We Found
The Valley Mezeiryk Full Of Excellent Pasture; Many Sweet-Scented Herbs
Were Growing In It, And The Acacia Trees Were All Green.
Upon enquiry I
learnt that to the north of Djebel Tyh copious rains had fallen during
the winter, while to the south of it there had been very little for the
last two years, and in the eastern parts none.
[P.506] In the whole way from the convent I had not met with the
smallest trace of antiquity, either inscriptions upon the rocks by the
road-side or any other labour of man, until we reached the summit of
Wady Mezeiryk, where, close to the road, is a large sand-stone rock,
which seems, for a small space, to have received an artificial surface.
Upon it I found rude drawings of camels, and of mountain and other
goats, resembling those which I had before seen, and those which I saw
afterwards in the Wady Mokatteb. No inscriptions were visible, but the
annexed figures were drawn between the animals. These were the only
drawings or inscriptions that I met with in the mountains to the E. of
the convent, although I passed many flat rocks, well suited to them. I
am inclined to think that the inscriptions have been written by pilgrims
proceeding to Mount Sinai, and that the drawings of animals which are
executed in a ruder manner and with a less steady hand, are the work of
the shepherds of the peninsula. We find only those animals represented
which are natives of these mountains, such as camels, mountain and other
goats, and gazelles, but principally the two first,[It may be worthy of
mention in this place that among the innumerable paintings and
sculptures in the temples, and tombs of Egypt, I never met with a single
instance of the representation of a camel. At Thebes, in the highest of
the tombs on the side of the Djebel Habou, called Abd el Gorne, which
has not, I believe, been noticed by former travellers, or even by the
French in their great work, I found all the domestic animals of the
Egyptians represented together in one large painting upon a wall,
forming the most elaborate and interesting work of the kind, which I saw
in Egypt. A shepherd conducts the whole herd into the presence of his
master, who inspects them, while a slave is noting them down. Yet even
here I looked in vain for the camel.] and I had occasion to remark in
the course of my tour, that the present Bedouins of Sinai are in the
habit of carving the figures of goats upon rocks and in grottos. Niebuhr
observes, that in the hieroglyphic
WADY TABA
[p.507] inscriptions which he saw in the ancient burying ground not far
distant from Naszeb, he found figures of goats upon almost every
inscribed tomb-stone; this animal is not very frequent in the
hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt.
From the point where we descended again to the shore, we followed a
range of black basaltic cliffs, into which the sea has worked several
creeks, appearing like so many small lakes, with very narrow openings
towards the sea; they are full of fish and shells.
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