Position 42 - Assiut, The Largest City Of Upper Egypt, Seen From The Cliffs At The West

The tombs in the cliff, which we saw from our previous station, are now behind us, as we look off over the town. Beyond the town is the regular white band that marks the river, and the fine white line between the town and the river, at an oblique angle with the latter, is the road from the river harbor to the town, a distance of some three-quarters of a mile. Beyond the river you see the valley, spreading eastward to the distant eastern cliffs, which show in dim gray upon the horizon.

Behind them is the rocky waste of the Arabian desert, which rises to a range of granite mountains and then drops to the Red Sea. It is but the continuation of the great Sahara, which lies behind us. Just at this point, the valley spread out before us, which the river has cut through the desert, is only some ten miles wide. Between us and the town are the fields, from which the inundation has just retreated, and you observe the black Abyssinian soil, which it has deposited.

This valley before us was once a bare trench, floored with naked rocks, and walled in by the cliffs on which we stand. As the centuries passed the river gradually covered the rock floor with mud, until now the soil deposit is here from 33 to 38 feet deep, while in the Delta, which was once a bay of the sea, it is 50 feet and more in depth. On the average it is perhaps less than 30 feet deep, so it has required over eight thousand years to enable the river to lay down a deposit of such a depth, for it rises on the average only about four inches in a century.

All those arts, the development of which we have seen so strikingly illustrated, for example, in the pyramids, the organization of men into society and under ordered government —all this grew up in this valley since yonder stratum of soil was deposited, and could not have made any considerable progress until the soil was deep enough to support vegetation over an extended area.

The irrigation of these lands in modern times is much assisted by a great dam, just completed by the English at this point. It contains no less than sixty arches, with a sluice at each end of the whole, and the country between here and the Fayûm greatly profits from the water thus stored. The canal flowing at our feet is one of the important irrigation canals of Egypt, called the Sohagiyeh, because it comes out of the river above here at the town of Sohag. The road which crosses it from the town is the ancient road, which has always led thence to the cemetery where we are.

From the 23rd century B. C, at least, the dead of Assiut have been borne along that road to be interred in or near these cliffs. The modern cemetery is on our left, just around a bend in the cliffs. The ancient town of the nobles, who hewed these tombs, among which we stand, lies fathoms deep, buried under the accumulations of thousands of years beneath the busy modern town. The lands about the town are owned by men, whose abstracts of title do not reach back to the lords of this district, who four thousand years ago left legally valid contracts assuring to their tombs after death the use of a certain portion of the income of these lands.

The ancient Egyptian lords and the peasantry, who in those remote days here fought and toiled for the princes of Heracleopolis, are long forgotten. In place of their massive temples, now rise the slender minarets of the Moslem mosque, brought into the land by those desert tribes, which these ancient princes despised as barbarians; and where the chateaus of the lords who lived here in Abraham's day once nestled under the palms, are the busy markets and teeming bazaars of the modern town.

All that the native still preserves of what was once here, is the name which he applies to the town. “Assiut,” or “Siut,” as it is also called, is but the slightly changed form of the ancient name of the town, which you will find in these tombs behind us, as “Siyowt” in hieroglyphs four thousand years old.

It is a modern city of over 42,000 inhabitants, with a number of important industries, especially the manufacture of a fine red pottery. The tourists from Cook's steamers are quite willing to expose themselves to the blazing sun and to walk up that long road from the harbor, to which I have already called your attention, in order to buy a few specimens of this beautiful ware in the interesting bazaars.

On market days, this road at our feet, and all the others converging in the town, are alive with natives, going up to the town to dispose of their produce in its markets; and like the same scene in other lands it is one of the most picturesque and interesting to be met with on the Nile. You will discover a group of such people just beyond the bridge, but if we could see this road on Saturday, you would be reminded of a trail of ants.

But now we must leave this fine landscape and visit our first upper Egyptian temple. This we shall find at Abydos, about one hundred miles above or southeast of Assiut, on the same side of the river. See Map 3. The temple at Abydos was built facing the river, that is, facing northeastward, and we are to look south-westward across the front. Turn to Plan 7, note the points of the compass as indicated upon it, and get clearly in mind the relation of the temple to the river. This is best done by turning the plan so that its north corresponds to north on the general Map 3. The red lines numbered 43 show precisely what portion of the temple we are to see first.