The Rape of the Nile

by Brian Fagan

  The strongman wasted no time in bringing his expertise to bear. He assembled a set of hauling tackle and then moored the boat to the riverbank close to the obelisk. His greatest difficulty was finding suitable poles to move the monument the few critical meters to the bank, for wood was in short supply. But enough timber came to hand over the next few days to shift the obelisk by rather similar methods to those used with the Young Memnon. Just as operations were about to begin, the governor himself brought over a letter from Drovetti telling him to allow no one to remove the obelisk except himself. Salt told him to give his compliments to Drovetti and to tell him the English were taking it anyhow.

  Meanwhile, the workers had built a rough stone causeway out from the bank, while Belzoni went off to spy out a channel through the Cataract. Then disaster struck. As the obelisk was rolled out along the causeway, the foundation stones sank into the mud. The priceless monument slid slowly into the Nile. Belzoni was transfixed with horror. Only the tip of the obelisk could be seen above the swirling water.

  The rest of the party left Belzoni alone with his problems and sailed on upstream into Nubia. A close inspection of the obelisk convinced the Italian that two or three days should see the obelisk in safety. Fortunately, the Philae workmen were both strong and very willing to work. They hauled large numbers of extra stones to the riverbank, then laid them underwater close to the obelisk. Now Belzoni came into his own. He worked large levers under the monument, then gradually lifted it onto dry land, heaping a pavement of stones under it as it was turned toward the shore. In two days the obelisk stood on dry land.

  Meanwhile, Drovetti’s agent put the whole town of Aswan in an uproar and brought the aga to Philae in an attempt to stop operations. But neither the governor nor the local people seemed inclined to stop Belzoni, regarding the quarrel as a matter between the English and the French. Belzoni steadfastly continued the loading operation, using a bridge of palm trunks to move the obelisk aboard the waiting boat.

  The next morning, Belzoni brought the boat and its precious cargo to the edge of the steepest part of the Cataract, some 375 meters (300 yards) long. He made careful preparations for the descent. A heavy rope was tied to a large tree upstream of the torrent and the other end passed inboard so that the five men remaining aboard could control the boat as it swept through the rapids. At the same time, Belzoni stationed men on the rocks on either side of the Cataract. They also held ropes attached to the boat, so they could pull or release them to prevent its being staved in against the rocks. Everything depended on the skill of the river men, for the large rope attached to the stern was incapable of stopping the boat on its own. It was merely sufficient to check the breakneck pace of descent through the rapids. The ship’s captain was beside himself with anxiety. Tearfully, he begged Belzoni to give him his boat back. Finally, he threw himself on the ground and buried his face in the sand, refusing to witness the imminent destruction of his most valuable possession.

  When everything was ready and the men were in position, Belzoni gave the signal to slacken the cable:

  It was one of the greatest sights I have seen. The boat took a course, which may be reckoned at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Accordingly, the men on land slackened the rope; and at the distance of one hundred yards the boat came in contact with an eddy, which, beating against a rock, returned towards the vessel, and that helped much to stop its course. The men on the side pulled the boat out of the direction of that rock, and it continued its course, gradually diminishing its rate, till it reached the bottom of the cataract; and I was not a little pleased to see it out of danger.

  Even the workers were thrilled at the safe passage. The captain of the boat “came to me with joy expressed in his countenance, as may easily be imagined.”6

  There were only two or three more dangerous spots to be traversed. These presented few problems, and the precious cargo reached Aswan safely the same day. One of Belzoni’s most daring and tricky exploits had ended in brilliant success. Never knowing when he might return, he was careful to pay off the local people and the governor to everyone’s satisfaction, setting off downstream to Thebes as quickly as possible. Head winds delayed the passage, so Belzoni went on by land and took up residence again in his old home in Seti I’s tomb. There he found Sarah waiting for him.

  Sarah had had an adventurous journey to Palestine, one that rivaled Belzoni’s own arduous travels in its frustrations and many dangers. Accompanied by James Curtin and Giovanni Finati, she had made her way to Jerusalem in time for Easter, bathed in the Jordan, and visited Nazareth. Most of the time she was dressed as a Mamluk youth and traveled practically by herself, a dangerous thing to do in the best of times in Palestine in the early nineteenth century. When she realized that her husband would not be joining her, Sarah returned to Alexandria on an evil-smelling packet boat. The cabin she had booked was full of melons and the deck crowded with Albanian soldiers. Soon she came down with a serious stomach fever. “I never suffered on the ocean what I suffered on this insignificant voyage,” she wrote some years later. It took her ill-fated packet no less than thirteen calm-plagued days to cross from Jaffa to Egypt.7

  She engaged a boat to take her to Thebes, accompanied only by a young Mamluk. The journey was uncomfortable, for dense rains soaked her bedding and possessions. The same storm had washed mud into Seti I’s tomb, the humidity causing some of the walls to crack. She ordered the mud removed and sat down to wait for her husband. He returned on December 23, and they spent a quiet Christmas together, “in the solitude of these recesses, undisturbed by the folly of mankind.”8 It was a wonderful rest and reunion.

  The day after Christmas Belzoni and his Greek interpreter mounted donkeys and, accompanied by two Arab servants, went over to Karnak. The obelisk had arrived safely at Thebes on Christmas Eve. Rather tactlessly, the captain had moored the boat under the noses of Drovetti and his agents at Karnak. “It irritated them,” recalls Belzoni, and the irritation led to a violent confrontation, which, according to the Italian, was deliberately engineered by the Frenchman.

  As Belzoni made his way toward Karnak, he met an Arab who warned him not to go near the other Europeans. He ignored the warning and soon came upon a party of laborers working on one of Salt’s claims. Despite the protests of the interpreter, Belzoni feigned to ignore them, recognizing the provocative stratagem for what it was. So he went on past the great temple of Karnak where the Drovetti party was lodging and inspected some of Salt’s claims nearby. He then set off for Thebes, passing again near the great propylaeum of the temple where he met an Arab who cried out that he had been beaten because he worked for the English. Belzoni again ignored this attempt at provocation and passed on his way.

  Soon he noticed Drovetti’s agent Antonio Lebolo, Giuseppe Rosignani, and about thirty armed Arabs hurrying toward him. In a moment, the angry men had surrounded Belzoni and his interpreter. Loudly, Antonio Lebolo inquired why he had moved Drovetti’s obelisk from Philae, for it was not Belzoni’s property. With that, he seized the bridle of Belzoni’s donkey with one hand and his waistcoat with the other. The Arabs disarmed the Italian’s servants and beat them. Rosignani pointed his double-barreled rifle at Belzoni’s chest in a rage. It was time, he said, for Belzoni to pay for his deeds. “My situation was not pleasant, surrounded by a band of ruffians like them,” remarked Belzoni with almost casual understatement, “and I have no doubt that if I had attempted to dismount, the cowards would have dispatched me on the ground, and said that they did it in defense of their lives as I had been the aggressor.” So he decided to stay on his donkey and treat them with contempt. This only inflamed their tempers.

  Drovetti and another band of armed Arabs now came on the scene. The consul angrily demanded what Belzoni meant by stopping his men from digging and ordered him to dismount. Belzoni replied that he knew of no such instance and complained of the discourtesy shown him. “At this moment a pistol was fired behind me, but I could not tell by whom. I was determined to bear much, sooner than c
ome to blows with such people, who did not blush to assail me all in a mass; but when I heard the pistol fired behind my back, I thought it was high time to sell my life as dear as I could.” So he dismounted in a fury.

  At this point, Drovetti evidently realized matters had gone too far and attempted to smooth things over. Among other things, the local Arabs had come to Belzoni’s aid and had surrounded Rosignani with menacing threats. The affair ended with Belzoni’s “informing Mr. Drovetti that I had resisted many and various sorts of attacks by his agents, but I did not expect they would come to such a pitch, and that it was high time for me to quit the country.” He returned to the Valley of the Kings in a state of fear and agitation, where Sarah was having “a violent bilious fever.”9

  It took a month to pack up the valuable wax impressions and records from Seti I’s tomb. The fragile alabaster sarcophagus was carefully transported on rollers from its centuries-old home over 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) of uneven terrain to Belzoni’s boat. Belzoni even found time to repair some of the damage to the tomb caused by the flood. Then on January 27, 1819, the Belzonis left Thebes for the last time. “I must confess,” he wrote, “that I felt no small degree of sorrow to quit a place which was become so familiar to me.”10

  The Belzonis took their valuable cargo all the way to Alexandria with the intention of taking ship for Europe immediately. But a letter from Salt caused Belzoni to delay, for the consul recommended that he institute legal proceedings against the miscreants. Mr. Lee, the British consul in Alexandria, had already taken matters up on his behalf with the legal authorities and the French consul. Drovetti had now returned to Alexandria and intervened on behalf of his agents. So it was agreed to leave matters until Henry Salt returned from Upper Egypt. Belzoni himself was not keen on a legal battle, for he knew only too well how much political influence his opponents wielded. Furthermore, an Italian “stranger,” who had helped Belzoni during the fracas, had arrived in Alexandria laden down with antiquities presented to him by Drovetti’s agents for resale in Europe. He could hardly be called a potentially reliable witness at this point. While waiting on legal matters, Belzoni had little option but to settle Sarah into a home provided by an English merchant in Alexandria and to cast around for an outlet for his restless energy. He thought of excavating in Lower Egypt, but concluded that it was too close to the “fountain head of our opponents.” Instead, he resolved on a side trip into the Western Desert in search of the temple of Jupiter Ammon.

  ::

  The Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert was famous for its oracle, consulted by none other than Alexander the Great in 331 BC. The priests of the oracle temple there proclaimed Alexander the “son of Amun,” giving him divine recognition before his subsequent crowning as pharaoh at Memphis. Two centuries earlier, the Persian king Cambyses sent an army of 50,000 men to destroy the oracle during his depredations along the Nile. They never returned. According to Herodotus, who spoke with the Ammonites of Siwa: “The Persians had reached about half way when, as they were at their midday meal, a wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops, and caused them wholly to disappear.”11 Belzoni was looking for a notorious temple.

  The English traveler William George Browne had crossed to the Siwa Oasis in 1792 and located extensive ancient ruins and temples there.12 But he did not attribute the major temple to Jupiter Ammon. No one knew exactly what he had found. Belzoni, certainly unaware of the importance of Browne’s discovery, searched at first for the temple in the Fayyum Depression instead. As a result, he never came close to the Siwa Oasis or the temple of Jupiter Ammon, although he had a most enjoyable trip.

  Belzoni’s last Egyptian journey differed from his earlier travels in being a more solitary expedition. His primary interest seems to have been to discover and examine the great temple rather than to bring home another load of antiquities. We can detect a change in the Italian’s interests, brought about both by the pressures at Thebes and by his most recent discoveries in the pyramids, at Berenice, and in the Valley of the Kings. Ever the showman, he now realized that his reputation depended as much on his abilities as an adventurer and explorer as a tomb robber. The temple of Jupiter Ammon might well be the kind of spectacular discovery that would make his name.

  The party was a small one—Belzoni, a Sicilian servant, and a pilgrim returning from Mecca who begged passage in the boat and proved “very useful.” They left the Nile at Beni Suef, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) upstream of Cairo, on April 29, 1819, and continued their journey into the Fayyum by donkey. The journey to the great depression led them through “a vast plain of cultivated land, along the route of an ancient channel, which brings water into the Faiyum.” That night they camped near the brick pyramid of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Senwosret II after setting a careful watch. Belzoni as usual reclined on his special mattress, “thin enough to serve as a saddle when folded up, but when laid on a mat or on the ground, affording as good a bed as any traveller ought to expect.”13

  The next day, Belzoni climbed the pyramid and gazed over the surrounding countryside, searching for the site of ancient Arsinoe and the fabulous Labyrinth, described by Herodotus as an even greater wonder than the pyramids. He found no trace of the Labyrinth, although he found signs of an ancient town near the pyramid of Hawara. It was not until seventy years later that Englishman Flinders Petrie found the Labyrinth, of which nothing remained except a mass of limestone chips.14

  The travelers were now in country famous for its rose water, used to keep the stench of Cairo from the delicate nostrils of its inhabitants. Here Belzoni obtained a firman and guides. He had avoided doing so in Alexandria or Cairo, for fear that his rivals would disrupt his plans. They passed by the ruins of ancient Arsinoe and left them to be examined on their return, pressing northward to the desolate Birket Qarûn, a brackish lake that lay more than 36.5 meters (120 feet) below sea level. Belzoni had some difficulty in finding a boat to carry the party westward to the far shore of the lake; when one did arrive, he was horrified and fascinated. “It was entirely out of shape,” he wrote. “The outer shell or hulk was composed of rough pieces of wood scarcely joined, and fastened by four other pieces, wrapped together by four more across, which formed the deck; no tar, no pitch either inside or out, and the only preventive against the water coming in was a kind of weed moistened, which had settled in the joints of the wood.”15

  Belzoni was still in search of the Labyrinth, which he was convinced lay across the lake. It was a romantic, if crazy, journey. They camped on a deserted shore and dined off fresh fish. “The scene here was beautiful—the silence of the night, the beams of the radiant moon shining on the still water of the lake, the solitude of the place, the sight of our boat, the group of fishermen, put me in mind of the lake Acheron, the boat Baris, and the old ferryman of the Styx.”16 Belzoni later remembered this overnight stay as one of his happiest moments.

  At the southwestern corner of the lake they landed to explore a complex of ruins and a temple, now known as Qasr Qarûn. The ruins were nothing spectacular, but Belzoni was startled out of his wits by a hyena, which rushed out at him from a small temple.17 Fortunately, the animal fled, for Belzoni was unarmed. Still no Labyrinth came to light, despite a two-day search along the northern shores of Birket Qarûn. Belzoni had some accounts of the lake with him, including unreliable maps, which led him to believe that it would be worth venturing into the mountains some distance from the lake. Only 3 kilometers (2 miles) from its shores, they came across another ruined town, consisting of “a great number of houses, and a high wall of sun-burnt bricks, which includes the ruins of a temple.”18 Fortunately, the fishermen had brought their hatchets with them, so they were able to excavate two or three of the houses. Under the collapsed roofs, rubbish choked the dwellings. One contained a fireplace. This was not the Labyrinth either. We now know that Belzoni had stumbled on a Ptolemaic town called Nesos Sokonopaiou.

  The travelers now gav
e up the search for the Labyrinth and crossed to the east side of the lake. Everywhere Belzoni saw fragments of columns and ancient building stone used in the construction of Arab huts. “I have no doubt,” he concluded, “that by tracing the source of these materials, the seat of the Labyrinth could be discovered, which must be most magnificent even in its ruined state.” This fruitless excursion included an interesting gustatory experience: Belzoni was able to enjoy a meal of pelican meat, which he described as “on the whole very tender, and pleasant to the palate.”19

  The searchers now moved away from the lake, on their way back to Medinet el-Fayyum and the rose-water factories. He passed through Fedmin el-Hanaises, where he heard the legend of the three hundred Coptic churches once said to exist there. The churches were reportedly buried under the town. But, said Belzoni, “the canal cuts through the town and none of the said churches appeared in the progress of the excavation through the town, which must have been the case had it been built on the said three hundred churches.”20

  The following day Belzoni reached Medinet el-Fayyum and immediately set out for nearby Arsinoe, where he admired “sculptures of most magnificent taste” and dug in the filling of an ancient reservoir in the middle of the town. But his real interest was in visiting the oasis to the west of Lake Moeris. He had some difficulty finding a guide, for the area was little known except to the Bedouin. Eventually, his old friend Khalil Bey, formerly of Esna and now stationed at Beni Suef, gave him a firman and arranged for a sheik named Grumar to guide him. Belzoni described Grumar as “a tall stout man, six feet three inches high, with a countenance that bespoke a resolute mind, and great eagerness after gain.”21

  On May 19, the caravan of six camels set out from Grumar’s camp, where Belzoni had spent several sleepless nights plagued by fleas. They traveled westward along the south side of the Fayyum, passing into the desert and through a formerly populated area that included some large burial mounds, which Belzoni attributed (wrongly) to Cambyses’s army. Six days later the caravan reached the Wadi Bahariya, an oasis where they watered their camels and made contact with the inhabitants.22 The first man they met was a dwarf who threatened Belzoni with a gun. Fortunately, Grumar spoke the local dialect and averted disaster. By using coffee and tobacco, both rare luxuries in the desert, Belzoni was able to persuade the local sheik to show him the ruins near the two villages in the area.