When Hecataeus of Miletus was at Thebes, about 500 B.C., he spoke, as Herodotus tells us,⁵ to the priests of Amun, of his genealogy, declaring himself to be the sixteenth in descent from a god. Upon this, the priests conducted him into a great building