![looking on. The poor weaver asks backsheesh, and when I tell him I
have nothing smaller than an English sovereign, he says he can
change it!
Here we find also a sort of Holly-Tree Inn, a house for charitable
entertainment, such as is often seen in Moslem villages. It is a
square mud-structure, entered by two doors, and contains two long
rooms with communicating openings. The dirt-floors are cleanly
swept and fresh mats are laid down at intervals. Any stranger or
weary traveler, passing by, is welcome to come in and rest or pass
the night, to have a cup of coffee and some bread. There are two
cleanly dressed attendants, and one of them is making coffee,
within, over a handful of fire, in a tiny coffee-pot. In front, in the
sun, on neat mats, sit half a dozen turbaned men, perhaps tired
wanderers and pilgrims in this world, who have turned aside to rest
for an hour, for a day, or for a week. They appear to have been
there forever. The establishment is maintained by a rich man of the
place; but signs of an abode of wealth we failed to discover in any of
the mud-enclosures.
When we are under way again, we express surprise at finding
here such an excellent charity.
“You no think the Lord he take care for his own?” says Abd-el-Atti.
“When the kin' [king] of Abyssinia go to 'stroy the Kaabeh in
Mecca”—
“Did you ever see the Kaabeh?”
“Many times. Plenty times I been in Mecca.”
“In what part of the Kaabeh is the Black Stone?”
“So. The Kaabeh is a building like a cube, about, I think him, thirty
feet high, built in the middle of the mosque at Mecca. It was built by
Abraham, of white marble. In the outside the east wall, near the
corner, 'bout so (four feet) high you find him, the Black Stone, put
there by Abraham, call him haggeh el ashad, the lucky, the fortunate
stone. It is opposite the sunrise. Where Abraham get him? God
knows. If any one sick, he touch this stone, be made so well as he
was. So I hunderstand. The Kaabeh is in the centre of the earth, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/102663-250409182437-2567b27b/85/Robotic-Fabrication-in-Architecture-Art-and-Design-2018-1st-Edition-Jan-Willmann-44-320.jpg)
Robotic Fabrication in Architecture Art and Design 2018 1st Edition Jan Willmann
- 1. Robotic Fabrication in Architecture Art and Design 2018 1st Edition Jan Willmann download https://ebookmeta.com/product/robotic-fabrication-in- architecture-art-and-design-2018-1st-edition-jan-willmann/ Download more ebook from https://ebookmeta.com
- 2. We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click the link to download now, or visit ebookmeta.com to discover even more! Aluminum Surfaces A Guide to Alloys Finishes Fabrication and Maintenance in Architecture and Art 1st Edition L. William Zahner https://ebookmeta.com/product/aluminum-surfaces-a-guide-to- alloys-finishes-fabrication-and-maintenance-in-architecture-and- art-1st-edition-l-william-zahner/ Zinc Surfaces: A Guide to Alloys, Finishes, Fabrication, and Maintenance in Architecture and Art 1st Edition L. William Zahner https://ebookmeta.com/product/zinc-surfaces-a-guide-to-alloys- finishes-fabrication-and-maintenance-in-architecture-and-art-1st- edition-l-william-zahner/ Steel Surfaces: A Guide to Alloys, Finishes, Fabrication and Maintenance in Architecture and Art 1st Edition L. William Zahner https://ebookmeta.com/product/steel-surfaces-a-guide-to-alloys- finishes-fabrication-and-maintenance-in-architecture-and-art-1st- edition-l-william-zahner/ DiPiro’s Pharmacotherapy Handbook 12th Edition Terry L. Schwinghammer https://ebookmeta.com/product/dipiros-pharmacotherapy- handbook-12th-edition-terry-l-schwinghammer/
- 3. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Mo Dao Zu Shi Novel Vol 2 1st Edition Mo Xiang Tong Xiu https://ebookmeta.com/product/grandmaster-of-demonic-cultivation- mo-dao-zu-shi-novel-vol-2-1st-edition-mo-xiang-tong-xiu/ Awareness of GOD 2022nd Edition Rabbi Moshe Weiner https://ebookmeta.com/product/awareness-of-god-2022nd-edition- rabbi-moshe-weiner/ I Want To Know What Love Is 1st Edition M K Moore https://ebookmeta.com/product/i-want-to-know-what-love-is-1st- edition-m-k-moore-2/ Liberating France Third Edition. Edition Judy Anderson Allan Kerr https://ebookmeta.com/product/liberating-france-third-edition- edition-judy-anderson-allan-kerr/ Statistics at Square Two 3rd Edition Michael J. Campbell https://ebookmeta.com/product/statistics-at-square-two-3rd- edition-michael-j-campbell/
- 4. White Noise 1st Edition P A Wilson https://ebookmeta.com/product/white-noise-1st-edition-p-a-wilson/
- 6. Editors Jan Willmann, Philippe Block, Marco Hutter, Kendra Byrne and Tim Schork Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2018 Foreword by Sigrid Brell-Çokcan and Johannes Braumann, Association for Robots in Architecture
- 7. Editors Jan Willmann Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Weimar, Germany Philippe Block Department of Architecture, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland Marco Hutter Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland Kendra Byrne San Francisco, CA, USA Tim Schork Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ISBN 978-3-319-92293-5 e-ISBN 978-3-319-92294-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92294-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950095 Funded by KUKA Robotics Germany and the Association for Robots in Architecture © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other
- 8. physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
- 9. Foreword by the Association for Robots in Architecture Since the beginning of the Association for Robots in Architecture, it has been our goal to promote collaboration within the community, but also with partners from industry and cross-disciplines. Robots in Architecture is proud to be associated with leading research organizations within architecture, such as ACADIA, or eCAADe but the scope of work that is being done by the community is starting to exceed the field of architecture into many other new domains, and we feel that it is important to accompany such steps. One measure to ensure the exchange across disciplines and other domains is to open the community to disciplines such as engineering and robotics by establishing common platforms where people can meet and exchange their ideas and research. Together with Springer, the Association for Robots in Architecture has therefore established a new Journal for Construction Robotics with the first published issue at the end of 2017 to foster collaborative papers and high-quality research in architecture. Another goal for the Association was to join forces with associations in Robotics. In 2016, Robots in Architecture joined euRobotics AISBL, the largest public–private partnership involving robotics in Europe. Sigrid Brell-Çokcan co-established a new Topic Group on Construction Robotics, acting alongside the other established 30 topic groups within euRobotics, ranging from wearables, bio-inspired robotics, health care, mining to infrastructure. In 2018, Sigrid has joined the board of directors. Through networks such as euRobotics, it is not only possible to promote a field of research, but also to actively shape policy, so that the importance of Construction Robotics is recognized, and appropriate research funding is allocated to relevant topics. Through the Multi- Annual Roadmap in research for the EU and its Horizon 2020 programme, these initiatives not only reach a chosen few researchers in academia, but also a wide range of commercial and non-commercial research institutions, robotics developers and users alike in Europe and beyond.
- 10. This year, we recognize the importance of such public–private partnerships and euRobotics by presenting euRobotics chairman Bernd Liepert with the Rob|Arch Community Contribution award. It is our goal that more researchers within the Robots in Architecture community will reach out to large-scale research and believe strongly that euRobotics AISBL is a prime example on how to combine economic with academic and political interests, fostering the common goal of creating robotic innovation. Innovation is also one of the core qualities we are looking for when selecting awardees. This year’s Pioneering Achievement and Pioneering Industry Award goes to two very different architectural companies, who have greatly facilitated the potential of robotic processes in their work. The internationally highly reputed architectural office Snøhetta was one of the first architectural companies to invest in robotic arms, joining us for our first KUKA|prc workshop in 2010 at the Advances in Architectural Geometry Conference in Vienna. For them, the robot has been an important tool for prototyping new approaches and design, placed closely to the open office in Oslo. The second awardee is Branch Technology from Tennessee in the USA, who have gone even further by not just using robots as CNC machines, but by developing their own robotic processes for large-scale robotic 3D printing. What we feel is special about Branch is that it is a company by architects who develop products for architects. As such, they did not stem from academia but from practice and therefore had to find investors to fund their ideas. Today they have a team with a wide variety of backgrounds and have realized a number of large-scale projects, collaborated with companies such as Foster + Partners and even won an award for their joint vision of future construction on Mars by the NASA. We believe that this drive embodies the true spirit of the community. We see in Branch a perfect role model where robotics lies at the core to enable technology-driven creativity in new business models. By Yu Lei’s research at Tsinghua University in China and his own professional workshop, we do not just honour a single person, who has made significant contributions to architectural robotics in China, but also the entire Chinese community of companies and researchers,
- 11. where the past years have seen great developments and a surge of new ideas and initiatives, as was demonstrated at this year’s CAADRIA conference organized by Prof. Xu Weiguo and the DADA community. While the potential for Construction Robotics in China is huge, there is also a great need for education and research and thus educators like Yu Lei are important trailblazers by sharing and starting new business models in architecture. We also believe that it is important to recognize the researchers, without whose work into robotics we would not have today’s sophisticated methods and machines at hand, and who create tomorrow’s tools and processes today. Jonas Buchli, director of the ETH Zurich Agile & Dexterous Robotics Lab, is one such pioneer whose work spans across many disciplines—from neurobiology and human locomotion to service robotics and also architecture, where has been a Principal Investigator of the NCCR Digital Fabrication, developing the In situ Fabricator (IF), with the goal of enabling the machine to autonomously perform precise mobile manipulation tasks in unstructured and unpredictable environments. We recognize his work with a Pioneering Research Award. In 2018, the Rob|Arch conference is back in Europe for the first time since Vienna in 2012 and is being hosted at ETH Zurich. ETH Zurich, in particular through the work of Gramazio Kohler Research, has been a central part of the research community and further solidified that status with the creation of the NCCR Digital Fabrication, a multi- disciplinary research cluster with more than 14 professors. We see ETH Zurich and the NCCR Digital Fabrication as a prime example how research can happen on a very large scale, with highly interdisciplinary and diverse research teams. At the same time, we believe that innovative research can also be done at a smaller scale, as it is demonstrated by this year’s 15 Rob|Arch conference workshops, involving tutors from more than 25 institutions, that are hosted centrally in ETH Zurich’s Robotic Fabrication Laboratory. An effort like Rob|Arch 2018 is only possible when many people work together towards a common goal. We would like to thank our local hosts at ETH Zurich and the NCCR Digital Fabrication, the Scientific Board led by Jan Willmann and all minds and hands involved in setting up such a big event.
- 12. We are grateful to Matt Jezyk (Autodesk) and Alois Buchstab (KUKA) for their continuing and enthusiastic support of the community through their respective companies, and we would like to thank all sponsors of this conference – Arup, BCG, Sika, Erne, Moog, and Bachmann Engineering – for this year’s collaboration in making Rob|Arch 2018 a success. Sigrid Brell-Çokcan (Association for Robots in Architecture) Johannes Braumann (Association for Robots in Architecture)
- 13. Preface New Scientific Frontiers The emergence of robotics with the creative sectors has led to an entirely new epistemology of collective making that is inextricably open and future-oriented. Challenged by increasingly complex technological and environmental problems, architects, designers, civil and process engineers, and roboticists are seeking novel practices of collaboration and exchange that deliberately overcome and dissolve traditional disciplinary boundaries. This collective approach to working with robots is not only revolutionizing how things are designed and made, but is fundamentally transforming the culture, politics and economics of the creative industries as a whole. What distinguishes contemporary industrial robots from their industrial predecessors—and indeed from other contemporary computer-controlled devices—is their versatility. Like computers, today’s robotic arms are suitable for a wide variety of tasks: they are “generic”, open-ended, adaptable and not restricted to any particular application or disciplinary focus. This versatility allows them to be readily customized and programmed to suit a wide range of specific intentions, both at the material and conceptual levels. It has also allowed us to shift our perception of robots as mechanistic, utilitarian devices suited to standardized serial production, towards understanding them as creative tools for exploring, designing and realizing physical objects and the built environment. If the first robotic age—the age of industrial automation—vastly improved our physical productivity, the second robotic age will surely come to distinguish itself as a driver of creative capacity. The present moment is ripe for connecting robot technology with imagination and materialization, inspiring new fundamental discoveries and opening new scientific frontiers. In fact, we have within reach access to volumes of information and centuries of knowledge about how to design and realize the material world. Aided by global digital connectedness, open-source ideals and collective encounters, robotics rejuvenates traditional disciplinary wisdom with entirely new practices of scientific collaboration and knowledge transfer. Now, more
- 14. than ever, we are coming to understand that robotics research should not be bound by constricting disciplinary standards, constraints or ideologies lest we limit its potential. Yet to explore this unprecedented potential requires not only a technical grasp of robots’ capabilities and limitations, but also an in-depth understanding of the disciplinary consequences of robotics research. With its theme of “Radical Cross- disciplinarity”, Rob|Arch 2018 facilitates this understanding by encouraging novel scientific approaches, applications and collaborations, not just in robotics, but beyond. Closing the Loop The Rob|Arch conference series was first launched in Vienna, Austria, in 2012 by Sigrid Brell-Çokcan and Johannes Braumann, the founders of the Association for Robots in Architecture. Their purpose was to make industrial robots more accessible to the creative industries—including art, design and architecture—by sharing ideas, research results and technological developments. The series has since become a biannual tradition in the international community (travelling to Michigan, US, in 2014 and to Sydney, Australia, in 2016) and has decisively boosted the exchange and dynamics within. In 2018, Rob|Arch lands at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), marking an important milestone for the digital fabrication community: ETH Zurich is not only one of the leading international universities for technology and science, it is also the institution where the first industrial robotic fabrication laboratory for non-standard architectural fabrication processes was installed in 2005. Closing this loop gives us the opportunity to foster novel explorations and state-of-the-art knowledge, techniques and methods, while consolidating and advancing our collective understanding of the evolution and impact of robotics in art, design and architecture. It is no coincidence that Rob|Arch 2018 is also co-hosted by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Digital Fabrication. Launched in 2014, the NCCR Digital Fabrication is itself a truly cross-disciplinary research platform meant to foster the seamless combination of digital technologies and physical building processes through cooperation and exchange beyond disciplinary boundaries.
- 15. Content and Contributions The Rob|Arch 2018 publication features the most important contributions to the conference. Rather than featuring merely formalist or technicist robotic adventures, this publication goes beyond pure built outcome to forward fresh approaches to scientific innovation, knowledge exchange and cross-disciplinary collaboration. This includes designers, artists and architects, and also—and increasingly— computation and robotics experts and builders, materials scientists and engineers, process and systems specialists and manufacturers, to name just a few. As a consequence, this book gathers exceptional, scientifically rigorous projects that not only transform the way we design and make, but which also build collaborative capacity in the field of robotic fabrication. The structure of this publication addresses this “new territory” of collaborative research. Stepping beyond theoretical observation, it outlines five distinct epicentres of practical research, which range from design and simulation research to automated assembly and real-world applications. Robotics and material and structural engineering play an integral role in each of these five areas. Chapter 1 (“Design and Simulation”) discusses new computational approaches to image classification using neural networks, stochastic assembly and deep learning for robotic construction; it also presents procedural fabrication workflows and haptic programming techniques, automatic path planning methods, visual feedback techniques, and function representation models. Novel materials and material processes for robotic fabrication are introduced in Chapter 2 (“Material and Processes”), including thermally tuned concrete panel printing, time-based material deposition, and digitally controlled concrete injection processes. This is complemented by research into the robotic manipulation of filament material and the automated control of material behaviour for spatial extrusion processes. In Chapter 3 (“Construction and Structure”), the emphasis is on new robotic construction processes and structural applications, for example bespoke concrete reinforcement, highly versatile wood processing, automated band-saw cutting for complex timber structures,
- 16. fabrication-aware methods for the realization of non-standard timber shells, and an advanced hybrid subtractive-additive approach to robotically construct double-curved concrete shells. Finally, the chapter presents a novel approach to the construction of jammed architectural structures. Robotic control, machinery, tooling and fabrication are discussed in Chapter 4 (“Control and Fabrication”), involving tubular composite fabrication with the aid of robotic swarms, automated manufacturing of natural composites, 3D printing with clay on freeform moulds, choreographic robotic wood manipulation, aerial construction using a cyber-physical macro-material system, as well as adaptive robotic carving. Also outlined in this chapter are approaches for multi-mode hybrid fabrication, robotic extrusion of functionally graded building components, as well as of elements with non-standard topology, on-site robotic construction and additive manufacturing techniques for non- woven textiles. The transfer to larger scales of real-world applications and practices is addressed in Chapter 5 (“Application and Practice”). Here we present automated slipforming for façade elements, robotic brick printing and stacking, robotic sewing of wooden shells, additive manufacturing of truss-shaped concrete pillars, and the realization of topology-optimized concrete structures using abrasive techniques. Large-scale bespoke timber frame construction and cooperative robotic brick assembly are also discussed. Workshop Activities Rob|Arch 2018 features a variety of formats and sessions to encourage creative dabbling and encounters with different research topics, practices and field-wide issues. Led by experts from academia, practice and industry, Rob|Arch 2018 workshops empower participants to learn and practise hands-on skills, and discuss cutting-edge fabrication techniques and trends with their peers in a collaborative environment. This year’s workshops offer a broad range of topics, including multiple robotic fabrication, industry-grade robotic programming using HAL, robotic real-time control using Grasshopper, robotic fabrication through the COMPAS framework, chainsawed wood joinery, cooperative
- 17. robotic assembly of spatial timber structures, large-scale robotic construction, hybrid robotic 3D printing of concrete shell structures, autonomous robotic swarm systems, adaptive spatial 3D printing of space frame structures, automated assembly in constrained sites, mixed reality environments for complex steel structures, mixed reality simulation for collaborative design exploration, as well as an introduction to KUKA|prc for Dynamo. Beyond Boundaries Rob|Arch 2018 aims to bring the community ground-breaking approaches to robotic fabrication from the most innovative research laboratories in the world, all while illuminating alternative pathways to boosting cross-disciplinary research and exchange. This publication therefore highlights contributions that not only substantially advance the state-of-the-art in robotic fabrication, but also challenge the reputedly clear division between research, practice and industry. It is our belief that effective knowledge transfer and exchange between different disciplines is crucial for the development of truly innovative and high-impact research in robotics, a priori, rather than a posteriori. Specifically, Rob|Arch 2018 looks at new paradigms of scientific collaboration, along with the challenges, risks and dynamics within this process. Given that our collective expertise includes autonomous control systems, advanced construction, collaborative design tools, computerized materials and structures, adaptive sensing and actuation, on-site and cooperative robotics, machine-learning, human–machine interaction, large-scale robotic fabrication and networked workflows (the list goes on), we can no longer discuss cross- disciplinarity, cooperation and collaboration in abstract terms. Doing so would be utterly inadequate to address the manifold cultures and practices of robotics that have emerged to master the increasingly complex technological and environmental challenges we face today. While we have observed a growing capacity for knowledge transfer and exchange in Rob|Arch submissions with each subsequent edition of the conference, this year the blurring of disciplinary boundaries between creative-, scientific- and practice-based domains is particularly
- 18. significant. We view this as a sign that complex problems cannot be dealt with from a single disciplinary perspective alone. Yet, while this blurring has yielded many new robotic explorations and real-world applications, these have not taken place uniformly. For example, the fields of intelligent computational design and simulation systems are particularly benefiting from an expanded set of collaborations and exchange between researchers and industry practitioners. Other areas that have especially benefitted from collaborative exchange include: advanced robotic control systems, and feedback processes that enable robots to adapt to different material conditions and changing environments. In all these cases, constant interaction and knowledge transfer between architects, designers, engineers and roboticists are pivotal, both as a result and as a catalysing instrument. The fast pace of creative and scientific research documented by Rob|Arch is no doubt a result of the bringing-together of diverse disciplines, competences and cultures. Perhaps the emerging cross- disciplinary culture of robotic fabrication research will, through the collaboratively built future environment, one day yield a generational change in how we view the collaborative creative process more broadly. As Richard Sennett once described it: it stimulates a gathering of creative explorations similar to collective encounters that in the pre- machinic age used to be related with, and venerated for, all things man- made. Acknowledgments The Scientific Chairs would like to express their gratitude to the Conference Chairs, Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, for entrusting us with the development of Rob|Arch 2018. We would like to extend our gratitude to the Association for Robots in Architecture, namely Sigrid Brell-Çokcan and Johannes Braumann, for their invaluable support and commitment, and, above all, for the forming of a global (and cross-disciplinary) creative robotics community through the development and promotion of Rob|Arch. In addition, we would also like to thank Autodesk, KUKA, ARUP, Boston Consulting Group, Sika, ERNE, Moog and Bachmann Engineering who financially supported
- 19. Rob|Arch 2018. Our sincere appreciation goes out as well to the Paper Committee; this conference and publication would not have been possible without their timeless effort and support. The Scientific Chairs also wish to thank the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Digital Fabrication for co-hosting and supporting Rob|Arch 2018. The engagement of the NCCR Digital Fabrication, including its management staff, technicians and researchers, has been decisive in making this conference and publication possible. As such, a special thanks goes to Russell Loveridge, Orkun Kasap and Kaitlin McNally for their extraordinary commitment and work in coordinating and pushing Rob|Arch 2018 forward. We would also like to thank our Workshop Chair, Romana Rust, and all our workshop partners for their exceptional engagement. And, we would also like to extend our gratitude to ETH Zurich and the Department of Architecture for the generous opportunity to pursue Rob|Arch 2018 in Zurich at the Hoenggerberg Campus. Last but not least, we would like to thank all our research partners and peer institutions, our local supporters and colleagues at ETH Zurich, University of Technology, Sydney, and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Finally, we would also like to thank Springer Engineering for their kind support in editing and publishing this scientific publication. Jan Willmann Philippe Block Kendra Byrne Marco Hutter Tim Schork June 2018
- 20. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 21. the first, wetting it with muddy water, and working into it sand, clay, and tufts of dead hair. What a way to spend Sunday! This is, on the whole, a model village. The people appear to have nothing, and perhaps they want nothing. They do nothing, and I suppose they would thank no one for coming to increase their wants and set them to work. Nature is their friend. I wonder what the staple of conversation of these people is, since the weather offers nothing, being always the same, and always fine. A day and a night and a day we fight adverse winds, and make no headway. One day we lie at Farras, a place of no consequence, but having, almost as a matter of course, ruins of the time of the Romans and the name Rameses II. cut on a rock. In a Roman wall we find a drain-tile exactly like those we use now. In the evening, after moon-rise, we drop down to Aboo Simbel.
- 22. W CHAPTER XXIV.—GIANTS IN STONE. HEN daylight came the Colossi of Aboo Simbel (or Ipsambool) were looking into our windows; greeting the sunrise as they have done every morning for three thousand five hundred years; and keeping guard still over the approach to the temple, whose gods are no longer anywhere recognized, whose religion disappeared from the earth two thousand years ago:—vast images, making an eternity of time in their silent waiting. The river here runs through an unmitigated desert. On the east the sand is brown, on the west the sand is yellow; that is the only variety. There is no vegetation, there are no habitations, there is no path on the shore, there are no footsteps on the sand, no one comes to break the spell of silence. To find such a monument of ancient power and art as this temple in such a solitude enhances the visitor's wonder and surprise. The Pyramids, Thebes, and Aboo Simbel are the three wonders of Egypt. But the great temple of Aboo Simbel is unique. It satisfies the mind. It is complete in itself, it is the projection of one creative impulse of genius. Other temples are growths, they have additions, afterthoughts, we can see in them the workings of many minds and many periods. This is a complete thought, struck out, you would say, at a heat. In order to justify this opinion, I may be permitted a little detail concerning this temple, which impressed us all as much as anything in Egypt. There are two temples here, both close to the shore, both cut in the mountain of rock which here almost overhangs the stream. We need not delay to speak of the smaller one, although it would be wonderful, if it were not for the presence of the larger. Between the two was a rocky gorge. This is now nearly filled up, to the depth of a hundred feet, by the yellow sand that has drifted and still drifts over from the level of the desert hills above.
- 23. This sand, which drifts exactly like snow, lies in ridges like snow, and lies loose and sliding under the feet or packs hard like snow, once covered the façade of the big temple altogether, and now hides a portion of it. The entrance to the temple was first cleared away in 1817 by Belzoni and his party, whose gang of laborers worked eight hours a day for two weeks with the thermometer at 1120 to 1160 Fahrenheit in the shade—an almost incredible endurance when you consider what the heat must have been in the sun beating upon this dazzling wall of sand in front of them. The rock in which the temple is excavated was cut back a considerable distance, but in this cutting the great masses were left which were to be fashioned into the four figures. The façade thus made, to which these statues are attached, is about one hundred feet high. The statues are seated on thrones with no intervening screens, and, when first seen, have the appearance of images in front of and detached from the rock of which they form a part. The statues are all tolerably perfect, except one, the head of which is broken and lies in masses at its feet; and at the time of our visit the sand covered the two northernmost to the knees. The door of entrance, over which is a hawk-headed figure of Re, the titular divinity, is twenty feet high. Above the colossi, and as a frieze over the curve of the cornice, is a row of monkeys, (there were twenty- one originally, but some are split away), like a company of negro minstrels, sitting and holding up their hands in the most comical manner. Perhaps the Egyptians, like the mediaeval cathedral builders, had a liking for grotesque effects in architecture; but they may have intended nothing comic here, for the monkey had sacred functions; he was an emblem of Thoth, the scribe of the under- world, who recorded the judgments of Osiris. These colossi are the largest in the world *; they are at least fifteen feet higher than the wonders of Thebes, but it is not their size principally that makes their attraction. As works of art they are worthy of study. Seated, with hands on knees, in that eternal, traditional rigidity of Egyptian sculpture, nevertheless the grandeur of the head and the noble beauty of the face take them out of the
- 24. category of mechanical works. The figures represent Rameses II. and the features are of the type which has come down to us as the perfection of Egyptian beauty. * The following are some of the measurements of one of these giants:—height of figure sixty-six feet; pedestal on which it sits, ten; leg from knee to heel, twenty; great toe, one and a half feet thick; ear, three feet, five inches long; fore-finger, three feet; from inner side of elbow-joint to end of middle finger, fifteen feet. I climbed up into the lap of one of the statues; it is there only that you can get an adequate idea of the size of the body. What a roomy lap! Nearly ten feet between the wrists that rest upon the legs! I sat comfortably in the navel of the statue, as in a niche, and mused on the passing of the nations. To these massive figures the years go by like the stream. With impassive, serious features, unchanged in expression in thousands of years, they sit listening always to the flowing of the unending Nile, that fills all the air and takes away from that awful silence which would else be painfully felt in this solitude. The interior of this temple is in keeping with its introduction. You enter a grand hall supported by eight massive Osiride columns, about twenty-two feet high as we estimated them. They are figures of Rameses become Osiris—to be absorbed into Osiris is the end of all the transmigrations of the blessed soul. The expression of the faces of such of these statues as are uninjured, is that of immortal youth—a beauty that has in it the promise of immortality. The sides of this hall are covered with fine sculptures, mainly devoted to the exploits of Rameses II.; and here is found again, cut in the stone the long Poem of the poet Pentaour, celebrating the single-handed exploit of Rameses against the Khitas on the river Orontes. It relates that the king, whom his troops dared not follow, charged with his chariot alone into the ranks of the enemy and rode through them again and again, and slew them by hundreds. Rameses at that time was only twenty-three; it was his first great campaign. Pursuing the enemy, he overtook them in advance of his troops, and, rejecting the councils of his officers, began the fight at once. “The footmen and
- 25. the horsemen then,” says the poet (the translator is M. de Rouge), “recoiled before the enemy who were masters of Kadesh, on the left bank of the Orontes.... Then his majesty, in the pride of his strength, rising up like the god Mauth, put on his fighting dress. Completely armed, he looked like Baal in the hour of his might. Urging on his chariot, he pushed into the army of the vile Khitas; he was alone, no one was with him. He was surrounded by 2,500 chariots, and the swiftest of the warriors of the vile Khitas, and of the numerous nations who accompanied them, threw themselves in his way.... Each chariot bore three men, and the king had with him neither princes nor generals, nor his captains of archers nor of chariots.” Then Rameses calls upon Amun; he reminds him of the obelisk he has raised to him, the bulls he has slain for him:—“Thee, I invoke, O my Father! I am in the midst of a host of strangers, and no man is with me. My archers and horsemen have abandoned me; when I cried to them, none of them has heard, when I called for help. But I prefer Amun to thousands of millions of archers, to millions of horsemen, to millions of young heroes all assembled together. The designs of men are nothing, Amun overrules them.” Needless to say the prayer was heard, the king rode slashing through the ranks of opposing chariots, slaying, and putting to rout the host. Whatever basis of fact the poem may have had in an incident of battle or in the result of one engagement, it was like one of Napoleon's bulletins from Egypt. The Khitas were not subdued and, not many years after, they drove the Egyptians out of their land and from nearly all Palestine, forcing them, out of all their conquests, into the valley of the Nile itself. During the long reign of this Rameses, the power of Egypt steadily declined, while luxury increased and the nation was exhausted in building the enormous monuments which the king projected. The close of his pretentious reign has been aptly compared to that of Louis XIV.—a time of decadence; in both cases the great fabric was ripe for disaster. But Rameses liked the poem of Pentaour. It is about as long as a book of the Iliad, but the stone-cutters of his reign must have known it by heart. He kept them carving it and illustrating it all his life, on
- 26. every wall he built where there was room for the story. He never, it would seem, could get enough of it. He killed those vile Khitas a hundred times; he pursued them over all the stone walls in his kingdom. The story is told here at Ipsambool; it is carved in the Rameseum; the poem is graved on Luxor and Karnak. Out of this great hall open eight other chambers, all more or less sculptured, some of them covered with well-drawn figures on which the color is still vivid. Two of these rooms are long and very narrow, with a bench running round the walls, the front of which is cut out so as to imitate seats with short pillars. In one are square niches, a foot deep, cut in the wall. The sculptures in one are unfinished, the hieroglyphics and figures drawn in black but not cut—some event having called off the artists and left their work incomplete We seem to be present at the execution of these designs, and so fresh are the colors ot those finished, that it seems it must have been only yesterday that the workman laid down the brush. (A small chamber in the rock outside the temple, which was only opened in 1874, is wonderful in the vividness of its colors; we see there better than anywhere else the colors of vestments.) These chambers are not the least mysterious portion of this temple. They are in absolute darkness, and have no chance of ventilation. By what light was this elaborate carving executed? If people ever assembled in them, and sat on these benches, when lights were burning, how could they breathe? If they were not used, why should they have been so decorated? They would serve very well for the awful mysteries of the Odd Fellows. Perhaps they were used by the Free Masons in Solomon's time. Beyond the great hall is a transverse hall (having two small chambers off from it) with four square pillars, and from this a corridor leads to the adytum. Here, behind an altar of stone, sit four marred gods, facing the outer door, two hundred feet from it. They sit in a twilight that is only-brightened by rays that find their way in at the distant door; but at morning they can see, from the depth of their mountain cavern, the rising sun.
- 27. We climbed, up the yielding sand-drifts, to the top of the precipice in which the temple is excavated, and walked back to a higher ridge. The view from there is perhaps the best desert view on the Nile, more extensive and varied than that of Aboosir. It is a wide sweep of desolation. Up and down the river we see vast plains of sand and groups of black hills; to the west and north the Libyan desert extends with no limit to a horizon fringed with sharp peaks, like aiguilles of the Alps, that have an exact resemblance to a forest. At night, we give the ancient deities a sort of Fourth of July, and illuminate the temple with colored lights. A blue-light burns upon the altar in the adytum before the four gods, who may seem in their penetralia to receive again the worship to which they were accustomed three thousand years ago. A green flame in the great hall brings out mysteriously the features of the gigantic Osiride, and revives the midnight glow of the ancient ceremonies. In the glare of torches and colored lights on the outside, the colossi loom in their gigantic proportions and cast grotesque shadows. Imagine this temple as it appeared to a stranger initiated into the mysteries of the religion of the Pharaohs—a cultus in which the mathematical secrets of the Pyramid and the Sphinx, art and architecture, were wrapped in the same concealment with the problem of the destiny of the soul; when the colors on these processions of gods and heroes, upon these wars and pilgrimages sculptured in large on the walls, were all brilliant; when these chambers were gorgeously furnished, when the heavy doors that then hung in every passage, separating the different halls and apartments, only swung open to admit the neophyte to new and deeper mysteries, to halls blazing with light, where he stood in the presence of these appalling figures, and of hosts of priests and acolytes. The temple of Aboo Simbel was built early in the reign of Rameses II., when art, under the impulse of his vigorous predecessors was in its flower, and before the visible decadence which befel it later under a royal patronage and “protection,” and in the demand for a wholesale production, which always reduces any art to mechanical
- 28. conditions. It seemed to us about the finest single conception in Egypt. It must have been a genius of rare order and daring who evoked in this solid mountain a work of such grandeur and harmony of proportion, and then executed it without a mistake. The first blow on the exterior, that began to reveal the Colossi, was struck with the same certainty and precision as that which brought into being the gods who are seated before the altar in the depth of the mountain. A bolder idea was never more successfully wrought out. Our last view of this wonder was by moonlight and by sunrise. We arose and went forth over the sand-bank at five o'clock. Venus blazed as never before. The Southern Cross was paling in the moonlight. The moon, in its last half, hung over the south-west corner of the temple rock, and threw a heavy shadow across a portion of the sitting figures. In this dimness of the half-light their proportions were supernatural. Details were lost. These might be giants of pre-historic times, or the old fabled gods of antediluvian eras, outlined largely and majestically, groping their way out of the hills. Above them was the illimitable, purplish blue of the sky. The Moon, one of the goddesses of the temple, withdrew more and more before the coming of Re, the sun-god to whom the temple is dedicated, until she cast no shadow on the façade. The temple, even the interior, caught the first glow of the reddening east. The light came, as it always comes at dawn, in visible waves, and these passed over the features of the Colossi, wave after wave, slowly brightening them into life. In the interior the first flush was better than the light of many torches, and the Osiride figures were revealed in their hiding-places. At the spring equinox the sun strikes squarely in, two hundred feet, upon the faces of the sitting figures in the adytum. That is their annual salute! Now it only sent its light to them; but it made rosy the Osiride faces on one side of the great hall. The morning was chilly, and we sat on a sand-drift, wrapped up against the cutting wind, watching the marvellous revelation. The
- 29. dawn seemed to ripple down the gigantic faces of the figures outside, and to touch their stony calm with something like a smile of gladness; it almost gave them motion, and we would hardly have felt surprised to see them arise and stretch their weary limbs, cramped by ages of inaction, and sing and shout at the coming of the sun-god. But they moved not, the strengthening light only revealed their stony impassiveness; and when the sun, rapidly clearing the eastern hills of the desert, gilded first the row of grinning monkeys, and then the light crept slowly down over faces and forms to the very feet, the old heathen helplessness stood confessed. And when the sun swung free in the sky, we silently drew away and left the temple and the guardians alone and unmoved. We called the reis and the crew; the boat was turned to the current, the great sweeps dipped into the water, and we continued our voyage down the eternal river, which still sings and flows in this lonely desert place, where sit the most gigantic figures man ever made.
- 30. W CHAPTER XXV.—FLITTING THROUGH NUBIA. E HAVE been learning the language. The language consists merely of tyeb. With tyeb in its various accents and inflections, you can carry on an extended conversation. I have heard two Arabs talking for a half hour, in which one of them used no word for reply or response except tyeb “good.” Tyeb is used for assent, agreement, approval, admiration, both interrogatively and affectionately. It does the duty of the Yankee “all right” and the vulgarism “that's so” combined; it has as many meanings as the Italian va bene, or the German So! or the English girl's yes! yes? ye-e-s, ye-e-as? yes (short), 'n ye-e-es in doubt and really a negative—ex.:—“How lovely Blanche looks to-night!” “'n ye- e-es.” You may hear two untutored Americans talking, and one of them, through a long interchange of views will utter nothing except, “that's so,” “that's so?” “that's so,” “that's so.” I think two Arabs meeting could come to a perfect understanding with: “Tyeb?' “Tyeb.” “Tyeb!” (both together). “Tyeb?” (showing something). “Tyeb” (emphatically, in admiration). “Tyeb” (in approval of the other's admiration). “Tyeb Ketér” (“good, much”). “Tyeb Keter?” “Tyeb.” “Tyeb.” (together, in ratification of all that has been said).
- 31. I say tyeb in my satisfaction with you; you say tyeb in pleasure at my satisfaction; I say tyeb in my pleasure at your pleasure. The servant says tyeb when you give him an order; you say tyeb upon his comprehending it. The Arabic is the richest of languages. I believe there are three hundred names for earth, a hundred for lion, and so on. But the vocabulary of the common people is exceedingly limited. Our sailors talk all day with the aid of a very few words. But we have got beyond tyeb. We can say eiwa (“yes”)—or nam, when we wish to be elegant—and la (“no”). The universal negative in Nubia, however, is simpler than this—it is a cluck of the tongue in the left check and a slight upward jerk of the head. This cluck and jerk makes “no,” from which there is no appeal. If you ask a Nubian the price of anything—be-kam dee?—and he should answer khamsa (“five”), and you should offer thelata (“three”), and he should kch and jerk up his head, you might know the trade was hopeless; because the kch expresses indifference as well as a negative. The best thing you could do would be to say bookra (“to-morrow”), and go away—meaning in fact to put off the purchase forever, as the Nubian very well knows when he politely adds, tyeb. But there are two other words necessary to be mastered before the traveller can say he knows Arabic. To the constant call for “backsheesh” and the obstructing rabble of beggars and children, you must be able to say mafeesh (“nothing”), and im'shee (“getaway,” “clear out,” “scat.”) It is my experience that this im'shee is the most necessary word in Egypt. We do nothing all day but drift, or try to drift, against the north wind, not making a mile an hour, constantly turning about, floating from one side of the river to the other. It is impossible to row, for the steersman cannot keep the boat's bow to the current. There is something exceedingly tedious, even to a lazy and resigned man, in this perpetual drifting hither and thither. To float, however slowly, straight down the current, would be quite another thing. To go sideways, to go stern first, to waltz around so that you never can tell which bank of the river you are looking at, or which way you are going, or what the points of the compass are, is
- 32. confusing and unpleasant. It is the one serious annoyance of a dahabeëh voyage. If it is calm, we go on delightfully with oars and current; if there is a southerly breeze we travel rapidly, and in the most charming way in the world. But our high-cabined boats are helpless monsters in this wind, which continually blows; we are worse than becalmed, we are badgered. However, we might be in a worse winter country, and one less entertaining. We have just drifted in sight of a dahabeëh, with the English flag, tied up to the bank. On the shore is a picturesque crowd; an awning is stretched over high poles; men are busy at something under it—on the rock near sits a group of white people under umbrellas. What can it be? Are they repairing a broken yard? Are they holding a court over some thief? Are they performing some mystic ceremony? We take the sandal and go to investigate. An English gentleman has shot two crocodiles, and his people are skinning them, stuffing the skin, and scraping the flesh from the bones, preparing the skeletons for a museum. Horrible creatures they are, even in this butchered condition. The largest is twelve feet long; that is called a big crocodile here; but last winter the gentleman killed one that was seventeen feet long; that was a monster. In the stomach of one of these he found two pairs of bracelets, such as are worn by Nubian children, two “cunning” little leathern bracelets ornamented with shells—a most useless ornament for a crocodile. The animal is becoming more and more shy every year, and it is very difficult to get a shot at one. They come out in the night, looking for bracelets. One night we nearly lost Ahmed, one of our black boys; he had gone down upon the rudder, when an enquiring crocodile came along and made a snap at him—when the boy climbed on deck he looked white even by starlight. The invulnerability of the crocodile hide is exaggerated. One of these had two bullet-holes in his back. His slayer says he has repeatedly put bullets through the hide on the back.
- 33. When we came away we declined steaks, but the owner gave us some eggs, so that we might raise our own crocodiles. Gradually we drift out of this almost utterly sterile country, and come to long strips of palm-groves, and to sakiyas innumerable, shrieking on the shore every few hundred feet. We have time to visit a considerable village, and see the women at their other occupation (besides lamentation) braiding each other's hair; sitting on the ground, sometimes two at a head, patiently twisting odds and ends of loose hair into the snaky braids, and muddling the whole with sand, water, and clay, preparatory to the oil. A few women are spinning with a hand-spindle and producing very good cotton- thread. All appear to have time on their hands. And what a busy place this must be in summer, when the heat is like that of an oven! The men loaf about like the women, and probably do even less. Those at work are mostly slaves, boys and girls in the slightest clothing; and even these do a great deal of “standing round.” Wooden hoes are used. The desert over which we walked beyond the town was very different from the Libyan with its drifts and drifts of yellow sand. We went over swelling undulations (like our rolling prairies), cut by considerable depressions, of sandstone with a light sand cover but all strewn with shale or shingle. This black shale is sometimes seen adhering like a layer of glazing to the coarse rock; and, though a part of the rock, it has the queer appearance of having been a deposit solidified upon it and subsequently broken off. On the tops of these hills we found everywhere holes scooped out by the natives in search of nitre; the holes showed evidence, in dried mud, of the recent presence of water. We descended into a deep gorge, in which the rocks were broken squarely down the face, exhibiting strata of red, white, and variegated sandstone; the gorge was a Wady that ran far back into the country among the mountains; we followed it down to a belt of sunt acacias and palms on the river. This wady was full of rocks, like a mountain stream at home; a great torrent running long in it, had worn the rocks into fantastic shapes, cutting punch-bowls and the
- 34. like, and water had recently dried in the hollows. But it had not rained on the river. This morning we are awakened by loud talking and wrangling on deck, that sounds like a Paris revolution. We have only stopped for milk! The forenoon we spend among the fashionable ladies of Derr, the capital of Nubia, studying the modes, in order that we may carry home the latest. This is an aristocratic place. One of the eight- hundred-years-old sycamore trees, of which we made mention, is still vigorous and was bearing the sycamore fig. The other is in front of a grand mud-house with latticed windows, the residence of the Kashefs of Sultan Selim whose descendants still occupy it, and, though shorn of authority, are said to be proud of their Turkish origin. One of them, Hassan Kashef, an old man in the memory of our dragoman, so old that he had to lift up his eyelids with his finger when he wanted to see, died only a few years ago. This patriarch had seventy-two wives as his modest portion in this world; and as the Koran allows only four, there was some difficulty in settling the good man's estate. The matter was referred to the Khedive, but he wisely refused to interfere. When the executor came to divide the property among the surviving children, he found one hundred and five to share the inheritance. The old fellow had many other patriarchal ways. On his death-bed he left a legacy of both good and evil wishes, requests to reward this friend, and to “serve out” that enemy, quite in the ancient style, and in the Oriental style, recalling the last recorded words of King David, whose expiring breath was an expression of a wish for vengeance upon one of his enemies, whom he had sworn not to kill. It reads now as if it might have been spoken by a Bedawee sheykh to his family only yesterday:—“And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when I went to Mahanaim; but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore hold him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to the
- 35. grave with blood. So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.” We call at the sand-covered temple at A'mada, and crawl into it; a very neat little affair, with fresh color and fine sculptures, and as old as the time of Osirtasen III. (the date of the obelisk of Heliopolis, of the Tombs of Beni Hassan, say about fifteen hundred years before Rameses II.); and then sail quickly down to Korosko, passing over in an hour or so a distance that required a day and a half on the ascent. At Korosko there are caravans in from Kartoom; the camel-drivers wear monstrous silver rings, made in the interior, the crown an inch high and set with blood-stone. I bought from the neck of a pretty little boy a silver “charm,” a flat plate with the name of Allah engraved on it. Neither the boy nor the charm had been washed since they came into being. The caravan had brought one interesting piece of freight, which had just been sent down the river. It was the head of the Sultan of Darfoor, preserved in spirits, and forwarded to the Khedive as a present. This was to certify that the Sultan was really killed, when Darfoor was captured by the army of the Viceroy; though I do not know that there is any bounty on the heads of African Sultans. It is an odd gift to send to a ruler who wears the European dress and speaks French, and whose chief military officers are Americans. The desolate hills behind Korosko rise a thousand feet, and we climbed one of the peaks to have a glimpse of the desert route and the country towards Kartoom. I suppose a more savage landscape does not exist. The peak of black disintegrated rocks on which we stood was the first of an assemblage of such as far as we could see south; the whole horizon was cut by these sharp peaks; and through these thickly clustering hills the caravan trail made its way in sand and powdered dust. Shut in from the breeze, it must be a hard road to travel, even with a winter sun multiplying its rays from all these hot rocks; in the summer it would be frightful. But on these summits, or on any desert swell, the air is an absolute elixir of life; it
- 36. has a quality of lightness but not the rarity that makes respiration difficult. At a village below Korosko we had an exhibition of the manner of fighting with the long Nubian war-spear and the big round shield made of hippopotamus-hide. The men jumped about and uttered frightening cries, and displayed more agility than fight, the object being evidently to terrify by a threatening aspect; but the scene was as barbarous as any we see in African pictures. Here also was a pretty woman (pretty for her) with beautiful eyes, who wore a heavy nose-ring of gold, which she said she put on to make her face beautiful; nevertheless she would sell the ring for nine dollars and a half. The people along here will sell anything they have, ornaments, charms to protect them from the evil-eye,—they will part with anything for money. At this village we took on a crocodile ten feet long, which had been recently killed, and lashed it to the horizontal yard. It was Abd-el-Atti's desire to present it to a friend in Cairo, and perhaps he was not reluctant, when we should be below the cataract, to have it take the appearance, in the eyes of spectators, of having been killed by some one on this boat. We obtained above Korosko one of the most beautiful animals in the world—a young gazelle—to add to our growing menagerie; which consists of a tame duck, who never gets away when his leg is tied; a timid desert hare, who has lived for a long time in a tin box in the cabin, trembling like an aspen leaf night and day; and a chameleon. The chameleon ought to have a chapter to himself. We have reason to think that he has the soul of some transmigrating Egyptian. He is the most uncanny beast. We have made him a study, and find very little good in him. His changeableness of color is not his worst quality. He has the nature of a spy, and he is sullen and snappish besides. We discovered that his color is not a purely physical manifestation, but that it depends upon his state of mind, upon his temper. When everything is serene, he is green as a May morning, but anger changes him instantly for the worse. It is however true that he takes his color mainly from the substance upon
- 37. which he dwells, not from what he eats; for he eats flies and allows them to make no impression on his exterior. When he was taken off an acacia-tree, this chameleon was of the bright-green color of the leaves. Brought into our cabin, his usual resting-place was on the reddish maroon window curtains, and his green changed muddily into the color of the woollen. When angry, he would become mottled with dark spots, and have a thick cloudy color. This was the range of his changes of complexion; it is not enough (is it?) to give him his exaggerated reputation. I confess that I almost hated him, and perhaps cannot do him justice. He is a crawling creature at best, and his mode of getting about is disagreeable; his feet have the power of clinging to the slightest roughness, and he can climb anywhere; his feet are like hands; besides, his long tail is like another hand; it is prehensile like the monkey's. He feels his way along very carefully, taking a turn with his tail about some support, when he is passing a chasm, and not letting go until his feet are firmly fixed on something else. And, then, the way he uses his eye is odious. His eye-balls are stuck upon the end of protuberances on his head, which protuberances work like ball-and-socket joints—as if you had your eye on the end of your finger. When he wants to examine anything, he never turns his head; he simply swivels his eye round and brings it to bear on the object. Pretending to live in cold isolation on the top of a window curtain, he is always making clammy excursions round the cabin, and is sometimes found in our bed-chambers. You wouldn't like to feel his cold tail dragging over you in the night. The first question every morning, when we come to breakfast, is, “Where is that chameleon?” He might be under the table, you know, or on the cushions, and you might sit on him. Commonly he conceals his body behind the curtain, and just lifts his head above the roller. There he sits, spying us, gyrating his evil eye upon us, and never stirring his head; he takes the color of the curtain so nearly that we could not see him if it was not for that swivel eye. It is then that he appears malign, and has the aspect of a wise but ill-disposed Egyptian whose soul has
- 38. had ill luck in getting into any respectable bodies for three or four thousand years. He lives upon nothing,—you would think he had been raised in a French pension. Few flies happen his way; and, perhaps he is torpid out of the sun so much of the time, he is not active to catch those that come. I carried him a big one the other day, and he repaid my kindness by snapping my finger. And I am his only friend. Alas, the desert hare, whom we have fed with corn, and greens, and tried to breed courage in for a long time, died this morning at an early hour; either he was chilled out of the world by the cold air on deck, or he died of palpitation of the heart; for he was always in a flutter of fear, his heart going like a trip-hammer, when anyone approached him. He only rarely elevated his long silky ears in a serene enjoyment of society. His tail was too short, but he was, nevertheless, an animal to become attached to. Speaking of Hassan Kashef's violation of the Moslem law, in taking more than four wives, is it generally known that the women in Mohammed's time endeavored also to have the privileges of men? Forty women who had cooked for the soldiers who were fighting the infidels and had done great service in the campaign, were asked by the Prophet to name their reward. The chief lady, who was put forward to prefer the request of the others, asked that as men were permitted four wives women might be allowed to have four husbands. The Prophet gave them a plain reason for refusing their petition, and it has never been renewed. The legend shows that long ago women protested against their disabilities. The strong north wind, with coolish weather, continues. On Sunday we are nowhere in particular, and climb a high sandstone peak, and sit in the shelter of a rock, where wandering men have often come to rest. It is a wild, desert place, and there is that in the atmosphere of the day which leads to talk of the end of the world. Like many other Moslems, Abd-el-Atti thinks that these are the last days, bad enough days, and that the end draws near. We have misunderstood what Mr. Lane says about Christ coming to “judge” the world. The Moslems believe that Christ, who never died, but was
- 39. taken up into heaven away from the Jews,—a person in his likeness being crucified in his stead,—will come to rule, to establish the Moslem religion and a reign of justice (the Millenium); and that after this period Christ will die, and be buried in Medineh, not far from Mohammed. Then the world will end, and Azrael, the angel of death, will be left alone on the earth for forty days. He will go to and fro, and find no one; all will be in their graves. Then Christ and Mohammed and all the dead will rise. But the Lord God will be the final judge of all. “Yes, there have been many false prophets. A man came before Haroun e' Rasheed pretending to be a prophet. “'What proof have you that you are one? What miracle can you do?'.rdquo; “'Anything you like.'.rdquo; “'Christ, on whom be peace, raised men from the dead.'.rdquo; “'So will I.' This took place before the king and the chief-justice. 'Let the head of the chief-justice be cut off,' said the pretended prophet, 'and I will restore him to life.'.rdquo; “'Oh,' cried the chief-justice, 'I believe that the man is a real prophet. Anyone who does not believe can have his head cut off, and try it.'.rdquo; “A woman also claimed to be a prophetess. 'But,' said the Khalif Haroun e' Rasheed, 'Mohammed declared that he was the last man who should be a prophet.'.rdquo; “'He didn't say that a woman shouldn't be,' the woman she answer.” The people vary in manners and habits here from village to village, much more than we supposed they would. Walking this morning for a couple of miles through the two villages of Maharraka —rude huts scattered under palm-trees—we find the inhabitants, partly Arab, partly Barabra, and many negro slaves, more barbaric than any we have seen; boys and girls, till the marriageable age, in a state of nature, women neither so shy nor so careful about covering themselves with clothing as in other places, and the slaves
- 40. wretchedly provided for. The heads of the young children are shaved in streaks, with long tufts of hair left; the women are loaded with tawdry necklaces, and many of them, poor as they are, sport heavy hoops of gold in the nose, and wear massive silver bracelets. The slaves, blacks and mulattoes, were in appearance like those seen formerly in our southern cotton-fields. I recall a picture, in abolition times, representing a colored man standing alone, and holding up his arms, in a manner beseeching the white man, passing by, to free him. To-day I saw the picture realized. A very black man, standing nearly naked in the midst of a bean-field, raised up both his arms, and cried aloud to us as we went by. The attitude had all the old pathos in it. As the poor fellow threw up his arms in a wild despair, he cried “Backsheesh, backsheesh, O! howadji!” For the first time we found the crops in danger. The country was overrun with reddish-brown locusts, which settled in clouds upon every green thing; and the people in vain attempted to frighten them from their scant strip of grain. They are not, however, useless. The attractive women caught some, and, pulling off the wings and legs, offered them to us to eat. They said locusts were good; and I suppose they are such as John the Baptist ate. We are not Baptists. As we go down the river we take in two or three temples a day, besides these ruins of humanity in the village,—-Dakkeh, Gerf Hossâyn, Dendoor. It is easy to get enough of these second-class temples. That at Gerf Hossâyn is hewn in the rock, and is in general arrangement like Ipsambool—it was also made by Rameses II.—but is in all respects inferior, and lacks the Colossi. I saw sitting in the adytum four figures whom I took to be Athos, Parthos, Aramis, and D'Artignan—though this edifice was built long before the day of the “Three Guardsmen.” The people in the village below have such a bad reputation that the dragoman in great fright sent sailors after us, when he found we were strolling through the country alone. We have seen no natives so well off in cattle, sheep, and cooking-utensils, or in nose-rings, beads, and knives; they are, however, a wild, noisy tribe, and the whole village followed us for a mile, hooting for backsheesh. The
- 41. girls wear a nose-ring and a girdle; the boys have no rings or girdles. The men are fierce and jealous of their wives, perhaps with reason, stabbing and throwing them into the river on suspicion, if they are caught talking with another man. So they say. At this village we saw pits dug in the sand (like those described in the Old Testament), in which cattle, sheep and goats were folded; it being cheaper to dig a pit than to build a stone fence. At Kalâbshee are two temples, ruins on a sufficiently large scale to be imposing; sculptures varied in character and beautifully colored; propylons with narrow staircases, and concealed rooms, and deep windows bespeaking their use as fortifications and dungeons as well as temples; and columns of interest to the architect; especially two, fluted (time of Rameses II.) with square projecting abacus like the Doric, but with broad bases. The inhabitants are the most pestilent on the river, crowding their curiosities upon us, and clamoring for money. They have for sale gazelle-horns, and the henna (which grows here), in the form of a green powder. However, Kalâbshee has educational facilities. I saw there a boys' school in full operation. In the open air, but in the sheltering angle of a house near the ruins, sat on the ground the schoolmaster. Behind him leaned his gun against the wall; before him lay an open Koran; and in his hand he held a thin palm rod with which he enforced education. He was dictating sentences from the book to a scrap of a scholar, a boy who sat on the ground, with an inkhorn beside him, and wrote the sentences on a board slate, repeating the words in aloud voice as he wrote. Nearby was another urchin, seated before a slate leaning against the angle of of the wall, committing the writing on it to memory, in a loud voice also. When he looked off the stick reminded him to attend to his slate. I do not know whether he calls this a private or a public school. Quitting these inhospitable savages as speedily as we can, upon the springing up of a south wind, we are going down stream at a spanking rate, leaving a rival dahabeëh, belonging to an English lord, behind, when the adversary puts it into the head of our pilot to steer across the river, and our prosperous career is suddenly arrested on a
- 42. sandbar. We are fast, and the English boat, keeping in the channel, shows us her rudder and disappears round the bend. Extraordinary confusion follows; the crew are in the water, they are on deck, the anchor is got out, there are as many opinions, as people, and no one obeys. The long pilot is a spectacle, after he has been wading about in the stream and comes on deck. His gown is off and his turban also; his head is shaved; his drawers are in tatters like lace-work. He strides up and down beating his breast, his bare poll shining in the sun like a billiard ball. We are on the sand nearly four hours, and the accident, causing us to lose this wind, loses us, it so happens, three days. By dark we tie up near the most excruciating Sakiya in the world. It is suggested to go on shore and buy the property and close it out. But the boy who is driving will neither sell nor stop his cattle. At Gertassee we have more ruins and we pass a beautiful, single column, conspicuous for a long distance over the desert, as fine as the once “nameless column” in the Roman forum, These temples, or places of worship, are on the whole depressing. There was no lack of religious privileges if frequency of religious edifices gave them. But the people evidently had no part in the ceremonies, and went never into these dark chambers, which are now inhabited by bats. The old religion does not commend itself to me. Of what use would be one of these temples on Asylum Hill, in Hartford, and how would the Rev. Mr. Twichell busy himself in its dark recesses, I wonder, even with the help of the deacons and the committee? The Gothic is quite enough for us. This morning—we have now entered upon the month of February —for the first time in Nubia, we have early a slight haze, a thin veil of it; and passing between shores rocky and high and among granite breakers, we are reminded of the Hudson river on a June morning. A strong north wind, however, comes soon to puff away this illusion, and it blows so hard that we are actually driven up-stream. The people and villages under the crumbling granite ledges that this delay enables us to see, are the least promising we have encountered; women and children are more nearly barbarians in
- 43. dress and manners; for the women, a single strip of brown cotton, worn à la Bedawee, leaving free the legs, the right arm and breast, is a common dress. And yet, some of these women are not without beauty. One pretty girl sitting on a rock, the sun glistening on the castor-oil of her hair, asked for backsheesh in a sweet voice, her eyes sparkling with merriment. A flower blooming in vain in this desert! Is it a question of “converting” these people? Certainly, nothing but the religion of the New Testament, put in practice here, bringing in its train, industry, self-respect, and a desire to know, can awaken the higher nature, and lift these creatures into a respectable womanhood. But the task is more difficult than it would be with remote tribes in Central Africa. These people have been converted over and over again. They have had all sorts of religions during the last few thousand years, and they remain essentially the same. They once had the old Egyptian faith, whatever it was; and subsequently they varied that with the Greek and Roman shades of heathenism. They then accepted the early Christianity, as the Abyssinians did, and had, for hundreds of years, opportunity of Christian worship, when there were Christian churches all along the Nile from Alexander to Meroë, and holy hermits in every eligible cave and tomb. And then came Mohammed's friends, giving them the choice of belief or martyrdom, and they embraced the religion of Mecca as cordially as any other. They have remained essentially unchanged through all their changes. This hopelessness of their condition is in the fact that in all the shiftings of religions and of dynasties, the women have continued to soak their hair in castor-oil. The fashion is as old as the Nile world. Many people look upon castor-oil as an excellent remedy. I should like to know what it has done for Africa. At Dabod is an interesting ruin, and a man sits there in front of his house, weaving, confident that no rain will come to spoil his yarn. He sits and works the treadle of his loom in a hole in the ground, the thread being stretched out twenty or thirty feet on the wall before him. It is the only industry of the village, and a group of natives are
- 44. looking on. The poor weaver asks backsheesh, and when I tell him I have nothing smaller than an English sovereign, he says he can change it! Here we find also a sort of Holly-Tree Inn, a house for charitable entertainment, such as is often seen in Moslem villages. It is a square mud-structure, entered by two doors, and contains two long rooms with communicating openings. The dirt-floors are cleanly swept and fresh mats are laid down at intervals. Any stranger or weary traveler, passing by, is welcome to come in and rest or pass the night, to have a cup of coffee and some bread. There are two cleanly dressed attendants, and one of them is making coffee, within, over a handful of fire, in a tiny coffee-pot. In front, in the sun, on neat mats, sit half a dozen turbaned men, perhaps tired wanderers and pilgrims in this world, who have turned aside to rest for an hour, for a day, or for a week. They appear to have been there forever. The establishment is maintained by a rich man of the place; but signs of an abode of wealth we failed to discover in any of the mud-enclosures. When we are under way again, we express surprise at finding here such an excellent charity. “You no think the Lord he take care for his own?” says Abd-el-Atti. “When the kin' [king] of Abyssinia go to 'stroy the Kaabeh in Mecca”— “Did you ever see the Kaabeh?” “Many times. Plenty times I been in Mecca.” “In what part of the Kaabeh is the Black Stone?” “So. The Kaabeh is a building like a cube, about, I think him, thirty feet high, built in the middle of the mosque at Mecca. It was built by Abraham, of white marble. In the outside the east wall, near the corner, 'bout so (four feet) high you find him, the Black Stone, put there by Abraham, call him haggeh el ashad, the lucky, the fortunate stone. It is opposite the sunrise. Where Abraham get him? God knows. If any one sick, he touch this stone, be made so well as he was. So I hunderstand. The Kaabeh is in the centre of the earth, and
- 45. has fronts to the four quarters of the globe, Asia, Hindia, Egypt, all places, toward which the Moslem kneel in prayer. Near the Kaabeh is the well, the sacred well Zem-Zem, has clear water, beautiful, so lifely. One time a year, in the month before Ramadan, Zem-Zem spouts up high in the air, and people come to drink of it. When Hagar left Ishmael, to look for water, being very thirsty, the little fellow scratched with his fingers in the sand, and a spring of water rushed up; this is the well Zem-Zem. I told you the same water is in the spring in Syria, El Gebel; I find him just the same; come under the earth from Zem-Zem.” “When the kin' of Abyssinia, who not believe, what you call infidel, like that Englishman, yes, Mr. Buckle, I see him in Sinai and Petra— very wise man, know a great deal, very nice gentleman, I like him very much, but I think he not believe—when the kin' of Abyssinia came with all his great army and his elephants to fight against Mecca, and to 'stroy the Kaabeh as well the same time to carry off all the cattle of the people, then the people they say, 'the cattle are ours, but the Kaabeh is the Lord's, and he will have care over it; the Kaabeh is not ours.' There was one of the elephants of the kin' of Abyssinia, the name of Mahmoud, and he was very wise, more wise than anybody else. When he came in sight of Mecca, he turned back and went the other way, and not all the spears and darts of the soldiers could stop him. The others went on. Then the Lord sent out of the hell very small birds, with very little stones, taken out of hell, in their claws, no larger than mustard seeds; and the birds dropped these on the heads of the soldiers that rode on the elephants— generally three or four on an elephant. The little seeds went right down through the men and through the elephants, and killed them, and by this the army was 'stroyed.” “When the kin', after that, come into the mosque, some power outside himself made him to bow down in respect to the Kaabeh. He went away and did not touch it. And it stands there the same now.”
- 47. W CHAPTER XXVI.—MYSTERIOUS PHILÆ. E are on deck early to see the approach to Philæ, which is through a gateway of high rocks. The scenery is like parts of the Rhine; and as we come in sight of the old mosque perched on the hillside, and the round tomb on the pinnacle above, it is very like the Rhine, with castle ruins. The ragged and rock island of Biggeh rises before us and seems to stop the way, but, at a turn in the river, the little temple, with its conspicuous columns, then the pylon of the great temple, and at length the mass of ruins, that cover the little island of Philæ, open on the view. In the narrows we meet the fleet of government boats conveying the engineer expedition going up to begin the railway from Wady Haifa to Berber. Abd-el-Atti does not like the prospect of Egypt running deeper and deeper in debt, with no good to come of it, he says; he believes that the Khedive is acting under the advice of England, which is entirely selfish and only desires a short way to India, in case the French should shut the Suez Canal against them (his view is a very good example of a Moslem's comprehension of affairs). Also thinking, with all Moslems, that it is best to leave the world and its people as the Lord has created and placed them, he replied to an enquiry about his opinion of the railroad, with this story of Jonah:— “When the prophet Jonah came out of the whale and sat down on the bank to dry under a tree (I have seen the tree) in Syria, there was a blind man sitting near by, who begged the prophet to give him sight. Then Jonah asked the Lord for help and the blind man was let to see. The man was eating dates at the same time, and the first thing he did when he got his eyes open was to snap the hard seeds at Jonah, who you know was very tender from being so long in the
- 48. whale. Jonah was stung on his skin, and bruised by the stones, and he cry out, 'O! Lord, how is this?' And the Lord said, 'Jonah, you not satisfied to leave things as I placed 'em; and now you must suffer for it'.” One muses and dreams at Philæ, and does not readily arouse himself to the necessity of exploring and comprehending the marvels and the beauties that insensibly lead him into sentimental reveries. If ever the spirit of beauty haunted a spot, it is this. Whatever was harsh in the granite ledges, or too sharp in the granite walls, whatever is repellant in the memory concerning the uses of these temples of a monstrous theogony, all is softened now by time, all asperities are worn away; nature and art grow lovely together in a gentle decay, sunk in a repose too beautiful to be sad. Nowhere else in Egypt has the grim mystery of the Egyptians cultus softened into so harmless a memory. The oval island contains perhaps a hundred acres. It is a rock, with only a patch or two of green, and a few scattered palms, just enough to give it a lonely, poetic, and not a fruitful aspect, and, as has been said, is walled all round from the water's edge. Covered with ruins, the principal are those of the temple of Isis. Beginning at the southern end of the island, where a flight of steps led up to it, it stretches along, with a curved and broadening colonnade, giant pylons, great courts and covered temples. It is impossible to imagine a structure or series of structures, more irregular in the lines or capricious in the forms. The architects gave free play to their fancy, and we find here the fertility and variety, if not the grotesqueness of imagination of the mediaeval cathedral builders. The capitals of the columns of the colonnade are sculptured in rich variety; the walls of the west cloister are covered with fine carvings, the color on them still fresh and delicate; and the ornamental designs are as beautiful and artistic as the finest Greek work, which some of it suggests: as rich as the most lovely Moorish patterns, many of which seem to have been copied from these living creations—-diamond-work, birds, exquisite medallions of flowers, and sphinxes.
- 49. Without seeing this mass of buildings, you can have no notion of the labor expended in decorating them. All the surfaces of the gigantic pylons, of the walls and courts, exterior and interior, are covered with finely and carefully cut figures and hieroglyphics, and a great deal of the work is minute and delicate chiselling. You are lost in wonder if you attempt to estimate the time and the number of workmen necessary to accomplish all this. It seems incredible that men could ever have had patience or leisure for it. A great portion of the figures, within and without, have been, with much painstaking, defaced; probably it was done by the early Christians, and this is the only impress they have left of their domination in this region. The most interesting sculptures, however, at Philæ are those in a small chamber, or mortuary chapel, on the roof of the main temple, touching the most sacred mystery of the Egyptian religion, the death and resurrection of Osiris. This myth, which took many fantastic forms, was no doubt that forbidden topic upon which Herodotus was not at liberty to speak. It was the growth of a period in the Egyptian theology when the original revelation of one God grew weak and began to disappear under a monstrous symbolism. It is possible that the priests, who held their religious philosophy a profound secret from the vulgar (whose religion was simply a gross worship of symbols), never relinquished the belief expressed in their sacred texts, which say of God “that He is the sole generator in heaven and earth, and that He has not been begotten.... That He is the only living and true God, who was begotten by Himself.... He who has existed from the beginning.... who has made all things and was not Himself made.” It is possible that they may have held to this and still kept in the purity of its first conception the myth of the manifestation of Osiris, however fantastic the myth subsequently became in mythology and in the popular worship. Osiris, the personification of the sun, the life-giving, came upon the earth to benefit men, and one of his titles was the “manifester of good and truth.” He was slain in a conflict with Set the spirit of evil and darkness; he was buried; he was raised from the dead by the prayers of his wife, Isis; he became the judge of the dead; he was
- 50. not only the life-giving but the saving deity; “himself the first raised from the dead, he assisted to raise those who were justified, after having aided them to overcome all their trials.” But whatever the priests and the initiated believed, this myth is here symbolized in the baldest forms. We have the mummy of Osiris passing through its interment and the successive stages of the under-world; then his body is dismembered and scattered, and finally the limbs and organs are reassembled and joined together, and the resurrection takes place before our eyes. It reminds one of a pantomime of the Ravels, who used to chop up the body of a comrade and then put him together again as good as new, with the insouciance of beings who lived in a world where such transactions were common. This whole temple indeed, would be a royal place for the tricks of a conjurer or the delusions of a troop of stage wizards. It is full of dark chambers and secret passages, some of them in the walls and some subterranean, the entrances to which are only disclosed by removing a close-fitting stone. The great pylons, ascended by internal stairways, have habitable chambers in each story, lighted by deep slits of windows, and are like palace fortresses. The view from the summit of one of them is fascinating, but almost grim; that is, your surroundings are huge masses of granite mountains and islands, only relieved by some patches of green and a few palms on the east shore. But time has so worn and fashioned the stones of the overtopping crags, and the color of the red granite is so warm, and the contours are so softened that under the brilliant sky the view is mellowed and highly poetical, and ought not to be called grim. This little island, gay with its gorgeously colored walls, graceful colonnades, garden-roofs and spreading terraces, set in its rim of swift water, protected by these granite fortresses, bent over by this sky, must have been a dear and sacred place to the worshippers of Isis and Osiris, and we scarcely wonder that the celebration of their rites was continued so long in our era. We do not need, in order to feel the romance of the place, to know that it was a favorite spot with Cleopatra, and that she moored her silken-sailed dahabeëh on
- 51. the sandbank where ours now lies. Perhaps she was not a person of romantic nature. There is a portrait of her here (the authenticity of which rests upon I know not what authority) stiffly cut in the stone, in which she appears to be a resolute woman with full sensual lips and a determined chin. Her hair is put up in decent simplicity. But I half think that she herself was like her other Egyptian sisters and made her silken locks to shine with the juice of the castor-oil plant. But what were these mysteries in which she took part, and what was this worship, conducted in these dark and secret chambers? It was veiled from all vulgar eyes; probably the people were scarcely allowed to set foot upon the sacred island. Sunday morning was fresh and cool, with fleecy clouds, light and summer-like. Instead of Sabbath bells, when I rose late, I heard the wild chant of a crew rowing a dahabeëh down the echoing channel. And I wondered how church bells, rung on the top of these pylons, would sound reverberating among these granite rocks and boulders. We climbed, during the afternoon, to the summit of the island of Biggeh, which overshadows Philæ, and is a most fantastic pile of crags. You can best understand this region by supposing that a gigantic internal explosion lifted the granite strata into the air, and that the fragments fell hap-hazard. This Biggeh might have been piled up by the giants who attempted to scale heaven, when Zeus blasted them and their work with his launched lightning. From this summit, we have in view the broken, rock-strewn field called the Cataract, and all the extraordinary islands of rock above, that almost dam the river; there, over Philæ, on the north shore, is the barrack-like Austrian Mission, and neat it the railway that runs through the desert waste, round the hills of the Cataract, to Assouan. These vast piled-up fragments and splintered ledges, here and all about us, although of raw granite and syenite, are all disintegrating and crumbling into fine atoms. It is this decay that softens the hardness of the outlines, and harmonizes with the ruins below. Wild as the convulsion was that caused this fantastic wreck, the scene is not without a certain peace now, as we sit here this Sunday afternoon, on a high crag, looking down upon the pagan