Burckhardt, John Lewis, 1784-1817; Nile River Valley -- Description and travel; Nubia -- Description and travel
It should seem that the new settlers had soon familiarized themselves
with the conquered natives, whose language they adopted, and still
retain. This language has no Arabic sounds whatever, and is spoken
all the way south of Assouan, as far as Seboua, and in every village
to the north of the former place, as far as Edfou; numbers of Kenous
having settled in Upper Egypt in later times. I have subjoined a
vocabulary of the Kenous and another of the Nouba. It is a fact
worthy of notice, that two foreign tongues should have subsisted
so long, to the almost entire exclusion of the Arabic, in a country
bordered on one side by Dongola and on the other by Egypt, in both
of which Arabic is exclusively spoken. Those only of the Kenous who
have been in Egypt speak Arabic; their women are, for the greater
part, entirely ignorant of it. Nor is it less remarkable that the
Aleykat Arabs of Seboua, and Wady el Arab, have retained their pure
Arabic, placed as they are on the boundaries both of the Kenous and
Nouba. The men are acquainted with both languages; but the Aleykat
women understand Arabic only.
The way of living, and the manners, of the Nouba and Kenous
being much the same, I shall speak of them, after I have given a
description of my route.
The neighbourhood of Derr is interesting on account of a temple
situated on the declivity of a rocky hill, just behind the
village. Its structure denotes remote antiquity. The gods of Egypt
appear to have been worshipped here long before they were lodged
in the gigantic temples of Karnac and Gorne, which are, to all
appearance, the most ancient temples in Egypt. The temple of Derr
is entirely hewn out of the sand-stone rock, with its pronaos,
sekos or cella, and adyton. The pronaos consists of three rows of
[Illustration] square pillars, four in each row. The row of pillars
nearest the cella, which were originally joined by the roof to the
main temple, are of larger dimensions than the rest; they are nearly
four feet square, and about fourteen feet high, and are still entire,
while fragments of the shafts only remain of the two outer rows. In
front of each of the four pillars are the legs of a colossal figure,
similar to those of the temple of Gorne, at Thebes. A portion of
the excavated rock which had formed one of the walls of the pronaos,
has fallen down; on the fragments of it, a battle is represented: the
hero, in his chariot, is pursuing his vanquished foe, who retires to
a marshy and woody country, carrying the wounded along with him. In
a lower compartment of the same wall, the prisoners, with their
arms tied behind their backs, are brought before the executioner,
who is represented in the act of slaying one of them. All these
figures are much defaced. On the opposite wall is another battle,
but in a still more mutilated state: in this, prisoners are brought
before the hawk-headed Osiris. On the front wall of the cella,
on each side of the principal entrance, Briareus is represented in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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