| Southport : Original Sources in Exploration | | |
Voyage in Lower and Upper Egypt, during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte. Vivant Denon | | | | |
|
Vol. 1, Chapters 12-13
Chapter 12: Bogaze. - Alluvial deposits of the Nile. - Suppliers. - Tallien. - Intercepted correspondences, etc. (p.56)
Our
position had entirely changed: in the possibility of being attacked, we
were obliged to make defensive preparations; we fortified the entrance
to the Nile, we established a battery on one of the islands, we visited
all the points.
In one of our reconnaissances we returned to the
bogaze or bar of the Nile: it was at that time almost at its greatest
height; and we are able to see the efforts of its weight against the
waves of the sea, which in this season are pushed twelve hours of each
day by the north wind in the opposite direction to the course of the
river: it results from this ( p.57) fights a ridge of sand, which rises
with time, becomes an island which shares the course of the river, and
forms two mouths which each have their breakers; the eddy of these
breakers brings to the shore part of the sand that the current had
carried away, and, through this alluvium, the two mouths close little
by little until one of them prevails over the the other, the less
strong, becomes obstructed and becomes dry land with the island; and at
the remaining mouth another bulge soon reforms, an island, two new
mouths, etc. etc. Is this not how we can most naturally account for the
ancient geography of the mouths of the Nile, explain the journey of
Menelaus in Homer, the change of the Delta, whose replacement could
first have been a gulf, then a beach, then a cultivated land, covered
with superb cities and rich harvests, cut by canals, which, drying or
intelligently watering the soil, carried abundance over the entire
surface of this new country. time, the scourges of revolutions, and
their disastrous results, points of drying out will have manifested
themselves:; parts will have been abandoned, others will have become
saline; lakes will have been formed, destroyed, and reproduced with new
forms; the obstructed channels will have changed course, will have been
lost; and today, in our uncertain research, we ask where were the
mouths of Canopus, Bolbitine, Berenice, etc.
The first
plants that grow on the alluvium are three to four species of soda: the
sands pile up against these plants; they rise again on the pile: their
withering is a fertilizer which causes the pine nuts to grow; these
rushes further raise the ground and consolidate it: the date tree
appears, which, by its shade, preserves the humidity there, and brings
abundance, as can be seen in the surroundings of the castle of Racid,
which, in the time of Selim, had its right cannon at sea, and which
(p.58) is now a league from the shore, surrounded by forests of palm
trees, under which grow other fruit trees, and all the vegetables of
the most abundant of our gardens.
During
this expedition I saw, at the mouth of the river, a number of pelicans
and jerboas. Observing the castle of Racid, I noticed that it had been
built from members of ancient buildings; that some of the stones of the
cannon embrasures were beautiful sandstone from Upper Egypt, still
covered with hieroglyphics. While visiting the underground passages, we
found a kind of store there, made up of abandoned weapons; they were
crossbows, bows and arrows, with helmets and swords in the shape of
those of the crusaders. While searching these stores, we dislodged bats
as big as pigeons: we killed several of them; they had all the shapes
of the flying fox.
Since the loss of our fleet, what troops
there were at Rosetta had been scattered into small garrisons in the
castles and batteries: we had been obliged to establish a caravan from
Alexandria to Rosetta via Aboukir and the desert, to maintain
communication between these two cities: soldiers were employed to
protect these caravans against the Arabs: there were too few left in
Rosetta for the service of the place, and the defense in the event of
attack; it was therefore a question of forming a militia from what
there were travelers, speculators, and useless, uncertain, wandering,
irresolute men, who arrived from Alexandria or who were already
returning from Cairo: these amphibians, corrupted by the Italian
countryside, having heard of the Egyptian harvests as the most abundant
in the universe, had thought that taking possession of such a country
was the ready-made fortune of those concerned; others, curious, jaded,
their minds fascinated by Savary's stories, had left Paris to come and
seek new pleasures in Cairo; others, speculators, to supply the army,
to (p.59) observe, bring in and sell at a high price what the colony
might lack; and yet the beys had taken away all that there was of money
and magnificence in Cairo; the people had completed the plundering of
the opulent houses before our entry into this city; Bonaparte did not
want suppliers, and the merchant fleet found itself blocked by the
English: all these circumstances cast a dark veil over Egypt for all
these travelers, surprised to find themselves captive, disappointed in
their projects, and obliged to contribute to the defense and
organization of an establishment which no longer sees anything other
than the fortune and glory of the nation in general: they wrote sad
stories in France, which the English intercepted, and which contributed
to deceiving them about our situation.
The English, happy to
believe that we were dying of hunger, sent back our prisoners to us, to
hasten the time of our destruction. They printed in their gazettes that
half of our army was in the hospital, that half of the other half was
obliged to lead the rest who were blind; while, however, Upper Egypt
provided us in abundance with the best wheat, and Lower Egypt with the
finest rice; that the country's sugar cost half as much as in France;
that innumerable herds of buffalo, oxen, sheep and goats, both farmers
and pastoral Arabs, provided abundantly for new consumption at the very
moment of the invasion, which assured us abundance and superfluity for
the future: while, for the luxury of our tables, we could add all
species of poultry, fish, game, vegetables and fruits. However, this is
what Egypt offered in terms of essential objects to these detractors,
who needed gold to repair the abuse they had made of it; and who,
finding none, no longer saw around them only burning sand, perpetual
sun, fleas and cousins, dogs: who prevented them from sleeping,
intractable husbands, and veiled women showing them only eternal
throats.
p.60) But let us abandon to the wind this cloud of
butterflies which always flock where a first light shines: let us see
our triumphs and peace reopen the gate of Alexandria, bring there wise
and industrious farmers, useful traders, settlers finally , who,
without being frightened by the fact that Africa does not resemble
Europe, will observe that in Egypt a man, for three sous, can have as
much as he needs for one day of the best rice in the world ; that part
of the land which has ceased to be flooded can be returned to
cultivation by watering, that windmills would raise it higher than the
pot mills used there, and which consume so many oxen , occupy so many
hands; that the Nile Islands and the greater part of the Delta are only
waiting for American settlers to produce the finest sugar canes on a
soil that will not devour men; as they approach Cairo and beyond, they
will see that they only need to improve to compete with all the indigo
and cotton plantations of all kinds; that by making a wise and sure
fortune, they will live under a pure and healthy sky, on the bank of a
river of an almost miraculous kind, and of which we cannot finish
numbering the advantages: they will see a new colony with cities all
built, skillful workers accustomed to toil and fully acclimatized, with
whom, in a few years, and with the help of the canals which are all
traced, they will create new provinces, the future abundance of which
will not be is not problematic, since modern industry will only restore
them to their former splendor.
With regard to our careless
soldiers, they mocked our sailors who had been beaten: imagined that
Mourat Bey had a white camel loaded with gold and diamonds; and there
was no longer any question but of Mourat-bey and his white camel. For
myself, I had (p.61) had Upper Egypt, and I postponed thinking about
our situation until my journey was over.
Chapter
13: Journey from Rosetta to Alexandria by Land. - Caravan. -
Aboukir Beach, seen after the Naval Battle. - Ruins of Canopus [1,2].
Our
tour in the Delta was delayed by the affairs which befell General
Menou: I resolved to use this delay to retrace my steps and retrace by
land the part of which I had only seen the coasts when coming from
Alexandria by sea; . I took advantage of a caravan to go and look for
the ruins of Canopus.
A number of local people had joined the
escort of this caravan: at dusk, when leaving the town it began to
develop on the smooth yellowish carpet of the sandy mounds which
surround Rosetta, it produced the most picturesque and imposing effect;
the groups of soldiers, those of merchants in their different costumes,
sixty loaded camels, as many Arab drivers, horses, donkeys,
pedestrians, some military instruments, offered the truth of one of the
most beautiful paintings of Benedetto, or of Salvator Rose. As soon as
we had descended the mounds and passed the palm trees, we entered, as
day expired, into a vast desert, where the horizontal line is broken
only by a few small brick monuments, which are intended to prevent the
traveler from getting lost. in space, and without which the smallest
error in the opening of the angle would cause it to lead by an extended
line to a goal far removed from that to which it was aiming. We walked,
in (p.62) the silence of the desert and the darkness, on a crust of
salt which consolidated the shifting sand a little: a detachment led
the way; then came the travelers, then the beasts of burden; another
military detachment secured the convoy against the Arab acrobats, who,
when they did not have the necessary forces to attack head-on,
sometimes came to kidnap the stragglers twenty paces from the caravan.
At
midnight we arrived at the seaside. The rising moon lit up a new scene;
four leagues of shore covered with our debris gave us the measure of
the loss we had suffered at the battle of Aboukir. The wandering Arabs,
to get a few nails or a few iron hoops, burned, all along the coast,
the masts, the carriages, the boats, still whole, manufactured at great
expense in our ports, and of which even the remains were still
treasures in places so stingy with such productions. The thieves fled
as we approached; All that remained were the corpses of the unfortunate
victims, who, carried and placed on soft sand with which they were
half-covered, had remained in pauses as sublime as they were
frightening.
The sight of these fatal objects had gradually
caused my soul to fall into a dark melancholy; I avoided these
frightening specters; and all those whom I met, by their varied
attitudes, arrested my gaze, and brought to my thoughts various
impressions: it had only been a few months since all these beings,
young, full of life, courage and hope , had been, by a noble effort,
torn away from the tears that I had seen shed, from the embraces of
their mothers, their sisters, their lovers, from the weak embraces of
their young children: all those to whom they were dear, I said to
myself, and who, yielding to their ardor, let them go away, still make
wishes for their success and their return; eager for news of their
triumph, they prepare parties for them, they content (p.63) the
moments, while the objects of their expectation lie on a foreign shore,
dried up by burning sand, their heads already white. . . . .What is
this truncated skeleton? is it you, intrepid Thévenard? impatient to
abandon shattered limbs to the helping iron, you only aspire to the
honor of dying at your post; an operation that is too slow tires your
restless ardor: you no longer have anything to expect from life, but
you can still give a useful order, and you fear being warned by death.
Another
specter succeeds; his arm envelops his head which sinks into the sand:
died in combat, remorse seems to survive your courageous end: do you
have any reproaches to make of yourself? your truncated limbs attest to
your courage; should you therefore be more than brave? Are the ruins
that the wave scatters around you piled up by your errors? and my soul,
moved by abandoning your remains, can I only give them sterile pity?
Who is this other one, sitting with his legs carried away? his
countenance seems to stop for a moment the death to which he is already
prey! it is you, without doubt, courageous Dupetithouars; receive the
tribute of the enthusiasm that you inspire in me: you die, but your
eyes when closing did not see your flag brought down, and your last
word was the order to the batteries that you commanded, to thunder on
the enemy of the fatherland: farewell; a tomb will not cover your
ashes, but the tears of the hero who misses you are the imperishable
trophy which will place your name in the temple of memory. What is this
in this calm attitude of the virtuous man, whose last action was
dictated by wisdom and duty? he still looks at the English fleet;
similar to Bayard, he wants to expire with his face turned towards the
enemy; his hand is extended towards tender and almost already destroyed
bones; However, I can distinguish a long neck and outstretched arms: it
is you, young hero, amiable Casablanca; it can only be (p.64) you;
death, inflexible death, has reunited you with your father, whom you
preferred to life; sensitive and respectable child, time promised you
glory; filial piety preferred death: receive our tears, the price of
your virtues.
The sun had chased away the shadows, and has not
yet seen the dark tint of my thoughts dissipated; However, the caravan
stopped and informed me that we were on the edge of the lake which
separates the desert plain from the peninsula at the end of which
Aboukir is built. This vast and deep lake is the ancient Canopite
mouth, which the Nile abandoned, and of which the sea, entering it
without obstacle, has by its weight pushed back the banks and widened
the bed: this ever-increasing evil threatens to destroy the the isthmus
which attaches Aboukir to the mainland, and on which flows the canal
which carries the waters to Alexandria. The Arab princes attempted to
build a dike, which was never united, or which, too weak, gave way to
the efforts of the wave, pushed during part of the year by the north
winds; only two piers remain of this dike on the respective banks. The
topographical plan of this little-known part of Egypt, and always
poorly traced on all maps, would provide the means to reason
effectively about the dangers which can result from the movement of the
sea, and to provide the necessary remedies for safety. of the important
canal which brought the waters of the Nile to Alexandria.
The
difficult embarkation on the Madié canal made this short journey almost
as long as the rest of the route. I drew it. On the other bank we found
the first works of a battery which we erected to protect this means of
communication, which the presence of the enemy made uncertain without
this precaution. We had barely passed when we had proof of it; for an
English brig and a viso, coming to disturb our march, fired seven or
eight (p.65) cannon shots at us; our silence made them believe that we
had nothing to answer them; consequently, a few hours later we saw
twelve boats detached from the English squadron, and the two vessels of
the morning which were coming at full sail towards our works. We
thought they were going to attempt a descent; but they were content to
anchor near the battery, and, when night came, to cannonade us: we
waited for the moon; and as soon as she had assured us of their
position, we began to respond to them in a manner apparently so
advantageous, that at the fourth cannon shot they cut the cables, left
their anchor, and disappeared.
After crossing the mouth of the
lake, following two sinuses bordered by sandy mounds, I finally arrived
at the suburb of Aboukir, which closely resembles the town, from which
it is separated by a space of one hundred and fifty paces: the two
together can be composed of forty to fifty bad huts in ruins, which cut
the peninsula into two parts, at the end of which the castle is built:
this fortress has some appearance from a distance; but the bastions
would collapse at the third blow from the culverines which are on the
ramparts, where they seem less aimed at than forgotten; there is a
bronze one fifteen feet long, carrying a fifty-pound ball. It was
necessary to throw down part of the batteries to form with the rubble a
platform solid enough to place four of our 36 cannons: this precaution
did not seem to me to be of much use, the buildings and boats likely to
carry heavy cannon to beat the walls unable to approach this promontory
because of the reefs and rocks which crown it. A hostile descent would
not take place there; and, once carried out, the castle could not hold,
and could not even serve as accommodation or stores, unless lines were
built in front to (p.66) defend the approach; but in all it seemed to
me that it would be preferable to destroy the castle, to fill in the
fountains, thus sparing a garrison, useless when there is no enemy, and
which must always be blocked or a prisoner of war from the moment he
was able to make a descent.
I made a bird's eye view of the peninsula.
I
found in the doorway of the castle four large stones of dark green
porphyry, and two long stones of the most compact statuary granite; at
the second door, I found, with four other stones, a member of a Doric
entablature, bearing triglyphs of great proportion and beautiful
execution: these fragments, with some traces of substructions at the
point of the rock, are the only antiquities that I was able to discover
at Aboukir, the location of which could never have changed, since the
ground is a limestone platform which rises above the sea, and is not
attached to the land only by an isthmus too narrow for a considerable
city to have been built there: it could therefore never have been other
than the fort or the castle at sea of Canopus or Heraclea, which Strabo
places there or near there. I had passed in front of fountains half a
mile before arriving at Aboukir; their construction was praised to me:
I returned there; I only found three square wells of Arab manufacture;
they are surrounded by heights which certainly contain ruins against
which are piled up an immense quantity of shards of terracotta pots,
mixed with the desert sands carried by the wind. Are these buried Arab
towers? Were these pot factories? are these the ruins of Heraclea? a
few pieces of granite on the platform, of the greatest eminence, would
make me prefer the latter opinion.
The next day, I followed,
with a detachment, the west coast, (p.67) questioning all the windings
and the smallest eminences; because, in Lower Egypt, they contain all
the antiquities, which are almost always their core. After three
quarters of an hour of walking, I found at the bottom of the second
cove a small jetty formed of colossal debris: what pleasure I felt when
first seeing a fragment of a hand, including the first phalanx, of
fourteen inches, belonged to a figure of thirty-six feet in proportion!
The granite, the work, and the style of this piece left me in no doubt
that it dates back to ancient Egyptian times; from the movement of this
hand, from some other debris which surrounds it, and from the sole
habit of seeing Egyptian figures, whose pose offers so little variety,
we can recognize in this fragment an Isis holding a nilometer: it it
would be easy to take this piece; but if moved it would lose almost all
its value. Near there several members of architecture attest by their
size that they belonged to a large and beautiful building of Doric
order: the waves have covered and struck these debris for many
centuries without having disfigured them: it seems that it is the fate
attached to all Egyptian monuments to equally resist men and time.
Further
into the sea, we see mixed with the fragments of the colossus that of a
sphinx, whose head and front legs are truncated, as far as the
madrepores and small shells have allowed me to judge; it is of a Greek
style and chisel and is not made of granite, but of a sandstone
resembling white marble, and of a transparency that I have only ever
seen in Egypt in this material; it was thirteen to fourteen feet in
proportion. At some distance, in the middle of the remains of
entablatures similar to those I have described, is another figure of
Isis, sufficiently preserved so that we can recognize its pose; its
legs are broken, but the piece is next to it. This figure (p.68) is in
granite, and has ten feet of proportion. All this debris seems to have
been placed there to form a pier, and to serve as a breaker in front of
a destroyed building; but which, judging by its substructions, can only
be the remains of a bath taken on the sea, and of which the cut rock
still traces the plan. The part that does not cover the sea retains
water conduits built of bricks, and covered in cement and pozzolan. All
this not having enough projection to make a drawing which was a view, I
traced a kind of figurative plan (plate 5) which will give the image of
the ruins and the fragments which I have just described.
Four
hundred toises from there, returning inland, still stretching towards
Alexandria, we find several structures built of bricks; and, although
we cannot make a case for it, we judge, by a few fragments of careful
constructions, that they were part of important buildings. Near there
we find several Corinthian capitals in marble, too crude to be
measured, but which must have belonged to bases of the same material,
and which gave the column twenty inches in diameter. Further on, a
large quantity of sections of fluted pink granite columns, all of the
same size, of the same material, worked with the same care, are the
indisputable ruins of a large and superb temple of the Doric order.
According to what Strabo has transmitted to us about this part of
Egypt, according to everything that I have just described, and in
particular these last fragments, I had no doubt left that these were
the ruins of Canopus, and those of its temple built by the Greeks,
whose cult rivaled that of Lampsacus: this miraculous temple where old
people find youth again; and the sick, health. The bath of which I gave
a view (plate 5) was perhaps one of the means that the priests used to
perform these miracles.
(p.69) The ground
has preserved nothing of the ancient Canopite pleasure; a few eminences
of sand and brick ruins, large square granite stones, without
hieroglyphs or shapes which attest to what type of building and to what
century they belonged, finally small valleys, as arid as the mounds
from which they are formed, are all that remains of this city, once so
delicious, and which now offers only a sad and wild appearance. It is
true that the canal of which Strabo speaks, which communicated from
Alexandria to Eleusine, and which by a branch arrived at Canopus, and
brought freshness there, has disappeared in such a way that we cannot
distinguish the trace of it, nor even conceive the possibility of its
existence: there remains water in the surrounding area only in a few
wells or cisterns, so narrow and so obscure that we can measure neither
their dimensions nor their depth; however, they still contain water:
finally this city, which brought together all the delights, where all
the voluptuous flocked, is now nothing more than a desert crossed by a
few jackals and Bedomns: I did not find there any last; but I saw a
jackal, which I would have taken for a dog, if I had not had the time
to very clearly examine its pointed nose and erect ears, its tail,
longer, trailing, and furnished with hair like that of the fox, to
which it resembles much more than the wolf, although the jackal is
regarded as the African wolf.
Unable to take advantage of the
escort that had accompanied me, I took the road to Aboukir: there I
found dispatches for the general in chief; a detachment was going to be
sent to carry them: I could not help myself from the pleasure that the
opportunity offered me to leave such a sad place. During my stay there,
I was never able to shake the thought that this castle was a state
prison to which I was relegated; this cramped rock, continually beaten
by the waves, the unwelcome noise (p.70) which results from it, the
whistling of the winds, the whiteness of the ground which tires the
sight, everything in this sad abode afflicts and withers the soul: by
leaving it, it seemed to me that I was escaping all the torments
of a tyrannical captivity.
I set out on a dark night; I was left
walking in the sea, scratching myself in the thickets, and sometimes
falling into the debris scattered on the shore; but at three o'clock in
the morning I arrived at Rosette, and I went to rest voluptuously, I
won't say in my bed, I hadn't seen one since I left France, but in a
cool room, on a proper mat.
Footnotes:
1.
[Editor's note] Canopus was an ancient Egyptian town located on the
Abuquir peninsula on the western bank at the mouth of the westernmost
branch of the Nile Delta. Herodotus (5th c. BC) refers to Canopus as an
ancient port; it was the principal port in Egypt for Greek trade before
the foundation of Alexandria. Eastern parts of Canopus, and the ancient port town of Heracleion-Thonis, are today
submerged in the sea, and have been located by underwater
archaeologists, while the western parts of Canopus (including the bath ruins found by Denon) are buried beneath the modern
coastal city of Abu Qir.
Canopus was the site of a temple to
the Egyptian god Serapis built by king Ptolemy III Euergetes. In 239
BC, Ptolemy III passed the "Decree of Canopus" which conferred various
new titles on the king and his consort, Berenice. Examples of this
decree inscribed in both hieroglyphic and demotic as well as Greek,
like the Rosetta Stone, provided keys to decipherment of the ancient
Egyptian language.
2. Description and maps of underwater sites at Canopus by Franck Goddio (Underwater
Archaeology in the Canopic Region in Egypt: The Topography and
Excavation of Heracleion-Thonis and East Canopus (1996 - 2006), Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2007 ).
[Continue to next part]
[Return to Table of Contents]
|
v |
| Southport main page Main
index of Athena Review
Copyright © 2023 Rust Family Foundation.
(All Rights Reserved). | | |
.
|