History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 29 - Vol. 02, Ch. 03: The First Theban Empire, pt. 5

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph in the _Ordnance Survey, Photo-graphs_, vol. iii.

pl.

8. The mining population increased so fast that two chapels were built, dedicated to Hâthor, and served by volunteer priests.

One of these chapels, presumably the oldest, consists of a single rock-cut chamber, upheld by one large square pillar, walls and pillar having been covered with finely sculptured scenes and inscriptions which are now almost effaced.

The second chapel included a beautifully proportioned rectangular court, once entered by a portico supported on pillars with Hâthor-head capitals, and beyond the court a narrow building divided into many small irregular chambers.

The edifice was altered and rebuilt, and half destroyed; it is now nothing by a confused heap of ruins, of which the original plan cannot be traced.

Votive stehe of all shapes and sizes, in granite, sandstone, or limestone, were erected here and there at random in the two chambers and in the courts between the columns, and flush with the walls.

Some are still _in situ_, others lie scattered in the midst of the ruins.

Towards the middle of the reign of Amenemhâît III.

, the industrial demand for turquoise and for copper ore became so great that the mines of Sarbût-el-Khâdîm could no longer meet it, and those in the Wady Maghara were re-opened.

The workings of both sets of mines were carried on with unabated vigour under Amenemhâîfc IV.

, and were still in full activity when the XIIIth dynasty succeeded the XIIth on the Egyptian throne.

Tranquillity prevailed in the recesses of the mountains of Sinai as well as in the valley of the Nile, and a small garrison sufficed to keep watch over the Bedouin of the neighbourhood.

Sometimes the latter ventured to attack the miners, and then fled in haste, carrying off their meagre booty; but they were vigorously pursued under the command of one of the officers on the spot, and generally caught and compelled to disgorge their plunder before they had reached the shelter of their “douars.

” The old Memphite kings prided themselves on these armed pursuits as though they were real victories, and had them recorded in triumphal bas-reliefs; but under the XIIth dynasty they were treated as unimportant frontier incidents, almost beneath the notice of the Pharaoh, and the glory of them--such as it was--he left to his captains then in command of those districts.

Egypt had always kept up extensive commercial relations with certain northern countries lying beyond the Mediterranean.

The reputation for wealth enjoyed by the Delta sometimes attracted bands of the Haiû-nîbû to come prowling in piratical excursions along its shores; but their expeditions seldom turned out successfully, and even if the adventurers escaped summary execution, they generally ended their days as slaves in the Fayûm, or in some village of the Said.

At first their descendants preserved the customs, religion, manners, and industries of their distant home, and went on making rough pottery for daily use, which was decorated in a style recalling that of vases found in the most ancient tombs of the Ægean archipelago; but they were gradually assimilated to their surroundings, and their grandchildren became fellahîn like the rest, brought up from infancy in the customs and language of Egypt.

The relations with the tribes of the Libyan desert, the Tihûnû and the Timihû, were almost invariably peaceful; although occasional raids of one of their bands into Egyptian territory would provoke counter raids into the valleys in which they took refuge with their flocks and herds.

Thus, in addition to the captive Haiû-nîbû, another heterogeneous element, soon to be lost in the mass of the Egyptian population, was supplied by detachments of Berber women and children.

[Illustration: 338. jpg MAP] The relations Egypt with her northern neighbours during the hundred years of the XIIth dynasty were chiefly commercial, but occasionally this peaceful intercourse was broken by sudden incursions or piratical expeditions which called for active measures of repression, and were the occasion of certain romantic episodes.

The foreign policy of the Pharaohs in this connexion was to remain strictly on the defensive.

Ethiopia attracted all their attention, and demanded all their strength.

The same instinct which had impelled their predecessors to pass successively beyond Gebel-Silsileh and Elephantine now drove the XIIth dynasty beyond the second cataract, and even further.

The nature of the valley compelled them to this course.

From the Tacazze, or rather from the confluence of the two Niles down to the sea, the whole valley forms as it were a Greater Egypt; for although separated by the cataracts into different divisions, it is everywhere subject to the same physical conditions.

In the course of centuries it has more than once been forcibly dismembered by the chances of war, but its various parts have always tended to reunite, and have coalesced at the first opportunity.

The Amami, the Irittt, and the Sitiu, all those nations which wandered west of the river, and whom the Pharaohs of the VIth and subsequently of the XIth dynasty either enlisted into their service or else conquered, do not seem to have given much trouble to the successors of Amenemhâît I.

The Ûaûaiû and the Mâzaiû were more turbulent, and it was necessary to subdue them in order to assure the tranquillity of the colonists scattered along the banks of the river from Philo to Korosko.

They were worsted by Amenemhâît I. in several encounters.

Ûsirtasen I. made repeated campaigns against them, the earlier ones being undertaken in his father’s lifetime.

Afterwards he pressed on, and straightway “raised his frontiers” at the rapids of Wady Haifa; and the country was henceforth the undisputed property of his successors.

It was divided into nomes like Egypt itself; the Egyptian language succeeded in driving out the native dialects, and the local deities, including Didûn, the principal god, were associated or assimilated with the gods of Egypt.

Khnûmû was the favourite deity of the northern nomes, doubtless because the first colonists were natives of Elephantine, and subjects of its princes.

In the southern nomes, which had been annexed under the Theban kings and were peopled with Theban immigrants, the worship of Khnûmû was carried on side by side with the worship of Amon, or Amon-Ra, god of Thebes.

In accordance with local affinities, now no longer intelligible, the other gods also were assigned smaller areas in the new territory--Thot at Pselcis and Pnûbsît, where a gigantic nabk tree was worshipped, Râ near Derr, and Horus at Miama and Baûka.

The Pharaohs who had civilized the country here received divine honours while still alive.

Ûsirtasen III.

was placed in triads along with Didûn, Amon, and Khnûmû; temples were raised to him at Semneh, Shotaûi, and Doshkeh;

and the anniversary of a decisive victory which he had gained over the barbarians was still celebrated on the 21st of Pachons, a thousand years afterwards, under Thutmosis III.

The feudal system spread over the land lying between the two cataracts, where hereditary barons held their courts, trained their armies, built their castles, and excavated their superbly decorated tombs in the mountain-sides.

The only difference between Nubian Egypt and Egypt proper lay in the greater heat and smaller wealth of the former, where the narrower, less fertile, and less well-watered land supported a smaller population and yielded less abundant revenues.

The Pharaoh kept the charge of the more important strategical points in his own hands.

Strongholds placed at bends of the river and at the mouths of ravines leading into the desert, secured freedom of navigation, and kept off the pillaging nomads.

The fortress of Derr [Kubbân?

--Ed.

], which was often rebuilt, dates in part at least from the early days of the conquest of Nubia.

Its rectangular boundary--a dry brick wall--is only broken by easily filled up gaps, and with some repairs it would still resist an Ababdeh attack.

* * The most ancient bricks in the fortifications of Derr, easily distinguishable from those belonging to the later restorations, are identical in shape and size with those of the walls at Syene and El-Kab; and the wall at El-Kab was certainly built not later than the XIIth dynasty.

The most considerable Nubian works of the XIIth dynasty were in the three places from which the country can even now be most effectively commanded, namely, at the two cataracts, and in the districts extending from Derr to Dakkeh.

Elephantine already possessed an entrenched camp which commanded the rapids and the land route from Syene to Philo.

Usirtasen III.

restored its great wall; he also cleared and widened the passage to Sériel, as did Papi I. to such good effect that easy and rapid communication between Thebes and the new towns was at all times practicable.

Some little distance from Phihe he established a station for boats, and an emporium which he called Hirû Khâkerî--“the Ways of Khâkerî”--after his own throne name--Khâkerî.

* * The widening of the passage was effected in the VIIIth year of his reign, the same year in which he established the Egyptian frontier at Semneh.

The other constructions are mentioned, but not very clearly, in a stele of the same year which came from Elephantine, and is now in the British Museum.

The votive tablet, engraved in honour of Anûkît at Sehêl, in which the king boasts of having made for the goddess “the excellent channel [called] ‘the Ways of Khâkeûrî,’” probably refers to this widening and deepening of the passage in the VIIIth year.

Its exact site is unknown, but it appears to have completed on the south side the system of walls and redoubts which protected the cataract provinces against either surprise or regular attacks of the barbarians.

Although of no appreciable use for the purposes of general security, the fortifications of Middle Nubia were of great importance in the eyes of the Pharaohs.

They commanded the desert roads leading to the Eed Sea, and to Berber and Gebel Barkel on the Upper Nile.

The most important fort occupied the site of the present village of Kuban, opposite Dakkeh, and commanded the entrance to the Wady Olaki, which leads to the richest gold deposits known to Ancient Egypt.

The valleys which furrow the mountains of Etbai, the Wady Shauanîb, the Waddy Umm Teyur, Gebel Iswud, Gebel Umm Kabriteh, all have gold deposits of their own.

The gold is found in nuggets and in pockets in white quartz, mixed with iron oxides and titanium, for which the ancients had no use.

The method of mining practised from immemorial antiquity by the Uaûaiû of the neighbourhood was of the simplest, and traces of the workings may be seen all over the sides of the ravines.

Tunnels followed the direction of the lodes to a depth of fifty-five to sixty-five yards; the masses of quartz procured from them were broken up in granite mortars, pounded small and afterwards reduced to a powder in querns, similar to those used for crushing grain; the residue was sifted on stone tables, and the finely ground parts afterwards washed in bowls of sycamore wood, until the gold dust had settled to the bottom.

* * The gold-mines and the method of working them under the Ptolemies have been described by Agatharchides; the processes employed were very ancient, and had hardly changed since the time of the first Pharaohs, as is shown by a comparison of the mining tools found in these districts with those which have been collected at Sinai, in the turquoise- mines of the Ancient Empire.

This was the Nubian gold which was brought into Egypt by nomad tribes, and for which the Egyptians themselves, from the time of the XIIth dynasty onwards, went to seek in the land which produced it.

They made no attempt to establish permanent colonies for working the mines, as at Sinai; but a detachment of troops was despatched nearly every year to the spot to receive the amount of precious metal collected since their previous visit.

The king Usirtasen would send at one time the prince of the nome of the Gazelle on such an expedition, with a contingent of four hundred men belonging to his fief; at another time, it would be the faithful Sihâthor who would triumphantly scour the country, obliging young and old to work with redoubled efforts for his master Amenemhâît II.

On his return the envoy would boast of having brought back more gold than any of his predecessors, and of having crossed the desert without losing either a soldier or a baggage animal, not even a donkey.

[Illustration: 314. jpg ONE OF TUE FAÇADES OF THE FORTRESS OF KUBBAN] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger, taken in 1881. Sometimes a son of the reigning Pharaoh, even the heir-presumptive, would condescend to accompany the caravan.

Amenemhâît III.

repaired or rebuilt the fortress of Kubbân, the starting-place of the little army, and the spot to which it returned.

It is a square enclosure measuring 328 feet on each side; the ramparts of crude brick are sloped slightly inwards, and are strengthened at intervals by bastions projecting from the external face of the wall.

The river protected one side; the other three were defended by ditches communicating with the Nile.

There were four entrances, one in the centre of each façade: that on the east, which faced the desert, and was exposed to the severest attacks, was flanked by a tower.

The cataract of Wady Haifa offered a natural barrier to invasion from the south.

Even without fortification, the chain of granite rocks which crosses the valley at this spot would have been a sufficient obstacle to prevent any fleet which might attempt the passage from gaining access to northern Nubia.

[Illustration: 345. jpg THE SECOND CATARACT BETWEEN HAMKEH AND WADY HALFA]

The Nile here has not the wild and imposing aspect which it assumes lower down, between Aswan and Philae.

It is bordered by low and receding hills, devoid of any definite outline.

Masses of bare black rock, here and there covered by scanty herbage, block the course of the river in some places in such profusion, that its entire bed seems to be taken up by them.

For a distance of seventeen miles the main body of water is broken up into an infinitude of small channels in its width of two miles; several of the streams thus formed present, apparently, a tempting course to the navigator, so calm and safe do they appear, but they conceal ledges of hidden reefs, and are unexpectedly forced into narrow passages obstructed by granite boulders.

The strongest built and best piloted boat must be dashed to pieces in such circumstances, and no effort or skilfulness on the part of the crew would save the vessel should the owner venture to attempt the descent.

The only channel at all available for transit runs from the village of Aesha on the Arabian side, winds capriciously from one bank to another, and emerges into calm water a little above Nakhiet Wady Haifa.

During certain days in August and September the natives trust themselves to this stream, but only with boats lightly laden; even then their escape is problematical, for they are in hourly danger of foundering.

As soon as the inundation begins to fall, the passage becomes more difficult: by the middle of October it is given up, and communication by water between Egypt and the countries above Wady Haifa is suspended until the return of the inundation.

By degrees, as the level of the water becomes lower, remains of wrecks jammed between the rocks, or embedded in sandbanks, emerge into view, as if to warn sailors and discourage them from an undertaking so fraught with perils.

Usirtasen I. realized the importance of the position, and fortified its approaches.