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kings had twenty thousand war chariots, and ancient writers say that
there were scattered along the Nile from here to Memphis one
hundred stone stables, each large enough to accommodate two
hundred horses.
The Aswan Dam is a huge granite barrier a mile and a quarter long which now
controls the waters of the Nile after centuries of alternate flood and drought, saves
Egypt from famine, and adds millions of acres to her irrigable lands.
It brings one close to the days of the Scriptures when he can put
his hand on the very same things that were touched by old Pharaoh;
and can visit the temples in which he worshipped, or sit on the
monuments erected in his honour, and look at the tomb in which his
royal bones were laid away. One feels closer still when he can look
at the royal mummy itself and actually see the hardhearted old
heathen almost as he was when alive, as I did at the museum the
other day.
This Pharaoh, Rameses II, was one of the greatest kings of
ancient Egypt. His temples are scattered throughout the Nile valley
and his statues are the largest ever discovered. One was found in
the Nile delta which measures forty-two feet in height, and there are
others sixty-six feet high at Abu Simbel in Nubia, about as far up the
Nile as Chicago is distant from the mouth of the Hudson. They are
seated on thrones and are hewn from the solid rocks. These figures
stand in front of the temple, also cut out of rock. This building is said
to have been erected by him in honour of his favourite wife,
Nefertari, and there are statues of his children about it. These show
that he was very much of a family man, for inscriptions on the
various monuments mention one hundred and sixty-two of his
children by name.
CHAPTER XVI
THE NILE IN HARNESS
For the last two days I have been steaming through one of the
oldest lands of the globe. I have been travelling up the Nile through
the country which belonged to Noah’s grandson, Cush, who was
Ham’s eldest son, and which was known to the Greeks and Romans
in later days as Ethiopia. The Egyptians called it Nubia, from their
word noub, which means gold, and it is known that a large part of the
gold of ancient time came from it.
Ancient Nubia had a considerable population, and was noted for
its riches and power. It was already a flourishing country about the
time of the Pyramid builders, while in the most prosperous days of
Old Egypt it had large towns and magnificent temples dedicated to
the worship of the Egyptian gods. On my way here I passed Abu
Simbel, a great temple on the bank of the Nile, which was cut out of
the rocks by Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the Bible. Farther down the
river lies the Temple of the Lions, where that same old king was
himself worshipped as a god.
Until 1100 b.c. this country was a dependency of the Pharaohs. It
then became independent, and later its armies overran and
conquered Egypt. As other nations came into this part of the Nile
valley they sent their armies against the Nubians, but were driven
back, and at the time the Romans came the country was ruled by a
succession of queens named Candace, one of whom made war
upon the Romans. The Nubian people very early adopted
Christianity, but later, when the Mohammedans took possession of
Egypt and the Upper Nile valley, they were converted to Islam. They
are still followers of the Prophet, and were among the boldest
soldiers of the fanatical Mahdi in his fights against the troops of
Egypt and Great Britain.
A land with such a history ought to be a rich one. The Nubia of to-
day is about as barren as any country on earth. With the exception of
a narrow band along the Nile, it is altogether desert. Beginning in the
sands of Libya, it extends several hundred miles eastward to the
Red Sea, but only in a few places has the soil enough moisture to
furnish even a scanty pasturage for camels and sheep. The bulk of
the desert population is made up of Bisharin Bedouins, living in tents
made of matting and moving about from place to place with their
flocks. Each tribe has a certain number of wells, and water is the
principal part of its visible wealth. The British officials of the Sudan
have surveyed these wells and investigated their depth and the
quality of the flow of the water. The government has also sunk some
new wells and found water at a depth of about one hundred feet.
Nubia is now a part of the Upper Nile valley, a cultivated strip, in
places only a quarter of a mile wide, winding its way like a snake
from north to south as far as from New York City to Detroit, and
extending on both sides of the river. It is of irregular width, for in
some places the desert comes close to the river, while in others the
stream winds through black rocky hills which rise straight above it a
thousand feet. Farther on, one sees yellow sand, spotted with black
rocks, which show signs of volcanic origin, and then at a low bend in
the river the water may be conducted out over the sands and create
a cultivated patch three miles in width.
The Nile is so walled in by hills that its waters have to be lifted in
order to flow over any level place. This is done chiefly by the
sakiehs, of which there are something like four thousand on the
Nubian Nile. The great wheels, moving in cogs, can be seen high up
on the banks, with their strings of buckets hanging to them. As the
buckets descend, each dips into the water and carries to the top a
few quarts at a time. In some places men raise the water in baskets
or buckets, and in others, the river slopes at such an angle that they
carry it up by hand and water little patches twenty or thirty feet wide.
Every low place along the river is farmed, and when the Nile falls,
the sand banks and islands are planted to crops.
Wherever there is a stretch of cultivated land, a village of mud and
stone huts has grown up, and such villages spot the banks for
hundreds of miles. At times there is no green except between village
and river, and one wonders how men can be born and live and die
there. Nevertheless, there are more than one hundred thousand
people to whom this region is the centre of the world.
Though much of this Nile border is too narrow for profitable
cultivation, it is very fertile and raises excellent cotton. At present the
other chief crops are wheat, barley, and millet, and the chief fruit is
dates, which are sweeter and larger than those grown farther down
the Nile valley. Indeed, the date trees that one sees almost
everywhere along the banks are a source of revenue for the
government, which taxes them at the rate of ten cents per tree.
“On the Ibis we make about six miles an hour as our dusky Nubian pilot
corkscrews up the Nile. Fortunately we are almost free from the myriad flies, the
modern plague of Egypt.”
Though the Aswan Dam has been of inestimable benefit to Egypt, the whole
world shares regret that when the sluice gates are closed the water backs up and
submerges Pharaoh’s Bed and other ancient ruins on the Island of Philæ.