Damiano da Rivoli (1642-1710), OFM.

manuscript on paper, folio (272 x 200mm.), 22 leaves, 27 lines, written in ink in a uniform scribal hand throughout (with occasional marginal additions), on paper watermarked with an anchor in a circle surmounted by a star, binding: early eighteenth-century English vellum-backed blue paper boards, lettered on spine p. damiano's voyage to nubia. m.s., water damage to outer lower corners of ff.[1-10] with some slight loss of words

cf. Streit, Bibliotheca missionum xvii (1952), nos 5403 and 5408 (a letter written by Damiano from Tripoli dated 17 September 1705); Beccari, Rerum aethiopicarum scriptores I (1903), pp. 180, 181, 203 and other material cited by Streit

Damiano spent ten years in the Holy Land and in 1701 was made head of the Mission (Praefectus) for Borno, Fezzan and Nubia. In 1705 he came to Kordofan, thence first to Libya and then to Cairo. He later went back to Tripoli but in April 1706, struck by sickness, he returned to Turin, where he died in February 1710.

This unknown and unpublished  manuscript is a detailed account of a journey from Cairo down the Nile into Nubia (what is now Sudan) and thence across the Baiyuda desert to Sennar in the east of Sudan, south of Khartoum.  

The writer begins by saying that he will not mention the pyramids, Joseph's well, the mosques, the Nile, the vast numbers of people, how the Nile floods, and many other topics which he, in true rhetorical manner, rehearses over two pages, before proceeding to tell us the story of the voyage.

Damiano decided to wait for the departure of the caravan to Sennar on 8 April 1703, Easter Day, and they set off then on a journey of eight days down the Nile to Asciud. There are descriptions of flora and fauna, including crocodiles and their mating habits, various birds along the bank, resembling pelicans, and other sights. Resuming the journey on 11 June still along the Nile, he sees many colossal ruins of antiquity. After many days journeying he reaches the edges of Egypt and Nubia, and on 7 August [1703] he reached Dongola where he paid two cakes of soap for a camel and makes further gifts of soap and other things to the sheikh of Dongola in what is now Sudan. Continuing along the Nile south and then eastwards, they came to Korti, a village on the way to Merowe, and Korti or Corta as he calls it "e l'ultimo luogo del regno della Nubia, prima d'entrare nel deserto di Baioda [Baiyuda]". Nowhere did he find any Christians, but in a village nearby called Candac he did find a church, built recently and decorated with pictures of saints. This, Damiano was told, had been built in a single day, which he dismisses as impossible, but he does go off with an escort of local negros to look at this and other buildings.

The region is described as poor and having houses built only of mud. Women go naked, young and old, adults and children not wearing anything on their bodies except a transparent garment of loose woven cotton, and there is much other information about the locals and their customs. Money, he tells us, is rarely used. He describes customs of Sennar, the clothes (or lack of them) worn without shame, marriage customs, the market in Sennar, the abundance of good meat and the cultivation of fruit and vegetables (water is plentiful), the buildings, all of mud and grass, its importance as a trading centre used by merchants from Egypt, Jedda, Dafur, Ethiopia etc.