THE COPTIC CONVENTS OF WADI NATRUN
AMONGST the guests who halted at the Villa Victoria, it was my good fortune to make the acquaintance of Mr. Palmer-Jones, an enthusiastic architect who had measured up some of the early Coptic convents, and had also reconstructed on paper dynastic buildings of which little but the plan is at present traceable. He was making preparations for a journey to Wadi Natrun to continue his work at the old convents which are dotted about that valley.
During a stay in Professor Garstang’s camp at Abydos, a few years ago, my interest in what concerns the Copts had been considerably excited, while I painted in the Coptic settlement which is a mile or two distant from Seti’s temple. Although these convents are of recent date compared to far-off pharaonic times, a period of fifteen centuries has nevertheless elapsed since many of them have been built. They also have this, which gives them a human interest above the earlier shrines, and that is their preservation of the uses for which they were founded. Many are now no more than a heap of ruins; but there yet remains a good number still inhabited by monks, and where the Christian liturgy of the early centuries is still repeated in the chapels.
91 When Mr. Jones kindly proposed that I should join him in his expedition, I was not long in making up my mind to do so. His preparations took longer than mine, for he had to procure a camp outfit for a stay in the desert, a good distance from the rest-house where he and I proposed to spend a week together. I could not afford the time to accompany him further afield, and a week of desert air I hoped would suffice to shake off the evil effects of a touch of influenza.
It took over a week to get an answer from the manager of the Salt and Soda Company, in whose rest-house we proposed to stay, although he wrote by return of post telling us we could come. The distance was within a hundred miles from Cairo; but postal arrangements are not expeditious in the desert.
The delay gave me time to paint the street which has been reproduced as an illustration to this book. The noise and dust, as well as the importunities of the inquisitive, made me long for the quiet and the fresh air of the desert. A change of work and of interests now and again is wholesome, and should but little work be the result of my expedition, the interest and the fresh air would compensate me for any loss of time.
We started at midday by a train which runs along the edge of the Libyan desert, just outside the cultivation area, and not far from the western bank of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. This is the Behera line, and if any one could be found with sufficient patience, he could reach Alexandria by one of its trains, and cover rather less ground than by the main route. After a crawl along the fringe of the desert for some seventy92 miles in a north-westerly direction, the train strikes into the Delta, and joins the main line at Teh el-Bar?d. Fortunately we could leave it after a thirty-mile crawl, at a station called el-Khatatbeh. We were met here by the agent of the Salt and Soda Company, and invited to wait in his house until the steam-tram would take us to the rest-house. This runs twice a week, and carries coal and other necessaries to the works. When the passenger carriage had been coupled on to the trucks, we started on this novel desert journey.
There seemed something sinister in the name of our destination—‘The Valley of Natron.’ It lay in the direction of the reddening sky, and seemed somehow to recall a valley with which Bunyan has made us familiar. The ‘Lacus Asphaltites,’ as classical atlases call the Dead Sea, is a name which in a similar way brought passages of the Pilgrim’s Progress back to me, when years ago I took a journey to Jericho. The engine, which pluckily dragged us into the increasing darkness, breathed sparks of fire into the clouds of smoke. Was it the mystery of the desert that got hold of me? The fire and smoke which snorted from the funnel of the little engine brought Apollyon clearly back to my mind.
I have passed months on end in the desert, and yet that awe which it inspires at sundown never leaves me.
For three hours we continued our course through the dreary waste. A crescent moon revealed an interminable series of low sand-hills; broken flints caught its light and looked like the reflections of the stars on a billowy sea. Though our horizon was not a93 distant one, the sense that we might have continued in our present direction for more than two thousand miles impressed us with the immensity of the great Sahara.
The quickened pace of our train told us that we had reached the depression where the series of natron lakes lies. Before we came to a standstill my illusions had vanished into thin air. A smell of caustic soda, and the sight of the works, of the coal trucks, the shunting cabin, and as we got nearer, that of the men in greasy overalls, carried me away from the Sahara, and set me down near some north-country manufacturing village.
We were met by the manager of the rest-house, and some natives (who might have hailed from Wednesbury from their get-up) shouldered our luggage while we picked our way to a long one-storied building we could see outlined against the starlit sky.
It had turned very cold, as it often does in the desert, even after a baking hot day. I blessed the whole of the Salt and Soda Company, Limited, for having provided a good stove in the rest-house sitting-room, and I poured more blessings on the Italian manager, who soon announced the dinner. What with our long fast and the keen desert air, we were able to do full justice to the padrone’s efforts. We asked him if he could hire us donkeys to take us to the convents the following morning. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said, ‘and you shall have them at whatever hour you like.’ We decided on half-past seven, and were promised that they should be there to the minute. We were up with the lark, and ready to start at the appointed time; but94 we might scan the horizon and never a donkey could we see, and the padrone was as invisible as the donkeys he had promised. After waiting an hour, I proposed our walking down to the works to make inquiries. Amongst a number of natives, who all knew nothing about donkeys—never seemed to have heard of such things—I noticed a fellow-countryman. He was stirring a bubbling, oily-looking liquid in a huge caldron. ‘Look out, sir,’ he cried, ‘a drop of this’ll burn right through your clothes, and if you step on it, your boots won’t be worth sixpence.’
The pot being sufficiently stirred and the lid duly adjusted, the man stepped over to where I had retreated, and seemed pleased to be able to talk in his own language again. He was a genial fellow, and was prepared to tell me all I might wish to know about natron. I got on the subject of donkeys as soon as I could, and learnt from him that the only three donkeys (excluding the padrone) which the company possessed, were probably down at the salt-pits. I explained that I did not expect to use the Company’s donkeys, but understood that we could hire some. I then learnt that there were none nearer than el-Khatatbeh.
Later on the manager of the works appeared, and I got Jones to introduce me to him. After thanking him for letting me use the rest-house, I told him my difficulties. All he could do, he kindly told us, would be to send the trolley to the rail-head, and from thence we should have to walk to the convents, as no donkeys were available that day. Ibrahim, my friend’s servant, put our lunch and materials on to the trolley, and as95 soon as the mule was harnessed, off we went to the rail-head.
A thin black line on my map of Northern Egypt is drawn from the great Sahara, through this part of the Libyan desert, till it reaches Cairo. It then winds along the valleys of the Arabian desert, and disappears out of the map just north of Suez. About the spot where our trolley now runs the map describes this line as Derb el-Hagg el-Megharbe, that is, the ‘Pilgrim’s Way of the Westerns.’ Within a space of twenty miles on this route stand four Christian convents, two of which we then saw outlined against the sky. They stood there before this desert tract was first used by Moslem pilgrims on their way to Mekka; and until the Behera railway was opened, this same track was followed by the monks on their journeyings to and from Cairo.
It was not an unfrequented route even before the early Christians settled here. The mineral alkali, which these marshes produce, was known and used while Memphis was the capital city of Egypt.
Salt, extracted from the poisonous-looking marshes below us, lay in hillocks on each side of the little tramway, as we neared its termination. During the first mile of our tramp to the nearest convent the ground looked as if it were covered with hoar-frost. It crackled under our feet as would thin ice, and I longed to reach the sandy plain on the higher level. The wintry appearance of this uninviting tract of land contrasted strangely with the hot sun which beat down on us. The sandy plain, when we reached it, may have been96 pleasant to our eyes, but it was infinitely more troublesome to walk over. We sank ankle deep at every step we took, and I now realised why the ‘Pilgrim’s Way’ ran through the plague-stricken-looking stretch which we had crossed.
As we neared our objective, the Dêr Amba-Bishai, it looked more and more like a medi?val fortress than a retreat for the religious. Its massive outer walls now masked the little domes seen from a greater distance. Hungry Moslem pilgrims journeying to Mekka might have proved unwelcome visitors to the handful of Gubti monks within, and some recent repairs of the walls were probably done more for security than from any sense of tidiness. The gateway was large and imposing; but the door itself was small and sufficiently recessed to be defended through the loopholes in the projecting jambs.
We were glad to rest in the shadow of the walls till we managed to get admitted into the convent. Repeated pulls at ............