The Nile

by Toby Wilkinson

  In the absence of any accompanying texts, the boats of the Eastern Desert defy easy interpretation. Their very existence indicates a strong connection with the world of the Nile Valley; their peculiar shapes and cargoes suggest a religious dimension (festival? pilgrimage? funerary ceremony? afterlife journey?). But, beyond that, it is impossible to be certain of their meaning. What is clear is that the people who have roamed the deserts to the east of Qift down the centuries have retained a close connection with Egypt’s great river. Images of Nilotic life, both animal and human, burned brightly in their imaginations and found permanent expression in their art.

  Perhaps the most magical, evocative and impressive of all the rock-art galleries in the Eastern Desert is the outcrop known prosaically as Site 18. Located along an ancient track, midway between two natural wells, the site is composed of piled boulders forming a natural cave. A short climb to the top of the rocky eminence affords spectacular views along the wadi in both directions, while the cave provides welcome protection, both from the fierce heat of the midday sun and from unwelcome desert animals by night. Seldom visited in modern times, Site 18 retains a palpable air of antiquity and sanctity. Those same qualities have attracted occasional visitors throughout Egypt’s long history, as a roll-call of the images carved into the rocks hereabouts makes clear:

  Elephants, giraffes, hippopotami, antelopes, ibexes, barbary sheep, cattle, crocodiles, birds; dog. Boats, some towed by men. Men with bows, staves, lassoes, people with upraised arms. Bukrania. Early Horus names [royal ciphers], a few probably very early hieroglyphs. Man (Pharaoh?) clubbing captive. Min. Greek inscription, Christian symbols (fish &c.). Blemyan signs, and connected with them camels, cattle, lion, sailing-boats, camel-riders. Arab inscriptions, wusûm, camels, naked woman, boat.18

  Sheltered from the scouring effect of the sand-laden wind, the images of Site 18 remain as fresh as when they were first created, up to six thousand years ago. The figure of the god Min, and the depiction of his standard in one of the boats, emphasises the connection between desert and valley, between this remote spot and the riverside community of Qift. Adding to the air of timelessness is the fact that the most prominent designs are still picked out in the chalk used to highlight them for photography and publication in 1937.

  It is a humbling experience to walk in the footsteps of the man who chalked the images at Site 18, who rediscovered them, brought them to scholarly attention and wrote the description quoted above. Persecuted during his lifetime and neglected after his death, his name merits barely a mention in the annals of Egyptology, yet he was one of its greatest pioneers. Hans Winkler (1900–45) was born in the German city of Bremerhaven. Both the date and nation of his birth were to prove unlucky. At the age of seventeen, he joined the Kaiser’s army and served in World War I. He survived the horrors of the trenches and, in 1919, was finally able to fulfil his true potential, as a scholar, studying at the University of Göttingen. But Germany’s post-war economic collapse and spiralling inflation proved disastrous for the Winklers, as for many families, and forced Hans to leave university. He became a miner and a political radical, briefly joining the German Communist Party. It was a decision that would come back to haunt him. Returning to his studies in 1923, he specialised in religious history and Semitic philology and went on to lecture at Tübingen University. But when Hitler came to power in 1933, the purge of “undesirables” began, and Winkler was among its first victims, being sacked from his university position on account of his brief, youthful dalliance with Marxism—a political crime compounded, no doubt, by his marriage to an Armenian. Winkler had visited Egypt once, in 1932, and now decided to go there for a longer stay, to escape persecution by the Nazis. In Egypt, as well as teaching philology at Cairo University, he pursued his interest in “folk culture” (these were the early years of scientific anthropology). Visits to Upper Egyptian villages brought him into contact with desert rock-art, and for the next few years, as a member of Robert Mond’s expedition, Winkler made frequent forays into the desert to copy and record these fascinating images.

  His most epic journey started at Qift in November 1936. Leaving the Nile Valley behind him, Winkler headed eastwards along the desert road to the Red Sea coast, numbering and recording the rock-art sites as he went. The first—which he duly labelled as Site 1—was the prominent outcrop of rocks on the northern side of the wadi only a few miles east of Qift, known to the locals as Qusur el-Banat. From there, he pushed further east, still following the main road, recording Sites 2 to 7 during the next week. After a week’s break, perhaps to restock his supplies, he set out again along the narrower valleys to the north of the Wadi Hammamat. Winkler’s progress seems to have been quite slow, even considering that he travelled by camel. He must have been making a meticulous search of the rock face at every point, noting down carved images which seemed particularly significant. It is telling that his unpublished notebooks are full of sketches—not of the fantastic boats and hunting scenes he discovered, but of later Bedouin, Coptic and Arab signs. These fascinated Winkler, and not only because he had a detailed knowledge of Egyptian folk culture. The signs which he took greatest pains to copy were those which resembled the swastika—the ancient Indian device, adopted by the Nazis as a symbol of their “Aryan” ancestry and supposed racial supremacy. The prevailing ideology of his homeland had imprinted itself on Winkler’s subconscious.

  After another week’s break, he set out to explore the dry valleys to the south of the Hammamat road. It was on 20 December that he came to his eighteenth new site (Site 18), a place so rich in drawings that it was worth a second visit on Boxing Day 1936. The new year’s season, which began after a week’s break on 8 January 1937, was to be even more productive. In the space of just two days, Winkler discovered no fewer than seventeen new sites, most of them in a wadi leading to a reliable fresh water well. Further discoveries lay ahead before Winkler left the Eastern Desert on 17 January 1937. After a two-week break in the Nile Valley, he set off again, this time into the Western Desert, where he stayed for the next two months. By the time he dismounted his camel in early April, he had travelled more extensively in Egypt’s deserts than any other European before him. A brilliant career as an Egyptologist and anthropologist beckoned. But Germany’s invasion of Poland just two years later and the outbreak of war put paid to Winkler’s hopes and dreams. He was drafted into the German army and, on 20 January 1945, just a few months before the end of the war, shot dead on active service in Poland. His work was to remain largely forgotten for the next fifty years, as Egyptologists focussed their attention on the rich sites of the Nile Valley. Only today is the scale of Winkler’s achievement once again recognised, together with the importance of his discoveries for the rich and complex history of Egypt.

  Like desert travellers before him, Winkler must have relied on local Bedouin guides to find his way around. (Today, even with modern GPS, it is easy to lose one’s bearings in the vast desert wilderness.) Most of the sites he visited had seen repeated use by desert people over many thousands of years, and many were still being added to by the camel-herders of Winkler’s own time. A few of the best rock-art sites escaped his attention entirely, and the likeliest explanation is that they were simply unknown to his guides.

  Amazingly, given the enormous changes that have buffeted Egypt since Winkler’s day, and especially in recent decades, the descendants of the ancient artists live on in the Eastern Desert. The Blemmyes who confronted the Romans and the Gebadei mentioned by Pliny survive today as the Ababda tribespeople. Their territory—the stretch of Eastern Desert from Aswan in the south to Qena in the north—is exactly that described by classical writers. Suppressed by the Romans, they simply melted back into the desert landscape, there to pursue their traditional way of life—herding, guiding and trading. In the medieval period, they conveyed Islamic pilgrims from the Nile Valley to the port of Aidhab for the short journey across the Red Sea to Jeddah and thence to Mecca. Since time immemorial, they have escorted caravans trav
elling north and south between Egypt and the Sudan.

  I will never forget my encounter with this ancient people, deep in the wastes of the Eastern Desert. Our convoy of four-wheel-drive vehicles had been travelling since dawn, through empty wadis and across rocky plains, following in Winkler’s footsteps in search of rock-art. As we rounded a bend near Bir Shallul, a surprising sight lay before us: alone, in the vast emptiness of sand and stone, a small, dark tent, roughly constructed from pieces of wood, draped with thick, woollen blankets. Around the tent lay a handful of belongings: a few iron cooking pots, two old tin cans, a small earthenware jar. A few feet away, in the dust, the top half of a broken plastic toy car suggested a present brought back from some past trip to the Nile Valley. And in the entrance to the tent, sitting on the ground, only partly shaded from the sun, a middle-aged woman. I say “middle-aged” but she may have been younger: soft skin is the first victim of the unforgiving desert conditions. Her exposed face and hands were a deep, nut-brown colour; the rest of her was swathed against the sun with thick layers of deep red clothing. In her lap, she cradled a small baby—new life, even in such lifeless surroundings. But the child was not hers.

  News of our arrival, unexpected and equally unwelcome, must have been borne on the desert breeze, for soon the mother appeared—a teenaged girl with her flock of goats. She had been tending them in an adjacent wadi where an aquifer deep underground supported a small patch of thorny grazing. The girl was wearing a light, patterned dress, with a white jacket and a black headscarf. Plastic sandals gave her feet some protection against the stony ground. Suspicious of our presence, the girl quickly reclaimed her baby from its grandmother, exchanging it for a baby kid she had been nursing. Family and flocks were bound together in their battle for survival. No doubt the father was away trading in the Nile Valley or escorting a caravan. For weeks, perhaps months at a time, the girl, her baby and her mother were left alone with their goats, scratching out a living in the desert wilderness, their lifestyle unchanged for millennia. Their entire household took up just a few square feet, surrounded on every side by a vast emptiness. As carbon footprints go, it must be the smallest on earth. Yet ongoing desertification as a result of climate change may bring this ancient way of life to an end.

  THE UNASSUMING LIFESTYLE and peaceful, reticent demeanour of today’s desert nomads belies their historic reputation as raiders and marauders. Since time immemorial, the Egyptian authorities have regarded their desert neighbours with suspicion or outright hostility. One of the earliest surviving inscriptions from the Nile Valley, a 4,800-year-old ivory label that was attached to a pair of sandals, records “the first time of smiting the Easterner”19 alongside an image of the king beating a desert nomad over the head. Some five centuries later, relief panels from the pyramid causeway of a Fifth Dynasty king depict starving tribespeople as a warning of what befell those who lived beyond the state’s reach. A generation later still, a trusted royal official named Weni was sent on repeated occasions at the head of a conscript army to subdue the “sand-dwellers.” The kings of the early Twelfth Dynasty regarded the nomads as a sufficient threat to warrant naming their Nubian command centre “Repelling the tribesmen,” and inscriptions from later periods record the predations of desert tribespeople, especially against the villages of Upper Egypt. Police checkpoints and guard posts set up on vantage points above the Valley of the Kings and on the outskirts of ancient Egyptian towns were designed to prevent infiltration by “those of the desert hills.”20 As late as 1884, an English visitor to Egypt described how the southern part of the country “was in a state of anarchy”21 in which “The Beduin on the outskirts of the desert … were plundering and murdering the fellahin.”22 Nineteenth-century tourists travelling by boat rarely moored for the night on the east bank of the Nile because “the shore was infested by the Beduin.”23

  Even today, settlements along the Nile Valley remain on their guard against unwanted intruders. Travellers within Egypt are used to the roadblocks and police checkpoints that monitor traffic at regular intervals along every major highway, at every intersection, and at every city and provincial boundary. But, as you drive into a town like Qena, sharp eyes will notice an additional, less obtrusive layer of state security. Standing by the roadside alongside the main bridge, dressed in everyday galabeyas but holding rifles, are the “village policemen.” These are trustworthy local elders with a detailed knowledge of their villages, the routes in and out. Recruited and armed by the feared Ministry of the Interior, they are the government’s eyes and ears in their local community, manning the main entrance and exit points, noting anything unusual, intercepting infiltrators and those who evade the authorities. Villagers the world over are suspicious of outsiders. In Egyptian society, and especially in the conservative communities of Upper Egypt, such distrust runs deep; it has been masterfully stoked and harnessed by successive governments, up to the present day.

  Such an atmosphere, indeed the town of Qena itself, proved the perfect breeding ground for Egypt’s arch spymaster, Omar Suleiman (1935–2012). One of the most notorious officials of the Mubarak era, Suleiman was born in Qena. After leaving school, he joined the army, soon after the coup that ended the monarchy and brought the Free Officers to power. In the military, his wiliness and ruthlessness found the perfect outlet. Following a master’s degree in political science at Cairo University and advanced training at the Frunze Military Academy in the Soviet Union—the perfect combination for a spy—Suleiman rose swiftly through the ranks of military intelligence. Service in the Yemeni conflict of 1962 and the Arab–Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 built his power base in the armed forces, and he became a trusted associate of Mubarak. Suleiman was appointed director of military intelligence in 1991 and director of the General Intelligence Directorate (Egypt’s secret service) two years later. His quick thinking is credited with saving Mubarak’s life during an assassination attempt in Ethiopia in 1995, and his diplomatic skills as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians were highly regarded, not least by the Americans.

  For a man in such a powerful position, Suleiman publicly eschewed any political ambitions, yet there was always more than met the eye. Posters supporting his candidacy mysteriously appeared in central Cairo during the 2010 presidential election, only to be swiftly taken down. Ever the consummate behind-the-scenes operator, Suleiman remained unscathed. Four days into the 2011 anti-government protests, Mubarak appointed Suleiman his first (and only) vice-president, signalling ultimate trust in his designated successor. Two weeks later, it was Suleiman who appeared on national television to announce Mubarak’s departure from office, after thirty-one years. With his bushy moustache and hard, piercing eyes—often hidden behind dark glasses—Suleiman was every inch the spy chief. Believing that he was uniquely qualified to restore stability to Egypt, he tried to run for president in 2012; but his candidacy, backed by his friends in the military, was deeply unpopular with young activists and Islamists alike and was eventually disqualified by the Election Commission. In July 2012, a few days after Mohamed Morsi’s inauguration as Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Suleiman died unexpectedly in an American hospital while undergoing tests. Nobody had even known he was unwell. A proud and wily Qenawi, he remained secretive to the very end.

  Qena’s attitude to outsiders developed in spite of—or perhaps because of—its traditional role as a rendezvous for caravans of pilgrims travelling to and from Mecca. Like Qift, Qena is located at the Nile Valley terminus of a major route across the Eastern Desert, a route that was especially busy in medieval times and remains so today. Among the pilgrims who came to Qena was the man to whom the city’s main mosque is dedicated. Sheikh Abd al-Rahim al-Qenawi, a Sufi holy man, died at Qena in 1196 and his tomb is a favourite place of pilgrimage. His annual moulid (festival) is an important event, attended by officials from throughout the Qena province. Local people have pictures of al-Qenawi in their homes, and pray to him as an intercessor. But like Heqaib of Elephantine, the original reas
on for his fame has been forgotten: it is enough that he is a holy man, their holy man.

  While Egyptians come to Qena to pray at the shrine of al-Qenawi, foreign visitors to Egypt pass this way on a different pilgrimage. For them, coming principally from Luxor, Qena is best known for the road junction that leads to Dendera. There are better preserved temples in Egypt; there are more dramatically situated temples; and there are larger temples. But no other has the same allure as Dendera, a Roman temple dedicated to an Egyptian goddess. In 1828, six years after publishing his Lettre à Monsieur Dacier, which correctly proposed the key to the decipherment of hieroglyphics, Jean-François Champollion visited Egypt for the first time. Of all the monuments he toured, the temple of Dendera made the biggest impression. Mooring by the banks of the Nile on a moonlit night, Champollion and his party could not wait until the morning, such was their excitement at the prospect of seeing Dendera for themselves. They rushed ashore and took off across the fields, without any proper sense of direction. With their white hooded garments, guns and sabres, they must have presented an alarming sight. As Champollion himself recalled, “An Egyptian would have taken us for Bedouins.”24 On reaching the temple, they wandered among the ruins for two hours, in a state of rapture. The breathtaking architecture of Dendera made them “drunk wth admiration … the propylon, flooded with a heavenly light—what a sensation! Perfect peace and mysterious magic reigned under the portico with its gigantic columns—and outside the moonlight was blinding! Strange and wonderful contrast!”25 Tragically, just seven years later, a quarter of the temple of Dendera was quarried away to provide materials for a saltpetre factory.