CHAPTER X

LOWER NUBIA AND THE GREAT RESERVOIR

WHEN the great dam at Aswân on the frontier between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia was built, the Nile valley for some eighty miles southwards was turned into a vast reservoir. The natives were handsomely compensated for the destruction of their houses and the submersion of their land, and their villages were rebuilt on the hillsides at a higher level. The reservoir is full each year from about January to June, while during the remaining months of the year the river resumes its natural level, and the people come down from their lofty dwelling-places to cultivate their small fields, like Mr. and Mrs. Noah from Ararat. Now, however, the dam, having proved so great a success, has been heightened; and in recent years the level of the water in the reservoir has been so increased that the country is flooded for well over a hundred miles. Several ancient buildings and many cemeteries and other remains have gone under the water; and for half the year the country is like a great lake with temples for islands. In order to decide what steps had to be taken to prevent any loss to Egyptology in this respect, the present writer made an elaborate report for the Government in 1906-7; and as a result of this a large sum of money -£60,000 or £70,000-was voted for archæologi

cal works. Not only was every temple repaired, strengthened, and thoroughly studied and photographed, but every single cemetery and ancient site was exhaustively excavated. Thus, not a scrap of information was lost to science, and every possible precaution was taken to safeguard the interest of the antiquary.

It was early in the summer of 1912 that I paid my last visit to Lower Nubia, on board a P.W.D. steamer; and I should like to record here some unofficial impressions of this very interesting reach of the Nile.

Upon the first day of our journey we passed through the five great locks of the dam which mount to the higher level like some huge Brobdingnagian stairway, and steamed southwards over the wide stretch of the pent-up waters, past groves of palmtrees standing deep in the flood, past the rough points of submerged rocks which once formed the promontories of the mainland, past slopes of golden sand which had formerly descended to the edge of cultivated fields, but now slid straight into the water in the manner of a perilous chute. It was our plan to push through to Abu Simbel, which is some miles south of the area to be affected by the new flood-level, and then to examine the main ancient sites on the way down. At mid-morning we steamed through the magnificent Pass of Kalabsheh, where towering granite cliffs drop sheer into the water and rugged piles of that splendid stone form islands in the river; and towards sunset we passed the temple of Dakkeh, whose lofty pylons can be seen for many a mile. About eight o'clock in the evening, when darkness. had fallen and the sky was massed over with stars,

we halted near the temple of Wady Sabu'a, and by the light of a lantern made our way to it over the soft sand.

The work in this temple is poor. The edges of the blocks of stone with which the walls are built are roughly trimmed, and the crevices are filled with plaster to hide the reproach of their bad workmanship. One wonders how much the dishonest contractor, or perhaps the Viceroy of Rameses II., in whose reign it was built, obtained out of the transaction; for, knowing modern Egypt and the tortuous ways of the native architect, one has developed a sort of jocular misanthropy that is not bounded by the years. The friend who was with me, and who is a highly cultured barbarian, expressed unmitigated disapproval of the entire place, and begged to be conducted back to the steamer with all dispatch; but to me the ruin, although undoubtedly a monument of slovenly work, has a rugged dignity. In the shifting light of the lantern which caused the shadows, like flibbertigibbets, to perform the most grotesque antics, and the decorated walls to stand out from them in a kind of luminous animation, one felt that there was still something to be learnt from it.

At dawn next day we steamed onwards, rounded the great bend of the Nile beween Korôsko and Derr, and halted during the morning at the foot of the hill of Kasr Ibrîm upon which the commanding ruins of an ancient fortress basks in the sunshine. One climbs up a winding path upon the north side of the hill, and mounts under impregnable walls to the narrow gateway, which it is almost surprising to find open. From inside this doorway a staircase rises to the higher levels of the hill; and now the ruined walls of the

barracks cluster in close array before one, while over to the right another and more elaborate doorway, flanked by massive pylons, stands almost on the edge of the cliffs. These two doorways date from about B.C. 25, when the Roman General Petronius placed a garrison here after he had defeated the one-eyed Ethiopian queen, Kandake, and her thirty thousand warriors and driven them into the Sudan. A few hundred years later a Byzantine garrison erected a Christian church on the hill-top a short way to the south; and threading one's way through the narrow streets between the deserted houses, this building suddenly comes into view. The ruin has a peculiar charm. The masonry arches and the well-built apse have, at the first glance, almost a Norman appearance; and here, as it were, at the top of the world, the scene is so foreign to Egypt that it holds all the charm of novelty to the Egyptolgist, tired, as to some extent he must be, of the temples beside the Nile.

The cliffs on the west side of the ruins drop almost sheer to the river, and from the top one may throw down stones which strike the green water far out of earshot and only just within sight. Sitting here in the morning sunshine, after our hot climb up the hill, a silent contentment possessed us which no words of mine can attempt to express. The river, the cultivation, and the desert were stretched out below us, all far away, and inviting only a mild quizzical contemplation. From this eminence we patronised Egypt, and smiled at all her petty troubles. What a place, we both declared, in which to build a little house! We could sit at the door all day long, smoking a pipe and musing upon the world's worries at this safe distance from them. On second thoughts,

however, my friend came to the conclusion that in a dreamer's life of this kind a very good piano would be necessary and a few reproductions of great pictures. A small library, too, would be essential, and perhaps a few congenial friends. I was about to discourse with some heat upon the oppressiveness of culture and the intolerable demands it makes upon its devotees, chaining them to cities and communities wherein alone its rites may be practised, when I was checked by a glance at my watch; and forthwith we descended the hill down to the steamer and its sunbaked decks.

We reached Abu Simbel towards sunset, and at once went ashore. The temple is cut out of a bluff of rock which overlooks the Nile a few miles before the Sudan frontier is reached. It was dedicated to the hawk-god Harmachis, one of the forms of the sungod; and it was so designed that the rays of the rising sun strike right at the temple, illuminating the façade, and penetrating at certain times of the year into the innermost sanctuary, where the statue of Rameses the Great awaits it with the gods. The four enormous figures of Rameses which sit in such solemnity at the entrance, as though to greet the sun, will be familiar to the reader; and those who have had the good fortune to visit this part of the world will remember that a great drift of sand had swept down the hillside at the north of the temple and had threatened in a few years to engulf it entirely. In 1909 this drift had pushed almost to the doorway of the temple and had thus covered the feet of the two colossi on that side of the façade. The terrace in front of the great statues had here been hidden for thousands of years, and I suggested that if the entire