Chapter 35

In the evening we took our final departure, crossing an uneven plain, covered with flints and the ruins of several villages, and then descended into the Wady Nedjed (Arabic); the rivulet, whose source is in a large paved basin in the valley, joins that of Shobak. Upon the hills which border this pleasant valley are the ruins of a large town of the same name, of which nothing remains but broken walls and heaps of stones. In one hour and a quarter from our encampment, and about as far from Shobak, we reached the camp of another tribe of Fellahein Bedouins, called Refaya (Arabic), where we slept. They are people of good property, for which they are indebted to their courage in opposing the extortions of the Howeytat. Here were about sixty tents and one hundred firelocks. Their herds of cows, sheep, and goats are very numerous, but they have few camels. Besides corn fields they have extensive vineyards, and sell great quantities of dried grapes at Ghaza, and to the Syrian pilgrims of the Hadj. They have the reputation of being very daring thieves.

August 22nd.—I was particularly desirous of visiting Wady Mousa, of the antiquities of which I had heard the country people speak in terms of great admiration; and from thence I had hoped to cross the desert in a straight line to Cairo; but my guide was afraid of the hazards of a journey through the desert, and insisted upon my taking the road by Akaba, the ancient Eziongeber, at the extremity of the eastern branch of the Red sea, where he said that we might join some caravans, and continue our route towards Egypt. I wished, on the contrary, to avoid Akaba, as I knew that the Pasha of Egypt kept there a numerous garrison to watch the movements of the Wahabi and of his rival the Pasha of Damascus;

SAOUDYE

[p.419] a person therefore like myself, coming from the latter place, without any papers to shew who I was, or why I had taken that circuitous route, would certainly have roused the suspicions of the officer commanding at Akaba, and the consequences might have been dangerous to me among the savage soldiery of that garrison. The road from Shobak to Akaba, which is tolerably good, and might easily be rendered practicable even to artillery, lies to the E. of Wady Mousa; and to have quitted it, out of mere curiosity to see the Wady, would have looked very suspicious in the eyes of the Arabs; I therefore pretended to have made a vow to slaughter a goat in honour of Haroun (Aaron), whose tomb I knew was situated at the extremity of the valley, and by this stratagem I thought that I should have the means of seeing the valley in my way to the tomb. To this my guide had nothing to oppose; the dread of drawing upon himself, by resistance, the wrath of Haroun, completely silenced him.

We left the Refaya early in the morning, and travelled over hilly ground. At the end of two hours we reached an encampment of Arabs Saoudye (Arabic), who are also Fellahein or cultivators, and the strongest of the peasant tribes, though they pay tribute to the Howeytat. Like the Refaya they dry large quantities of grapes. They lay up the produce of their harvest in a kind of fortress called Oerak (Arabic), not far from their camp, where are a few houses surrounded by a stone wall. They have upwards of one hundred and twenty tents. We breakfasted with the Saoudye, and then pursued the windings of a valley, where I saw many vestiges of former cultivation, and here and there some remains of walls and paved roads, all constructed of flints. The country hereabouts is woody. In three hours and a half we passed a spring, from whence we ascended a mountain, and travelled for some time along its barren summit, in a S.W. direction, when we again descended, and reached Ain

ELDJY

[p.420] Mousa, distant five hours and a half from where we had set out in the morning. Upon the summit of the mountain near the spot where the road to Wady Mousa diverges from the great road to Akaba, are a number of small heaps of stones, indicating so many sacrifices to Haroun. The Arabs who make vows to slaughter a victim to Haroun, think it sufficient to proceed as far as this place, from whence the dome of the tomb is visible in the distance; and after killing the animal they throw a heap of stones over the blood which flows to the ground. Here my guide pressed me to slaughter the goat which I had brought with me from Shobak, for the purpose, but I pretended that I had vowed to immolate it at the tomb itself. Upon a hill over the Ain Mousa the Arabs Lyathene (Arabic) were encamped, who cultivate the valley of Mousa. We repaired to their encampment, but were not so hospitably received as we had been the night before.

Ain Mousa is a copious spring, rushing from under a rock at the eastern extremity of Wady Mousa. There are no ruins near the spring; a little lower down in the valley is a mill, and above it is the village of Badabde (Arabic), now abandoned. It was inhabited till within a few years by about twenty families of Greek Christians, who subsequently retired to Kerek. Proceeding from the spring along the rivulet for about twenty minutes, the valley opens, and leads into a plain about a quarter of an hour in length and ten minutes in breadth, in which the rivulet joins with another descending from the mountain to the southward. Upon the declivity of the mountain, in the angle formed by the junction of the two rivulets, stands Eldjy (Arabic), the principal village of Wady Mousa. This place contains between two and three hundred houses, and is enclosed by a stone wall with three regular gates. It is most picturesquely situated, and is inhabited by the

WADY MOUSA

[p.421] Lyathene abovementioned, a part of whom encamp during the whole year in the neighbouring mountains. The slopes of the mountain near the town are formed into artificial terraces, covered with corn fields and plantations of fruit trees. They are irrigated by the waters of the two rivulets and of many smaller springs which descend into the valley below Eldjy, where the soil is also well cultivated. A few large hewn stones dispersed over the present town indicate the former existence of an ancient city in this spot, the happy situation of which must in all ages have attracted inhabitants. I saw here some large pieces of beautiful saline marble, but nobody could tell me from whence they had come, or whether there were any rocks of this stone in the mountains of Shera.

I hired a guide at Eldjy, to conduct me to Haroun’s tomb, and paid him with a pair of old horse-shoes. He carried the goat, and gave me a skin of water to carry, as he knew that there was no water in the Wady below.

In following the rivulet of Eldjy westwards the valley soon narrows again; and it is here that the antiquities of Wady Mousa begin. Of these I regret that I am not able to give a very complete account: but I knew well the character of the people around me; I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller had ever before been seen; and a close examination of these works of the infidels, as they are called, would have excited suspicions that I was a magician in search of treasures; I should at least have been detained and prevented from prosecuting my journey to Egypt, and in all probability should have been stripped of the little money which I possessed, and what was infinitely more valuable to me, of my journal book. Future travellers may visit the spot under the protection of an armed force; the inhabitants will become more accustomed to the researches of strangers; and the antiquities of

[p.422] Wady Mousa will then be found to rank amongst the most curious remains of ancient art.

At the point where the valley becomes narrow is a large sepulchral vault, with a handsome door hewn in the rock on the slope of the hill which rises from the right bank of the torrent: on the same side of the rivulet, a little farther on, I saw some other sepulchres with singular ornaments. Here a mass of rock has been insulated from the mountain by an excavation, which leaves a passage five or six paces in breadth between it and the mountain. It forms nearly a cube of sixteen feet, the top being a little narrower than the base; the lower part is hollowed into a small sepulchral cave with a low door; but the upper part of the mass is solid. There are three of these mausolea at a short distance from each other. A few paces lower, on the left side of the stream, is a larger mausoleum similarly formed, which appears from its decayed state, and the style of its architecture, to be of more ancient date than the others. Over its entrance are four obelisks, about ten feet in height, cut out of the same piece of rock; below is a projecting ornament, but so much defaced by time that I was unable to discover what it had originally represented; it had, however, nothing of the Egyptian style.

Continuing for about three hundred paces farther along the valley, which is in this part about one hundred and fifty feet in breadth; several small tombs are met with on both sides of the rivulet, excavated in the rock, without any ornaments. Beyond these is a spot where the valley seemed to be entirely closed by high rocks; but upon a nearer approach, I perceived a chasm about fifteen or twenty feet in breadth, through which the rivulet flows westwards in winter; in summer its waters are lost in the sand and gravel before they reach the opening, which is called El Syk (Arabic). The precipices on either side of the torrent are

[p.423] about eighty-feet in height; in many places the opening between them at top is less than at bottom, and the sky is not visible from below. As the rivulet of Wady Mousa must have been of the greatest importance to the inhabitants of the valley, and more particularly of the city, which was entirely situated on the west side of the Syk, great pains seem to have been taken by the ancients to regulate its course. Its bed appears to have been covered with a stone pavement, of which many vestiges yet remain, and in several places stone walls were constructed on both sides, to give the water its proper direction, and to check the violence of the torrent. A channel was likewise cut on each side of the Syk, on a higher level than the river, to convey a constant supply of water into the city in all seasons, and to prevent all the water from being absorbed in summer by the broad torrent bed, or by the irrigation of the fields in the valley above the Syk.

About fifty paces below the entrance of the Syk a bridge of one arch thrown over the top of the chasm is still entire; immediately below it, on both sides, are large niches worked in the rock, with elegant sculptures, destined probably for the reception of statues. Some remains of antiquities might perhaps be found on the top of the rocks near the bridge; but my guide assured me, that notwithstanding repeated endeavours had been made, nobody had ever been able to climb up the rocks to the bridge, which was therefore unanimously declared to be the work of the Djan, or evil genii. In continuing along the winding passage of the Syk, I saw in several places small niches cut in the rock, some of which were single; in other places there were three or four together, without any regularity; some are mere holes, others have short pilasters on both sides; they vary in size from ten inches to four or five feet in height; and in some of them the bases of statues are still visible. We passed several collateral chasms between perpendicular

[p.424] rocks, by which some tributary torrents from the south side of the Syk empty themselves into the river. I did not enter any of them, but I saw that they were thickly overgrown with Defle trees. My guide told me that no antiquities existed in these valleys, but the testimony of these people on such subjects is little to be relied on. The bottom of the Syk itself is at present covered with large stones, brought down by the torrent, and it appears to be several feet higher than its ancient level, at least towards its western extremity. After proceeding for twenty-five minutes between the rocks, we came to a place where the passage opens, and where the bed of another stream coming from the south joins the Syk. On the side of the perpendicular rock, directly opposite to the issue of the main valley, an excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller, after having traversed for nearly half an hour such a gloomy and almost subterraneous passage as I have described. It is one of the most elegant remains of antiquity existing in Syria; its state of preservation resembles that of a building recently finished, and on a closer examination I found it to be a work of immense labour.

The principal part is a chamber sixteen paces square, and about twenty- five feet high. There is not the smallest ornament on the walls, which are quite smooth, as well as the roof, but the outside of the entrance door is richly embellished with architectural decorations. Several broad steps lead up to the entrance, and in front of all is a colonnade of four columns, standing between two pilasters. On each of the three sides of the great chamber is an apartment for the reception of the dead. A similar excavation, but larger, opens into each end of the vestibule, the length of which latter is not equal to

[p.425] that of the colonnade as it appears in front, but terminates at either end between the pilaster and the neighbouring column. The doors of the two apartments opening into the vestibule are covered with carvings richer and more beautiful than those on the door of the principal chamber. The colonnade is about thirty-five feet high, and the columns are about three feet in diameter with Corinthian capitals. The pilasters at the two extremities of the colonnade, and the two columns nearest to them, are formed out of the solid rock, like all the rest of the monument, but the two centre columns, one of which has fallen, were constructed separately, and were composed of three pieces each. The colonnade is crowned with a pediment, above which are other ornaments, which, if I distinguished them correctly, consisted of an insulated cylinder crowned with a vase, standing between two other structures in the shape of small temples, supported by short pillars. The entire front, from the base of the columns to the top of the ornaments, may be sixty or sixty-five feet. The architrave of the colonnade is adorned with vases, connected together with festoons. The exterior wall of the chamber at each end of the vestibule, which presents itself to the front between the pilaster and the neighbouring column, was ornamented with colossal figures in bas-relief; but I could not make out what they represented. One of them appears to have been a female mounted upon an animal, which, from the tail and hind leg, appears to have been a camel. All the other ornaments sculptured on the monument are in perfect preservation.

The natives call this monument Kaszr Faraoun (Arabic), or Pharaoh’s castle; and pretend that it was the residence of a prince. But it was rather the sepulchre of a prince, and great must have been the opulence of a city, which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its rulers.

[p.426] From this place, as I before observed, the Syk widens, and the road continues for a few hundred paces lower down through a spacious passage between the two cliffs. Several very large sepulchres are excavated in the rocks on both sides; they consist generally of a single lofty apartment with a flat roof; some of them are larger than the principal chamber in the Kaszr Faraoun. Of those which I entered, the walls were quite plain and unornamented; in some of them are small side rooms, with excavations and recesses in the rock for the reception of the dead; in others I found the floor itself irregularly excavated for the same purpose, in compartments six to eight feet deep, and of the shape of a coffin; in the floor of one sepulchre I counted as many as twelve cavities of this kind, besides a deep niche in the wall, where the bodies of the principal members of the family, to whom the sepulchre belonged, were probably deposited.

On the outside of these sepulchres, the rock is cut away perpendicularly above and on both sides of the door, so as to make the exterior facade larger in general than the interior apartment. Their most common form is that of a truncated pyramid, and as they are made to project one or two feet from the body of the rock they have the appearance, when seen at a distance, of insulated structures. On each side of the front is generally a pilaster, and the door is seldom without some elegant ornaments.

These fronts resemble those of several of the tombs of Palmyra,

[p.427] but the latter are not excavated in the rock, but constructed with hewn stones. I do not think, however, that there are two sepulchres in Wady Mousa perfectly alike; on the contrary, they vary greatly in size, shape, and embellishments. In some places, three sepulchres are excavated one over the other, and the side of the mountain is so perpendicular that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost, no path whatever being visible; some of the lower have a few steps before their entrance.

In continuing a little farther among the sepulchres, the valley widens to about one hundred and fifty yards in breadth. Here to the left is a theatre cut entirely out of the rock, with all its benches. It may be capable of containing about three thousand spectators: its area is now filled up with gravel, which the winter torrent brings down. The entrance of many of the sepulchres is in like manner almost choked up. There are no remains of columns near the theatre. Following the stream about one hundred and fifty paces further, the rocks open still farther, and I issued upon a plain two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards across, bordered by heights of more gradual ascent than before. Here the ground is covered with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, fragments of columns, and vestiges of paved streets; all clearly indicating that a large city once existed here; on the left side of the river is a rising ground extending westwards for nearly a quarter of an hour, entirely covered with similar remains. On the right bank, where the ground is more elevated, ruins of the same description are also seen. In the valley near the river, the buildings have probably been swept away by the impetuosity of the winter torrent; but even here are still seen the foundations of a temple, and a heap of broken columns; close to which is a large Birket, or reservoir of water, still serving for the supply of the inhabitants during the summer. The finest sepulchres in Wady

[p.428] Mousa are in the eastern cliff, in front of this open space, where I counted upwards of fifty close to each other. High up in the cliff I particularly observed one large sepulchre, adorned with Corinthian pilasters.

Farther to the west the valley is shut in by the rocks, which extend in a northern direction; the river has worked a passage through them, and runs underground, as I was told, for about a quarter of an hour. Near the west end of Wady Mousa are the remains of a stately edifice, of which part of the wall is still standing; the inhabitants call it Kaszr Bent Faraoun (Arabic), or the palace of Pharaoh’s daughter. In my way I had entered several sepulchres, to the surprise of my guide, but when he saw me turn out of the footpath towards the Kaszr, he exclaimed: “I see now clearly that you are an infidel, who have some particular business amongst the ruins of the city of your forefathers; but depend upon it that we shall not suffer you to take out a single para of all the treasures hidden therein, for they are in our territory, and belong to us.” I replied that it was mere curiosity, which prompted me to look at the ancient works, and that I had no other view in coming here, than to sacrifice to Haroun; but he was not easily persuaded, and I did not think it prudent to irritate him by too close an inspection of the palace, as it might have led him to declare, on our return, his belief that I had found treasures, which might have led to a search of my person and to the detection of my journal, which would most certainly have been taken from me, as a book of magic. It is very unfortunate for European travellers that the idea of treasures being hidden in ancient edifices is so strongly rooted in the minds of the Arabs and Turks; nor are they satisfied with watching all the stranger’s steps; they believe that it is sufficient for a true magician to have seen and observed the spot where treasures are hidden (of which he is supposed to be already informed by the

[p.429] old books of the infidels who lived on the spot) in order to be able afterwards, at his ease, to command the guardian of the treasure to set the whole before him. It was of no avail to tell them to follow me and see whether I searched for money. Their reply was, “of course you will not dare to take it out before us, but we know that if you are a skilful magician you will order it to follow you through the air to whatever place you please.” If the traveller takes the dimensions of a building or a column, they are persuaded that it is a magical proceeding. Even the most liberal minded Turks of Syria reason in the same manner, and the more travellers they see, the stronger is their conviction that their object is to search for treasures, “Maou delayl” (Arabic), “he has indications of treasure with him,” is an expression I have heard a hundred times.

On the rising ground to the left of the rivulet, just opposite to the Kaszr Bent Faraoun, are the ruins of a temple, with one column yet standing to which the Arabs have given the name of Zob Faraoun (Arabic), i.e. hasta virilis Pharaonis; it is about thirty feet high and composed of more than a dozen pieces. From thence we descended amidst the ruins of private habitations, into a narrow lateral valley, on the other side of which we began to ascend the mountain, upon which stands the tomb of Aaron. There are remains of an ancient road cut in the rock, on both sides of which are a few tombs. After ascending the bed of a torrent for about half an hour, I saw on each side of the road a large excavated cube, or rather truncated pyramid, with the entrance of a tomb in the bottom of each. Here the number of sepulchres increases, and there are also excavations for the dead in several natural caverns. A little farther on, we reached a high plain called Szetouh Haroun (Arabic), or Aaron’s terrace, at the foot of the mountain upon which his tomb is situated. There are several subterranean sepulchres

[p.430] in the plain, with an avenue leading to them, which is cut out of the rocky surface.

The sun had already set when we arrived on the plain; it was too late to reach the tomb, and I was excessively fatigued; I therefore hastened to kill the goat, in sight of the tomb, at a spot where I found a number of heaps of stones, placed there in token of as many sacrifices in honour of the saint. While I was in the act of slaying the animal, my guide exclaimed aloud, “O Haroun, look upon us! it is for you we slaughter this victim. O Haroun, protect us and forgive us! O Haroun, be content with our good intentions, for it is but a lean goat! O Haroun, smooth our paths; and praise be to the Lord of all creatures!”[[Arabic].] This he repeated several times, after which he covered the blood that had fallen on the ground with a heap of stones; we then dressed the best part of the flesh for our supper, as expeditiously as possible, for the guide was afraid of the fire being seen, and of its attracting hither some robbers.