DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0245
KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL. 227
animated, noisy throng dispersing in a dozen different
directions.
We turned away with the rest, the writer and the painter
rambling off in search of the temple, while the other three
devoted themselves to the pursuit of baskets and native
jewelry. When we looked back presently the crowd was
gone; but the desolate mother still lay motionless in the
dust.
It chanced that we witnessed many funerals in Kubia;
so many that one sometimes felt inclined to doubt whether
the governor'of Asstian had not reported over-favorably of
the health of the province. The ceremonial, with its
dancing and chanting, was always much the same; always
barbaric, and in the highest degree artificial. One
would like to know how much of it is derived
lrom purely African sources, and how much from ancient
Egyptian tradition. The dance is most probably Ethio-
pian. Lepsius, traveling through the Soudan in A. D. 1844,*
saw something of the kind at a funeral in Wed Medi-
neh, .about half-way between Sennaar and Khartum. The
white fillet worn by the choir of mourners is, on the other
hand, distinctly Egyptian. AVe afterward saw it repre-
sented in paintings of funeral processions on the walls of
several tombs at Thebes,f where the wailing women are
seen to be gathering up the dust in their hands and casting
it upon their heads, just as they do now. As for the wail
•—beginning high and descending through a scale divided
not by semi-tones but thirds of tones to a final note about
an^ octave and a half lower than that from which it started
—it probably echoes to this day the very pitch and rhythm
of the wail that followed the Pharaohs to their sepulchers in
the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. Like the zaghareet,
°!' joy-cry.- which every mother teaches to her little
girls and which, it is said, can only be acquired in very early
youth, it lias been handed down from generation to genera-
tion through an untold succession of ages, The song to
which the fellah works his shadiif and the monotonous
* Lepsius' Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, etc. Letter xviii, p. 184.
Bphn'sad., a. d. 18o!S.
t See the interesting account of funereal rites and ceremonies in
Sir(i. Wilkinson's "Ancient, Egyptians," vol. ii, cb. x, Lond., 1871.
Also wood-cuts Nos, 493 and 494 in the same chapter of the same
work,
animated, noisy throng dispersing in a dozen different
directions.
We turned away with the rest, the writer and the painter
rambling off in search of the temple, while the other three
devoted themselves to the pursuit of baskets and native
jewelry. When we looked back presently the crowd was
gone; but the desolate mother still lay motionless in the
dust.
It chanced that we witnessed many funerals in Kubia;
so many that one sometimes felt inclined to doubt whether
the governor'of Asstian had not reported over-favorably of
the health of the province. The ceremonial, with its
dancing and chanting, was always much the same; always
barbaric, and in the highest degree artificial. One
would like to know how much of it is derived
lrom purely African sources, and how much from ancient
Egyptian tradition. The dance is most probably Ethio-
pian. Lepsius, traveling through the Soudan in A. D. 1844,*
saw something of the kind at a funeral in Wed Medi-
neh, .about half-way between Sennaar and Khartum. The
white fillet worn by the choir of mourners is, on the other
hand, distinctly Egyptian. AVe afterward saw it repre-
sented in paintings of funeral processions on the walls of
several tombs at Thebes,f where the wailing women are
seen to be gathering up the dust in their hands and casting
it upon their heads, just as they do now. As for the wail
•—beginning high and descending through a scale divided
not by semi-tones but thirds of tones to a final note about
an^ octave and a half lower than that from which it started
—it probably echoes to this day the very pitch and rhythm
of the wail that followed the Pharaohs to their sepulchers in
the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. Like the zaghareet,
°!' joy-cry.- which every mother teaches to her little
girls and which, it is said, can only be acquired in very early
youth, it lias been handed down from generation to genera-
tion through an untold succession of ages, The song to
which the fellah works his shadiif and the monotonous
* Lepsius' Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, etc. Letter xviii, p. 184.
Bphn'sad., a. d. 18o!S.
t See the interesting account of funereal rites and ceremonies in
Sir(i. Wilkinson's "Ancient, Egyptians," vol. ii, cb. x, Lond., 1871.
Also wood-cuts Nos, 493 and 494 in the same chapter of the same
work,