CHAPTER VI.FROM MEMPHIS TO SIOUT.Leaving the Pyramids—A Calm and a Breeze—A Coptic Visit—Minyeh—The Grottoes of Beni-Hassan—Doum Palms and Crocodiles—Djebel Aboufayda—Entrance into Upper Egypt—Diversions of the Boatmen—Siout—Its Tombs—A Landscape—A Bath.
Leaving the Pyramids—A Calm and a Breeze—A Coptic Visit—Minyeh—The Grottoes of Beni-Hassan—Doum Palms and Crocodiles—Djebel Aboufayda—Entrance into Upper Egypt—Diversions of the Boatmen—Siout—Its Tombs—A Landscape—A Bath.
“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream.”Leigh Hunt’s Sonnet to the Nile.
“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream.”Leigh Hunt’s Sonnet to the Nile.
“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream.”
“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream.”
Leigh Hunt’s Sonnet to the Nile.
Leigh Hunt’s Sonnet to the Nile.
The extent of my journey into Africa led me to reverse the usual plan pursued by travellers on the Nile, who sail to Assouan or Wadi-Halfa without pause, and visit the antiquities on their return. I have never been able to discern the philosophy of this plan. The voyage up is always longer, and more tedious (to those heathens who call the Nile tedious), than the return; besides which, two visits, though brief, with an interval between, leave a more complete and enduring image, than a single one. The mind has time to analyze and contrast, and can afterwards confirm or correct the first impressions. How any one can sail from Cairo to Siout, a voyage of two hundred and sixty miles, with but one or two points of interest, without taking the Pyramids with him in memory, I cannot imagine. Were it not for that recollection, I should have pronounced Modern Egypt more interesting than theEgypt of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies. I omitted seeing none of the important remains on my upward journey, so that I might be left free to choose another route homeward, if possible. It seemed like slighting Fortune to pass Dendera, and Karnak and Ombos, without notice. Opportunity is rare, and a wise man will never let it go by him. I knew not what dangers I might have to encounter, but I knew that it would be a satisfaction to me, even if speared by the Bedouins of the Lybian Desert, to think: “You rascals, you have killed me, but I have seen Thebes!”
The Pyramids of Dashoor followed us all the next day after leaving Memphis. Our sailors tugged us slowly along shore, against a mild south wind, but could not bring us out of the horizon of those red sandstone piles. Our patience was tried, that day and the next, by our slow and toilsome progress, hindered still more by running aground on sand-banks, but we were pledged to patience, and had our reward. On the morning of the fourth day, as we descried before us the minarets of Benisouef, the first large town after leaving Cairo, a timid breeze came rustling over the dourra-fields to the north, and puffed out the Cleopatra’s languid sails. The tow-rope was hauled in, our Arabs jumped on board and produced the drum and tambourine, singing lustily as we moved out into the middle of the stream. The wind increased; the flag lifted itself from the mast and streamed toward Thebes, and Benisouef went by, almost before we had counted its minarets. I tried in vain to distinguish the Pyramid of Illahoon, which stands inland, at the base of the Libyan Hills and the entrance of the pass leading to the Lake of Fyoom, the ancient Mœris. Near the Pyramid are the foundations of the famous Labyrinth,lately excavated by Dr. Lepsius. The Province of Fyoom, surrounding the lake, is, with the exception of the Oases in the Libyan Desert, the only productive land west of the mountains bordering the Nile.
All afternoon, with both sails full and our vessel leaning against the current, we flew before the wind. At dusk, the town of Feshn appeared on our left; at midnight, we passed Abou-Girgeh and the Mounds of Behnesa, the ancient Oxyrinchus; and when the wind left us, at sunrise, we were seventy miles from Benisouef. The Arabian Mountains here approach the river, and at two points terminate in abrupt precipices of yellow calcareous rock. The bare cliffs of Djebel el Tayr (the Mountain of Birds), are crowned with the “Convent of the Pulley,” so called from its inaccessible situation, and the fact that visitors are frequently drawn to the summit by a rope and windlass. While passing this convent, a cry came up from the muddy waters of the river: “We are Christians, O Howadji!” and presently two naked Coptic monks wriggled over the gunwale, and sat down, panting and dripping, on the deck. We gave them backsheesh, which they instantly clapped into their mouths, but their souls likewise devoutly yearned for brandy, which they did not get. They were large, lusty fellows, and whatever perfection of spirit they might have attained, their flesh certainly had never been unnecessarily mortified. After a breathing spell, they jumped into the river again, and we soon saw them straddling from point to point, as they crawled up the almost perpendicular cliff. At Djebel el Tayr, the birds of Egypt (according to an Arabic legend) assemble annually and choose one of their number to remain there for a year. My friend complained that the wild geese and duckswere not represented, and out of revenge fired at a company of huge pelicans, who were seated on a sand-bank.
The drum and tambourine kept lively time to the voices of our sailors, as we approached Minyeh, the second large town on the river, and the capital of a Province. But the song this time had a peculiar significance. After the long-drawn sound, something between a howl and a groan, which terminated it, we were waited upon by a deputation, who formally welcomed us to the city. We responded by a backsheesh of twenty-five piastres, and the drum rang louder than ever. We stayed in Minyeh long enough to buy a leg of mutton, and then sailed for the tombs of Beni-Hassan. The wind left us as we reached a superb palm-grove, which for several miles skirts the foot of Djebel Shekh Timay. The inhabitants are in bad odor, and in addition to our own guard, we were obliged to take two men from the village, who came armed with long sticks and built a fire on the bank, beside our vessel. This is a regulation of the Government, to which travellers usually conform, but I never saw much reason for it. We rose at dawn and wandered for hours through the palms, to the verge of the Desert. When within two or three miles of the mountain of Beni-Hassan, we provided ourselves with candles, water-flasks and weapons, and set off in advance of our boat. The Desert here reached the Nile, terminating in a bluff thirty to forty feet in height, which is composed of layers of pebbles and shelly sand, apparently the deposit of many successive floods. I should have attributed this to the action of the river, cutting a deeper channel from year to year, but I believe it is now acknowledged that the bed of the Nile is gradually rising, and that the yearly inundation covers a much wider space than in the time of the Pharaohs.It is difficult to reconcile this fact with the very perceptible encroachments which the sand is making on the Libyan shore; but we may at least be satisfied that the glorious harvest-valley through which the river wanders can never be wholly effaced thereby.
We climbed to the glaring level of the Desert, carrying with us the plumes of a beautiful gray heron which my friend brought down. A solitary Arab horseman was slowly moving along the base of the arid hills, and we descried in the distance a light-footed gazelle, which leisurely kept aloof and mocked our efforts to surround it. At the foot of the mountain we passed two ruined villages, destroyed several years ago by Ibrahim Pasha, on account of the marauding propensities of the inhabitants. It has a cruel sound, when you are told that the people were driven away, and their dwellings razed to the ground, but the reality is a trifling matter. The Arabs take their water-skins and pottery, jump into the Nile, swim across to a safer place, and in three or four days their palaces of mud are drying in the sun. We came upon them the next morning, as thievishly inclined as ever, and this was the only place where I found the people otherwise than friendly.
A steep path, up a slope covered with rounded boulders of hard black rock, leads to the grottoes of Beni-Hassan. They are among the oldest in Egypt, dating from the reign of Osirtasen I, about 1750 years before the Christian Era, and are interesting from their encaustic paintings, representing Egyptian life and customs at that early date. The rock chambers extend for nearly half a mile along the side of the mountain. The most of them are plain and without particular interest, and they have all suffered from the great spoilers of Egypt—thePersian, the Copt and the Saracen. Four only retain their hieroglyphics and paintings, and are adorned with columns hewn from the solid rock. The first we entered contained four plain, fluted columns, one of which had been shivered in the centre, leaving the architrave and capital suspended from the ceiling. The walls were covered with paintings, greatly faded and defaced, representing the culture and manufacture of flax, the sowing and reaping of grain, and the making of bread, besides a number of spirited hunting and fishing scenes. The occupant of the tomb appears to have been a severe master, for his servants are shown in many places, undergoing the punishment of the bastinado, which is even inflicted upon women. He was also wealthy, for we still see his stewards presenting him with tablets showing the revenues of his property. He was a great man in Joseph’s day, but the pit in which he lay is now empty, and the Arabs have long since burned his mummy to boil their rice.
The second tomb is interesting, from a painting representing thirty men, of a foreign nation, who are brought before the deceased occupant. Some antiquarians suppose them to be the brethren of Joseph, but the tomb is that of a person named Nehophth, and the number of men does not correspond with the Bible account. Two of the southern tombs, which are supported by pillars formed of four budding locust-stalks bound together, are covered with paintings representing different trades and professions. The rear walls are entirely devoted to illustrations of gymnastic exercises, and the figures are drawn with remarkable freedom and skill. There are never more than two persons in a group, one being painted red and the other black, in order the better to show the position ofeach. In at least five hundred different groupings the same exercise is not repeated, showing a wonderful fertility of invention, either on the part of the artist or the wrestlers. The execution of these figures fully reached my ideas of Egyptian pictorial art, but the colors were much less vivid than some travellers represent. The tombs are not large, though numerous, and what is rather singular, there is not the least trace of a city in the neighborhood, to which they could have belonged.
The next day at noon we passed between the mounds of Antinoë and Hermopolis Magna, lying on opposite banks of the Nile. Antinoë, built by the Emperor Adrian in honor of his favorite, the glorious Antinous, who was here drowned in the river, has entirely disappeared, with the exception of its foundations. Twenty-five years ago, many interesting monuments were still standing, but as they were, unfortunately, of the white calcareous stone of the Arabian Hills, they have been long since burnt for lime. Before reaching Antinoë we had just come on board, after a long walk on the western bank, and the light wind which bore us toward the mountain of Shekh Abaddeh was too pleasant to be slighted; so we saw nothing of Adrian’s city except some heaps of dirt. The splendid evening, however, which bathed the naked cliffs of the mountain in rosy flame, was worth more to us than any amount of marble blocks.
The guide book says, “hereabouts appears the doum palm, and crocodiles begin to be more frequently seen.” The next morning we found one of the trees, but day after day we vainly sought a crocodile. My friend recalled a song of Geibel’s, concerning a German musician who played his violin by the Nile till the crocodiles came out and danced around the Pyramidsand in his despair would also have purchased a violin, if any could have been found in Siout. I had seen alligators on the Mississippi, and took the disappointment more complacently. The doum palm differs from the columnar date-palm in the form of its leaves, which are fan-like, and in having a branching trunk. The main stem divides a few feet from the root, each of the branches again forming two, and each of these two more, till the tree receives a broad, rounded top. The fruit hangs below in clusters, resembling small cocoa-nuts, and has a sort of gingerbread flavor, which is not disagreeable. When fully dry and hard, it takes a polish like ivory, and is manufactured by the Arabs into beads, pipe bowls and other small articles.
We approached the mountain of Aboufayda with a strong and favorable wind. Here the Nile, for upward of ten miles, washes the foot of lofty precipices, whose many deep fissures and sharp angles give them the appearance of mountains in ruin. The afternoon sun shone full on the yellow rocks, and their jagged pinnacles were cut with wonderful distinctness against the perfect blue of the sky. This mountain is considered the most dangerous point on the Nile for boats, and the sailors always approach it with fear. Owing to its deep side-gorges, the wind sometimes shifts about without a moment’s warning, and if the large lateen sail is caught aback, the vessel is instantly overturned. During the passage of this and other similar straits, two sailors sit on deck, holding the sail-rope, ready to let it fly in the wind on the slightest appearance of danger. The shifting of the sail is a delicate business, at such times, but I found it better to trust to our men, awkward as they were, than to confuse by attempting to direct them. At Djebel Shekh Saïd, the sailors have a custom of throwing twoor three loaves of bread on the water, believing that it will be taken up by two large white birds and deposited on the tomb of the Shekh. The wind favored us in passing Aboufayda; the Cleopatra dashed the foam from the rough waves, and in two or three hours the southern corner of the mountain lay behind us, leaning away from the Nile like the shattered pylon of a temple.
Before sunset we passed the city of Manfalout, whose houses year by year topple into the mining flood. The side next the river shows only halves of buildings, the rest of which have been washed away. In a few years the tall and airy minarets will follow, and unless the inhabitants continue to shift their dwellings to the inland side, the city will entirely disappear. From this point, the plain of Siout, the garden of Upper Egypt, opened wide and far before us. The spur of the Libyan hills, at the foot of which the city is built, shot out in advance, not more than ten or twelve miles distant, but the Nile, loth to leave these beautiful fields and groves, winds hither and thither in such a devious, lingering track, that you must sail twenty-five miles to reach El Hamra, the port of Siout. The landscape, broader and more majestic than those of Lower Egypt, is even richer and more blooming. The Desert is kept within its proper bounds; it is no longer visible from the river, and the hills, whose long, level lines frame the view on either side, enhance by their terrible sterility the luxury of vegetation which covers the plain. It is a bounteous land, visited only by healthy airs, and free from the pestilence which sometimes scourges Cairo.
The wind fell at midnight, but came to us again the next morning at sunrise, and brought us to El Hamra before noon.Our men were in high spirits at having a day of rest before them, the contracts for boats always stipulating for a halt of twenty-four hours at Siout and Esneh, in order that they may procure their supplies of provisions. They buy wheat and dourra, have it ground in one of the rude mills worked by buffaloes, and bake a sufficient quantity of loaves to last two or three weeks. Our men had also the inspiration of backsheesh in their song, and their dolorous love-melodies rang from shore to shore. The correctness with which these people sing is absolutely surprising. Wild and harsh as are their songs, their choruses are in perfect accord, and even when at the same time exerting all their strength at the poles and oars, they never fail in a note. The melodies are simple, but not without expression, and all are pervaded with a mournful monotony which seems to have been caught from the Desert. There is generally an improvisatore in each boat’s crew, who supplies an endless number of lines to the regular chorus of “hay-haylee sah!” So far as I could understand our poet, there was not the least meaning or connection in his poetry, but he never failed in the rhythm. He sang, for instance: “O Alexandrian!”—then followed the chorus: “Hasten, three of you!”—chorus again: “Hail, Sidi Ibrahim!” and so on, for an hour at a time. On particular occasions, he added pantomime, and the scene on our forward deck resembled a war-dance of the Blackfeet. The favorite pantomime is that of a man running into a hornet’s nest. He stamps and cries, improvising all the while, the chorus seeking to drown his voice. He then throws off his mantle, cap, and sometimes his last garment, slapping his body to drive off the hornets, and howling with pain. The song winds up with a prolonged crywhich only ceases when every lung is emptied. Even when most mirthfully inclined, and roaring in ecstasy over some silly joke, our men always laughed in accord. So sound and hearty were their cachinnatory choruses, that we involuntarily laughed with them.
A crowd of donkeys, ready saddled, awaited us on the bank, and the boys began to fight before our boat was moored. We chose three unpainted animals, so large that our feet were at least three inches from the ground, and set off on a gallop for Siout, which is about a mile and a half from the river. Its fifteen tall, white minarets rose before us, against the background of the mountain, and the handsome front of the palace of Ismaïl Pasha shone through the dark green of its embosoming acacias. The road follows the course of a dam, built to retain the waters of the inundation, and is shaded with palms, sycamores and mimosas. On either side we looked down upon fields of clover, so green, juicy and June-like that I was tempted to jump from my donkey and take a roll therein. Where the ground was still damp the Arabs were ploughing with camels, and sowing wheat on the moist, fat loam. We crossed a bridge and entered the court of justice, one of the most charmingly clean and shady spots in Egypt. The town, which is built of sun-dried bricks, whose muddy hue is somewhat relieved by the whitewashed mosques and minarets, is astonishingly clean in every part. The people themselves appeared to be orderly, intelligent and amiable.
The tombs of the City of Wolves, the ancient Lycopolis, are in the eastern front of the mountain overhanging the city. We rode to theStabl Antar, the principal one, and then climbed to the summit. The tombs are much larger thanthose of Beni-Hassan, but have been almost ruined by the modern Egyptians. The enormous square pillars which filled their halls have been shattered down for lime, and only fragments of the capitals still hang from the ceilings of solid rock. The sculptures and hieroglyphics, which are here not painted but sculptured in intaglio, are also greatly defaced. The second tomb called by the ArabsStabl Hamam(Pigeon Stable), retains its grand doorway, which has on each side the colossal figure of an ancient king. The sand around its mouth is filled with fragments of mummied wolves, and on our way up the mountain we scared one of their descendants from his lair in a solitary tomb. TheStabl Hamamis about sixty feet square by forty in height, and in its rough and ruined aspect is more impressive than the more chaste and elegant chambers of Beni-Hassan. The view of the plain of Siout, seen through its entrance, has a truly magical effect. From the gray twilight of the hall in which you stand, the green of the fields, the purple of the distant mountains, and the blue of the sky, dazzle your eye as if tinged with the broken rays of a prism.
From the summit of the mountain, which we reached by scaling a crevice in its white cliffs, we overlooked a more beautiful landscape than that seen from the Pyramid. In the north, beyond the spires of Manfalout and the crags of Aboufayda, we counted the long palm-groves, receding behind one another to the yellow shore of the Desert; in front, the winding Nile and the Arabian Mountains; southward, a sea of wheat and clover here deepening into dark emerald, there paling into gold, according to the degree of moisture in the soil, and ceasing only because the eye refused to follow; while behindus, over the desert hills, wound the track of the yearly caravan from Dar-Fūr and Kordofan. Our Arab guide pointed out a sandy plain, behind the cemetery of the Mamelukes, which lay at our feet, as the camping-ground of the caravan, and tried to tell us how many thousand camels were assembled there. As we looked upon the superb plain, teeming with its glory of vegetable life and enlivened by the songs of the Arab ploughmen, a funeral procession came from the city and passed slowly to the burying-ground, accompanied by the dismal howling of a band of women. We went below and rode between the whitewashed domes covering the graves of the Mamelukes. The place was bright, clean and cheerful, in comparison with the other Arab burying-grounds we had seen. The grove which shades its northern wall stretches for more than a mile along the edge of the Desert—a picturesque avenue of palms, sycamores, fragrant acacias, mimosas and acanthus. The air around Siout is pregnant with the rich odor of the yellow mimosa-flowers, and one becomes exhilarated by breathing it.
The city has handsome bazaars and a large bath, built by Mohammed Bey Defterdar, the savage son-in-law of Mohammed Ali. The halls are spacious, supported by granite columns, and paved with marble. Little threads of water, scarcely visible in the dim, steamy atmosphere, shoot upward from the stone tanks, around which a dozen brown figures lie stretched in the lazy beatitude of the bath. I was given over to two Arabs, who scrubbed me to desperation, plunged me twice over head and ears in a tank of scalding water, and then placed me under a colddouche. When the whole process, which occupied more than half an hour, was over, a cup of coffee and a pipewere brought to me as I lay stretched out on the divan, while another attendant commenced a course of dislocation, twisting and cracking all my joints and pressing violently with both hands on my breast. Singularly enough, this removed the languor occasioned by so much hot water, and gave a wonderful elasticity to the frame. I walked out as if shod with the wings of Mercury, and as I rode back to our boat, congratulated my donkey on the airy lightness of his load.