When a building has already stood for five or six thousand years in a climate where mosses and lichens, and all those natural signs of age to which we are accustomed in Europe, are unknown, it is not to be supposed that a few centuries more or less can tell upon its outward appearance; yet to my thinking the pyramid of Ouenephes looks older than those of Ghîzeh. If this be only fancy, it gives one, at all events, the impression of belonging structurally to a ruder architectural period. The idea of a monument composed of diminishing platforms is in its nature more primitive than that of a smooth four-sided pyramid. We remarked that the masonry on one side—I think on the side facing eastward—was in a much more perfect condition than on either of the others.
Wilkinson describes the interior as “a hollow dome supported here and there by wooden rafters,” and states that the sepulchral chamber was lined with blue porcelain tiles.[10]We would have liked to go inside, but this is no longer possible, the entrance being blocked by a recent fall of masonry.
Making up now for lost time, we rode on as far as the house built in 1850 for Mariette’s accommodation during the excavation of the Serapeum—a labor which extended over a period of more than four years. The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and long-lost sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These bulls (honored by the Egyptians as successive incarnations of Osiris) inhabited the temple of Apis at Memphis while they lived; and, being mummied after death, were buried in catacombs prepared for them in the desert. In 1850, Mariette, traveling in the interests of the French government, discovered both the temple and the catacombs, being, according to his own narrative, indebted for the clew to a certain passage in Strabo, which describes the Temple of Serapis as being situate in a district where the sand was so drifted by the wind that the approach to it was in danger of being overwhelmed; while the sphinxes on either side of the great avenue were already more or less buried, some having only their heads above the surface. “If Strabo had not written this passage,” says Mariette, “it is probable that the Serapeum would still be lost under the sands of the necropolis of Sakkârah. One day, however (in 1850), being attracted to Sakkârah by my Egyptological studies, I perceived the head of a sphinx showing above the surface. It evidently occupied its original position. Close by lay a libation-table on which was engraved a hieroglyphic inscription to Apis-Osiris. Then that passage in Strabo came to my memory, and I knew that beneath my feet lay the avenue leading to the long and vainly sought Serapeum. Without saying a word to any one I got some workmen together and we began excavating. The beginning was difficult; but soon the lions, the peacocks, the Greekstatues of the Dromos, the inscribed tablets of the Temple of Nectanebo[11]rose up from the sands. Thus was the Serapeum discovered.”
The house—a slight, one-storied building on a space of rocky platform—looks down upon a sandy hollow which now presents much the same appearance that it must have presented when Mariette was first reminded of the fortunate passage in Strabo. One or two heads of sphinxes peep up here and there in a ghastly way above the sand and mark the line of the great avenue. The upper half of a boy riding on a peacock, apparently of rude execution, is also visible. The rest is already as completely overwhelmed as if it had never been uncovered. One can scarcely believe that only twenty years ago the whole place was entirely cleared at so vast an expenditure of time and labor. The work, as I have already mentioned, took four years to complete. This avenue alone was six hundred feet in length and bordered by an army of sphinxes, one hundred and forty-one of which were foundin situ. As the excavation neared the end of the avenue, the causeway, which followed a gradual descent between massive walls, lay seventy feet below the surface. The labor was immense and the difficulties were innumerable. The ground had to be contested inch by inch. “In certain places,” says Mariette, “the sand was fluid, so to speak, and baffled us like water continually driven back and seeking to regain its level.”[12]
If, however, the toil was great, so also was the reward. A main avenue terminated by a semicircular platform, around which stood statues of famous Greek philosophers and poets; a second avenue at right angles to the first; the remains of the great temple of the Serapeum; three smaller temples; and three distinct groups of Apis catacombs were brought to light. A descending passage opening from a chamber in the great temple led to the catacombs—vast labyrinths of vaults and passages hewn out of the solid rock on which the temples were built. These three groups of excavations represent three epochs of Egyptian history. The first and most ancient series consists of isolated vaults dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-second dynasty; that is to say, from aboutB.C.1703 toB.C.980. The second group, which dates from the reign of Sheshonk I (twenty-second dynasty,B.C.980) to that of Tirhakah, the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, is more systematically planned, and consists of one long tunnel bordered on each side by a row of funereal chambers. The third belongs to the Greek period, beginning with Psammetichus I (twenty-sixth dynasty,B.C.665) and ending with the latest Ptolemies. Of these, the first are again choked with sand; the second are considered unsafe; and the third only is accessible to travelers.
After a short but toilsome walk and some delay outside a prison-like door at the bottom of a steep descent, we were admitted by the guardian—a gaunt old Arab with a lantern in his hand. It was not an inviting looking place within. The outer daylight fell upon a rough step or two, beyond which all was dark. We went in. A hot, heavy atmosphere met us on the threshold; the door fell to with a dull clang, the echoes of which went wandering away as if into the central recesses of the earth; the Arab chattered and gesticulated. He was telling us that we were now in the great vestibule and that it measured ever so many feet in this and that direction; but we could see nothing—neither the vaulted roof overhead, nor the walls on any side, nor even the ground beneath our feet. It was like the darkness of infinite space.
A lighted candle was then given to each person and the Arab led the way. He went dreadfully fast and it seemed at every step as if one were on the brink of some frightful chasm. Gradually, however, our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and we found that we had passed out of the vestibule into the first great corridor. All was vague, mysterious, shadowy. A dim perspective loomed out of the darkness. The lights twinkled and flitted like wandering sparks of stars. The Arab held his lantern to the walls here and there, and showed us some votive tablets inscribed with records of pious visits paid by devout Egyptians to the sacred tombs. Of these they found fivehundred when the catacombs were first opened; but Mariette sent nearly all to the Louvre.
A few steps farther and we came to the tombs—a succession of great vaulted chambers hewn out at irregular distances along both sides of the central corridor and sunk some six or eight feet below the surface. In the middle of each chamber stood an enormous sarcophagus of polished granite. The Arab, flitting on ahead like a black ghost, paused a moment before each cavernous opening, flashed the light of his lantern on the sarcophagus and sped away again, leaving us to follow as we could.
So we went on, going every moment deeper into the solid rock and farther from the open air and the sunshine. Thinking it would be cold underground, we had brought warm wraps in plenty; but the heat, on the contrary, was intense, and the atmosphere stifling. We had not calculated on the dryness of the place, nor had we remembered that ordinary mines and tunnels are cold because they are damp. But here for incalculable ages—for thousands of years probably before the Nile had even cut its path through the rocks of Silsilis—a cloudless African sun had been pouring its daily floods of light and heat upon the dewless desert overhead. The place might well be unendurable. It was like a great oven stored with the slowly accumulated heat of cycles so remote and so many, that the earliest periods of Egyptian history seem, when compared with them, to belong to yesterday.
Having gone on thus for a distance of nearly two hundred yards, we came to a chamber containing the first hieroglyphed sarcophagus we had yet seen; all the rest being polished, but plain. Here the Arab paused; and, finding access provided by means of a flight of wooden steps, we went down into the chamber, walked round the sarcophagus, peeped inside by the help of a ladder, and examined the hieroglyphs with which it is covered. Enormous as they look from above, one can form no idea of the bulk of these huge monolithic masses except from the level on which they stand. This sarcophagus, which dates from the reign of Amasis, of the twenty-sixth dynasty, measured fourteen feet in length by eleven in height, and consisted of a single block of highly wrought black granite. Four persons might sit in it round a small card-table, and play a rubber comfortably.
From this point the corridor branches off for another two hundred yards or so, leading always to more chambers and more sarcophagi, of which last there are altogether twenty-four. Three only are inscribed; none measure less than from thirteen to fourteen feet in length; and all are empty. The lids in every instance have been pushed back a little way, and some are fractured; but the spoilers have been unable wholly to remove them. According to Mariette, the place was pillaged by the early Christians, who, besides carrying off whatever they could find in the way of gold and jewels, seem to have destroyed the mummies of the bulls and razed the great temple nearly to the ground. Fortunately, however, they either overlooked, or left as worthless, some hundreds of exquisite bronzes and the five hundred votive tablets before mentioned, which, as they record not only the name and rank of the visitor, but also, with few exceptions, the name and year of the reigning Pharaoh, afford invaluable historical data, and are likely to do more than any previously discovered documents toward clearing up disputed points of Egyptian chronology.
It is a curious fact that one out of the three inscribed sarcophagi should bear the oval of Cambyses—that Cambyses of whom it is related that, having desired the priests of Memphis to bring before him the god Apis, he drew his dagger in a transport of rage and contempt and stabbed the animal in the thigh. According to Plutarch, he slew the beast and cast out its body to the dogs; according to Herodotus, “Apis lay some time pining in the temple, but at last died of his wound, and the priests buried him secretly;” but according to one of these precious Serapeum tablets, the wounded bull did not die till the fourth year of the reign of Darius. So wonderfully does modern discovery correct and illustrate tradition.
And now comes the sequel to this ancient story in the shape of an anecdote related by M. About, who tells how Mariette, being recalled suddenly to Paris some months after the opening of the Serapeum, found himself without the means of carrying away all his newly excavated antiquities, and so buried fourteen cases in the desert, there to await his return. One of these cases contained an Apis mummy which had escaped discovery by the early Christians; and this mummy was that of the identicalApis stabbed by Cambyses. That the creature had actually survived his wound was proved by the condition of one of the thigh-bones, which showed unmistakable signs of both injury and healing.
Nor does the story end here. Mariette being gone, and having taken with him all that was most portable among his treasures, there came to Memphis one whom M. About indicates as “a young and august stranger” traveling in Egypt for his pleasure. The Arabs, tempted perhaps by a princely bakhshîsh, revealed the secret of the hidden cases; whereupon the archduke swept off the whole fourteen, dispatched them to Alexandria, and immediately shipped them for Trieste.[13]“Quant au coupable,” says M. About, who professes to have had the story direct from Mariette, “il a fini si tragiquement dans un autre hemisphère que, tout bien pesé, je renonce à publier son nom.” But through so transparent a disguise it is not difficult to identify the unfortunate hero of this curious anecdote.
The sarcophagus in which the Apis was found remains in the vaults of the Serapeum; but we did not see it. Having come more than two hundred yards already, and being by this time well-nigh suffocated, we did not care to put two hundred yards more between ourselves and the light of day. So we turned back at the half distance—having, however, first burned a pan of magnesian powder, which flared up wildly for a few seconds; lit the huge gallery and all its cavernous recesses and the wondering faces of the Arabs, and then went out with a plunge, leaving the darkness denser than before.
From hence, across a farther space of sand we went in all the blaze of noon to the tomb of one Ti, a priest and commoner of the fifth dynasty, who married with a lady named Neferhotep-s, the granddaughter of a Pharaoh, and here built himself a magnificent tomb in the desert.
On the façade of this tomb, which must originally have looked like a little temple, only two large pillars remain. Next comes a square court-yard, surrounded by a roofless colonnade, from one corner of which a covered passage leads to two chambers. In the center of the court-yardyawns an open pit some twenty-five feet in depth, with a shattered sarcophagus just visible in the gloom of the vault below. All here is limestone—walls, pillars, pavements, even the excavated débris with which the pit had been filled in when the vault was closed forever. The quality of this limestone is close and fine like marble, and so white that, although the walls and columns of the court-yard are covered with sculptures of most exquisite execution and of the greatest interest, the reflected light is so intolerable that we find it impossible to examine them with the interest they deserve. In the passage, however, where there is shade, and in the large chamber, where it is so dark that we can see only by the help of lighted candles, we find a succession of bas-reliefs so numerous and so closely packed that it would take half a day to see them properly. Ranged in horizontal parallel lines about a foot and a half in depth, these extraordinary pictures, row above row, cover every inch of wall-space from floor to ceiling. The relief is singularly low. I should doubt if it anywhere exceeds a quarter of an inch. The surface, which is covered with a thin film of very fine cement, has a quality and polish like ivory. The figures measure an average height of about twelve inches, and all are colored.
Here, as in an open book, we have the biography of Ti. His whole life, his pleasures, his business, his domestic relations, are brought before us with just that faithful simplicity which makes the charm of Montaigne and Pepys. A child might read the pictured chronicles which illuminate these walls and take as keen a pleasure in them as the wisest of archæologists.
Ti was a wealthy man and his wealth was of the agricultural sort. He owned flocks and herds and vassals in plenty. He kept many kinds of birds and beasts—geese, ducks, pigeons, cranes, oxen, goats, asses, antelopes and gazelles. He was fond of fishing and fowling, and used sometimes to go after crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which came down as low as Memphis in his time. He was a kind husband, too, and a good father, and loved to share his pleasures with his family. Here we see him sitting in state with his wife and children, while professional singers and dancers perform before them. Yonder they walk out together and look on while the farm-servants are at work, and watch the coming in of the boats that bringhome the produce of Ti’s more distant lands. Here the geese are being driven home; the cows are crossing a ford; the oxen are plowing; the sower is scattering his seed; the reaper plies his sickle; the oxen tread the grain; the corn is stored in the granary. There are evidently no independent tradesfolk in these early days of the world. Ti has his own artificers on his own estate, and all his goods and chattels are home-made. Here the carpenters are fashioning new furniture for the house; the shipwrights are busy on new boats; the potters mold pots; the metal-workers smelt ingots of red gold. It is plain to see that Ti lived like a king within his own boundaries. He makes an imposing figure, too, in all these scenes, and, being represented about eight times as large as his servants, sits and stands a giant among pigmies. His wife (we must not forget that she was of the blood royal) is as big as himself; and the children are depicted about half the size of their parents. Curiously enough, Egyptian art never outgrew this early naîveté. The great man remained a big man to the last days of the Ptolemies, and the fellah was always a dwarf.[14]
Apart from these and one or two other mannerisms, nothing can be more natural than the drawing, or more spirited than the action, of all these men and animals. The most difficult and transitory movements are expressed with masterly certitude. The donkey kicks up his heels and brays—the crocodile plunges—the wild duck rises on the wing; and the fleeting action is caught in each instance with a truthfulness that no landseer could distance. The forms, which have none of the conventional stiffness of later Egyptian work, are modeled roundly and boldly yet finished with exquisite precision and delicacy. Thecoloring, however, is purely decorative; and, being laid on in single tints, with no attempt at gradation or shading, conceals rather than enhances the beauty of the sculptures. These, indeed, are best seen where the color is entirely rubbed off. The tints are yet quite brilliant in parts of the larger chamber; but in the passage and court-yard, which have been excavated only a few years and are with difficulty kept clear from day to day, there is not a vestige of color left. This is the work of the sand—that patient laborer whose office it is not only to preserve but to destroy. The sand secretes and preserves the work of the sculptor, but it effaces the work of the painter. In sheltered places where it accumulates passively like a snow-drift, it brings away only the surface detail, leaving the under colors rubbed and dim. But nothing, as I had occasion constantly to remark in the course of the journey, removes color so effectually as sand which is exposed to the shifting action of the wind.
HEAD OF TI.
HEAD OF TI.
HEAD OF TI.
This tomb, as we have seen, consists of a portico, a court-yard, two chambers, and a sepulchral vault; but it also contains a secret passage of the kind known as a “serdab.” These “serdabs,” which are constructed in the thickness of the walls and have no entrances, seem to be peculiar to tombs of the ancient empire (i.e.the period of the pyramid kings); and they contain statues of the deceased of all sizes, in wood, lime-stone, and granite. Twenty statues of Ti were here found immured in the “serdab” of his tomb, all broken save one—a spirited figure in lime-stone, standing about seven feet high, and now in the museum at Boulak. This statue represents a fine young man in a white tunic, and is evidently a portrait. The features are regular; the expression is good-natured; the whole tournure of the head is more Greek than Egyptian. The flesh is painted of a yellowish brick tint, and the figure stands in the usual hieratic attitude, with the left leg advanced, the hands clenched, and the arms straightened close to the sides. One seems to know Ti so well after seeing the wonderful pictures in his tomb, thatthis charming statue interests one like the portrait of a familiar friend.[15]
How pleasant it was, after being suffocated in the Serapeum and broiled in the tomb of Ti, to return to Mariette’s deserted house and eat our luncheon on the cool stone terrace that looks northward over the desert! Some wooden tables and benches are hospitably left here for the accommodation of travelers, and fresh water in ice-cold kullehs is provided by the old Arab guardian. The yards and offices at the back are full of broken statues and fragments of inscriptions in red and black granite. Two sphinxes from the famous avenue adorn the terrace and look down upon their half-buried companions in the sand-hollow below. The yellow desert, barren and undulating, with a line of purple peaks on the horizon, reaches away into the far distance. To the right, under a jutting ridge of rocky plateau not two hundred yards from the house, yawns an opened-mouthed black-looking cavern shored up with heavy beams and approached by a slope of débris. This is the forced entrance to the earlier vaults of the Serapeum, in one of which was found a mummy described by Mariette as that of an Apis, but pronounced by Brugsch to be the body of Prince Kha-em-nas, governor of Memphis and the favorite son of Rameses the Great.
This remarkable mummy, which looked as much like a bull as a man, was found covered with jewels and gold chains and precious amulets engraved with the name of Kha-em-nas, and had on its face a golden mask; all which treasures are now to be seen in the Louvre. If it was the mummy of an Apis, then the jewels with which it was adorned were probably the offering of the prince at that time ruling in Memphis. If, on the contrary, it was the mummy of a man, then, in order to be buried in a place of peculiar sanctity, he probably usurped one of the vaults prepared for the god. The question is a curious one andremains unsolved to this day; but it could no doubt be settled at a glance by Professor Owen.[16]
Far more startling, however, than the discovery of either Apis or jewels was the sight beheld by Mariette on first entering that long-closed sepulchral chamber. The mine being sprung and the opening cleared he went in alone; and there, on the thin layer of sand that covered the floor he found the footprints of the workmen who, three thousand seven hundred years[17]before, had laid that shapeless mummy in its tomb and closed the doors upon it, as they believed, forever.
And now—for the afternoon is already waning fast—the donkeys are brought round and we are told that it is time to move on. We have the sight of Memphis and the famous prostrate colossus yet to see and the long road lies all before us. So back we ride across the desolate sands; and with a last, long, wistful glance at the pyramid in platforms, go down from the territory of the dead into the land of the living.
There is a wonderful fascination about this pyramid. One is never weary of looking at it—of repeating to one’s self that it is indeed the oldest building on the face of the whole earth. The king who erected it came to the throne, according to Manetho, about eighty years after the death of Mena, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. All we have of him is his pyramid; all we know of him is his name. And these belong, as it were, to the infancy of the human race. In dealing with Egyptian dates one is apt to think lightly of periods that count only by centuries; but it is a habit of mind which leads to error and it should be combated. The present writer found it useful to be constantly comparing relative chronological eras; as, for instance, in realizing the immense antiquity of the Sakkârah pyramid, it is some help to remember that from the time when it was built by King Ouenephes to the time when King Khufu erected the great pyramid of Ghizeh, there probably lies a space of years equivalent to that which, in the history of England, extends from the dateof the conquest to the accession of George II.[18]And yet Khufu himself—the Cheops of the Greek historians—is but a shadowy figure hovering upon the threshold of Egyptian history.
And now the desert is left behind and we are nearing the palms that lead to Memphis. We have, of course, been dipping into Herodotus—every one takes Herodotus up the Nile—and our heads are full of the ancient glories of this famous city. We know that Mena turned the course of the river in order to build it on this very spot, and that all the most illustrious Pharaohs adorned it with temples, palaces, pylons and precious sculptures. We had read of the great Temple of Ptah that Rameses the Great enriched with colossi of himself; and of the sanctuary where Apis lived in state, taking his exercise in a pillared court-yard where every column was a statue; and of the artificial lake and the sacred groves and the obelisks and all the wonders of a city which, even in its later days, was one of the most populous in Egypt.
Thinking over these things by the way, we agree that it is well to have left Memphis till the last. We shall appreciate it the better for having first seen that other city on the edge of the desert to which, for nearly six thousand years, all Memphis was quietly migrating, generation after generation. We know now how poor folk labored, and how great gentlemen amused themselves, in those early days when there were hundreds of country gentlemen like Ti, with town-houses at Memphis and villas by the Nile. From the Serapeum, too, buried and ruined as it is, one cannot but come away with a profound impression of the splendor and power of a religion which could command for its myths such faith, such homage, and such public works.
And now we are once more in the midst of the palm-woods, threading our way among the same mounds that we passed in the morning. Presently those in front strike away from the beaten road across a grassy flat to the right; and the next moment we are all gathered round the brink of a muddy pool, in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of blackened and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the famous prostrate colossus of Rameses the Great, which belongs to the British nation, but which the British government is too economical to remove.[19]So here it lies, face downward; drowned once a year by the Nile; visible only when the pools left by the inundation have evaporated, and all the muddy hollows are dried up. It is one of two which stood at the entrance to the great Temple of Ptah; and by those who have gone down into the hollow and seen it from below in the dry season, it is reported of as a noble and very beautiful specimen of one of the best periods of Egyptian art.
Where, however, is the companion colossus? Where is the temple itself? Where are the pylons, the obelisk, the avenues of sphinxes? Where, in short, is Memphis?
The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to the barren mounds among the palms.
They look like gigantic dust-heaps and stand from thirty to forty feet above the plain. Nothing grows upon them, save here and there a tuft of stunted palm; and their substance seems to consist chiefly of crumbled brick, broken potsherds, and fragments of limestone. Some few traces of brick foundations and an occasional block or two of shaped stone are to be seen in places low down against the foot of one or two of the mounds; but one looks in vain for any sign which might indicate the outline of a boundary wall or the position of a great public building.
And is this all?
No—not quite all. There are some mud-huts yonder, in among the trees; and in front of one of these we find a number of sculptured fragments—battered sphinxes, torsos without legs, sitting figures without heads—in green, black, and red granite. Ranged in an irregular semicircle on the sward, they seem to sit in forlornconclave, half solemn, half ludicrous, with the goats browsing round, and the little Arab children hiding behind them.
Near this, in another pool, lies another red-granite colossus—not the fellow to that which we saw first, but a smaller one—also face downward.
And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities—a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks round and tries in vain to realize the lost splendors of the place. Where is the Memphis that King Mena came from Thinis to found—the Memphis of Ouenephes, and Khufa, and Khafra, and all the early kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus, of Strabo, of Abd-el-Latîf? Where are those stately ruins which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space estimated at “half a day’s journey in every direction”? One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood—here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we see the village of Mitrâhîneh and catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of Ghîzeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in the dialect of the fellah, who calls the place of the mounds Tell Monf[20]—just as Sakkârah fossilizes the name of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the Memphite Osiris.
No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept its place in history so long. Founded four thousand years before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one dynasties; it survived the rule of the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman; it was, even in its decadence, second onlyto Alexandria in population and extent; and it continued to be inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became the quarry from which Fostât (old Cairo) was built; and as the new city rose on the eastern bank the people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient capital to desolation and decay.
Still a vast field of ruins remained. Abd-el-Latîf, writing at the commencement of the thirteenth century, speaks with enthusiasm of the colossal statues and lions, the enormous pedestals, the archways formed of only three stones, the bas-reliefs and other wonders that were yet to be seen upon the spot. Marco Polo, if his wandering tastes had led him to the Nile, might have found some of the palaces and temples of Memphis still standing; and Sandys, who inA.D.1610 went at least as far south of Cairo as Kafr el Iyat, says that “up the river for twenty miles space there was nothing but ruines.” Since then, however, the very “ruines” have vanished; the palms have had time to grow; and modern Cairo has doubtless absorbed all the building material that remained from the middle ages.
Memphis is a place to read about, and think about, and remember; but it is a disappointing place to see. To miss it, however, would be to miss the first link in the whole chain of monumental history which unites the Egypt of antiquity with the world of to-day. Those melancholy mounds and that heron-haunted lake must be seen, if only that they may take their due place in the picture-gallery of one’s memory.
It had been a long day’s work, but it came to an end at last; and as we trotted our donkeys back toward the river a gorgeous sunset was crimsoning the palms and pigeon-towers of Bedreshayn. Everything seemed now to be at rest. A buffalo, contemplatively chewing the cud, lay close against the path and looked at us without moving. The children and pigeons were gone to bed. The pots had baked in the sun and been taken in long since. A tiny column of smoke went up here and there from amid the clustered huts; but there was scarcely a moving creature to be seen. Presently we passed a tall, beautiful fellah woman standing grandly by the wayside, with her veil thrown back and falling in long folds to her feet. She smiled, put out her hand, and murmur’d “bakhshîsh!” Her fingers were covered with rings and her arms with silver bracelets. She begged because to beg is honorable, and customary, and a master of inveterate habit; but she evidently neither expected nor needed the bakhshîsh she condescended to ask for.
A few moments more and the sunset has faded, the village is left behind, the last half-mile of plain is trotted over. And now—hungry, thirsty, dusty, worn out with new knowledge, new impressions, new ideas—we are once more at home and at rest.
Itis the rule of the Nile to hurry up the river as fast as possible, leaving the ruins to be seen as the boat comes back with the current; but this, like many another canon, is by no means of universal application. The traveler who starts late in the season has, indeed, no other course open to him. He must press on with speed to the end of his journey, if he would get back again at low Nile without being irretrievably stuck on a sand-bank till the next inundation floats him off again. But for those who desire not only to see the monuments, but to follow, however superficially, the course of Egyptian history as it is handed down through Egyptian art, it is above all things necessary to start early and to see many things by the way.
For the history of ancient Egypt goes against the stream. The earliest monuments lie between Cairo and Siout, while the latest temples to the old gods are chiefly found in Nubia. Those travelers, therefore, who hurry blindly forward with or without a wind, now sailing, now tracking, now punting, passing this place by night, and that by day, and never resting till they have gained the farthest point of their journey, begin at the wrong end and see all their sights in precisely inverse order. Memphis and Sakkârah and the tombs of Beni Hassan should undoubtedly be visited on the way up. So should El Kâb and Tell el Amarna, and the oldest parts of Karnak and Luxor. It is not necessary to delay long at any of these places. They may be seen cursorily on the way up, and be more carefully studied on the way down; but they should be seen as they come, no matter at what trifling cost of present delay and despite any amount of ignorant opposition. For in this way only is it possible to trace the progression and retrogression of the arts from the pyramid-builders to the Cæsars; or to understand at the time and on the spot inwhat order that vast and august procession of dynasties swept across the stage of history.
For ourselves, as will presently be seen, it happened that we could carry only a part of this programme into effect; but that part, happily, was the most important. We never ceased to congratulate ourselves on having made acquaintance with the pyramids of Ghîzeh and Sakkârah before seeing the tombs of the kings at Thebes; and I feel that it is impossible to overestimate the advantage of studying the sculptures of the tomb of Ti before one’s taste is brought into contact with the debased style of Denderah and Esneh. We began the great book, in short, as it always should be begun—at its first page; thereby acquiring just that necessary insight without which many an after-chapter must have lost more than half its interest.
If I seem to insist upon this point it is because things contrary to custom need a certain amount of insistence and are sure to be met by opposition. No dragoman, for example, could be made to understand the importance of historical sequence in a matter of this kind; especially in the case of a contract trip. To him, Khufu, Rameses and the Ptolemies are one. As for the monuments, they are all ancient Egyptian, and one is just as odd and unintelligible as another. He cannot quite understand why travelers come so far and spend so much money to look at them; but he sets it down to a habit of harmless curiosity—by which he profits.
The truth is, however, that the mere sight-seeing of the Nile demands some little reading and organizing, if only to be enjoyed. We cannot all be profoundly learned; but we can at least do our best to understand what we see—to get rid of obstacles—to put the right thing in the right place. For the land of Egypt is, as I have said, a great book—not very easy reading, perhaps, under any circumstances; but at all events quite difficult enough already without the added puzzlement of being read backward.
And now our next point along the river, as well as our next link in the chain of early monuments, was Beni Hassan, with its famous rock-cut tombs of the twelfth dynasty; and Beni Hassan was still more than a hundred and forty-five miles distant. We ought to have gone on again directly—to have weighed anchor and made a few miles that very evening on returning to the boats; but we insisted on a secondday in the same place. This, too, with the favorable wind still blowing. It was against all rule and precedent. The captain shook his head, the dragoman remonstrated in vain.
“You will come to learn the value of a wind when you have been longer on the Nile,” said the latter, with that air of melancholy resignation which he always assumed when not allowed to have his own way. He was an indolent, good-tempered man, spoke English fairly well, and was perfectly manageable; but that air of resignation came to be aggravating in time.
The M. B.’s being of the same mind, however, we had our second day, and spent it at Memphis. We ought to have crossed over to Turra and have seen the great quarries from which the casing-stones of the pyramids came, and all the finer limestone with which the temples and palaces of Memphis were built. But the whole mountain side seemed as if glowing at a white heat on the opposite side of the river, and we said we would put off Turra till our return. So we went our own way; and Alfred shot pigeons; and the writer sketched Mitrâhîneh and the palms and the sacred Lake of Mena; and the rest grubbed among the mounds for treasure, finding many curious fragments of glass and pottery, and part of an engraved bronze Apis; and we had a green, tranquil, lovely day, barren of incident, but very pleasant to remember.
The good wind continued to blow all that night, but fell at sunrise, precisely when we were about to start. The river now stretched away before us, smooth as glass, and there was nothing for it, said Reïs Hassan, but tracking. We had heard of tracking often enough since coming to Egypt, but without having any definite idea of the process. Coming on deck, however, before breakfast, we found nine of our poor fellows harnessed to a rope like barge-horses, towing the huge boat against the current. Seven of the M. B.s’ crew, similarly harnessed, followed at a few yards’ distance. The two ropes met and crossed and dipped into the water together. Already our last night’s mooring place was out of sight, and the pyramid of Ouenephes stood up amid its lesser brethren on the edge of the desert, as if bidding us good-by. But the sight of the trackers jarred, somehow, with the placid beauty of the picture. We got used to it, as one gets used to everything,in time; but it looked like slaves’ work and shocked our English notions disagreeably.
That morning, still tracking, we pass the pyramids of Dahshûr. A dilapidated brick pyramid standing in the midst of them looks like an aiguille of black rock thrusting itself up through the limestone bed of the desert. Palms line the bank and intercept the view, but we catch flitting glimpses here and there, looking out especially for that dome-like pyramid which we observed the other day from Sakkârah. Seen in the full sunlight, it looks larger and whiter and more than ever like the roof of the old Palais de Justice far away in Paris.
Thus the morning passes. We sit on deck writing letters, reading, watching the sunny river-side pictures that glide by at a foot’s pace, and are so long in sight. Palm-groves, sand-banks, patches of fuzzy-headed dura[21]and fields of some yellow-flowering herb succeed each other. A boy plods along the bank, leading a camel. They go slowly, but they soon leave us behind. A native boat meets us, floating down sidewise with the current. A girl comes to the water’s edge with a great empty jar on her head and waits to fill it till the trackers have gone by. The pigeon-towers of a mud village peep above a clump of lebbek trees, a quarter of a mile inland. Here a solitary brown man, with only a felt skull-cap on his head and a slip of scanty tunic fastened about his loins, works a shâdûf,[22]stooping and rising, stooping and rising, with the regularity of a pendulum. It is the same machine which we shall see by and by depicted in the tombs at Thebes; and the man is so evidently an ancient Egyptian, that we find ourselves wondering how he escaped being mummified four or five thousand years ago.
THE SHADUF.
THE SHADUF.
THE SHADUF.
By and by a little breeze springs up. The men drop the rope and jump on board—the big sail is set—the breeze freshens—and away we go again, as merrily as the day we left Cairo. Toward sunset we see a strange object, like a giant obelisk broken off halfway, standing up on the western bank against an orange-gold sky. This is the pyramid of Meydûm, commonly called the false pyramid. It looks quite near the bank; but this is an effect of powerful light and shadow, for it lies back at least four miles from the river. That night, having sailed on till past nine o’clock, we moor about a mile from Beni Suêf, and learn with some surprise that a man must be dispatched to the governor of the town for guards. Not that anything ever happened to anybody at Beni Suêf, says Talhamy; but that the place is supposed not to have a first-rate reputation. If we have guards, we at all events make the governor responsible for our safety and the safety of our possessions. So the guards are sent for; and being posted on the bank, snore loudly all night long, just outside our windows.
Meanwhile the wind shifts round to the south, and next morning it blows full in our faces. The men, however, track up to Beni Suêf to a point where the buildings come down to the water’s edge and the towing-path ceases; and there we lay to for awhile among a fleet of filthy native boats, close to the landing-place.
The approach to Beni Suêf is rather pretty. The khedive has an Italian-looking villa here, which peeps up white and dazzling from the midst of a thickly wooded park. The town lies back a little from the river. A few coffee-houses and a kind of promenade face the landing-place; and a mosque built to the verge of the bank stands out picturesquely against the bend of the river.
And now it is our object to turn that corner, so as to get into a better position for starting when the wind drops. The current here runs deep and strong, so that we have both wind and water dead against us. Half our men clamber round the corner like cats, carrying the rope with them; the rest keep the dahabeeyah off the bank with punting poles. The rope strains—a pole breaks—we struggle forward a few feet and can get no farther. Then the men rest awhile; try again; and are again defeated. So the fight goes on. The promenade and the windows ofthe mosque become gradually crowded with lookers on. Some three or four cloaked and bearded men have chairs brought and sit gravely smoking their chibouques on the bank above, enjoying the entertainment. Meanwhile the water-carriers come and go, filling their goat-skins at the landing-place; donkeys and camels are brought down to drink; girls in dark-blue gowns and coarse black veils come with huge water-jars laid sidewise upon their heads and, having filled and replaced them upright, walk away with stately steps, as if each ponderous vessel were a crown.
So the day passes. Driven back again and again, but still resolute, our sailors, by dint of sheer doggedness, get us round the bad corner at last. The Bagstones follows suit a little later; and we both moor about a quarter of a mile above the town. Then follows a night of adventures. Again our guards sleep profoundly; but the bad characters of Beni Suêf are very wide awake. One gentleman, actuated no doubt by the friendliest motives, pays a midnight visit to the Bagstones; but being detected, chased and fired at, escapes by jumping overboard. Our turn comes about two hours later, when the writer, happening to be awake, hears a man swim softly round the Philæ. To strike a light and frighten everybody into sudden activity is the work of a moment. The whole boat is instantly in an uproar. Lanterns are lighted on deck; a patrol of sailors is set; Talhamy loads his gun; and the thief slips away in the dark like a fish.
The guards, of course, slept sweetly through it all. Honest fellows! They were paid a shilling a night to do it and they had nothing on their minds.
Having lodged a formal complaint next morning against the inhabitants of the town, we received a visit from a sallow personage clad in a long black robe and a voluminous white turban. This was the chief of the guards. He smoked a great many pipes; drank numerous cups of coffee; listened to all we had to say; looked wise; and finally suggested that the number of our guards should be doubled.
I ventured to object that if they slept unanimously forty would not be of much more use than four. Whereupon he rose, drew himself to his full height, touched his beard and said with a magnificent melodramatic air: “If they sleep they shall be bastinadoed till they die!”
And now our good luck seemed to have deserted us. For three days and nights the adverse wind continued to blow with such force that the men could not even track against it. Moored under that dreary bank, we saw our ten days’ start melting away and could only make the best of our misfortunes. Happily the long island close by and the banks on both sides of the river were populous with sand-grouse; so Alfred went out daily with his faithful George and his unerring gun and brought home game in abundance, while we took long walks, sketched boats and camels and chaffered with native women for silver torques and bracelets. These torques (in ArabicTók) are tubular but massive, penannular, about as thick as one’s little finger and finished with a hook at one end and a twisted loop at the other. The girls would sometimes put their veils aside and make a show of bargaining; but more frequently, after standing for a moment with great wondering black velvety eyes staring shyly into ours, they would take fright like a troop of startled deer and vanish with shrill cries, half of laughter, half of terror.
At Beni Suêf we encountered our first sand-storm. It came down the river about noon, showing like a yellow fog on the horizon and rolling rapidly before the wind. It tore the river into angry waves and blotted out the landscape as it came. The distant hills disappeared first; then the palms beyond the island; then the boats close by. Another second and the air was full of sand. The whole surface of the plain seemed in motion. The banks rippled. The yellow dust poured down through every rift and cleft in hundreds of tiny cataracts. But it was a sight not to be looked upon with impunity. Hair, eyes, mouth, ears, were instantly filled and we were driven to take refuge in the saloon. Here, although every window and door had been shut before the storm came, the sand found its way in clouds. Books, papers, carpets, were covered with it; and it settled again as fast as it was cleared away. This lasted just one hour, and was followed by a burst of heavy rain; after which the sky cleared and we had a lovely afternoon. From this time forth, we saw no more rain in Egypt.
At length, on the morning of the fourth day after our first appearance at Beni Suêf and the seventh since leaving Cairo, the wind veered round again to the north, and weonce more got under way. It was delightful to see the big sail again towering up overhead, and to hear the swish of the water under the cabin windows; but we were still one hundred and nine miles from Rhoda, and we knew that nothing but an extraordinary run of luck could possibly get us there by the twenty-third of the month, with time to see Beni Hassan on the way. Meanwhile, however, we make fair progress, mooring at sunset when the wind falls, about three miles north of Bibbeh. Next day, by help of the same light breeze which again springs up a little after dawn, we go at a good pace between flat banks, fringed here and there with palms, and studded with villages more or less picturesque. There is not much to see, and yet one never wants for amusement. Now we pass an island of sand-bank covered with snow-white paddy-birds, which rise tumultuously at our approach. Next comes Bibbeh, perched high along the edge of the precipitous bank, its odd-looking Coptic convent roofed all over with little mud domes, like a cluster of earth-bubbles. By and by we pass a deserted sugar factory, with shattered windows and a huge, gaunt, blackened chimney, worthy of Birmingham or Sheffield. And now we catch a glimpse of the railway and hear the last scream of a departing engine. At night, we moor within sight of the factory chimneys and hydraulic tubes of Magagha, and next day get on nearly to Golosanèh, which is the last station-town before Minieh.
It is now only too clear that we must give up all thought of pushing on to Beni Hassan before the rest of the party shall come on board. We have reached the evening of our ninth day; we are still forty-eight miles from Rhoda; and another adverse wind might again delay us indefinitely on the way. All risks taken into account, we decide to put off our meeting till the twenty-fourth, and transfer the appointment to Minieh; thus giving ourselves time to track all the way in case of need. So an Arabic telegram is concocted, and our fleet runner starts off with it to Golosanèh before the office closes for the night.
The breeze, however, does not fail, but comes back next morning with the dawn. Having passed Golosanèh, we come to a wide reach in the river, at which point we are honored by a visit from a Moslem santon of peculiar sanctity, named “Holy Sheik Cotton.” Now Holy Sheik Cotton, who is a well-fed, healthy-looking young man ofabout thirty, makes his first appearance swimming, with his garments twisted into a huge turban on the top of his head, and only his chin above water. Having made his toilet in the small boat, he presents himself on deck and receives an enthusiastic welcome. Reïs Hassan hugs him—the pilot kisses him—the sailors come up one by one, bringing little tributes of tobacco and piasters, which he accepts with the air of a pope receiving Peter’s pence. All dripping as he is, and smiling like an affable Triton, he next proceeds to touch the tiller, the ropes, and the ends of the yards, “in order,” says Talhamy, “to make them holy;” and then, with some kind of final charm or muttered incantation, he plunges into the river again, and swims off to repeat the same performance on board the Bagstones.
From this moment the prosperity of our voyage is assured. The captain goes about with a smile on his stern face, and the crew look as happy as if we had given them a guinea. For nothing can go wrong with a dahabeeyah that has been “made holy” by Holy Sheik Cotton. We are certain now to have favorable winds—to pass the cataract without accident—to come back in health and safety, as we set out. But what, it may be asked, has Holy Sheik Cotton done to make his blessing so efficacious? He gets money in plenty; he fasts no oftener than other Mohammedans; he has two wives; he never does a stroke of work; and he looks the picture of sleek prosperity. Yet he is a saint of the first water; and when he dies, miracles will be performed at his tomb, and his eldest son will succeed him in the business.
We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a good many saints in the course of our eastern travels; but I do not know that we ever found they had done anything to merit the position. One very horrible old man named Sheik Saleem has, it is true, been sitting on a dirt heap near Farshût, unclothed, unwashed, unshaven, for the last half-century or more, never even lifting his hand to his mouth to feed himself; but Sheik Cotton had gone to no such pious lengths, and was not even dirty.
We are by this time drawing toward a range of yellow cliffs that have long been visible on the horizon, and which figure in the maps as Gebel et Tâyr. The Arabian desert has been closing up on the eastern bank for some timepast and now rolls on in undulating drifts to the water’s edge. Yellow bowlders crop out here and there above the mounded sand, which looks as if it might cover many a forgotten temple. Presently the clay bank is gone and a low barrier of limestone rock, black and shiny next the water-line, has taken its place. And now, a long way ahead, where the river bends and the level cliffs lead on into the far distance, a little brown speck is pointed out as the Convent of the Pulley. Perched on the brink of the precipice it looks no bigger than an ant-heap. We had heard much of the fine view to be seen from the platform on which this convent is built, and it had originally entered into our programme as a place to be visited on the way. But Minieh has to be gained now at all costs; so this project has to be abandoned with a sigh.
And now the rocky barrier rises higher, quarried here and there in dazzling gaps of snow-white cuttings. And now the convent shows clearer; and the cliffs become loftier; and the bend in the river is reached; and a long perspective of flat-topped precipice stretches away into the dim distance.
It is a day of saints and swimmers. As the dahabeeyah approaches, a brown poll is seen bobbing up and down in the water a few hundred yards ahead. Then one, two, three bronze figures dash down a steep ravine below the convent walls, and plunge into the river—a shrill chorus of voices, growing momentarily more audible, is borne upon the wind—and in a few minutes the boat is beset by a shoal of mendicant monks, vociferating with all their might “Ana Christian ya Hawadji!—Ana Christian ya Hawadji!” (“I am a Christian, oh, traveler!”) As these are only Coptic monks and not Moslem santons, the sailors, half in rough play, half in earnest, drive them off with punting poles; and only one shivering, streaming object, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, is allowed to come on board. He is a fine, shapely man, aged about forty, with splendid eyes and teeth, a well-formed head, a skin the color of a copper beech-leaf, and a face expressive of such ignorance, timidity, and half-savage watchfulness as makes one’s heart ache.
And this is a Copt; a descendant of the true Egyptian stock; one of those whose remote ancestors exchanged the worship of the old gods for Christianity under the rule ofTheodosius some fifteen hundred years ago, and whose blood is supposed to be purer of Mohammedan intermixture than any in Egypt. Remembering these things, it is impossible to look at him without a feeling of profound interest. It maybe only fancy, yet I think I see in him a different type to that of the Arab—a something, however slight, which recalls the sculptured figures in the tomb of Ti.
But while we are thinking about his magnificent pedigree, our poor Copt’s teeth are chattering piteously. So we give him a shilling or two for the sake of all that he represents in the history of the world; and with these and the donation of an empty bottle, he swims away contented, crying out again and again: “Ketther-kháyrak Sittát! Ketther-kháyrak keteer!” (“Thank you, ladies! thank you much!”)
And now the convent with its clustered domes is passed and left behind. The rock here is of the same rich tawny hue as at Turra, and the horizontal strata of which it is composed have evidently been deposited by water. That the Nile must at some remote time have flowed here at an immensely higher level seems also probable; for the whole face of the range is honeycombed and water-worn for miles in succession. Seeing how these fantastic forms—arched, and clustered, and pendent—resemble the recessed ornamentation of Saracenic buildings, I could not help wondering whether some early Arab architect might not once upon a time have taken a hint from some such rocks as these.
Thus the day wanes, and the level cliffs keep with us all the way—now breaking into little lateral valleys andculs-de-sacin which nestle clusters of tiny huts and green patches of lupin; now plunging sheer down into the river; now receding inland and leaving space for a belt of cultivated soil and a fringe of feathery palms. By and by comes the sunset, when every cast shadow in the recesses of the cliffs turns to pure violet; and the face of the rock glows with a ruddier gold; and the palms on the western bank stand up in solemn bronze against a crimson horizon. Then the sun dips, and instantly the whole range of cliffs turns to a dead, greenish gray, while the sky above and behind them is as suddenly suffused with pink. When this effect has lasted for something likeeight minutes, a vast arch of deep-blue shade, about as large in diameter as a rainbow, creeps slowly up the eastern horizon and remains distinctly visible as long as the pink flush against which it is defined yet lingers in the sky. Finally the flush fades out; the blue becomes uniform; the stars begin to show; and only a broad glow in the west marks which way the sun went down. About a quarter of an hour later comes the after-glow, when for a few minutes the sky is filled with a soft, magical light, and the twilight gloom lies warm upon the landscape. When this goes it is night; but still one long beam of light streams up in the track of the sun and remains visible for more than two hours after the darkness has closed in.
Such is the sunset we see this evening as we approach Minieh; and such is the sunset we are destined to see, with scarcely a shade of difference, at the same hour and under precisely the same conditions for many a month to come. It is very beautiful, very tranquil, full of wonderful light and most subtle gradations of tone, and attended by certain phenomena of which I shall have more to say presently; but it lacks the variety and gorgeousness of our northern skies. Nor, given the dry atmosphere of Egypt, can it be otherwise. Those who go up the Nile expecting, as I did, to see magnificent Turneresque pageants of purple, and flame-color, and gold, will be disappointed as I was. For your Turneresque pageant cannot be achieved without such accessories of cloud and vapor as in Nubia are wholly unknown, and in Egypt are of the rarest occurrence. Once, and only once, in the course of an unusually protracted sojourn on the river, had we the good fortune to witness a grand display of the kind; and then we had been nearly three months in the dahabeeyah.
Meanwhile, however, we never weary of these stainless skies, but find in them, evening after evening, fresh depths of beauty and repose. As for that strange transfer of color from the mountains to the sky, we had repeatedly observed it while traveling in the Dolomites the year before, and had always found it take place, as now, at the moment of the sun’s first disappearance. But what of this mighty after-shadow, climbing half the heavens and bringing night with it? Can it be the rising shadow of the world projected on the one horizon as the sun sinks on the other?I leave the problem for wiser travelers to solve. We had not science enough among us to account for it.
That same evening, just as the twilight came on, we saw another wonder—the new moon on the first night of her first quarter; a perfect orb, dusky, distinct, and outlined all round with a thread of light no thicker than a hair. Nothing could be more brilliant than this tiny rim of flashing silver; while every detail of the softly glowing globe within its compass was clearly visible. Tycho, with its vast crater, showed like a volcano on a raised map; and near the edge of the moon’s surface, where the light and shadow met, keen sparkles of mountain-summits catching the light and relieved against the dusk were to be seen by the naked eye. Two or three evenings later, however, when the silver ring was changed to a broad crescent, the unilluminated part was as if it were extinguished, and could no longer be discerned even by help of a glass.
The wind having failed as usual at sunset, the crew set to work with a will and punted the rest of the way, so bringing us to Minieh about nine that night. Next morning we found ourselves moored close under the khedive’s summer palace—so close that one could have tossed a pebble against the lattice windows of his highness’ hareem. A fat gate-keeper sat outside in the sun, smoking his morning chibouque and gossiping with the passers by. A narrow promenade scantily planted with sycamore figs ran between the palace and the river. A steamer or two, and a crowd of native boats, lay moored under the bank; and yonder, at the farther end of the promenade, a minaret and a cluster of whitewashed houses showed which way one must turn in going to the town.
It chanced to be market-day; so we saw Minieh under its best aspect, than which nothing could well be more squalid, dreary, and depressing. It was like a town dropped unexpectedly into the midst of a plowed field; the streets being mere trodden lanes of mud dust, and the houses a succession of windowless mud prisons with their backs to the thoroughfare. The bazaar, which consists of two or three lanes a little wider than the rest, is roofed over here and there with rotting palm-rafters and bits of tattered matting; while the market is held in a space of waste ground outside the town. The former, with its little cupboard-like shops, in which the merchants sit cross-legged like shabby old idols in shabby old shrines—the ill-furnished shelves—the familiar Manchester goods—the gaudy native stuffs—the old red saddles and faded rugs hanging up for sale—the smart Greek stores where Bass’ ale, claret, curaçoa, Cyprus, Vermouth, cheese, pickles, sardines, Worcester sauce, blacking, biscuits, preserved meats, candles, cigars, matches, sugar, salt, stationery, fire-works, jams, and patent medicines can all be bought at one fell swoop—the native cook’s shop exhaling savory perfumes of Kebabs and lentil soup, and presided over by an Abyssinian Soyer blacker than the blackest historical personage ever was painted—the surging, elbowing, clamorous crowd—the donkeys, the camels, the street-cries, the chatter, the dust, the flies, the fleas, and the dogs, all put us in mind of the poorer quarters of Cairo. In the market it is even worse. Here are hundreds of country folk sitting on the ground behind their baskets of fruits and vegetables. Some have eggs, butter, and buffalo-cream for sale, while others sell sugar-canes, limes, cabbages, tobacco, barley, dried lentils, split beans, maize, wheat, and dura. The women go to and fro with bouquets of live poultry. The chickens scream; the sellers rave; the buyers bargain at the top of their voices; the dust flies in clouds; the sun pours down floods of light and heat; you can scarcely hear yourself speak; and the crowd is as dense as that other crowd which at this very moment, on this very Christmas eve, is circulating among the alleys of Leadenhall Market.
The things were very cheap. A hundred eggs cost about fourteen pence in English money; chickens sold for five pence each; pigeons from two-pence to two-pence-half-penny; and fine live geese for two shillings a head. The turkeys, however, which were large and excellent, were priced as high as three-and-sixpence; being about half as much as one pays in Middle and Upper Egypt for a lamb. A good sheep may be bought for sixteen shillings or a pound. The M. B.’s, who had no dragoman and did their own marketing, were very busy here, laying in stores of fresh provision, bargaining fluently in Arabic, and escorted by a body-guard of sailors.
A solitary dôm palm, the northernmost of its race and the first specimen one meets with on the Nile, grows in a garden adjoining this market-place; but we could scarcelysee it for the blinding dust. Now, a dôm palm is just the sort of tree that De Wint should have painted—odd, angular, with long forked stems, each of which terminates in a shock-headed crown of stiff finger-like fronds shading heavy clusters of big shiny nuts about the size of Jerusalem artichokes. It is, I suppose, the only nut in the world of which one throws away the kernel and eats the shell; but the kernel is as hard as marble, while the shell is fibrous, and tastes like stale gingerbread. The dôm palm must bifurcate, for bifurcation is the law of its being; but I could never discover whether there was any fixed limit to the number of stems into which it might subdivide. At the same time, I do not remember to have seen any with less than two heads or more than six.
Coming back through the town, we were accosted by a withered one-eyed hag like a reanimated mummy, who offered to tell our fortunes. Before her lay a dirty rag of handkerchief full of shells, pebbles and chips of broken glass and pottery. Squatting, toad-like, under a sunny bit of wall, the lower part of her face closely veiled, her skinny arms covered with blue and green glass bracelets and her fingers with misshapen silver rings, she hung over these treasures, shook, mixed and interrogated them with all the fervor of divination, and delivered a string of the prophecies usually forthcoming on these occasions.
“You have a friend far away, and your friend is thinking of you. There is good fortune in store for you; and money coming to you; and pleasant news on the way. You will soon receive letters in which there will be something to vex you, but more to make you glad. Within thirty days you will unexpectedly meet one whom you dearly love,” etc., etc., etc.
It was just the old familiar story, retold in Arabic, without even such variations as might have been expected from the lips of an old fellâha born and bred in a provincial town of Middle Egypt.
It may be that ophthalmia especially prevailed in this part of the country, or that, being brought unexpectedly into the midst of a large crowd, one observed the people more narrowly, but I certainly never saw so many one-eyed human beings as that morning at Minieh. There must have been present in the streets and market-place from ten to twelve thousand natives of all ages, and I believe it is noexaggeration to say that at least every twentieth person, down to little toddling children of three and four years of age, was blind of an eye. Not being a particularly well-favored race, this defect added the last touch of repulsiveness to faces already sullen, ignorant and unfriendly. A more unprepossessing population I would never wish to see—the men half stealthy, half insolent; the women bold and fierce; the children filthy, sickly, stunted and stolid. Nothing in provincial Egypt is so painful to witness as the neglected condition of very young children. Those belonging to even the better class are for the most part shabbily clothed and of more than doubtful cleanliness; while the offspring of the very poor are simply incrusted with dirt and sores and swarming with vermin. It is at first hard to believe that the parents of these unfortunate babies err, not from cruelty, but through sheer ignorance and superstition. Yet so it is; and the time when these people can be brought to comprehend the most elementary principles of sanitary reform is yet far distant. To wash young children is injurious to health, therefore the mothers suffer them to fall into a state of personal uncleanliness, which is alone enough to engender disease. To brush away the flies that beset their eyes is impious; hence ophthalmia and various kinds of blindness. I have seen infants lying in their mothers’ arms with six or eight flies in each eye. I have seen the little helpless hands put down reprovingly if they approached the seat of annoyance. I have seen children of four and five years old with the surface of one or both eyes eaten away; and others with a large, fleshy lump growing out where the pupil had been destroyed. Taking these things into account, the wonder is, after all, not that three children should die in Egypt out of every five—not that each twentieth person in certain districts should be blind, or partially blind; but that so many as forty per cent of the whole infant population should actually live to grow up, and that ninety-five per cent should enjoy the blessing of sight. For my own part I had not been many weeks on the Nile before I began systematically to avoid going about the native towns whenever it was practicable to do so. That I may so have lost an opportunity of now and then seeing more of the street-life of the people is very probable; but such outside glimpses are of little real value, and I at all events escapedthe sight of much poverty, sickness and squalor. The condition of the inhabitants is not worse, perhaps, in an Egyptian beled[23]than in many an Irish village; but the condition of the children is so distressing that one would willingly go any number of miles out of the way rather than witness their suffering, without the power to alleviate it.[24]
If the population in and about Minieh are personally unattractive, their appearance at all events matches their reputation, which is as bad as that of their neighbors. Of the manners and customs of Beni Suêf we had already some experience; while public opinion charges Minieh, Rhoda and most of the towns and villages north of Siût with the like marauding propensities. As for the villages at the foot of Beni Hassan, they have been mere dens of thieves for many generations; and though razed to the ground some years ago by way of punishment, are now rebuilt and in as bad odor as ever. It is necessary, therefore, in all this part of the river, not only to hire guards at night, but, when the boat is moored, to keep a sharp lookout against thieves by day. In Upper Egypt it is very different. There the natives are good-looking, good-natured, gentle and kindly; and though clever enough at manufacturing and selling modern antiquities, are not otherwise dishonest.
That same evening (it was Christmas eve), nearly two hours earlier than their train was supposed to be due, the rest of our party arrived at Minieh.