Navigation Surveys, Salvage Archaeology, and the Nile

While in Florida, I read Rex Keating's "Nubian Rescue", which is not an episode from the Arabian Nights. It summarized the Nubian Campaign, a portion of UNESCO's massive salvage operation racing against the filling of Lake Nasser behind Aswan High Dam on the Nile. Though it was an enormous, well-funded international effort that relocated Abu Simel and put ancient Meroe on the map, it could not save some great sites.

For me, it was a really sobering look at what could be in store for the Usumacinta and what might have to be done. Chris [Shaw's] reports from Rosa Bacelis about goings on at Boca' sound ominous. I'm going to just crib from the book, with an occasional aside. The quotes speak for themselves.

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UNESCO drew up a list of the principal threats to world cultural property. "First among them, and the most spectacular, is dam construction. In America, the Missouri River drainage plan has submerged all the known sites of five major prehistoric cultures." Subsidiary works, such as access roads, worker camps, and quarries for rock fill can be equally destructive [paraphrased].

From Dr. Vittorino Veronese's UNESCO appeal on 3-8-1960: "It is not easy to choose between temples and crops. I would be sorry for any man called on to make that choice who could not do so without a feeling of despair. These monuments do not belong solely to the countries who hold them in trust. Treasures of universal value are entitled to universal protection."

The Nubian campaign focused on a 100 mile stretch between Faras and the Dal Cataract. They fielded thirty expeditions from 24 countries from 1663 to 1971. "The Second Cataract, of all the many reaches of the Nile in its four thousand mile journey from source to sea, was by far the most beautiful. Rapids and islands followed in bewildering variety until at Semna, forty miles upstream from the Rock of Abusir, the granite closes in on the river, driving it into a channel less than fifty yards wide. From then on the landscape was convulsed into a series of ridges known in Arabic as Batn el Hagar the Belly of Stone and never was anything more aptly named. From Semna to the Dal Cataract, a distance of 55 miles, the Nile ran swiftly between steep walls of rock."

Though one is in the desert and the other in selva, the Nile struck me as remarkably like the Usumacinta. Both were swift, challenging, and well-used river routes. The Belly of Stone corresponds to the gorge-bound Usu' from Yaxchilan to La Linea. The lengths are even the same. The Usu' canyons follow downstream just as the rapids of the Second Cataract do on the Nile. Each had a parallel overland route: the Usu's was through Piedras Negras and La Pasadita, and the Nile's was the Nubian Road.

"Wherever there was a perilous stretch of water there one would find a(n Egyptian) fortress. They represented military engineering on a scale never before attempted in the ancient world and never to be equaled." The Nile had twelve forts ranged along the Second Cataract. The Usu' valley also has its fortresses: Panhale, La Pasadita, probably Yaxchilan, and maybe others.

Buhen - "The main defensive wall with rectangular towers projecting from it at regular intervals was 5 metres thick and 11 metres high. The number of bricks that went into its construction reached the staggering figure of ten millions. Piercing the bastions were double rows of loopholes, one set for standing and the other for kneeling archers. Buhen was virtually impregnable and nothing short of artillery could have breached its defenses. The architects of 1900 BC were every bit as imaginative and in some ways more advanced than the designers of the fortresses of our Middle Ages."

Mirgissa - "Whenever I think of Nubia, it is Mirgissa Fortress that comes to mind. That improbable mass of brickwork perched above the wildest and most dangerous stretch of the Second Cataract fires the imagination." Not only was it the largest of the Egyptian forts, its outer works sprawled for miles enclosing a river town. "The sandy plain south of the fort was never examined. Had the docks and warehouses been found they could have yielded invaluable information on the maritime and commercial activities of ancient Egypt."

"It is a great misfortune that not one of the forts has been preserved. For close to four thousand years they resisted the abrasive winds of Nubia and it is hard to credit that now in the year of 1974 not one of these absolutely unique structures survives." Being of mud brick, they could not be moved to higher ground. In the rising lake waters, the mud bricks dissolved into just mud.

As the surveys progressed, data accumulated on the river itself. At Mirgissa "the French Mission actually found a slipway which had been used for dragging ships. It took the form of a roadway laid with wooden poles rather like the sleepers of a railroad, each pole being slightly curved. The poles had long been eaten by termites but the dry mud had faithfully retained their imprints just as it had retained the impressions of grooves made by the keels of the ships and the actual footprints of sailors who had pulled the vessels along the slippery surface some forty centuries ago. When I saw the slipway the sand was already drifting over it but still I was able to follow its course due north for three kilometers. The dangerous rapids nearby can be navigated in reasonable safety only during the period of high water between the end of July and November, and the slipway had been constructed to outflank them and make navigation possible throughout the year."

"There can be little doubt that similar slipways would have been found in other dangerous reaches of the Cataract had the archaeologists conducting the Survey known what to look for. All the fortresses must have had quays or even harbors. At Buhen and Serra forts the quays were in situ."

"A careful study of aerial photographs of the Second Cartaract had revealed artificial spurs (wing dams) among several rapids and it is entirely conceivable that had Mills and his colleagues known of the existence of such spurs, which are difficult to spot on the ground, they could well have located and mapped others during their survey of the river and its islands. It is an opportunity lost which can never recur since the whole region is now submerged."

"To sum up then: Professor Vercoutter believes that in the reign of Amenemhet III two massive spur walls were built over the natural barrier at Semna and a high level of water was maintained by other spur walls at Uronarti and Askut, and so on down the length of the Cataract. We are drawn to the remarkable conclusion that one of the great rivers of the world was effectively brought under control nearly forty centuries ago."

The bottom line is that a navigation survey of the entire section of the Nile was badly needed but never done. Only bits and pieces were recorded. Hopefully we'll do better on the Usu'.

Other lessons that I got from UNESCO's Nubian Campaign were:

- An archaeological salvage effort is a huge job, requiring financial help from many nations, multiple teams on the ground, and a long term commitment. Any one project, like a navigation survey or dig, is only a small part.

- A lot more sites turn up than are known at the start. In one part of Nubia they started with a dozen and ended up with 1000, and that was in a desert where you can see things. Think how many may be along the Usumacinta hidden in the selva.

- No matter how good the resources, things are left undone, some for lack of resources, but many because a need was recognized too late.

- Last, and most heartbreaking, the biggest and best are going to be destroyed. All that will survive are documents from the surveys.

1-22-04, Ron Canter, with many quotes from Rex Keating