DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2873#0050
VALLEY OF THE NILE FROM THE QUARRIES OF TOURA.
*E have now done with Cairo—have seen the last of its striped mosques and its fantastically
beautiful minarets; its ricketty houses and ruin heaps—the grandeur of the past and the mean-
ness of the present. We have worn out two or three gloriously exciting ever-memorable days
on the Field of Pyramids and Tombs. "We are not satisfied by any means; were our lives of
antediluvian measure, we would surely have devoted one entire year to our cane-bottomed chair
on the portico of Shepherd's Hotel. Those solemn, fusty, loose-twisted old Arabs, whose bare
legs eternally act pendulum to the movement of their little nodding pit-a-pating donkeys—that imperturbable
- Turk, covered with braid and buttons, upon a gilt and jewelled saddle, upon a cloth of crimson and gold, upon
I/s, a great stately ass, sixteen hands high and worth eighty golden guineas—those pushing young tradesmen, the
/ donkey-boys, with Murillo faces, and four or five tongues a-piece—Arabic, English, American, French, Italian
—with backs as brown and dusty as their beasts, as whaclcable, and almost as insensitive—those shabby, tasselly,
furtive-looking vagabonds, the Bedouin, with their strings of half-starved, grumbling, disjointed camels—oh ! to see
such stage effects, and hundreds more—unutterably well done—pass you by in eternal sunshine, one little year out of
nine hundred were short allotment indeed !
And then that Field of Pyramids and Tombs, twenty-five miles long, swelling into mountains at Geezeh, and
Sakkarah, and Dashour, and dropping at every mile between into strange mysterious " Valleys of the Shadow of
Death," thousands of them yet unexplored by the living—why, if we were to spend half a century here it would not be
much, compared with the four thousand years that its grim tenants have passed in its populous solitudes.
But since our days in the land of Egypt are at most three score and ten, we have torn ourselves from Cairo the
enchanted, shaken hands with the mummies, and abandoned ourselves, upon the bosom of the " Father of Rivers," in
a modern Arab " ark of bulrushes," literally "pitched within and without with pitch."
We are twelve miles from Cairo. Our "ark" is moored at the village of Toura, a name which is probably derived
from that of the ancient town which once stood here called, Triocus Magnus; which again, according to Strabo and
Diodorus, was so called from the Trojan captives of Menelaus. The ancient historians mention the mountains which
bound the plain of Toura as the site of the quarries from which the material for the Pyramids was obtained; and an
inspection of these quarries will confirm this information, for they are of great extent, and contain hieroglyphic tablets
and inscriptions, with the names of early kings. The northern portion is still worked, and a railway has been laid
down by the Pacha from the mountain to the river; but many of the ancient quarries are on the very summit of the
hill, around the place from which our view is taken. We have had a long weary trudge over that hot sandy plain ; it
is four or five miles across, and the rocks are steep and high ; and the black sailor-man, with bare legs and feet, who
carried our camera, had to rest half-way up, and eat his all-day biscuit and smoke a pipe; but we are amply rewarded
by the view from the summit. This is a worthy glimpse of the Nile valley; you see the great river for twenty or
thirty miles, fringed with palm groves and villages, and dotted with white sails; and you see in the dim distance the
Pyramids of Geezeh, perhaps twenty miles away, but cutting great broad-based wedges into the clear blue sky. This
view was taken during the progress of the inundation, a large tract of the country in the direction of the Pyramids
being overflowed.
The quarries consist of innumerable caves or chambers, many of them connected by subterraneous passages, and
arc interesting not only from their extent and antiquity, but because that here may be seen the manner in which the
stone was cut. Tiers of stones were removed in the form of steps until the intended floor of the quarry was reached.
The reader is referred to Sir Gardner Wilkinson's w'ork for translations of some of the hieroglyphic inscriptions which
are found in these quarries.
i]
*E have now done with Cairo—have seen the last of its striped mosques and its fantastically
beautiful minarets; its ricketty houses and ruin heaps—the grandeur of the past and the mean-
ness of the present. We have worn out two or three gloriously exciting ever-memorable days
on the Field of Pyramids and Tombs. "We are not satisfied by any means; were our lives of
antediluvian measure, we would surely have devoted one entire year to our cane-bottomed chair
on the portico of Shepherd's Hotel. Those solemn, fusty, loose-twisted old Arabs, whose bare
legs eternally act pendulum to the movement of their little nodding pit-a-pating donkeys—that imperturbable
- Turk, covered with braid and buttons, upon a gilt and jewelled saddle, upon a cloth of crimson and gold, upon
I/s, a great stately ass, sixteen hands high and worth eighty golden guineas—those pushing young tradesmen, the
/ donkey-boys, with Murillo faces, and four or five tongues a-piece—Arabic, English, American, French, Italian
—with backs as brown and dusty as their beasts, as whaclcable, and almost as insensitive—those shabby, tasselly,
furtive-looking vagabonds, the Bedouin, with their strings of half-starved, grumbling, disjointed camels—oh ! to see
such stage effects, and hundreds more—unutterably well done—pass you by in eternal sunshine, one little year out of
nine hundred were short allotment indeed !
And then that Field of Pyramids and Tombs, twenty-five miles long, swelling into mountains at Geezeh, and
Sakkarah, and Dashour, and dropping at every mile between into strange mysterious " Valleys of the Shadow of
Death," thousands of them yet unexplored by the living—why, if we were to spend half a century here it would not be
much, compared with the four thousand years that its grim tenants have passed in its populous solitudes.
But since our days in the land of Egypt are at most three score and ten, we have torn ourselves from Cairo the
enchanted, shaken hands with the mummies, and abandoned ourselves, upon the bosom of the " Father of Rivers," in
a modern Arab " ark of bulrushes," literally "pitched within and without with pitch."
We are twelve miles from Cairo. Our "ark" is moored at the village of Toura, a name which is probably derived
from that of the ancient town which once stood here called, Triocus Magnus; which again, according to Strabo and
Diodorus, was so called from the Trojan captives of Menelaus. The ancient historians mention the mountains which
bound the plain of Toura as the site of the quarries from which the material for the Pyramids was obtained; and an
inspection of these quarries will confirm this information, for they are of great extent, and contain hieroglyphic tablets
and inscriptions, with the names of early kings. The northern portion is still worked, and a railway has been laid
down by the Pacha from the mountain to the river; but many of the ancient quarries are on the very summit of the
hill, around the place from which our view is taken. We have had a long weary trudge over that hot sandy plain ; it
is four or five miles across, and the rocks are steep and high ; and the black sailor-man, with bare legs and feet, who
carried our camera, had to rest half-way up, and eat his all-day biscuit and smoke a pipe; but we are amply rewarded
by the view from the summit. This is a worthy glimpse of the Nile valley; you see the great river for twenty or
thirty miles, fringed with palm groves and villages, and dotted with white sails; and you see in the dim distance the
Pyramids of Geezeh, perhaps twenty miles away, but cutting great broad-based wedges into the clear blue sky. This
view was taken during the progress of the inundation, a large tract of the country in the direction of the Pyramids
being overflowed.
The quarries consist of innumerable caves or chambers, many of them connected by subterraneous passages, and
arc interesting not only from their extent and antiquity, but because that here may be seen the manner in which the
stone was cut. Tiers of stones were removed in the form of steps until the intended floor of the quarry was reached.
The reader is referred to Sir Gardner Wilkinson's w'ork for translations of some of the hieroglyphic inscriptions which
are found in these quarries.
i]