Treading an ancient path

By Nevine El-Aref
We left Cairo by car in the early morning and headed for Qantara West, where we would take the ferry across the Suez Canal. Our plan was to head in a north-easterly direction for Tel Al-Farama, ancient Pelusium, and follow the ancient "Horus Road" to Al-Arish, visiting as many sites as possible on a single day. The sun was shining as we set out. We passed the industrial city of 10 Ramadan and bypassed Ismailia, where a narrow two-lane stretch of asphalt led to the ferry. We realised immediately that we were in for a long wait -- there was a long queue of cars, trucks and bicycles.
We took our place at the end of the queue, and to pass the time I took out the Rough Guide, which accompanies me on every trip. I flipped to Pelusium, the largest and most important frontier post along the Horus Road. The area was once extremely fertile, filled with orchards and vineyards and watered by the most easterly branch of the Nile, which dried up only in the third century AD.
I learned some interesting facts while we waited. At Pelusium the Roman general Pompey was murdered on the orders of his protégé, the young Ptolemy XIII. Legend has it that Crusader King Baldwin I died there of ptomaine poisoning after eating putrid fish, and 185,000 soldiers of the invading Assyrian king Sennacherib were massacred after swarms of rats ate their quivers and bows!
I felt the car easing forward towards the ferry. Soon we had crossed the canal and were driving off the ferry towards the Centre for Sinai Studies, a 10-minute drive away. This is the first educational and scientific centre to be built in the region, and is an invaluable means of disseminating information for scholars, tourists and members of the lay public like myself. Here we were to meet up with Ahmed Amer, the antiquities department inspector who was to accompany us on our trip.
The centre, which emulates the shape of a Pharaonic temple, comprises three buildings: a residential unit for students and lecturers, a growing library of books and documentary films on archaeology and a building divided into lecture and reception halls. The centre also houses a studio with a display of coloured slides showing the development of ancient Egyptian architecture.
The centre's museum, which displays a number of artefacts unearthed during local excavations, is designed in the long term to become a scientific academy to provide practical training and academic studies in restoration, excavation and documentation.
Amer gave us a hospitable welcome with cups of steaming tea. He told us our journey would take us along the longest military road in Egypt, and the only one to have retained its ancient fortresses. "The fortresses reveal information about the various types of military architecture in Egypt and more about the history of Egypt's eastern gateway than ever before," Amer said.
Few roads on earth have played so decisive a part in the history of so many nations. Along it the ancient Egyptian empire expanded into western Asia, Islam entered north Africa, and science and philosophy were disseminated from Alexandria.
The Horus Road was the vital commercial and military link between Egypt and Asia. It has felt the marching feet of no fewer than 50 armies. From west to east, the Pharaohs Thutmose III and Ramses II crossed Sinai with their military forces. From east to west came the Assyrian hordes, the Persian army of Cambyses, Alexander the Great with his mercenaries, Antiochus and the Roman legions, and the Arab conquerors led by 'Amr Ibn Al'As.
Our first port of call was the mud-brick fortress of Habuwa, which dates from the time of the Hyksos, the hated invaders of Egypt who came from the direction of Syria and swept into the Delta with horse and chariot. In those distant days there was no Suez Canal to hinder their progress, and they were able to conquer Egypt in the 14th century BC and rule for a hundred years. Habuwa is a small mud brick fort with three entrances and the remains of military fortifications.
An ancient barrage was our next destination, an impressive two-kilometre dyke near Pelusium. We walked through the columns of what was obviously once a great amphitheatre, and were guided to see skeletons of crocodiles and Roman baths with exquisite mosaics (though I must confess I failed to see the connection between the two!). It appears that Pelusium was a pleasure resort in Graeco-Roman times, and high-ranking officials went there for "time out." It is hard to visualise it as such today, but of course the land then was extremely fertile, watered annually by the floods of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. This enabled large tracts of land to be cultivated with orchards and vineyards. I recall reading somewhere that Pelusium produced the finest wines in the world, distributed throughout the Graeco-Roman world.
The historical wealth of northern Sinai has long been known. The earliest archaeological activity was carried out by the French scholar J Cledat between 1909 and 1914. But it was only when plans were drawn up to build the Al-Salam Canal -- designed to put 400,000 feddans under cultivation -- went ahead, that it became clear that the archaeological resources in northern Sinai would be lost unless they were given immediate attention.
The then Egyptian Antiquities Organisation (EAO), in collaboration with French scholars, began in 1980 to excavate sites at Qantara, Habuwa, Pelusium, Tel Al-Makhzan, Qasserout and Qalat Al-Tina. The joint EAO-University of Lille project started in the 1990/91 season, and then, following an invitation from the newly-formed Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), various foreign missions undertook to excavate the area. So far more than 50 archaeological sites have been identified and excavated.
As the teams worked in the difficult conditions of northern Sinai, fortresses, citadels, churches, amphitheatres and baths came to light, and slowly the idea of developing the Horus Road as a tourist attraction gained momentum. Amer is anxious that the public be informed about it. "Northern Sinai was heavily occupied and the monuments are enormously interesting," he said.
I had to agree. The citadel, for example, is remarkable -- one of the most impressive monuments we saw on our trip. This huge structure, built in the reign of Ptolemy IV with seven-foot-thick walls, three gates and 36 military towers, encloses an area 600 metres long and 300 wide.
While we were admiring the magnificent structure, we were joined by Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, director of the Sinai and Canal monuments. He told us that underneath the citadel a cache of 500 bronze coins was unearthed, along with precious stones, weapons and pottery shards. Grain silos, stables, store rooms, a dormitory for soldiers and houses were also discovered around the citadel. "It suggests this citadel was used as a customs and excise station," Maqsoud said.
It must, indeed, have been a heavily populated area, if the ruins of houses excavated around the citadel are any indication.
"Tel Al-Farama (i.e. Pelusium) and the neighbouring sites at Tel Al-Makhzan and Kanais probably formed parts of 'Greater Pelusium,'" Maqsoud said. When the salvage project began in 1991, these areas were divided into concessions and allocated to archaeological teams from Egypt, Canada, Switzerland and Britain. Egyptian archaeologists excavated in and around the ancient port, the amphitheatre and the Byzantine church.
Our next destination was Tel Al-Makhzan, a 20-minute drive away. We stopped at the end of an asphalt road and walked for a few minutes over the mud flats until we reached a brick ruin. It seemed, at first, to be "more of the same," but I was wrong. Closer inspection revealed the ruins of three churches dating from the fourth and fifth centuries. The Horus Road was, of course, also the highway along which Christian pilgrims travelled, and there were churches from Rafah to Pelusium. The largest we saw was a church dedicated to Aba Maques, a martyr of the Diocletian persecutions in the fourth century.
"The SCA are currently upgrading the Horus Road monuments," Abdel-Maqsoud said. A new museum is being built to house antiquities excavated in Sinai by Israeli archaeologists during their survey between 1967 and 1980. These objects have now been returned to Egypt, but only 1,000 of the best will be exhibited.
The idea is to display the Horus Road through the ages, revealing military life at the time when Qantara East was Egypt's "eastern gateway" to Palestine and Syria. Weapons, chariot wheels and shields will stand side by side with utilitarian items such as pottery.
The day passed all too quickly. It was almost five o'clock. Our driver suggested we stay overnight as he was too exhausted to drive back to Cairo. We asked Amer to lead us to the nearest hotel. Hotel? Tourism clearly hasn't yet developed in that part of Sinai, for all the lofty plans of museums and archaeological tours. The nearest hotels, we discovered, were in Ismailia, 260 kilometres away!
Practical information: You can reach Qantara West by train, which runs straight through the agricultural land of the eastern Delta to Ismailia. On the other side, however, there is no transport other than taxis.
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