The Nile

by Toby Wilkinson

  Petrie was in a particularly delicate situation. His twelve-week dig at Qift was funded by independent financial backers in England, Jesse Haworth and Martyn Kennard, to whom Petrie sent back regular reports throughout the excavation season. He had to tread a fine line between talking up the importance of his discoveries and scandalising the very people who made the work possible. Little wonder, perhaps, that the following year Petrie founded the Egyptian Research Account to fund future excavations, thereby giving him complete independence of action (and publication).

  Of the temple buildings that once housed these remarkable statues and reliefs, but little survived. Successive generations of sebakh-diggers and treasure-seekers had taken their toll. But even the small pieces of inscribed stone that remained, although dislodged from their original settings, were sufficient to rewrite chapters of Egyptian history. None is more illuminating than the series of decrees set up in the temple at Qift by successive monarchs of the late Old Kingdom. They display the tension between the centre and the provinces, between economic control and political expediency, at its most acute.

  Right up until the reforms of Muhammad Ali in the early nineteenth century, the Egyptian government derived the majority of its revenue from the country’s agricultural wealth. Most, if not all, land was owned, ultimately, by the state, and the state levied a share of the harvest as taxes. So the fertility of the soil, together with the regular collection of produce from Egypt’s farmers, kept the government finances in a healthy surplus. In such a system, granting exemption from taxation to any land-holding was a serious step, since it denied the state its revenue. On the other hand, no mark of government favour was quite as significant (or welcome, to the grantee). Throughout history, Egypt’s rulers used their power to grant tax-exempt status. It was a convenient political tool to win the loyalty of influential families, towns and temples. Because of their financial and political value, exemption decrees were often prominently displayed in public buildings.

  In the dying days of the Old Kingdom, several such decrees were set up in the temple at Qift, underscoring this small provincial town’s wider economic and political significance. Further royal decrees followed, concerned not with tax exemption but with the promotion of royal favourites to high office. Three decrees were issued by King Neferkaura, charting the meteoric rise of a certain Shemai from obscurity to the governorship of Upper Egypt, and the commensurate appointment of his son Idy as provincial governor of Qift. A further eight decrees were announced in the space of a single day by Neferkaura’s successor. Once again, all were concerned with the promotions and honours accorded to Shemai and members of his family. The reason for this extraordinary shower of royal largesse: the new king was none other than Shemai’s father-in-law, and was using the full weight of his authority to reward his relatives. The Qift decrees provide a telling illustration of cronyism and of the need for the central government to buy the loyalty of the provinces—features of Egyptian politics in the twenty-first century AD as much as in the twenty-second century BC.

  For a place of comparative contemporary obscurity, Qift has often found itself at the heart of Egypt’s story. For example, it was on the front line of the civil war between Thebes and the northern provinces that ultimately resulted in the birth of the Middle Kingdom. Qift’s rulers flip-flopped between the opposing sides, depending on which was in the ascendant, but ultimately threw in their lot with the Thebans. It was a wise choice. When the rulers of Thebes conquered all of Egypt, Qift was once again the focus of royal patronage. King Mentuhotep deployed a workforce from the town to dig new wells along the route to the Red Sea, while two generations later a successful quarrying expedition from Qift enabled the man in charge, the vizier Amenemhat, to secure his political ascendancy and ultimate accession to the throne.

  Qift’s undoubted heyday, though, was during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods when the establishment of a port on the Red Sea coast (Berenike), the construction of a road thence from the Nile Valley and the opening of the Red Sea trade routes from the Mediterranean to India made Qift a major trans-shipment centre. The local temple witnessed almost constant building activity from Ptolemy II down to Caracalla, as each successive ruler sought both to reward and stamp his authority on Qift. The town was noted for its cosmopolitan atmosphere, garrison troops and traders from across the Ptolemaic and Roman empires mixing with local inhabitants. (The minutiae of archaeology tell us that the Ptolemaic inhabitants ate cattle, pigs and fish, while the Romans preferred sheep, goats and birds.) In 25–4 BC, the Greek geographer Strabo—a friend of the Roman Prefect—travelled through Upper Egypt and commented on the high reputation of Qift by comparison with the degradation of Thebes (which at that point had declined to little more than a “collection of villages”16). Under Augustus, soldiers from the third legion were stationed at Qift, building a bridge across the Nile, and staffing, repairing and supplying the string of forts which stretched across the Eastern Desert from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea. The road from Qift to the port of Quseir was the most heavily fortified in the whole country, with watchtowers, way-stations and fortified wells, as well as small garrisons like Didyme, still well preserved today.

  In addition to its military role and importance as a trading centre, Qift was also a defensive outpost against bandits (going on the run was a form of tax evasion in Roman Egypt) and, more seriously, the unpredictable nomads of the Eastern Desert who periodically threatened the state’s economic interests. Augustus stationed an entire legion at Qift, while Caracalla brought in elite archers from Palmyra. But even such forces proved insufficient, and the Blemmyes temporarily overran Qift in the later third century AD, remaining thereafter a constant thorn in the government’s side.

  Over the centuries, Qift’s combination of self-reliance and adaptability has served it well. At about the time of the Blemmyan incursions, the town also attracted early Christian converts who rebelled against Diocletian’s persecutions. Although Qift was razed by the emperor as punishment, it remained unbowed and within a generation had become an episcopal seat; a large basilica and baptistery were built next to the ancient temple complex. The Qiftis likewise absorbed the coming of Islam while retaining their commercial edge. Under the Mamluks, seagoing ships were built at Qift for transport overland to Quseir, and Qift also developed a thriving manufacturing industry, specialising in sugar and soap which it supplied to the rest of Egypt. Only the rise of nearby Qus, starting in the tenth century AD, started to eat away at Qift’s economic importance. By medieval times, Qus was second only to Cairo in size, a place for exiled sultans and caliphs; it had its own madrassa and mint, and a virtual monopoly on Red Sea trade.

  The European mastery of the sea routes around the Cape of Good Hope in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries greatly reduced Red Sea commerce with India (until the construction of the Suez Canal, when trade rebounded). Qus and Qift were thrown back on their own devices. With a long history to draw upon, the Qiftis settled back into their accustomed ways, as if nothing had changed. In his excavation notebooks, Petrie describes the house of a wealthy local landowner where servants ran about performing tasks and “the old scribe sat crooning over ancient airs as he cast up the accounts; it was the XIIth dynasty still alive.”17 Add a mobile telephone, and the scene would be much the same today. A second notebook entry recalls how Petrie’s Qiftis quickly learned the importance of a clean water supply, saving them from the ravages of a cholera outbreak that swept Egypt one summer. Proud of its traditions but ready to embrace change, Qift exemplifies the doughty spirit of rural Upper Egypt.

  When it was first founded, back in prehistory, the settlement of Qift lay right on the river. Like all villages in Upper Egypt, it depended on the life-giving waters of the Nile for its very existence. Over the centuries, however, the river has moved steadily westwards, leaving Qift some distance away from the east bank. This change in geography is, perhaps, reflected in the village’s changing character. Worship of a prehistoric fertility god—appropriate fo
r a Nile-side community—was succeeded, although not supplanted, by an orientation towards the desert and the Red Sea coast that lies beyond.

  Despite its relative distance and inaccessibility from the Nile Valley, the Red Sea coast has always been important for Egypt. In prehistoric times, marine shells were brought back to settlements by the river as rare, treasured possessions. From at least the Middle Kingdom onwards, expeditions to the fabled land of Punt (probably modern coastal Sudan) set sail from the port of Mersa Gawasis or, later, Quseir. In the early Ptolemaic period, a port was founded further south, at Berenike, to trade with India. The Red Sea route to India ensured Egypt’s strategic importance to its Roman, Byzantine, Islamic and colonial rulers, and provided the impetus for successive British military actions, at Abukir Bay, el-Alamein and Suez. Since the coming of Islam to Egypt, Red Sea ports have provided the Nile Valley’s pilgrims with the most direct access to the holy sites of Arabia. And, in modern times, the development of beach resorts along the Red Sea coast has given Egypt its very own “riviera,” with all-year-round sun, sea and sand. In the process, once small fishing villages have been transformed into all-inclusive mega-resorts, complete with nudist beaches for Russian tourists. As a result, many ordinary Egyptians no longer feel able to take their families to the beach as they used to, even if the income from European visitors is a welcome boost to the beleaguered Egyptian economy.

  The importance of the Eastern Desert is not merely as a route from the Nile Valley to the sea. The desert itself holds great riches and it is these which have led to its exploration and exploitation since earliest times. This can be seen most dramatically in the Black Mountains of the Wadi Hammamat. Due east of Qift, and roughly halfway between the river and the sea, a range of dark peaks rises up suddenly from the wadi floor. The road through the mountains, following the route of the ancient desert track, runs through a narrow defile. After a mile or so, the gulley opens out to reveal a breathtaking sight: vast, sheer quarry faces on either side, where countless blocks of fine-grained, greenish-black siltstone have been quarried away in antiquity to supply the royal workshops of pharaonic Egypt. On the north side of the road, halfway up the cliff face, lies an abandoned stone sarcophagus, its inside carefully chiselled away but its outside left unfinished when a flaw was discovered. On the south side of the road, the lower sections of the quarry face are covered with hundreds of hieroglyphic inscriptions, left by the expeditions which worked here over a period of some two thousand years. From the beginning of the Pyramid Age to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, groups of quarrymen were sent to the Black Mountains in search of the prized stone known to the ancient Egyptians as bekhen. In the hot and dangerous conditions, they put their trust in Min (or, in classical times, Pan) as guardian of the Eastern Desert; many of the inscriptions depict the god receiving offerings from grateful expedition leaders or, more frequently, the kings who sent them but stayed safely at home.

  The Black Mountains no longer echo to the chisels of quarrymen or the shouts of their foremen, but, a short distance beyond, riches continue to be excavated from the Eastern Desert. Bir Umm Fawakhir has been a site of gold production since late prehistoric times. Gold extracted from these mines gave Nagada its ancient moniker and its wealth. The oldest surviving map in the world, dating from the reign of Ramesses IV (1156–1150 BC), shows the Bir Umm Fawakhir gold mines. Miners’ huts and a stone-built chapel from the days of the British occupation of Egypt can still be seen alongside the road. And today, once again, an Egypto-Australian company is prospecting for gold at the site.

  Alongside siltstone from the Black Mountains and gold from Bir Umm Fawakhir, the Romans—the most voracious miners of the Eastern Desert’s mineral resources—extracted quartz diorite from Wadi Barud and emeralds from Sikait-Zubara. But the two most remarkable quarry sites of all provided two different types of stone for the buildings of imperial Rome. Mons Claudianus, “the mountain of Claudius,” lies seventy-five miles east of the Nile. Worked intermittently from the first to the fourth centuries AD, the quarries provided a particularly prized form of stone, tonalite gneiss, that was hewn into columns and basins, pedestals and pavements to adorn the imperial capital. Use of the stone seems to have been the personal prerogative of the emperor: the Pantheon has columns extracted from the living rock at Mons Claudianus. Similar columns still litter the quarry site, finished to near perfection but abandoned when faults in the stone were discovered. You can still walk through the rooms in the fortress, peer down into the well, imagine life at the quarry face. Mons Claudianus in its heyday was a hive of activity. The entire complex comprised over 130 separate quarrying sites, together with a stone-built granary, garrison, stable block, cistern, bath-house, temple and cemetery. At its peak during the reigns of Trajan (AD 98–117) and Antoninus Pius (AD 138–161), Mons Claudianus housed a population of 920 people—soldiers, officials, skilled and unskilled workers and their families. And all in a desert region whose average annual rainfall is just a quarter of an inch. The solution to maintaining a sizeable population in such an inhospitable place was to arrange regular supplies from the Nile Valley. The donkeys that carried their loads across the desert were slaughtered on arrival to provide a source of meat, thus killing two birds (or beasts) with one stone.

  Even the ingenuity of the operation at Mons Claudianus pales by comparison with Mons Porphyrites, “the mountain of porphyry.” It lies in the Gebel Dokhan, “the smoky mountain,” twenty-five miles from the sea, among jagged mountain peaks. On 23 July AD 18, in the fourth year of the reign of Tiberius, a Roman by the name of Caius Cominius Leugas discovered a source of the most prized of all stones in the ancient world, imperial porphyry. Porphyry was the royal colour, a rich, deep purple, and was so rare that it was reused, like silver and gold. A porphyry source, even in the remotest location, could not be ignored. Mons Porphyrites began life as a series of six small quarries, served by seven villages for the workers. Later, a fortified garrison, commanded by a legionary centurion, was established at the centre of the complex to provide security. Quarrying took place more or less continuously throughout the Roman period, providing floor tiles for Nero’s palace, the Domus Aurea, and a sarcophagus for his ashes. (Porphyry was also much prized by the Byzantine rulers, being used in Hagia Sophia; and its royal, sacral connotations continued into the Middle Ages—the tomb of Henry III of England in Westminster Abbey contains porphyry from Egypt’s Eastern Desert.) What made the quarrying such a logistical challenge—and achievement—was the fact that the porphyry was found at the tops of the mountains. Blocks of stone had to be levered loose and allowed to roll down the mountainside along prepared slipways. At the bottom, they would be worked into shape before being hauled away along access roads driven around the contours of the mountains. Conditions at Mons Porphyrites were extreme—in summer, the temperature can reach 45°C in the shade. The vegetation is extremely sparse, yet flash floods can wreak havoc as they course through the narrow wadis. Little wonder that the quarrymen built temples to Isis and Serapis, where they could pray for protection from the ever-present dangers of injury and death.

  What kept the whole operation going, for century after century, was a lifeline from the Nile Valley. Chaff and charcoal had to be imported for fuel, to supplement the meagre supplies of local timber. Workers’ families living in the Nile Valley sent food parcels of freshly baked bread—though, by the time they had survived the journey across the Eastern Desert, they must have been as tough as shoe-leather. For the senior officials, luxury goods such as wine, olive oil, pine kernels and almonds were imported from the Nile Valley, together with that essential Roman condiment, fish sauce, packed carefully in ceramic containers. More essential were the regular grain deliveries from the well-watered fields of Egypt, which provided the basic dietary staple to go with the donkey meat. Despite the Romans’ remarkable ingenuity, communities in the midst of the desert like Mons Claudianus and Mons Porphyrites nonetheless relied utterly on the Nile for their sustenance.

  THE EA
STERN DESERT IS one of the most inhospitable and inaccessible regions of Egypt. Unlike the Sahara with its shifting sand dunes stretching to the horizon, the land to the east of the Nile is a rocky wilderness, a place of sheer cliffs and stony plains, criss-crossed by steep-sided wadis. It is a place of solitude and stark beauty. The barren desert is about as far removed as it is possible to imagine from the quintessentially riverine Egyptian landscape. Yet even in this environment the Nile exerts a powerful influence. At hundreds of places in the Eastern Desert—prominent cliff faces, rock ledges and overhangs, caves and secluded gulleys—the rocks are covered with designs, carefully pecked into the surface by the stone tools of ancient artists. The phenomenon of rock-art is well attested across North Africa and Arabia, but the rich treasure-trove to be found in Egypt’s deserts is relatively poorly known. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in these records from the past, and it is clear that the rock-art tradition is both ancient and long-lived.

  The earliest images were made by semi-nomadic cattle herders in the early fourth millennium BC, when Egypt was just beginning its long journey to statehood. The latest images (if one discounts the picture of a Toyota Land Cruiser, etched into a rock by a very recent tourist expedition) were made in recent centuries by Bedouin tribes. In between, mining expeditions, government emissaries, traders, travellers, soldiers and explorers all left their mark. Hunters and their hunting dogs, gazelle and giraffe, tethered cattle and grazing goats, royal cartouches, prayers to Min, lewd graffiti, warriors on horseback and tribal symbols: all are to be found etched into the red-black surface of the sandstone rocks. But alongside these desert images, and equally numerous, are scenes of a distinctly Nilotic nature: crocodiles, hippos and, above all, boats. Boats of all shapes and sizes. Square-hulled boats and boats with elaborately curved prows. Boats powered by crews of rowers or hauled along by ropes. Boats carrying chiefs, deities, dancers and wild animals. Single boats and entire flotillas. All in the middle of a desert with not a drop of water in sight.