CHAPTER III.

THE ANTIQUITIES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF MERAWI.

The portion of the Nile Valley in which Merawi is situated was occupied by the victorious troops of the Sirdar immediately after the capture of Dongoia, on September 23rd, 1897. The Nile is easily navigable for steamers the whole way from Dongoia to Kasingar, a village on the east bank at the foot of the Fourth Cataract, but the Sirdar decided that the Headquarters of the Frontier Field Force of the Egyptian Army should be established on the west bank of the river, opposite to the village of Merawi, about nine miles down stream of Kasingar. The camp lay, in fact, quite close to the village of Sanam Abu Dom, which stands at one end of the comparatively long valley that runs parallel with a range of mountains extending from Ai-Makherif (Berber) on the Nile, not far from the mouth of the Atbara River, to the Nile, nearly opposite Gebel Barkal. This valley is called " Wadi Abil Dom," i.e., the " valley of the dom palms," because numbers of this tree are, or were, found in certain portions of it. The village of Sanam Abu Dom has always been of some importance, for it formed the halting-place of the caravans which travelled from the Nile across the Desert of Gilif to the Nile again. The first portion of its name, which means "image," or "idol," suggests that it stood near the site of some ancient buildings containing figures of gods, and it is probable that the whole name has reference to a temple built by some Nubian king at the northwest end of the Wadi Abu Dom a few centuries before Christ.

That a temple with two or three courts and many columns actually stood on the site where the camp lay is proved by the fact that the bases of several sandstone columns, similar in shape and size to those which are to be seen to this day at Nuri and Gebel Barkal, were found in 1897, when the soldiers were digging out 114