Departure for Abou-Simbel

On the 14th of August, 1816, the Hon. Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles, Commanders in the Royal Navy, left England, with the intention of making a tour on the Continent. This journey they were led to extend far beyond the original design. Curiosity at first, and an increasing admiration of antiquities as they advanced, carried them at length through several parts of the Levant, which have been little visited by modern travellers, and gave them more than four years of continued employment.

Soon after their return to England, in the end of the year 1820, they were induced to transcribe a selection of the letters which they had addressed during their absence to their families in England, as the most convenient mode of satisfying the inquiries of numerous friends.

“Towards the end of May, 1817, we joined company at Philae with Messrs. Beechey and Belzoni, who were about to proceed up the Nile. The principal object of the expedition, which was undertaken at the desire of Mr. Salt, was to endeavour to open the great temple at Abou-Simbel, which Mr. Belzoni, who was that gentleman’s agent, had attempted the preceding year.
The whole face of the temple, as high as the heads of the statues which are in front of it, was buried in the sand which had been blown from the desert. This sand, in the course of time, had accumulated to such a degree, as not only to fill up the whole of the valley, but also to form a mountain, sloping from the front of the temple for 200 or 300 yards towards the banks of the Nile. From all external appearance it is probable this temple, which is hewn out of the solid rock, had been shut fo very many centuries, perhaps for more than 2000 years; and in that case, if it had not suffered too much in the general pillage and destruction which all the sacred edifices underwent at the conquest of Egypt, by Cambyses and other subsequent princes, it was hoped that something interesting to the antiquary might be discovered.
We considered it a fortunate circumstance for us to have an opportunity of joining in so interesting an undertaking. It is advisable that travellers should be both numerous and well armed in Nubia: our party was now a tolerably strong one, as including Mr. Beechey’s Greek servant, an Arab cook, and a janissary [Giovanni Finati], it consisted of seven persons. We could only add one solitary musket to a pretty good stock of arms of every description which Mr. Beeckey had with him. We hired a boat at a village situated on a point amidst a cluster of date-trees which bounds the view of the river from Philae to the southward. The crew consisted of five men, including the reis or captain, and three boys: three of the men and the reis were brothers, and the fifth was their brother-in-law. This latter was dressed in a blue shirt, from which circumstance we nick-named him the “blue devil”; his real name was Hassan; he will be by and by a conspicuous character in this narrative. The boys were sons of some one or other of the crew, and the boat thay said belonged to the father of them all, an old man whowore a green turban, as a descendant of the Prophet.
In the afternoon of the 16th June, we started with a fine fair wind, having first settled a quarrel between two of our crew, in which one of them was cut through the calf of the leg, to the bone. Our agreement with the reis was for 160 piastres per month, 4l. sterling; and at the end of the voyage, if they behaved well, a backsheeish or present was promised, a stipulation which always forms part of similar bargains in this country. It was expressly understood that the crew should find their own provisions.”

From Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria, and the Holy Land
by Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles, 1823

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