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.
