Part 10

I am certain that you take a lively interest in the travels of the unfortunate Seetzen, who was poisoned five years ago in Yemen. His labours, I can assure you, have been very extensive, and conducted in a most enlightened manner. His intimate acquaintance with all branches of natural history was applied with indefatigable zeal to countries the most difficult of access, and he had many times nearly become a martyr to those pursuits, before he met with his ultimate fate. It has fallen to my lot to trace his footsteps, in many hitherto unknown parts of Syria and Arabia Petrӕa, and again in the Hedjaz; these, together with what I heard from the Europeans who knew him at Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, as well as from many Arabs on the road, have inspired me with as great a respect for his private character, as the dispersed memoirs of his researches already published, must give every reader for his literary acquirements. Although endowed with a lively fancy, and even with considerable poetical talents, he was a man of plain truth. If sometimes over fond of speculating upon the facts which he had collected, yet I am certain that in stating those facts, he observed the strictest adherence to truth, and I have not the smallest doubt, that if he had lived to publish the mass of knowledge which he had acquired during his travels, he would have far excelled all travellers, who ever wrote on the same countries. Mr. Salt has lately shewn me a letter which he received in 1811, from Mr. Rutland, then factor at Mokha, acquainting him with the death of Seetzen, which had just taken place, and making mention, at the same time, of several papers which he had left as a present to Mr. Rutland, who adds that as they are in German he cannot read them. As Mr. Seetzen would hardly have thought it worth while to make such a present to a person who could so little appreciate its value, I am much inclined to suspect they were only left in his hands as a deposit. Exact designs and descriptions of Mekka and other places, vocabularies of eighteen African languages, &c. are stated to be among the number. Seetzen’s friends at Cairo, according to the common practice of Levantines, amongst whom most of the pseudo Franks established in these parts must be classed, entirely forgot him as soon as he was beyond their threshold, and it thus happened that although his death took place as far back as September, 1811, in the vicinity of Mokha, where it was of public notoriety, and that although since the beginning of 1811, no news whatever had been heard of him at Cairo, yet nobody thought proper to write to Mokha, for further enquiry, and as late as July 1815, nothing was known here of his fate. I then received a letter from Mokha, giving some details of the death of Mr. Seetzen, which I forwarded immediately to Vienna, accompanying it with a letter of my own to Mr. Hammer, which he, without being authorized to it, abridged and published, together with the other paper.

An Italian physician of the name of Cervelli, now established as a merchant at Alexandria, made four years ago some interesting travels in the North of Africa; he was attached to the son of Yousef Pasha of Tripoli, in the capacity of physician, and his patron being sent by his father to reduce Fezzan, the chief of which had been dilatory in the payment of the tribute, Cervelli accompanied the Pasha’s son upon that expedition; they first went from Tripoli by land to Derne, near to which Mr. Cervelli saw the splendid ruins of Cyrene, at least what he supposed to be the remains of that town; they went from Derne to Augila, and from thence to Fezzan, where they remained about six weeks, and then returned over a chain of mountains, where he found snow, (for it was in winter,) by Sokhne to Tripoli.

He heard of two English travellers having been at Fezzan, of whom one died, and the other was never heard of after his departure for Soudan; the name of Hornemann was unknown to Mr. Cervelli. This gentleman, although not a man of letters, possesses natural talents, and a good deal of vivacity and good nature; he told me that he took many notes, that he has not yet drawn up a journal, but that he has some intention of publishing his travels: I never could get him to shew me any of his papers, but I know that he possesses some, together with a few sketches of drawings; as his time is now totally occupied by commercial pursuits, I doubt, whether he will ever have leisure to work up his journal, and therefore, being well persuaded of the interest which his tour would excite, I have done my best to get possession of his papers, and offered him a thousand piastres for them, under the formal promise that if ever they should be published, it should be under his own name. Since his departure for Alexandria, I have charged Mr. Thurburn, formerly secretary to Colonel Missett, and now a partner in the house of Briggs and Co. a gentleman of much information, to renew the negociation with Mr. Cervelli. He has lately informed me, that Mr. Cervelli refuses to part with his papers; but has promised to employ his evenings in arranging them, as he wishes to publish them himself.

I feel the greatest regret, in being obliged to inform you, in closing this letter, that I have no well founded hopes of being able to leave Egypt before next spring. It would be tedious to enter into all the disappointments I have experienced, by the non-arrival of the western caravan. If the Committee believes that I am not a trifler in my duty, they will not doubt that nothing but imperious circumstances could so long detain me at Cairo. If, on the contrary, my prolonged stay in this city should give rise to any doubts of the sincerity of my intentions, I feel that nothing that I could say on the subject could possibly remove them.

_Cairo, 20th February,_ 1817.

By the present conveyance, I have the honour of transmitting to the Committee, my journals in the Hedjaz, together with some notices on the interior of Africa, and a translation from Macrizi, containing some documents on the history and geography of Nubia and the Nile countries; which may serve to illustrate my travels in Nubia.

You will be pleased to hear that the colossal head from Thebes has at last, after many difficulties, safely arrived at Alexandria. Mr. Belzoni, who offered himself to undertake this commission, has executed it with great spirit, intelligence, and perseverance. The head is waiting now at Alexandria for a proper conveyance to Malta. Mr. Salt and myself have borne the expenses jointly, and the trouble of the undertaking has devolved upon Mr. Belzoni, whose name I wish to be mentioned, if ever ours shall on this occasion, because he was actuated by public spirit fully as much as ourselves. The Committee need not be under any apprehension, that this transaction has caused my name to become of public notoriety in Egypt; which would certainly have been the case, if it had been known that I had a hand in the business, for during the fortnight the head remained at Boulak, the vessel was constantly crowded by swarms of visitors, of all classes. Nobody knows that I have had any thing to do with it. The Kahirines ascribe it entirely to Mr. Salt and Mr. Belzoni, who, they say, send it to England to have it taken to pieces, in order to find the invaluable jewel which it contains. The residence of the French Savans in Egypt has not taught them to form better notions, and the same kind of belief which caused the Shikh of Tedmor to resist my carrying off a small mutilated bust, found near the portico at Palmyra, still operates in every part of Egypt.

The peasants of Gourne reported to me, that the French had in vain endeavoured to carry off this head: and that they had even cut a hole in the lower part of the bust, to blow off part of the stone, and render it thus more transportable. I am ignorant for what reason they relinquished that scheme, but it is somewhat curious to find that in the drawing which they have given of that head, in their great work, they have represented it as it would probably have been, after the lower part should have been destroyed.

The discoveries of Mr. Belzoni in Upper Egypt, are too interesting not to deserve notice here. He has half cleared the temple of Ebsambal in Nubia, of the sands that obstructed it. The frontispiece of the temple, which has thus been discovered, is full of hieroglyphics; of the four colossi which stand before it, the face of one only (which I have mentioned in my journal), remains perfect; one of the three others has been reduced by mutilation to a mere lump of rock.

Behind Gourne[11] he has discovered a new tomb of the kings, about one mile distant from the most western “insulated tomb,” as the French laid it down in their map. He says it is beautiful, and larger than any of the others, with a sarcophagus in it. All the paintings are done upon a white stucco, adhering loosely to the wall, and thus easily to be removed.

By digging at Gourne, in the plain between the Memnonium, and Medinet Habou,[12] in a western direction from the two sitting colossi, about half a mile distant from them, he found a mutilated colossal head of granite, of much larger dimensions than the one he carried off, or any other at Thebes, being from ten to twelve feet across the front.

You remember the small pond, within the enclosure of the interior part of the temple of Karnak, towards the side of Luxor,[13] which encircles on three sides an elevated ground. A row of Andro-sphynxes, or whatever they may be called, stand there, which the French had dug up, and of which Mr. William Banks carried off last year the two best. In digging farther on in the line in which these statues stood, Mr. Belzoni has discovered eighteen others, of similar shape, but of much superior workmanship, all in beautiful preservation; he has brought down six of them to Mr. Salt, who had furnished him with money for the express purpose of procuring antiquities; besides the commission to carry off the head. By the side of these figures he has found another statue, of a hard, large grained sand stone: it is a whole length naked figure, sitting upon a chair, with a ram’s head upon the knees; the face and body entire; with plaited hair falling down to the shoulders. This is one of the finest, I should say the finest Egyptian statue I have seen; the expression of the face is exquisite, and I believe it to be a portrait. From the beautiful preservation of all these figures, which is so rare in Egypt, Mr. Belzoni argues, that the Egyptians used this place to hide their idols, when the Persians came to destroy them, and he hopes, in going up a second time to Thebes, to find at the same place other treasures. He has likewise found at Karnak, the four sided monument, with figures in high relief on three sides of it, of which the French talk so highly in their work, and of which they have given a drawing. But it was in quite a different place from that indicated by them, for Mr. Belzoni found it under ground far to the east of the adytum of Karnak. This, with a dozen of Sphinxes, he has been obliged to leave on the shore of the river near Karnak, the boat being already over loaded. The head alone weighs, I believe, from twelve to fifteen tons.

Mr. Belzoni, who is as enterprising as he is intelligent, high-minded, and disinterested, further informs us, that he has dug up the colossus, indicated by the French upon their map of Karnak, as laying on the N. W. side of the abovementioned pond, under the name of “Colosse renversé.” He has turned it up, and finds it to be a torso without head, or feet, about thirty feet in length, of beautiful workmanship; he says that he has seen nothing in Egypt, not even excepting our head, that can be compared to it, as it is a true imitation of nature, not done in the usual hard style, but according to the best rules of art.

If Mr. Belzoni had had a flat bottomed boat at his command, he is confident that he should have been able to float down one of the small obelisks of Philӕ, about twenty five feet in length. He handles masses of this kind with as much facility as others handle pebbles, and the Egyptians who see him a giant in figure, for he is six feet and a half high, believe him to be a sorcerer. Manual labour is so very cheap in Upper Egypt, that a little money goes a great way: the hire for a Fellah per day, is about four-pence; although upwards of one hundred Fellahs were occupied for many days with our head, and that we paid one hundred pounds for the boat only, and made a present to Mr. Belzoni, small indeed, but as much as our circumstances permitted, the total expense incurred by us, as far as Alexandria, does not amount to more than three hundred pounds, and Mr. Belzoni’s whole expedition, to about four hundred and fifty pounds. The Pasha of Egypt is luckily not yet aware of the value of these statues; if he was, he would probably imitate Wely Pasha of the Morea, and ask for passage money, for he extends his extortions over every article of Egyptian produce, and condescends even to farm out the trade of camel and sheep’s dung. Mr. Belzoni, who is known in England as a hydraulic engineer, and is married to an English woman, who has accompanied him to Egypt, entered last year the service of the Pasha, as a mechanic, but not being able to contend with the intrigues of a Turkish court, and too honourable to participate in them, he was dismissed as unfit for his business, and five months of pay still remain due to him. So much for the Pasha’s encouragement of European artists. They are enticed into his service by his emissaries in the Mediterranean, but are soon left to bewail their credulity.

You will find in the notes accompanying my translation of Macrizi, the account of some other very interesting discoveries, in the Eastern mountains of Upper Egypt; and last month, the old and so often visited pyramid of Djize was so well rummaged, that much curious new matter has come to light. Mr. Caviglia, an Italian, and Mr. Kabitch, a German, settled here, formed the project of exploring the well in the great pyramid. In the course of the operation, they have discovered that a continuation of the descending passage leads to a chamber under the centre of the pyramid, and they find that no other well descends into the passage.

I have been led to believe from various circumstances, that this new discovered continuation of the entrance passage was opened in the time of the Khalif who opened the pyramid, and that it has been choaked up ever since. If I am to believe Sherif Edrys, the author of a history of the Pyramids, a book, I believe, unknown in Europe, and which I have lately purchased here, the interior of the pyramid is full of passages and rooms, and several sarcophagi are yet to be discovered. This author wrote in the twelfth century, and himself minutely examined the pyramid.

I cannot dismiss the subject of Egyptian antiquities, without saying a word of Mr. Drovetti’s collection. It is certainly at present the finest of all those extant, in Italy, France, and England. There are few large statues, but great numbers of middle sized, and an innumerable series of idols, scarabees, medals, intaglios, and other articles illustrative of the religion and domestic life of the Egyptians, their dress, furniture, &c. &c. His rolls of papyrus are particularly valuable. He has ten quite entire, three of which are, I believe, the largest ever found in this country, together with a great number of smaller ones; and a large Coptic manuscript, written upon gazelle skin, found in the island of Omke, above the cataract of Wady Halfa. Many large specimens of Egyptian sculpture may yet be obtained, but it will be long before so complete a collection of smaller articles will be collected by one person. Mr. Drovetti has been for twelve years a person of great influence, and even power in Egypt; and his great object has been, to augment his collection, for which purpose he employed people in every part of the country. As it often happens in the Levant, with Europeans, long settled there, mercantile and pecuniary interests have at last got the better of his love for antiquity, and Mr. Drovetti having now turned corn-dealer, is desirous of converting his collection into cash. It would certainly be most desirable to have the collection in England. I believe that it has cost him about fifteen hundred pounds, and is certainly worth three or four times that sum in Europe.

I am in anxious expectation of a caravan for Lybia, and I have been long prepared to start at the shortest notice; I shall now leave Egypt with the more pleasure, because I shall not have to regret the abandoning of my journals in a rude state, which would have been the case if I had departed last year; for it will afford me no small consolation in my future travels, to think that whatever may be my fate, some fruit has been reaped from my pursuits, and that the Association is now in possession of several journals, containing new information upon very interesting countries.

_Cairo, March 23d,_ 1817.

If any thing can give me pleasure, it is the information which you give me, that my employers are contented with me, and I beg you to assure them, that as long as I shall have the honour to be in their service, no efforts shall be left untried by me to deserve their approbation. I fully appreciate the permission they have given me, to pass so long a time out of the intended direction of my labours. If some credit be due to me for the manner in which I have spent this time, no less is due to their liberality, in affording me the means of applying my exertions to countries and subjects, that fell not within the immediate scope of my mission; although I flatter myself, that the purposes of the latter were at the same time considerably advanced.

It affords me much satisfaction to understand that what I have written on the Bedouins has been found of interest. My last additions to those papers, which complete all the information I possess on that nation, have perhaps not reached you. I have illustrated their manners, laws, and character, with much pleasure, because I hold them to be infinitely superior to their neighbours the Turks. They have happily escaped the corruption of Levantine manners and morals, and this alone entitles them to the attention of the European public, although few travellers have thought them worth noticing, otherwise than as a nation of bloody, savage, and faithless robbers.

When you ask me whether I know Antar, you probably forget that the first knowledge I gained of that author, was from an odd volume in your own library.[14] I fully agree with you in your sentiments concerning it; it has certainly every characteristic of an epic poem; it is throughout of high interest, and often sublime. I have attentively read little more than one twelfth part of it; the copy I bought at Aleppo is among the MSS. which I sent to England from Syria. Its style is very remarkable; without descending to the tone of common conversation, as the One Thousand and one Nights often do, it is simple, and natural, and clear of that bombast, and those forced expressions, and far-fetched metaphors, which the Orientals admire even in their prosaists, but which can never be to the taste of an European critic. The poetry appears almost every where to be the effusion of real sentiment, and the heroic strain of Antar’s war and love songs, his satires and bursts of self-praise, are as exalted as they are natural. You are no doubt informed that this same Antar was one of the poets of the Moallakat, and that Osmay, who relates his life in this work, occupied a high rank among the poets at the court of Haroun er-Rashid, and his son Mamoun. I believe Sir William Jones was the first to call the attention of the public to this romantic poem, in his Comment. Poes. Asiat. He possessed only one or two volumes of it, yet enough to convince him of the excellence of the whole performance, of which he speaks in terms of the highest praise.

Having occasion to write to your brother[15] not long since, I suggested to him the expediency of making some abridgement, in case of his publishing a translation of any part of Antar, for there are many repetitions, in which the Arabs delight, but which lessen the general interest of the work. I am confident that the translation of the abridged Antar would extremely gratify the public, and nothing would give me greater pleasure, than to see the noble Bedouin romance ushered into this world.

_Cairo, 18th May,_ 1817.

By the present opportunity I transmit to Sir Joseph Banks, my journal in the peninsula of Sinai, and to you, a volume of proverbs and popular sayings current at Cairo. I am afraid the Committee will be startled at all the Arabic it contains, and exclaim that the writer was sent to these countries not to become a translator but a discoverer. I can only say in excuse, that as my stay in this city has been unfortunately, but necessarily, so much prolonged, I thought that with a view to forward my future designs, I could not do better than pursue my study of Arabic, and in so far I can assure you, that I have derived essential benefit from this compilation, while at the same time I hope that a knowledge of the Arab nation, and of their present language, may be somewhat advanced by it, and facilitated to others. In translating and explaining these sayings, I have been actuated by another motive; I wished to leave a memorial with my employers, as well as with the public, that I had acquired a competent knowledge of the vulgar dialect of the people whom I have described in my journals. The simple assurance to that effect, would go very little way with those, who know that for the last fifty years few Europeans have published their travels among Arabs, without pretending to be familiar with their language, and at the same time giving proofs of gross ignorance of it. It is true that from the perusal of my journals, and from the information which I collected in the course of my travels without the help of interpreters, the reader will probably infer that I must have understood something of this language; but he would still be left in utter ignorance whether that acquaintance was such, as to confirm or detract from the veracity of the stated facts; the latter being often applicable to those, who hear and understand only by halves, yet enough to make them believe that they are not in want of a Dragoman. I have therefore thought it incumbent upon me, to give some clear proof how far I really possess that knowledge, and cannot help flattering myself that by this little work I have given a greater degree of authenticity to my journals. If I am not able to display the learning of a profound Arabic scholar, I trust at least that those who take the trouble to peruse this volume, will give me credit for understanding the language of the bazar, and of the peasants, and that is all I wish for at present.

From what I have just said, you will perceive that I am desirous of having these sheets published. The number of amateurs of Arabic is so very small in Europe, and the printing of Arabic is so expensive, that even the advantageous sale of such a work would, I believe, hardly defray one third of the expenses. It is reasonable to doubt whether the African Association would like to engage in an undertaking, so foreign to its avowed pursuits, although I shall be very happy to find that I am mistaken in this surmise. But it strikes me that the Directors of the East India Company, who patronise so liberally every branch of Oriental learning, may perhaps be willing to lend their assistance to this publication.