180 



ACCOUNT AND RESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION TO EGYPT, &c. 



[1854. 



became a royal residence, and hence the focus of Egyptian splen- 

 dour. The great break in the succcession at the end of the 12th 

 Dynasty, caused by the invasion of the Hyksos, and their dominion, 

 which lasted many centuries, first drove the Egyptian power back 

 into Ethiopia, and at length entirely destroyed it, till the power- 

 ful Pharaohs of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Dynasties again ad- 

 vanced from the south, drove back the Semitic intruders, and 

 raised the power of the Egyptian empire to its summit. The 

 greater proportion of Theban monuments date also from this 

 period. As we may suppose they have been the principal object 

 of investigation to all travellers, therefore our work here had been 

 for the most part anticipated. 



Nevertheless it was necessary to re-examine the whole ground 

 most carefully, partly to complete the defieiences left by our pre- 

 decessors, partly to make a proper selection of those monuments 

 which were of most importance for our particular purpose, and 

 which we were anxious to insert among our collections, either in 

 the shape of a drawing or an impression upon paper, or even in 

 the original itself. We directed our principal attention during 

 the whole journey, and especially here, to taking the most exact 

 architectonic plans of all the buildings and other localities which 

 appeared to us to be of any consequence ; and for this purpose we . 

 did not hesitate to make extensive excavations. By this means 

 we succeeded, amongst other things, in discovering and recording 

 for the first time, a perfect plan of the most beautiful of all the 

 Temple buildings, namely, the Ammon Temple, built by Ramses 

 2nd, which is described by Diodorus under the name of the 

 sepulchre of Osymandyas. We made several excavations also in 

 the valleys of the royal tombs, and opened, for instance; the rock- 

 tomb of the same Ramses 2nd, one of the largest of those which 

 have hitherto been accessible. Unfortunately, the interior cham- 

 bers were so much destroyed by the dirt and rubbish that had 

 fallen in, that we could make out little more from the representa- 

 tion upon the walls than the proprietor of the tomb. 



Accompanied by the artist Max Weidenbach, I made an inter- 

 mediate journey from Karnak to the Peninsula of Sinai. We 

 went thither by the old road from Koptos to Aennum (Philotera), 

 now leading from Qeneh to Koser, which conducted us first to 

 the remarkable stone quarries of Hammamat, already worked out 

 during the old Monarchy. The numerous rock-inscriptions, which 

 date as far back as the 6th Dynasty, occupied us here for five 

 whole days. From this place we passed through the Arabian 

 chain of mountains to the north, as far as Gebel Zeit, where we 

 embarked for Tor, situated opposite. We ascended through Wadi 

 Hebran to the convent, and from thence through Wadi e Schech, 

 Wadi Firan, W. Mokatteb, W. Maghara, by Sarbut el Chadem, 

 down again to Abu Zelimeh, where we got into our vessel, to 

 return to Koser and Thebes. 



As early as the 4th Manethonic Dynasty, between three and 

 four thousand years before Christ, this Desert Peninsula was 

 subject to Egypt, and was principally colonised by the Egyptians 

 on account of the copper mines, which are there met with on the 

 limits of the primitive mountain range, and the surrounding 

 sandstone mountains. Upon several rock-tablets of Wadi Maghara, 

 the kings of those oldest Dynasties were represented fighting with 

 the Semitic aboriginies, and the inscriptions of Sarbut el Chadem, 

 were at least as early as the 12th Dynasty. We did not, also, 

 lose sight of the great interest which is attached to these localities 

 of the Peninsula in connection with the Old Testament. More 

 especially, I believe, that I have succeeded for the first time (not 

 accepting Burekhardt) in determining the correct position of 

 Sinai, since contrary to the tradition of the convent, hitherto 

 accepted, I did not recognise in it one of the southern mountains, 

 but in Serbal, which is situated several days' journey more to the 



north, at whose base lies the only fertile oasis of the whole Penin- 

 sula. This opinion which has been already published in a pre- 

 liminary account of the journey, addressed to the King of Prussia, 

 has met with frequent oppositions, but has also latterly received 

 much approbation, I believe, in a special treatise upon the question, 

 by W. Hogg, printed in the last half of the " Transactions for the 

 Royal Society of Literature." (1848) I have not hitherto been 

 able to discover any material counter-arguments in the discussions 

 which have been held upon the subject, but, on the other hand, 

 much stronger evidence that, contrary to the later Byzantine tra- 

 dition, the more ancient Christian, and probably the Egyptian 

 tradition itself, considered Serbal, at whose foot the oldest convent 

 was situated, to be the true Sinai. 



On the 14th of April we returned to Thebes, and finally left it 

 on the 16th of May. On our way back to Lower Egypt, we re- 

 examined more minutely the monuments of Schenhur, Dendera, 

 Hou, Abydos, Echmim, El Bosra, Tel el Amarna, and El Hibe, 

 and on the 27th of June, our party, which had been increased at 

 the last stage by the addition of Dr. Bethmann, again entered 

 Cairo. 



I was detained there myself some months longer than the other 

 members of the expedition, in order to direct the transportation 

 of several sepulchral chambers in the neighbourhood of the great 

 Pyramids, and to superintend the embarkation of the valuable 

 blocks of stone, together with the other monuments, which we 

 brought with us from Upper Egypt and Ethiopia, and which the 

 Viceroy Mohammed Ali sent as a preseut to his Majesty the King 

 of Prussia. In this troublesome as well as important affair, for 

 the practical performance of which four experienced workmen had 

 been expressly sent from Berlin to Egypt, I had only the kind 

 assistance of Dr. Bethmann, who accompanied me on an indepen- 

 dent footing during the remainder of the journey back. 



After a final visit to Alexandria, we embarked on the 25th of 

 September at Cairo for Damietta, but on the way visited the ruins 

 of Samanud, Behbet, and the Ramses Temple of San, (Tanis) and 

 left Egypt on the 1st of October, in a vessel whic i took us to 

 Jaffa. After we had traversed the whole length of Palestine, and 

 from Jerusalem had visited the Dead Sea, and from Beyrout, Da- 

 mascus, and Baalbec, at the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, the ancient 

 Lykos, we came upon the last Egyptian monuments in the north, 

 namely, those celebrated memorial-tablets, which the great Ramses 

 2nd engraved beside the old Military road, as a recollection of his 

 warlike and victorious Asiatic compaigns in the fourteenth century 

 before Christ. After a period of more than 3000 years, neither the 

 form, nor even the Name-Shield of the powerful Pharaoh, at 

 whose court Moses was educated, had been destroyed by the 

 destructive sea-air. On one tablet, indeed, I was able to distinguish 

 the date of the fourth, on another that of the second year of his 

 reign. 



According to the testimony of Herodotus, similar monuments 

 of Sesostris are also found in Ionia, and some time ago, one which 

 he describes as being there, was re-discovered. But an excursion 

 from Smyrna to that spot soon convinced us that the rock-picture 

 of Karabel was produced by an Asiatic and not by an Egyptian 

 chisel. 



Lastly, we saw in the Hippodrome, at Constantinople, the 

 obelisk of the third Tuthmosis, but, like others, sought in vain for 

 the second, which earlier travellers would have us believe that 

 they had seen. On the 24th December, I left Constantinople, 

 and landed on the 5th January, 1 846, in Trieste. 



The whole journey, of which this is a very hasty sketch, was 

 one of the most fortunate expeditions which has ever been under- 



