Achmet.CHAPTER V.THE PYRAMIDS AND MEMPHIS.Howling Dervishes—A Chicken Factory—Ride to the Pyramids—Quarrel with the Arabs—The Ascent—View from the Summit—Backsheesh—Effect of Pyramid climbing—The Sphinx—Playing the Cadi—We obtain Justice—Visit to Sakkara and the Mummy Pits—The Exhumation of Memphis—Interview with M. Mariette—Account of his Discoveries—Statue of Rameses II.—Return to the Nile.
Achmet.
Achmet.
Achmet.
Howling Dervishes—A Chicken Factory—Ride to the Pyramids—Quarrel with the Arabs—The Ascent—View from the Summit—Backsheesh—Effect of Pyramid climbing—The Sphinx—Playing the Cadi—We obtain Justice—Visit to Sakkara and the Mummy Pits—The Exhumation of Memphis—Interview with M. Mariette—Account of his Discoveries—Statue of Rameses II.—Return to the Nile.
“And Morning opes in haste her lids,To gaze upon the Pyramids.”—Emerson.
“And Morning opes in haste her lids,To gaze upon the Pyramids.”—Emerson.
“And Morning opes in haste her lids,To gaze upon the Pyramids.”—Emerson.
“And Morning opes in haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids.”—Emerson.
We went no further than the village of Gizeh, three or four miles above Cairo, on the first evening, having engaged our donkeys and their drivers to meet us there and convey us to the Pyramids on the following morning. About dusk, the raïs moored our boat to the bank, beside a College of dervishes, whose unearthly chants, choruses and clapping of hands, were prolonged far into the night. Their wild cries, and deep, monotonousbass howlings so filled our ears that we could not choose but listen, and, in spite of our fatigue sleep was impossible. After performing for several hours, they gradually ceased, through sheer exhaustion, though there was one tough old dervish, who continued to gasp out, “Allah! Allah!” with such a spasmodic energy, that I suspected it was produced by the involuntary action of his larynx, and that he could not have stopped, even had he been so minded.
When we threw open the latticed blinds of our cabin, before sunrise, the next morning, the extraordinary purity of the air gave rise to an amusing optical delusion on the part of my friend. “See that wall!” said he, pointing to a space between two white houses; “what a brilliant color it is painted, and how those palms and these white houses are relieved against it!” He was obliged to look twice before he perceived that what he had taken for a wall close at hand, was really the sky, and rested upon a far-off horizon. Our donkeys were in readiness on the bank, and I bestrode the same faithful little gray who had for three days carried me through the bazaars of Cairo. We left orders for the raïs to go on to Bedracheyn, a village near the supposed site of Memphis, and taking Achmet with us, rode off gayly among the mud hovels and under the date-trees of Gizeh, on our way to the Pyramids. Near the extremity of the village, we entered one of the large chicken-hatching establishments for which the place is famed, but found it empty. We disturbed a numerous family of Fellahs, couched together on the clay floor, crept on our hands and knees through two small holes and inspected sundry ovens covered with a layer of chaff, and redolent of a mild, moist heat and a feathery smell. The owner informed us that forthe first four or five days the eggs were exposed to smoke as well as heat, and that when the birds began to pick the shell, which generally took place in fifteen days, they were placed in another oven and carefully accouched.
The rising sun shone redly on the Pyramids, as we rode out on the broad harvest land of the Nile. The black, unctuous loam was still too moist from the inundation to be ploughed, except in spots, here and there, but even where the water had scarce evaporated, millions of germs were pushing their slender blades up to the sunshine. In that prolific soil, the growth of grain is visible from day to day. The Fellahs were at work on all sides, preparing for planting, and the ungainly buffaloes drew their long ploughs slowly through the soil. Where freshly turned, the earth had a rich, soft lustre, like dark-brown velvet, beside which the fields of young wheat, beans and lentils, glittered with the most brilliant green. The larks sang in the air and flocks of white pigeons clustered like blossoms on the tops of the sycamores. There, in November, it was the freshest and most animating picture of Spring. The direct road to the Pyramids was impassable, on account of the water, and we rode along the top of a dyke, intersected by canals, to the edge of the Libyan Desert—a distance of nearly ten miles. The ruptures in the dyke obliged us occasionally to dismount, and at the last canal, which cuts off the advancing sands from the bounteous plain on the other side, our donkeys were made to swim, while we were carried across on the shoulders of two naked Arabs. They had run out in advance to meet us, hailing us with many English and French phrases, while half a dozen boys, with earthen bottles which they had just filled from the slimy canal, crowded after them,insisting, in very good English, that we should drink at once, and take them with us to the Pyramids.
Our donkeys’ hoofs now sank deep in the Libyan sands, and we looked up to the great stone-piles of Cheops, Cephrenes and Mycerinus, not more than half a mile distant. Our sunrise view of the Pyramids on leaving Gizeh, was sufficient, had I gone no further, and I approached them, without the violent emotion which sentimental travellers experience, but with a quiet feeling of the most perfect satisfaction. The form of the pyramid is so simple and complete, that nothing is left to the imagination. Those vast, yellowish-gray masses, whose feet are wrapped in the silent sand, and whose tops lean against the serene blue heaven, enter the mind and remain in the memory with no shock of surprise, no stir of unexpected admiration. The impression they give and leave, is calm, grand and enduring as themselves.
The sun glared hot on the sand as we toiled up the ascent to the base of Cheops, whose sharp corners were now broken into zigzags by the layers of stone. As we dismounted in his shadow, at the foot of the path which leads up to the entrance, on the northern side, a dozen Arabs beset us. They belonged to the regular herd who have the Pyramids in charge, and are so renowned for their impudence that it is customary to employ the janissary of some Consulate in Cairo, as a protection. Before leaving Gizeh I gave Achmet my sabre, which I thought would be a sufficient show to secure us from their importunities. However, when we had mounted to the entrance and were preparing to climb to the summit, they demanded a dollar from each for their company on the way. This was just four times the usual fee, and we flatly refused the demand. Myfriend had in the mean time become so giddy from the few steps he had mounted, that he decided to return, and I ordered Achmet, who knew the way, to go on with me and leave the Arabs to their howlings. Their leader instantly sprang before him, and attempted to force him back. This was too much for Achmet, who thrust the man aside, whereupon he was instantly beset by three or four, and received several hard blows. The struggle took place just on the verge of the stones, and he was prudent enough to drag his assailants into the open space before the entrance of the Pyramid. My friend sprang towards the group with his cane, and I called to the donkey-driver to bring up my sabre, but by this time Achmet had released himself, with the loss of his turban.
The Arabs, who had threatened to treat us in the same manner, then reduced their demand to the regular fee of five piastres for each. I took three of them and commenced the ascent, leaving Achmet and my friend below. Two boys followed us, with bottles of water. At first, the way seemed hazardous, for the stones were covered with sand and fragments which had fallen from above, but after we had mounted twenty courses, the hard, smooth blocks of granite formed broader and more secure steps. Two Arabs went before, one holding each of my hands, while the third shoved me up from the rear. The assistance thus rendered was not slight, for few of the stones are less than four feet in height. The water-boys scampered up beside us with the agility of cats. We stopped a moment to take breath, at a sort of resting-place half-way up—an opening in the Pyramid, communicating with the uppermost of the interior chambers. I had no sooner sat down on the nearest stone, than the Arabs stretched themselvesat my feet and entertained me with most absurd mixture of flattery and menace. One, patting the calves of my legs, cried out; “Oh, what fine, strong legs! how fast they came up: nobody ever went up the Pyramid so fast!” while the others added: “Here you must give us backsheesh: every body gives us a dollar here.” My only answer was, to get up and begin climbing, and they did not cease pulling and pushing till they left me breathless on the summit. The whole ascent did not occupy more than ten minutes.
The view from Cheops has been often described. I cannot say that it increased my impression of the majesty and grandeur of the Pyramid, for that was already complete. My eyes wandered off from the courses of granite, broadening away below my feet, to contemplate the glorious green of the Nile-plain, barred with palm-trees and divided by the gleaming flood of the ancient river; the minarets of Cairo; the purple walls of the far Arabian mountains; the Pyramid groups of Sakkara and Dashoor, overlooking disinterred Memphis in the South; and the arid yellow waves of the Libyan Desert, which rolled unbroken to the western sky. The clear, open heaven above, which seemed to radiate light from its entire concave, clasped in its embrace and harmonized the different features of this wonderful landscape. There was too much warmth and brilliance for desolation. Every thing was alive and real; the Pyramids were not ruins, and the dead Pharaohs, the worshippers of Athor and Apis, did not once enter my mind.
My wild attendants did not long allow me to enjoy the view quietly. To escape from their importunities for backsheesh, I gave them two piastres in copper coin, which instantly turned their flatteries into the most bitter complaints. It wasinsulting to give so little, and they preferred having none; if I would not give a dollar, I might take the money back. I took it without more ado, and put it into my pocket. This rather surprised them, and first one, and then another came to me and begged to have it again, on his own private account. I threw the coins high into the air, and as they clattered down on the stones, there ensued such a scramble as would have sent any but Arabs over the edge of the Pyramid. We then commenced the descent, two seizing my hands as before, and dragging me headlong after them. We went straight down the side, sliding and leaping from stone to stone without stopping to take breath, and reached the base in five or six minutes. I was so excited from the previous aggression of the Arabs, that I neither felt fatigue nor giddiness on the way up and down, and was not aware how violent had been my exertions. But when I touched the level sand, all my strength vanished in an instant. A black mist came over my eyes, and I sank down helpless and nearly insensible. I was scarcely able to speak, and it was an hour before I could sit upright on my donkey. I felt the Pyramid in all my bones, and for two or three days afterwards moved my joints with as much difficulty as a rheumatic patient.
The Arabs, who at first had threatened to kill Achmet, now came forward and kissed his hands, humbly entreating pardon. But his pride had been too severely touched by the blows he had received, and he repulsed them, spitting upon the ground, as the strongest mark of contempt. We considered it due to him, to ourselves, and to other travellers after us, to represent the matter to the Shekh of the Pyramids, who lives in a village called Kinnayseh, a mile distant, and orderedAchmet to conduct us thither. We first rode along the base of the Pyramid of Cephrenes, and down the sand drifts to the majestic head of the Sphinx. I shall not attempt to describe this enormous relic of Egyptian art. There is nothing like it in the world. Those travellers who pronounce its features to be negro in their character, are certainly very hasty in their conclusions. That it is an Egyptian head is plainly evident, notwithstanding its mutilation. The type, however, is rather fuller and broader than is usual in Egyptian statues.
On reaching the village we found that the shekh was absent in Cairo, but were received by his son, who, after spelling out a few words of my Arabic passport and hearing Achmet’s relation of the affair, courteously invited us to his house. We rode between the mud huts to a small court-yard, where we dismounted. A carpet was spread on the ground, under a canopy of palm-leaves, and the place of honor was given to us, the young shekh seating himself on the edge, while our donkey-drivers, water-boys and a number of villagers, stood respectfully around. A messenger was instantly despatched to the Pyramids, and in the mean time we lighted the pipe of peace. The shekh promised to judge the guilty parties and punish them in our presence. Coffee was ordered, but as the unlucky youth returned and indiscreetly cried out, “Ma feesh!” (there is none!) the shekh took him by the neck, and run him out of the court-yard, threatening him with all manner of penalties unless he brought it.
We found ourselves considered in the light of judges, and I thought involuntarily of the children playing Cadi, in the Arabian tale. But to play our Cadi with the necessary gravity of countenance was a difficult matter. It was rather embarrassingto sit cross-legged so long, and to look so severe. My face was of the color of a boiled lobster, from the sun, and in order to protect my eyes, I had taken off my cravat and bound it around the red tarboosh. My friend had swathed his felt hat in like manner, and when the shekh looked at us from time to time, while Achmet spoke of our friendship with all the Consuls in Cairo, it was almost too much to enjoy quietly. However, the shekh, who wore a red cap and a single cotton garment, treated us with much respect. His serene, impartial demeanor, as he heard the testimony of the various witnesses who were called up, was most admirable. After half an hour’s delay, the messenger returned, and the guilty parties were brought into court, looking somewhat alarmed and very submissive. We identified the two ringleaders, and after considering the matter thoroughly, the shekh ordered that they should be instantly bastinadoed. We decided between ourselves to let the punishment commence, lest the matter should not be considered sufficiently serious, and then to show our mercy by pardoning the culprits.
One of the men was then thrown on the ground and held by the head and feet, while the shekh took a stout rod and began administering the blows. The victim had prepared himself by giving his bornous a double turn over his back, and as the end of the rod struck the ground each time, there was much sound with the veriest farce of punishment. After half a dozen strokes, he cried out, “ya salaam!” whereupon the crowd laughed heartily, and my friend ordered the shekh to stop. The latter cast the rod at our feet, and asked us to continue the infliction ourselves, until we were satisfied. We told him and the company in general, through Achmet, thatwe were convinced of his readiness to punish imposition; that we wished to show the Arabs that they must in future treat travellers with respect; that we should send word of the affair to Cairo, and they might rest assured that a second assault would be more severely dealt with. Since this had been demonstrated, we were willing that the punishment should now cease, and in conclusion returned our thanks to the shekh, for his readiness to do us justice. This decision was received with great favor; the two culprits came forward and kissed our hands and those of Achmet, and the villagers pronounced a unanimous sentence of “taïb!” (good!) The indiscreet youth again appeared, and this time with coffee, of which we partook with much relish, for this playing the Cadi was rather fatiguing. The shekh raised our hands to his forehead, and accompanied us to the end of the village, where we gave the coffee-bearer a backsheesh, dismissed our water-boys, and turned our donkeys’ heads toward Abousir.
Achmet’s dark skin was pale from his wounded pride, and I was faint from pyramid-climbing, but a cold fowl, eaten as we sat in the sun, on the border of the glowing Desert, comforted us. The dominion of the sand has here as distinct a bound as that of the sea; there is not thirty yards from the black, pregnant loam, to the fiery plain, where no spear of grass grows. Our path lay sometimes on one side of this border, sometimes on the other, for more than an hour and a half, till we reached the ruined pyramids of Abousir, where it turned southward into the Desert. After seeing Cheops and Cephrenes, these pyramids are only interesting on account of their dilapidated state and the peculiarity of their forms, some of their sides taking a more obtuse angle at half their height.They are buried deep in the sand, which has so drifted toward the plain, that from the broad hollow lying between them and the group of Sakkara, more than a mile distant, every sign of vegetation is shut out. Vast, sloping causeways of masonry lead up to two of them, and a large mound, occupying the space between, suggests the idea that a temple formerly stood there. The whole of the desert promontory, which seemed to have been gradually blown out on the plain, from the hills in the rear, exhibits traces here and there of ruins beneath the surface. My friend and I, as we walked over the hot sand, before our panting donkeys, came instinctively to the same conclusion—that a large city must have once occupied the space between, and to the southward of, the two groups of pyramids. It is not often that amateur antiquarians find such sudden and triumphant confirmation of their conjectures, as we did.
On the way, Achmet had told us of a Frenchman who had been all summer digging in the sand, near Sakkara. After we had crawled into the subterranean dépôt of mummied ibises, and nearly choked ourselves with dust in trying to find a pot not broken open; and after one of our donkeymen went into a human mummy pit and brought out the feet and legs of some withered old Egyptian, we saw before us the residence of this Frenchman; a mud hut on a high sand-bank. It was an unfortunate building, for nearly all the front wall had tumbled down, revealing the contents of his kitchen. One or two Arabs loitered about, but a large number were employed at the end of a long trench which extended to the hills.
Before reaching the house a number of deep pits barred our path, and the loose sand, stirred by our feet, slid back intothe bottom, as if eager to hide the wonders they disclosed. Pavements, fresh as when first laid; basement-walls of white marble, steps, doorways, pedestals and fragments of pillars glittered in the sun, which, after the lapse of more than two thousand years, beheld them again. I slid down the side of the pit and walked in the streets of Memphis. The pavement of bitumen, which once covered the stone blocks, apparently to protect them and deaden the noise of horses and chariots, was entire in many places. Here a marble sphinx sat at the base of a temple, and stared abstractedly before her; there a sculptured cornice, with heavy mouldings, leaned against the walls of the chamber into which it had fallen, and over all were scattered fragments of glazed and painted tiles and sculptured alabaster. The principal street was narrow, and was apparently occupied by private dwellings, but at its extremity were the basement-walls of a spacious edifice. All the pits opened on pavements and walls, so fresh and cleanly cut, that they seemed rather the foundations of a new city, laid yesterday, than the remains of one of the oldest capitals of the world.
We approached the workmen, where we met the discoverer of Memphis, Mr. Auguste Mariette. On finding we were not Englishmen (of whose visits he appeared to be rather shy), he became very courteous and communicative. He apologized for the little he had to show us, since on account of the Vandalism of the Arabs, he was obliged to cover up all his discoveries, after making his drawings and measurements. The Egyptian authorities are worse than apathetic, for they would not hesitate to burn the sphinxes for lime, and build barracks for filthy soldiers with the marble blocks. Besides this, the French influence at Cairo was then entirely overshadowed bythat of England, and although M. Mariette was supported in his labors by the French Academy, and a subscription headed by Louis Napoleon’s name, he was forced to be content with the simple permission to dig out these remarkable ruins and describe them. He could neither protect them nor remove the portable sculptures and inscriptions, and therefore preferred giving them again into the safe keeping of the sand. Here they will be secure from injury, until some more fortunate period, when, possibly, the lost Memphis may be entirely given to the world, as fresh as Pompeii, and far more grand and imposing.
I asked M. Mariette what first induced him to dig for Memphis in that spot, since antiquarians had fixed upon the mounds near Mitrahenny (a village in the plain below, and about four miles distant), as the former site of the city. He said that the tenor of an inscription which he found on one of the blocks quarried out of these mounds, induced him to believe that the principal part of the city lay to the westward, and therefore he commenced excavating in the nearest sand-hill in that direction. After sinking pits in various places he struck on an avenue of sphinxes, the clue to all his after discoveries. Following this, he came upon the remains of a temple (probably theSerapeum, or Temple of Serapis, mentioned by Strabo), and afterward upon streets, colonnades, public and private edifices, and all other signs of a great city. The number of sphinxes alone, buried under these high sand-drifts, amounted to two thousand, and he had frequently uncovered twenty or thirty in a day. He estimated the entire number of statues, inscriptions and reliefs, at between four and five thousand. The most remarkable discovery was that of eight colossalstatues, which were evidently the product of Grecian art. During thirteen months of assiduous labor, with but one assistant, he had made drawings of all these objects and forwarded them to Paris. In order to be near at hand, he had built an Arab house of unburnt bricks, the walls of which had just tumbled down for the third time. His workmen were then engaged in clearing away the sand from the dwelling of some old Memphian, and he intended spreading his roof over the massive walls, and making his residence in the exhumed city.
The man’s appearance showed what he had undergone, and gave me an idea of the extraordinary zeal and patience required to make a successful antiquarian. His face was as brown as an Arab’s, his eyes severely inflamed, and his hands as rough as a bricklayer’s. His manner with the native workmen was admirable, and they labored with a hearty good-will which almost supplied the want of the needful implements. All they had were straw baskets, which they filled with a sort of rude shovel, and then handed up to be carried off on the heads of others. One of the principal workmen was deaf and dumb, but the funniest Arab I ever saw. He was constantly playing off his jokes on those who were too slow or too negligent. An unlucky girl, stooping down at the wrong time to lift a basket of sand, received the contents of another on her head, and her indignant outcry was hailed by the rest with screams of laughter. I saw the same man pick out of the sand a glazed tile containing hieroglyphic characters. The gravity with which he held it before him, feigning to peruse it, occasionally nodding his head, as if to say, “Well done for old Pharaoh!” could not have been excelled by Burton himself.
Strabo states that Memphis had a circumference of seventeenmiles, and therefore both M. Mariette and the antiquarians are right. The mounds of Mitrahenny probably mark the eastern portion of the city, while its western limit extended beyond the Pyramids of Sakkara, and included in its suburbs those of Abousir and Dashoor. The space explored by M. Mariette is about a mile and a half in length, and somewhat more than half a mile in breadth. He was then continuing his excavations westward, and had almost reached the first ridge of the Libyan Hills, without finding the termination of the ruins. The magnitude of his discovery will be best known when his drawings and descriptions are given to the world. A few months after my visit, his labors were further rewarded by finding thirteen colossal sarcophagi of black marble, and he has recently added to his renown by discovering an entrance to the Sphinx. Yet at that time, the exhumation of the lost Memphis—second only in importance to that of Nineveh—was unknown in Europe, except to a fewsavansin Paris, and the first intimation which some of my friends in Cairo and Alexandria had of it, was my own account of my visit, in the newspapers they received from America. But M. Mariette is a young man, and will yet see his name inscribed beside those of Burckhardt, Belzoni and Layard.
We had still a long ride before us, and I took leave of Memphis and its discoverer, promising to revisit him on my return from Khartoum. As we passed the brick Pyramid of Sakkara, which is built in four terraces of equal height, the dark, grateful green of the palms and harvest-fields of the Nile appeared between two sand-hills—a genuine balm to our heated eyes. We rode through groves of the fragrant mimosa to a broad dike, the windings of which we were obliged to followacross the plain, as the soil was still wet and adhesive. It was too late to visit the beautiful Pyramids of Dashoor, the first of which is more than three hundred feet in height, and from a distance has almost as grand an effect as those of Gizeh. Our tired donkeys lagged slowly along to the palm-groves of Mitrahenny, where we saw mounds of earth, a few blocks of red granite and a colossal statue of Remeses II. (Sesostris)—which until now were supposed to be the only remains of Memphis. The statue lies on its face in a hole filled with water. The countenance is said to be very beautiful, but I could only see the top of Sesostris’s back, which bore a faint resemblance to a crocodile.
Through fields of cotton in pod and beans in blossom, we rode to the Nile, dismissed our donkeys and their attendants, and lay down on some bundles of corn-stalks to wait the arrival of our boat. But there had been a south wind all day, and we had ridden much faster than our men could tow. We sat till long after sunset before the stars and stripes, floating from the mizzen of theCleopatra, turned the corner below Bedrasheyn. When, at last, we sat at our cabin-table, weary and hungry, we were ready to confess that the works of art produced by our cook, Salame, were more marvellous and interesting than Memphis and the Pyramids.