Fortress of Ibrim, Nubia

This vignette represents the fortress from a nearer point of View, and admirably exhibits the bold headland, which is crested with the ruins of walls, towers, and defences; but it contains few relics of antiquity, and those a mixture of Egyptian and Roman, of a late date and in bad style: a stone building, with a cornice and projecting slab, intended for the globe and asps; and the capital of a Corinthian column of Roman date. A block used in building the outward wall bears the name of Tirhaka, an Ethiopian king, who ruled in his capital of Naputa, now El Berkel. In the rock below Ibrim are some small painted grottoes, bearing the names of Thothmes I. and III., and of Amunoph III, and of Remeses Il, of the eighteenth dynasty, with statues in high relief at the upper end.

Nothing can be imagined more lonely as an abode than this fortress the Nile and the sun are the only things that appear to move there; and there is no water except what is obtained from the river. From its elevated situation the look-out is only over desolate mountains and an arid desert; sometimes, but rarely, a boat from Lower Egypt brings a traveller from a far distant country on his way to Wady Halfa, that he may be enabled to report on his return that he had visited both cataracts of the Nile. When the banks of the Nile were more thickly inhabited, and more frequent intercourse took place with Ethiopia and Abyssinia, Ibrim was a place of some importance: traces of habitations beyond the walls, and of an extensive necropolis, are evidence of a population more proportionate to its situation as a frontier fortress.