The Treasury of Ancient Egypt Part 13

The pilfering of antiquities found during the course of authorised excavations is one of the most common forms of robbery. The overseer cannot always watch the workmen sufficiently closely to prevent them pocketing the small objects which they find, and it is an easy matter to carry off the stolen goods, even though the men are searched at the end of the day. A little girl minding her father's sheep and goats in the neighbourhood of the excavations, and apparently occupying her hands with the spinning of flax, is perhaps the receiver of the objects. Thus it is more profitable to dig for antiquities even in authorised excavations than to work the water-hoist, which is one of the usual occupations of the peasant. Pulling the hoisting-pole down, and swinging it up again with its load of water many thousands of times in the day, is monotonous work; whereas digging in the ground, with the eyes keenly watching for the appearance of antiquities, is always interesting and exciting. And why should the digger refrain from appropriating the objects which his pick reveals? If he does not make use of his opportunities and carry off the antiquities, the western director of the works will take them to his own country and sell them for his own profit. All natives believe that the archaeologists work for the purpose of making money. Speaking of Professor Flinders Petrie, a peasant said to me the other day: "He has worked five-and-twenty years now; he must be _very_ rich." He would never believe that the antiquities were given to museums without any payment being made to the finder.

The stealing of fragments broken out of the walls of "show" monuments is almost the only form of robbery which will receive general condemnation.

That this vandalism is also distasteful to the natives themselves is shown by the fact that several better-cla.s.s Egyptians living in the neighbourhood of Thebes subscribed, at my invitation, the sum of 50 for the protection of certain beautiful tombs. When they were shown the works undertaken with their money, they expressed themselves as being "pleased with the delicate inscriptions in the tombs, but very awfully angry at the damage which the devils of ignorant people had made." A native of moderate intelligence can quite appreciate the argument that whereas the continuous warfare between the agents of the Department of Antiquities and the illegal excavators of small graves is what might be called an honourable game, the smashing of public monuments cannot be called fair-play from whatever point of view the matter is approached.

Often revenge or spite is the cause of this damage. It is sometimes necessary to act with severity to the peasants who infringe the rules of the Department, but a serious danger lies in such action, for it is the nature of the Thebans to revenge themselves not on the official directly but on the monuments which he is known to love. Two years ago a native illegally built himself a house on Government ground, and I was obliged to go through the formality of pulling it down, which I did by obliging him to remove a few layers of brickwork around the walls. A short time afterwards a famous tomb was broken into and a part of the paintings destroyed; and there was enough evidence to show that the owner of this house was the culprit, though unfortunately he could not be convicted. One man actually had the audacity to warn me that any severity on my part would be met by destruction of monuments. Under these circ.u.mstances an official finds himself in a dilemma. If he maintains the dignity and prestige of his Department by punishing any offences against it, he endangers the very objects for the care of which he is responsible; and it is hard to say whether under a lax or a severe administration the more damage would be done.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. XXIV. A modern Gournawi beggar.]

[_Photo by E. Bird._

The produce of these various forms of robbery is easily disposed of.

When once the antiquities have pa.s.sed into the hands of the dealers there is little chance of further trouble. The dealer can always say that he came into possession of an object years ago, before the antiquity laws were made, and it is almost impossible to prove that he did not. You may have the body of a statue and he the head: he can always damage the line of the breakage, and say that the head does not belong to that statue, or, if the connection is too obvious, he can say that he found the head while excavating twenty years ago on the site where now you have found the body. Nor is it desirable to bring an action against the man in a case of this kind, for it might go against the official. Dealing in antiquities is regarded as a perfectly honourable business. The official, crawling about the desert on his stomach in the bitter cold of a winter's night in order to hold up a convoy of stolen antiquities, may use hard language in regard to the trade, but he cannot say that it is pernicious as long as it is confined to minor objects. How many objects of value to science would be destroyed by their finders if there was no market to take them to! One of the Theban dealers leads so holy a life that he will a.s.suredly be regarded as a saint by future generations.

The sale of small antiquities to tourists on the public roads is prohibited, except at certain places, but of course it can be done with impunity by the exercise of a little care. Men and boys and even little girls as they pa.s.s will stare at you with studying eyes, and if you seem to be a likely purchaser, they will draw from the folds of their garments some little object which they will offer for sale. Along the road in the glory of the setting sun there will come as fine a young man as you will see on a day's march. Surely he is bent on some n.o.ble mission: what lofty thoughts are occupying his mind, you wonder. But as you pa.s.s, out comes the scarab from his pocket, and he shouts, "Wanty scarab, mister?--two shillin'," while you ride on your way a greater cynic than before.

Some years ago a large inscribed stone was stolen from a certain temple, and was promptly sold to a man who sometimes traded in such objects.

This man carried the stone, hidden in a sack of grain, to the house of a friend, and having deposited it in a place of hiding, he tramped home, with his stick across his shoulders, in an att.i.tude of deep unconcern.

An enemy of his, however, had watched him, and promptly gave information. Acting on this the police set out to search the house. When we reached the entrance we were met by the owner, and a warrant was shown to him. A heated argument followed, at the end of which the infuriated man waved us in with a magnificent and most dramatic gesture.

There were some twenty rooms in the house, and the stifling heat of a July noon made the task none too enjoyable. The police inspector was extremely thorough in his work, and an hour had pa.s.sed before three rooms had been searched. He looked into the cupboards, went down on his knees to peer into the ovens, stood on tiptoe to search the fragile wooden shelves (it was a heavy stone which we were looking for), hunted under the mats, and even peeped into a little tobacco-tin. In one of the rooms there were three or four beds arranged along the middle of the floor. The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top. The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record. Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks. The inspector ran his hand through the clothes which lay therein, and out jumped a few more rats, which likewise went up the walls. The searching of the remaining rooms carried us well through the afternoon; and at last, hot and weary, we decided to abandon the hunt.

Two nights later a man was seen walking away from the house with a heavy sack on his back; and the stone is now, no doubt, in the Western hemisphere.

The attempt to regain a lost antiquity is seldom crowned with success.

It is so extremely difficult to obtain reliable information; and as soon as a man is suspected his enemies will rush in with accusations.

Thirty-eight separate accusations were sent in against a certain head-watchman during the first days after the fact had leaked out that he was under suspicion. Not one of them could be shown to be true.

Sometimes one man will bring a charge against another for the betterment of his own interests. Here is a letter from a watchman who had resigned, but wished to rejoin, "To his Exec. Chief Dircoter of the tembels. I have honner to inform that I am your servant X, watchman on the tembels before this time. Sir from one year ago I work in the Santruple (?) as a watchman about four years ago. And I not make anything wrong and your Exec. know me. Now I want to work in my place in the tembel, because the man which in it he not attintive to His, but alway he in the coffee....

He also steal the scribed stones. Please give your order to point me again. Your servant, X." "The coffee" is, of course, the _cafe_ which adjoins the temple.

A short time ago a young man came to me with an accusation against his own father, who, he said, had stolen a statuette. The tale which he told was circ.u.mstantial, but it was hotly denied by his infuriated parent. He looked, however, a trifle more honest than his father, and when a younger brother was brought in as witness, one felt that the guilt of the old man would be the probable finding. The boy stared steadfastly at the ground for some moments, however, and then launched out into an elaborate explanation of the whole affair. He said that he asked his father to lend him four pounds, but the father had refused. The son insisted that that sum was due to him as his share in some transaction, and pointed out that though he only asked for it as a loan, he had in reality a claim to it. The old man refused to hand it over, and the son, therefore, waited his opportunity and stole it from his house, carrying it off triumphantly to his own establishment. Here he gave it into the charge of his young wife, and went about his business. The father, however, guessed where the money had gone; and while his son was out, invaded his house, beat his daughter-in-law on the soles of her feet until she confessed where the money was hidden, and then, having obtained it, returned to his home. When the son came back to his house he learnt what had happened, and, out of spite, at once invented the accusation which he had brought to me. This story appeared to be true in so far as the quarrel over the money was concerned, but that the accusation was invented proved to be untrue.

Sometimes the peasants have such honest faces that it is difficult to believe that they are guilty of deceit. A lady came to the camp of a certain party of excavators at Thebes, holding in her hand a scarab. "Do tell me," she said to one of the archaeologists, "whether this scarab is genuine. I am sure it must be, for I bought it from a boy who a.s.sured me that he had stolen it from your excavations, and he looked such an honest and truthful little fellow."

In order to check pilfering in a certain excavation in which I was a.s.sisting we made a rule that the selected workmen should not be allowed to put unselected subst.i.tutes in their place. One day I came upon a man whose appearance did not seem familiar, although his back was turned to me. I asked him who he was, whereupon he turned upon me a countenance which might have served for the model of a painting of St John, and in a low, sweet-voice he told me of the illness of the real workman, and of how he had taken over the work in order to obtain money for the purchase of medicine for him, they being friends from their youth up. I sent him away and told him to call for any medicine he might want that evening.

I did not see him again until about a week later, when I happened to meet him in the village with a policeman on either side of him, from one of whom I learned that he was a well-known thief. Thus is one deceived even in the case of real criminals: how then can one expect to get at the truth when the crime committed is so light an affair as the stealing of an antiquity?

The following is a letter received from one of the greatest thieves in Thebes, who is now serving a term of imprisonment in the provincial gaol:--

"SIR GENERAL INSPECTOR,--I offer this application stating that I am from the natives of Gurneh, saying the following:--

'On Sat.u.r.day last I came to your office and have been told that my family using the sate to strengthen against the Department. The result of this talking that all these things which somebody pretends are not the fact. In fact I am taking great care of the antiquities for the purpose of my living matter. Accordingly, I wish to be appointed in the vacant of watching to the antiquities in my village and promise myself that if anything happens I do hold myself resposible.'"

I have no idea what "using the sate to strengthen" means.

It is sometimes said that European excavators are committing an offence against the sensibilities of the peasants by digging up the bodies of their ancestors. n.o.body will repeat this remark who has walked over a cemetery plundered by the natives themselves. Here bodies may be seen lying in all directions, torn limb from limb by the gold-seekers; here beautiful vases may be seen smashed to atoms in order to make more rare the specimens preserved. The peasant has no regard whatsoever for the sanct.i.ty of the ancient dead, nor does any superst.i.tion in this regard deter him in his work of destruction. Fortunately superst.i.tion sometimes checks other forms of robbery. _Djins_ are believed to guard the h.o.a.rds of ancient wealth which some of the tombs are thought to contain, as, for example, in the case of the tomb in which the family was asphyxiated, where a fiend of this kind was thought to have throttled the unfortunate explorers. Twin brothers are thought to have the power of changing themselves into cats at will; and a certain Huseyn Osman, a harmless individual enough, and a most expert digger, would turn himself into a cat at night-time, not only for the purpose of stealing his brother Muhammed Osman's dinner, but also in order to protect the tombs which his patron was occupied in excavating. One of the overseers in some recent excavations was said to have power of detecting all robberies on his works. The archaeologist, however, is unfortunately unable to rely upon this form of protection, and many are the schemes for the prevention of pilfering which are tried.

In some excavations a sum of money is given to the workman for every antiquity found by him, and these sums are sufficiently high to prevent any outbidding by the dealers. Work thus becomes very expensive for the archaeologist, who is sometimes called upon to pay 10 or 20 in a day.

The system has also another disadvantage, namely, that the workmen are apt to bring antiquities from far and near to "discover" in their diggings in order to obtain a good price for them. Nevertheless, it would seem to be the most successful of the systems. In the Government excavations it is usual to employ a number of overseers to watch for the small finds, while for only the really valuable discoveries is a reward given.

For finding the famous gold hawk's head at Hieraconpolis a workman received 14, and with this princely sum in his pocket he went to a certain Englishman to ask advice as to the spending of it. He was troubled, he said, to decide whether to buy a wife or a cow. He admitted that he had already one wife, and that two of them would be sure to introduce some friction into what was now a peaceful household; and he quite realised that a cow would be less apt to quarrel with his first wife. The Englishman, very properly, voted for the cow, and the peasant returned home deep in thought. While pondering over the matter during the next few weeks, he entertained his friends with some freedom, and soon he found to his dismay that he had not enough money left to buy either a wife or a cow. Thereupon he set to with a will, and soon spent the remaining guineas in riotous living. When he was next seen by the Englishman he was a beggar, and, what was worse, his taste for evil living had had several weeks of cultivation.

The case of the fortunate finder of a certain great _cache_ of mummies was different. He received a reward of 400, and this he buried in a very secret place. When he died his possessions descended to his sons.

After the funeral they sat round the grave of the old man, and very rightly discussed his virtues until the sun set. Then they returned to the house and began to dig for the hidden money. For some days they turned the sand of the floor over; but failing to find what they sought, they commenced operations on a patch of desert under the shade of some tamarisks where their father was wont to sit of an afternoon. It is said that for twelve hours they worked like persons possessed, the men hacking at the ground, and the boys carrying away the sand in baskets to a convenient distance. But the money was never found.

It is not often that the finders of antiquities inform the authorities of their good fortune, but when they do so an attempt is made to give them a good reward. A letter from the finder of an inscribed statue, who wished to claim his reward, read as follows: "With all delight I please inform you that on 8th Jan. was found a headless temple of granite sitting on a chair and printed on it."

I will end this chapter as I began it, in the defence of the Theban thieves. In a place where every yard of ground contains antiquities, and where these antiquities may be so readily converted into golden guineas, can one wonder that every man, woman, and child makes use of his opportunities in this respect to better his fortune? The peasant does not take any interest in the history of mankind, and he cannot be expected to know that in digging out a grave and scattering its contents, through the agency of dealers, over the face of the globe, he loses for ever the facts which the archaeologist is striving so hard to obtain. The scientific excavator does not think the antiquities themselves so valuable as the record of the exact arrangement in which they were found. From such data alone can he obtain his knowledge of the manners and customs of this wonderful people. When two objects are found together, the date of one being known and that of the other unknown, the archaeological value of the find lies in the fact that the former will place the latter in its correct chronological position. But if these two objects are sold separately, the find may perhaps lose its entire significance. The trained archaeologist records every atom of information with which he meets; the native records nothing. And hence, if there is any value at all in the study of the history of mankind, illegal excavation must be stopped.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FLOODING OF LOWER NUBIA.

The country of Lower Nubia lies between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile. The town of Aswan, once famous as the frontier outpost of Egypt and now renowned as a winter resort for Europeans and Americans, stands some two or three miles below the First Cataract; and two hundred miles southwards, at the foot of the Second Cataract, stands Wady Halfa.

About half-way between these two points the little town of Derr nestles amidst its palms; and here the single police-station of the province is situated. Agriculturally the land is extremely barren, for the merest strip of cultivation borders the river, and in many reaches the desert comes down to the water's edge. The scenery is rugged and often magnificent. As one sails up the Nile the rocky hills on either side group themselves into bold compositions, rising darkly above the palms and acacias reflected in the water. The villages, cl.u.s.tered on the hillsides as though grown like mushrooms in the night, are not different in colour to the ground upon which they are built; but here and there neatly whitewashed houses of considerable size are to be observed. Now we come upon a tract of desert sand which rolls down to the river in a golden slope; now the hills recede, leaving an open bay wherein there are patches of cultivated ground reclaimed from the wilderness; and now a dense but narrow palm-grove follows the line of the bank for a mile or more, backed by the villages at the foot of the hills.

The inhabitants are few in number. Most of the males have taken service as cooks, butlers, waiters, and bottle-washers in European houses or hotels throughout Egypt; and consequently one sees more women than men pottering about the villages or working in the fields. They are a fine race, clean in their habits and cheery in character. They can be distinguished with ease from the Egyptian _fellahn_; for their skin has more the appearance of bronze, and their features are often more aquiline. The women do not wear the veil, and their dresses are draped over one shoulder in a manner unknown to Egypt. The method of dressing the hair, moreover, is quite distinctive: the women plait it in innumerable little strands, those along the forehead terminating in bead-like lumps of bee's-wax. The little children go nude for the first six or eight years of their life, though the girls sometimes wear around their waists a fringe made of thin strips of hide. The men still carry spears in some parts of the country, and a light battle-axe is not an uncommon weapon.

There is no railway between Aswan and Halfa, all traffic being conducted on the river. Almost continuously a stream of native troops and English officers pa.s.ses up and down the Nile bound for Khartoum or Cairo; and in the winter the tourists on steamers and _dahabiyehs_ travel through the country in considerable numbers to visit the many temples which were here erected in the days when the land was richer than it is now. The three most famous ruins of Lower Nubia are those of Philae, just above Aswan; Kalabsheh, some forty miles to the south; and Abu Simbel, about thirty miles below Halfa: but besides these there are many buildings of importance and interest. The ancient remains date from all periods of Egyptian history; for Lower Nubia played an important part in Pharaonic affairs, both by reason of its position as the buffer state between Egypt and the Sudan, and also because of its gold-mining industries. In old days it was divided into several tribal states, these being governed by the Egyptian Viceroy of Ethiopia; but the country seldom revolted or gave trouble, and to the present day it retains its reputation for peacefulness and orderly behaviour.

Owing to the building, and now the heightening, of the great Nile dam at Aswan, erected for the purpose of regulating the flow of water by holding back in the plenteous autumn and winter the amount necessary to keep up the level in the dry summer months, the whole of the valley from the First Cataract to the neighbourhood of Derr will be turned into a vast reservoir, and a large number of temples and other ruins will be flooded. Before the dam was finished the temples on the island of Philae were strengthened and repaired so as to be safe from damage by the water; and now every other ruin whose foundations are below the future high-water level has been repaired and safeguarded.

In 1906 and 1907 the present writer was dispatched to the threatened territory to make a full report on the condition of the monuments there;[1] and a very large sum of money was then voted for the work. Sir Gaston Maspero took the matter up in the spirit which is a.s.sociated with his name; Monsieur Barsanti was sent to repair and underpin the temples; French, German, and English scholars were engaged to make copies of the endangered inscriptions and reliefs; and Dr Reisner, Mr C. Firth, and others, under the direction of Captain Lyons, were entrusted with the complete and exhaustive excavation of all the cemeteries and remains between the dam and the southern extremity of the reservoir. As a result of this work, not one sc.r.a.p of information of any kind will be lost by the flooding of the country.

[Footnote 1: Weigall: 'A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia.'

(Department of Antiquities, Cairo, 1907.)]

As was to be expected, the building and raising of the dam caused consternation amongst the archaeologically interested visitors to Egypt, and very considerably troubled the Egyptologists. Philae, one of the most picturesque ruins on the Nile, was to be destroyed, said the more hysterical, and numerous other buildings were to meet with the same fate. A very great deal of nonsense was written as to the vandalism of the English; and the minds of certain people were so much inflamed by the controversy that many regrettable words were spoken. The Department of Antiquities was much criticised for having approved the scheme, though it was more generally declared that the wishes of that Department had not been consulted, which was wholly untrue. These strictures are p.r.o.nounced on all sides at the present day, in spite of the very significant silence and imperturbation (not to say supination) of Egyptologists, and it may therefore be as well to put the matter plainly before the reader, since the opinion of the person who is in charge of the ruins in question, has, whether right or wrong, a sort of interest attached to it.

In dealing with a question of this kind one has to clear from the brain the fumes of unbalanced thought and to behold all things with a level head. Strong wine is one of the lesser causes of insobriety, and there is often more damage done by intemperance of thought in matters of criticism than there is by actions committed under the influence of other forms of immoderation. We are agreed that it is a sad spectacle which is to be observed in the Old Kent Road on a Sat.u.r.day night, when the legs of half the pedestrians appear to have lost their cunning. We say in disgust that these people are intoxicated. What, then, have we to say regarding those persons whose brains are unbalanced by immoderate habits of thought, who are suffering from that primary kind of intoxication which the dictionary tells us is simply a condition of the mind wherein clear judgment is obscured? There is sometimes a debauchery in the reasoning faculties of the polite which sends their opinions rollicking on their way just as drink will send a man staggering up the highroad. Temperance and sobriety are virtues which in their relation to thought have a greater value than they possess in any other regard; and we stand in more urgent need of missionaries to preach to us sobriety of opinion, a sort of critical teetotalism, than ever a drunkard stood in want of a pledge.

This case of Philae and the Lower Nubian temples ill.u.s.trates my meaning.

On the one hand there are those who tell us that the island temple, far from being damaged by its flooding, is benefited thereby; and on the other hand there are persons who urge that the engineers concerned in the making of the reservoir should be tarred and feathered to a man.

Both these views are distorted and intemperate. Let us endeavour to straighten up our opinions, to walk them soberly and decorously before us in an atmosphere of propriety.

It will be agreed by all those who know Egypt that a great dam was necessary, and it will be admitted that no reach of the Nile below Wady Halfa could be converted into a reservoir with so little detriment to _modern_ interests as that of Lower Nubia. Here there were very few cultivated fields to be inundated and a very small number of people to be dislodged. There were, however, these important ruins which would be flooded by such a reservoir, and the engineers therefore made a most serious attempt to find some other site for the building. A careful study of the Nile valley showed that the present site of the dam was the only spot at which a building of this kind could be set up without immensely increasing the cost of erection and greatly adding to the general difficulties and the possible dangers of the undertaking. The engineers had, therefore, to ask themselves whether the damage to the temples weighed against these considerations, whether it was right or not to expend the extra sum from the taxes. The answer was plain enough.

They were of opinion that the temples would not be appreciably damaged by their flooding. They argued, very justly, that the buildings would be under water for only five months in each year, and for seven months the ruins would appear to be precisely as they always had been. It was not necessary, then, to state the loss of money and the added inconveniences on the one hand against the total loss of the temples on the other. It was simply needful to ask whether the temporary and apparently harmless inundation of the ruins each year was worth avoiding at the cost of several millions of precious Government money; and, looking at it purely from an administrative point of view, remembering that public money had to be economised and inextravagantly dealt with, I do not see that the answer given was in any way outrageous. Philae and the other temples were not to be harmed: they were but to be closed to the public, so to speak, for the winter months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. XXV. The island and temples of Philae when the reservoir is empty.]

[_Photo by R. Glendinning._

This view of the question is not based upon any error. In regard to the possible destruction of Philae by the force of the water, Mr Somers Clarke, F.S.A., whose name is known all over the world in connection with his work at St Paul's Cathedral and elsewhere, states definitely[1]

that he is convinced that the temples will not be overthrown by the flood, and his opinion is shared by all those who have studied the matter carefully. Of course it is possible that, in spite of all the works of consolidation which have been effected, some cracks may appear; but during the months when the temple is out of water each year, these may be repaired. I cannot see that there is the least danger of an extensive collapse of the buildings; but should this occur, the entire temple will have to be removed and set up elsewhere. Each summer and autumn when the water goes down and the buildings once more stand as they did in the days of the Ptolemies and Romans, we shall have ample time and opportunity to discuss the situation and to take all proper steps for the safeguarding of the temples against further damage; and even were we to be confronted by a ma.s.s of fallen ruins, scattered pell-mell over the island by the power of the water, I am convinced that every block could be replaced before the flood rose again. The temple of Maharraka was entirely rebuilt in three or four weeks.