SANCTUARY IN KARNAKSANCTUARY IN KARNAK
GADDIS YOUNG IN YEARS. GADDIS IS AS OLD AS THESE MONUMENTS IN REFLECTION AND MENTAL HERITAGE—A PART WITH THEM OF A VANISHED DAYGADDISYOUNG IN YEARS. GADDIS IS AS OLD AS THESE MONUMENTS IN REFLECTION AND MENTAL HERITAGE—A PART WITH THEM OF A VANISHED DAY
I want to speak a word just here of Gaddis. He is pure Copt, and the name "Copt" is from "Gypt"—that is, "Egypt"—the Copts being the direct descendants of the race that built ancient Thebes. His color is a clear, rich brown; his profile might be a part of these wall decorations. Then there are his eyes—mere dreamy slits, behind which he dwells in an age far removed from ours, while his lips wear always that ineffable smile which belongs only to Egypt, its sculpture and its people, the smile that regards with gentle contemplation—and compassion—all trivial things. Young in years, Gaddis is as old as these monuments in reflection and mental heritage—a part with them of a vanished day. And but for his fez and little European coat, which with the sash and figured skirt complete the dress of the Egyptian guide, Gaddis might truly have been plucked fromthese pictured walls. I should add that he reads the hieroglyphics and has all languages on his tongue—English, French, German—the Egyptian is born with these, I think; his voice is a drowsy hum that is pure music; his temper is as sweet and changeless as his smile.
So much for Gaddis. He stood now with his lifted hand directed to the panoramic story of the past; then, in slow, measured voice:
"Zis is ze great temple of Karnak—ze work of many king. Here you will see ze King Ram-e-ses II. wiz ze crown an' symbol of Upper an' Lower Egypt, making sacrifice of fruit and fowl an' all good sings to ze gawd Amm-Ra, in ze presence of Horus, ze hawk-headed sun-gawd, an' Anubis an' Osiris, ze gawd of ze under-worlid."
Thus it was our sight-seeing in Upper Egypt began.
The temple of Karnak cannot be described. The guide-books attempt it, but the result is only a maze of figures and detail for which the mind cares little. All the Greek temples on the Acropolis combined would make but a miniature showing by the side of Karnak. Most of the Egyptian kings, beginning as far back as 3000b.c., had a hand in its building, and for above two thousand years it was in a state of construction, restoration, or repair. The result is an amazing succession of halls and columns, monoliths, and mighty walls—many of them tumbled and tumbling now, but enough standing to show what a race once flourished here. Long ago the road over which we came from Luxor was an avenue eighty feet wide and a mile and a half long, connecting the two great temples. It was faced on each side with ram-headed sphinxes only a few feet apart. Most of them are gone now, but the few mutilated specimens left prompt one's imagination of that mighty boulevard. The Karnak of that day, with its various enclosures, is said to have covered a thousand acres. The mind does not grasp that, any more than it comprehends the ages of its construction, the history it has seen. It is like trying to grasp the distance to the stars.
No one may say who began Karnak, but theUsertsens of the earliest Theban Dynasty had a hand in its building, and after them the other dynasties down to the Ptolemaic days. Thothmes III. and his aunt, the wonderful Queen Hatasu—the ablest woman of her time—were among its builders, and these two set up obelisks, erected pylons and vast columned halls. This was about 1600b.c., when the glory of Egypt was at flood-tide. Two centuries later the mighty Seti I., whose mummied form sleeps to-day in the Museum at Cairo, began what is known as the great Hypostile Hall, finished by his still mightier son, Rameses II., whose mummy likewise reposes in Cairo, father and son together. Rameses built other additions to Karnak, and crowded most of them with pictures and statues of himself and the sculptured glorification of his deeds. He was, in fact, not only the greatest king, but the greatest egotist the world has ever known, and in the end believed himself a god. It is said that he built more than seventy temples altogether, chiefly to hold his statues, and that he put his name on a number that had been built by his predecessors. It has been hinted that to his title of "The Great" the word "Advertiser" should have been added, and the fact that he is now on exhibition in a glass case must be a crowning gratification to him, if he knows it. It should be mentioned that Rameses II. is thought to be one of the oppressors of the Israelites, which may tend to arrange his period and personality in the Biblical mind.
I am wandering away from the subject in hand. I want to talk about Karnak, and I find myself talkingof kings. But, then, onecannottalk about Karnak—not intelligently. One mustseeKarnak, and he will believe himself dreaming all the time, and he will come away silent. The Romans came to Karnak when the Egyptians had finished with their building, and by-and-by the early Christians, who could always be depended upon to pull down and mutilate and destroy anything that was particularly magnificent. Our old friend, the good Queen Helena, arrived, and the temples of Egypt crumbled before the blight of her fanaticism. But I must change cars again. I get a little rabid when I take up Queen Helena and her tribe.
We followed Gaddis from arch to pylon, from enclosure to sanctuary—we passed down colonnades that one must see to believe. There are two kinds of columns in Egypt, by-the-way, the Lotus and the Papyrus—the former with a capital that opens out like a flaring bowl, the cup of the lotus-flower; the other with a capital that is more like an opening bud. The lotus symbolizes the Delta country, Lower Egypt; the papyrus stands for Upper Egypt, the country of the Nile, where we now are. Both are used in these temples, and here in Karnak there is a hall of Lotus columns—one hundred and thirty-four in number—twelve of them sixty feet high and twelve feet through!
That is the great Hypostile Hall of Seti I., and I wish the English language were big enough, and I on sufficiently good terms with it to convey the overwhelming impression of that place. Try to conceive an architectural forest of the size of a city block,planted with sculptured and painted columns and filled with sunlight—the columns towering till they seem to touch the sky, and of such thickness that six men with extended arms, finger-tip to finger-tip, can barely span them round. The twelve mightier columns form a central avenue that simply dwarfs into insignificance any living thing that enters it. You suddenly become an insect when you stand between those columns and look up, and you have the feeling that you are likely to be stepped on. The rest of that colossal assembly stretch away on either side and are only a degree smaller. All are painted with the four colors of the Nile—mellow tones of blue, red, green and yellow, signifying high and low Nile, green fields and harvest—imperishable pigments as fresh and luminous under this sunlit sky as when they were laid there by artists who finished and put their brushes away more than three thousand years ago. How poor are mere words in the presence of this mighty reality which has outlived so many languages—will outlive all the puny languages that try to convey it now!
Looking down the great central avenue of Seti's hall, we beheld at the end—standing as true to-day as when she placed it there—the graceful granite obelisk of Queen Hatasu.
"Set up in honor of father Amen," she relates in her inscription on the base. She adds that she covered the tip with copper that it might be seen at a great distance, and tells how the monolith and its mate (now lying broken near it) were hewn from the Assuan quarries and brought down the Nile to Thebes.I may say here that we did not read these inscriptions ourselves. We could do it, of course, if we had time, but Gaddis, who is at least five thousand years old, inside, is better at it than we could be in a brief period like that, so we depend on him a good deal. Gaddis can read anything. A bird without a head, followed by a pair of legs walking, a row of sawteeth, a picked chicken, a gum-drop and a comb, all done in careful outline, mean "Homage to the Horus of the two horizons" to Gaddis, though I have been unable as yet to see why.
We went into the Hall, or Temple, of Khonsu, the moon-god, and here was a breath-taking collection of papyrus columns, short, thick, built to stand through the ages on the uncertain foundation of this alluvial plain. We passed into a sanctuary where the priests of Amen prepared the sacrifice, and Gaddis read the story on the walls, and pointed out for the twentieth time, perhaps, Horus, the hawk-headed god, and Hapi, his son, who has a dog head and can hardly be called handsome; also Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the Under World. We came to a temple with a wall upon which Seti recorded his victories over the forces of Syria, and pictured himself in the act of destroying an army single handed by gathering their long hair into a single twist preparatory to smiting off this combined multitude of heads at a blow. We follow Gaddis through long tumbling avenues and corridors of decorated walls; we climbed over fallen columns that prostrate were twice as high as our heads; we studied the records which those old kings, in ages when all the rest of the world was myth andfable set up to preserve the story of their deeds. And remember, all these columns and walls were not only completely covered with figures carved in relief, but tinted in those unfading colors, subdued, harmonious, and more beautiful than I can tell.
I MADE A PICTURE OF THE FLY-BRUSH BRIGADEI MADE A PICTURE OF THE FLY-BRUSH BRIGADE
How little and how feebly I seem to be writing about this stupendous ruin, yet I must conclude presently for lack of room. We went into the Ramesseum, a temple literally lined with heroic statues of Rameses, where I made a picture of the fly-brush brigade, as we call ourselves now, because in Upper Egypt a fly-brush is absolutely necessary not alone to comfort, but to very existence. The fly here is not the ordinary house variety, fairly coy and flirtatious if one has a newspaper or other impromptu weapon, retiring now and again to a safe place for contemplation; no, the Egyptian fly is different. He never retires and he is not in the least coy. He makes for you in a cloud, and it is only by continuous industry that you can beat him off at all. Furthermore, he begins business the instant he touches, and he has continuously the gift which our fly sometimes has on a sultry, muggy day—the art of sticking with his feet, which drives you frantic. So you buy a fly-brush the instant you land in Upper Egypt, and you keep it going constantly from dawn to dark. The flies retire then, for needed rest.
ITS MAGNIFICENT PYLONS OR ENTRANCE WALLS ... AND THEN ONCE MORE WE WERE ON THE DONKEYSITS MAGNIFICENT PYLONS OR ENTRANCE WALLS ... AND THEN ONCE MORE WE WERE ON THE DONKEYS
We passed through another avenue of ram-headed sphinxes (some of the heads were gone) which Rameses built, and stood outside of the great temple of Amen, once called the "Throne of the World." Its magnificent pylons, or entrance walls, are one hundredand fifty feet high and three hundred broad. We ascended one of these for a general view of the vast field of ruin.
Piled and tumbled and flung about lay the mighty efforts of a mighty race. At one place excavating was still going on, and a regiment of little boys were running back and forth with baskets of dirt on their heads, singing and sweating in the blazing sun, earning as much as two piastres (ten cents) a day. Men were working, too; they receive quite fancy sums—twenty cents a day, some of them.
Now that we were outside of the shaded temple and sanctuary enclosures our party was not very game. It was our first day in Upper Egypt, and the flies and the sun made a pretty deadly combination. We began to complain, and to long for the cool corridors and fizzy drinks and protecting screens of the hotel. We might have played golf or tennis in that sun, but seeing ruins was different, and we began to pray for the donkeys again. So Gaddis led us around by the Sacred Lake, where once the splendid ceremonials were performed—it is only a shallow pool now—and then once more we were on the donkeys, strung out in a crazy, shrieking stampede for the hotel. Gaddis rode near me. His donkey was a racer, too, but Gaddis did not laugh or cry out, or anything of the sort. He only wore that gentle serene smile, the smile of Egypt, observing trivial things.
THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR ... ONCE MORE REFLECTING ITS COLUMNS IN THE NILETHE TEMPLE OF LUXOR ... ONCE MORE REFLECTING ITS COLUMNS IN THE NILE
In the afternoon we visited the Temple of Luxor, that beautiful structure which Amenophis III. builton the banks of the Nile. Luxor is Karnak on a smaller scale, though big enough in all conscience, and it is not all excavated yet. Débris had covered this temple to the very top, and it is not so long ago that a village was built on a level with the capitals of these columns. When M. Maspero, in 1883, began his work of excavation, the natives naturally protested against the uncovering of the "heathen" ruins at the expense of their mud huts. The work went on, however, and to-day a large part of the magnificent architecture stands revealed, once more reflecting its columns in the Nile.
There is still a quantity of débris to be removed. One end of the Temple is full of it, and may remain so a good while. On top of this mass, some five hundred years ago, a Mohammedan mosque was built by the descendants of a saint named Abu Haggag, and sufficient of his family are left to this day to hold that mosque intact against all would-be excavators. However, the mosque itself begins to look pretty old. If the diggers keep encroaching, it may slide off into the Temple some day, saints and all.
Luxor, as a whole, is better preserved than Karnak. I suppose the heaped-up débris kept the columns in position during the last ten or a dozen centuries. I wish it had been there when the early Christian came along. Cambyses of Persia, who burned everything that would burn in Egypt, about 527b.c., blackened the walls of this temple with fire, the marks of which show to this day, but he was nothing to the followers of Queen Helena. Even the guide-book, which is likely to be conservative in any comment that maytouch upon the faith of its readers, says concerning the followers of Helena: "Not content with turning certain sections of it into churches, the more fanatical among them smashed statues, and disfigured bas-reliefs and wrecked shrines with characteristic savage and ignorant zeal."[7]
There ought to be a painting or a marble group somewhere entitled "Early Christian at Work"—a lean-faced, stringy-haired maniac with sledge, murdering a symbolized figure of Defenceless Art in the Far East. The early Christian is said to have destroyed forty-five thousand statues in Thebes in one day.
Still, those statues may not matter so much—they were probably all of Rameses the Great, and there are enough of him left. The Luxor Temple had them in all sizes, and of all materials, from granite to alabaster. Also some of "Mrs. Rameses," as Gaddis called her—no particular Mrs. Rameses—there having been several of her; just a sort of generic type of connubial happiness, I suppose. Mrs. Rameses, by the way, does not cut much figure in the statuary. She usually comes only about to the knee of the King, though she is life-size even then, for his own statues are colossal, ranging anywhere from fifteen to fifty feet high. That was to represent their difference in importance, of course, an idea which the women members of our party seemed to disapprove.[8]
One of the statues of Rameses was found in acurious manner. A guide only a little while ago was lecturing to a party of tourists, while a young lady not far away was sketching a corner of the ruin. The sketcher stopped to listen to the guide's talk, and when he had finished said to the boy who was keeping the flies from her:
"Go up on that heap of rubbish and see what that stone is."
It was the rubbish that slopes down from the old mosque. The boy climbed up, pulled away the trash, and uncovered the head of one of the most perfect Rameseses yet discovered.
Originally the Temple of Luxor was five hundred feet long, one hundred and eighty feet wide, and, as before mentioned, was connected with Karnak by a double row of ram-headed sphinxes. Amenophis III. built it about 1500b.c., and it was regarded as the most beautiful of Egyptian temples. Then came his son, Amenophis IV., who, being a sun-worshipper after the manner of his Mesopotamian mother, cut away the name of the Egyptian god Amen and set up a new worship here. It was a brief innovation. The priests made it too hot for the Heretic King. He gave up the struggle after a time, went into the desert farther down the Nile, and built there a city and temples of his own. Then this temple was sacred to the old religion again. It remained so until Alexander came, cut his name here and there, and probably worshipped his own assortment of gods. Later came the Roman and the early Christian; still later the Mohammedan established ceremonies and reconstructed shrines.
We had all the old sacrifices and processions and gods and victories over again in Luxor, including the picture story of the birth of Amenophis III., which depicts an immaculate conception; an annunciation; a visitation of wise men with gifts, executed about 1500b.c.
After which we returned to the hotel; but when the sun was low in the west beyond the Nile and the air was getting balmy, I slipped back and sat in the old Temple in the quiet, and thought of a number of things. Then as the sun slipped below the verge, a figure stepped out on the minaret just over my head and began that weird thrilling chant which once heard will remain forever unforgotten, the cry of the East—"Allah il Allah," the Muezzin's call to prayer.
So it is still a place of worship. The voice of faith has reached down thirty-four centuries, and whatever the form, or the prophet, or the priest, it is all embodied there at evening and at morning in the cry, "There is no God but God."
It was early next morning when we crossed the Nile to the rhythm of a weird chorus which the boatmen sang to the beat of the oars. It is probably older than these temples, and the boatmen themselves do not know the meaning of the words, Gaddis said. One intones and the others answer, and it is in minor keys with a dying fall at the end, except now and then when a curious lifting note drops in, like a flash of light on the oars. Bound for the Valley of the Kings, the House of Hatasu, and the Colossi of Memnon, it seemed a fitting overture.
The donkeys were waiting on the other bank—the same we had used yesterday, fat and fresh as ever, and the same boys were there calling and gesticulating to their special charges of the day before. There are always a few more donkey-boys than is necessary, it seems, all of them wildly eager for the privilege of racing all day in the perishing sun, urging the donkeys and yelling for baksheesh at every jump—not that they expect to get it until the end of the day, but as a traditional part of the performance. The donkey-boy gets nothing, we are told, but what one is pleased to give him—the donkey hire going to the Sheik, who owns the donkeys and lets the boys get what they can. I would write a good deal aboutthose half-naked, half-savage, tireless donkey-boys if permitted. They and their brothers, and their cousins even to the fourth remove, who come in like a charging army in the wild baksheesh skirmish at the end, interest me.
Mounted, we led away in the usual stampede along canals and by lush green fields, across the fertile strip that borders the Nile. The green is rather wide here—as much as a mile, I should think, and it was pleasant going through the still morning if one kept well forward in the procession—in front of the dust that rose mightily behind us. Every little way where we slackened speed, detachments of sellers would charge from the roadside with trinkets, imitation scarabs, and images, but more notably with fragments (and these were genuine enough) of what long ago—as much as three or four thousand years, perhaps—had been human beings like ourselves. Remnants of mummies they were, quarried out of the barren hills where lie not only the kings but the millions who in the glory of Egypt lived and died in Thebes. The hills are full of them, Gaddis said, and unearthing them has become an industry.
It was rather grewsome at first to be offered such things—to have a head, or a hand, or a foot thrust up under your eyes, and with it an outstretched palm for payment. The prices demanded were not very high, and the owners, the present owners, would take less—a good deal less than the first quotation. A physician in our party bought a head—hard and black as old mahogany, with some bits of gold-leaf still sticking to it—for five francs, and I was offereda baby's hand (it had been soft and dimpled once—it was dark and withered now) for a shilling.
We crossed the line which "divides the desert from the sown"—a sharp, perfectly distinguishable line in Egypt—and were in the sand, the sun getting high and blazing down, fairly drenching us with its flame. We thought it would be better when we entered the hills, but that was a mistake. It was worse, for there was not a particle of growing shade, not a blade of any green thing, and there seemed no breath of life in that stirless air.
Remember it never rains here; these hills have never known water since the Flood, but have been baking in this vast kiln for a million years. You will realize that it must be hot, then, but you will never know how hot until you go there. Here and there a rock leaned over a little and made a skimpy blue shadow, which we sidled into as we passed for a blessed instant of relief. We understood now the fuller meaning of that Bible phrase, "As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." This was a weary land with shadows far between. Now and then those astonishing donkeys broke into a gallop and stirred up a little scorching wind, the unflagging boys capering and shouting behind.
It seemed an endless way, up into these calcined hills to the Burial-place of Kings, but by-and-by there were traces of ruins and excavation, and we heard the throb of a dynamo on the quivering air. We dismounted then, and Gaddis led us up a burning little steep to what at first seemed a great tunnel into the mountain-side. How deep and cool and invitingit looked up there; we would go in, certainly. Was it really a tomb? No wonder those old kings looked forward to such a place.
It was merely an entrance to a tomb—a tunnel, truly, and of such size that I believe two railway trains could enter it side by side and two more on top of them! I think most of us had the idea—I know I did—that we would go down ladders into these tombs, and that they would be earthy, cheerless places, more interesting than attractive.
They are the most beautiful places I ever saw. The entrances—vast, as I have stated—go directly in from the hillside; the rock floors are dry and clean, while the side-walls and the ceilings are simply a mass of such carving and color as the world nowhere else contains. An electric dynamo set up in a tomb that was never finished (that of Rameses XII., I believe) supplies illumination for these homes of the kingly dead, and as you follow deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain your wonder grows at the inconceivable artistic effort and constructive labor that have been expended on those walls. Deeper, and still deeper, along a gradual decline that seems a veritable passage to the underworld. Here and there, at the side, are antechambers or avenues that lead away—we wonder whither.
Now and again Gaddis paused to explain the marvellous story of the walls—the progress of the King to the underworld—his reception there, his triumphs, his life in general in that long valley of spirits which ran parallel with Egypt and was neither above nor below the level of the earth. It was thisform and idea of the underworld that the shape of these tombs was intended to express, while their walls illustrate the happy future life of the King. Chapters from the "Book of the Underworld" (a sort of descriptive geography of the country) and from the "Book of the Dead" (a manual of general instruction as to customs and deportment in the new life) cover vast spaces. Here and there a design was not entirely worked out, but the sketch was traced in outline, which would indicate that perhaps the King died before his tomb (always a life-work) was complete.
Now, realize: This gorgeous passage was nearly five hundred feet long, cut into the living rock, and opened into a vast pillared and vaulted chamber fully sixty feet long by forty wide and thirty high—the whole covered with splendid decorations that the dry air and protection have preserved as fresh and beautiful as the day they were finished so many centuries ago. This was the royal chamber, empty now, where in silent state King Seti I. once lay. We are a frivolous crowd, but we were awed into low-voiced wonder at the magnitude of this work, the mightiness of a people who could provide so overwhelmingly for their dead.
I do not remember how many such tombs we visited, but they were a good many, including those of Rameses I. and II., the father and the mighty son of Seti I., all three of whom now sleep in the Cairo Museum. Also the tomb of Rameses IX., one of the finest of the lot.
In some of the tombs the sarcophagi were still inplace, but all are empty of occupants except one. This was the splendid tomb of Amenophis II., of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who lived in the glory of Egypt, 1600b.c., a warrior who slew seven Syrian chiefs with his own hand. Gaddis had not told us what to expect in that tomb, and when we had followed through the long declining way to the royal chamber and beheld there, not an empty sarcophagus but a king asleep, we were struck to silence with that three thousand five hundred years of visible rest.
The top of the sarcophagus is removed, and is replaced by heavy plate glass. Just over the sleeper's face there is a tiny electric globe, and I believe one could never tire of standing there and looking at that quiet visage, darkened by age, but beautiful in its dignity; unmoved, undisturbed by the storm and stress of the fretful years.
How long he has been asleep! The Israelites were still in bondage when he fell into that quiet doze, and for their exodus, a century or two later, he did not care. Hector and Achilles and Paris and the rest had not battled on the Plains of Troy; the gods still assembled on Mt. Olympus; Rome was not yet dreamed. He had been asleep nigh a thousand years when Romulus quit nursing the she-wolf to build the walls of a city which would one day rule the world. The rise, the conquest, the decline of that vast empire he never knew. When her armies swept the nations of the East and landed upon his own shores he did not stir in his sleep. The glory of Egypt ebbed away, but he did not care. Old religions perished; new gods and new prophets replaced thegods and prophets he had known—it mattered not to him, here in this quiet underworld. Through every change he lay here in peace, just as he lies to-day, so still, so fine in his kingly majesty—upon his face that soft electric glow which seems in no wise out of place, because it has come as all things come at last to him who waits.
In a sort of anteroom near the royal chamber lie the mummies of three adherents of the King, each with a large hole in the skull and a large gash in the breast—royal slaves, no doubt, sent to bear their liege company. I remember one of them as having very long thick curly hair—a handsome fellow, I suppose; a favorite who could not, or would not, be left behind.
A number of other royal mummies were found in the Tomb of Amenophis II., so that at some period of upheaval it must have been used as a hiding-place for the regal dead, as was a cave across the mountains at Der al-Bahari. Perhaps those who secreted them here thought that a king who in life had slain seven chiefs with his own hand would make a potent guard. They were not mistaken. Through all the centuries the guests of that still house lay undisturbed.
We paused, though briefly—for it was fairly roasting outside—at the excavations of our countryman, Mr. Theodore M. Davis, who has brought to light so many priceless relics in this place; after which we bought an entire stock of oranges from an Arab who suddenly appeared from nowhere, sucked them ravenously, and set out, leading our donkeys up a broilingprecipitous path over the mountains, for the house of Queen Hatasu, which lies at the base of the cliffs on the other side.
It was not very far, I suppose, but it was strenuous and seemed miles. We were rewarded, however, when we reached the plateau of the mountain top. From the brink of the great cliff we could look out over the whole plain of Thebes, its villages and its ruins, its green cultivation and its blazing sands. Once it was a vast city—"the city of a hundred gates and twenty thousand chariots of war." Through its centre flowed the Nile, a very fountain of life, its one outlet to the world. To the east and the west lay Nature's surest fortifications, the dead hills and the encompassing sands. It is estimated that the city of Paris could stand on this level sweep and that Thebes overspread it all. As at Ephesus, we tried to re-create that vanished city, but we did not try long, for the mid-day sun was too frying hot.
So we descended to the rest-house of Der al-Bahari, where we created a famine in everything resembling refreshments, liquid or otherwise, in that wayside shelter. Then out on the piazza we swung our fly-brushes, beat off the sellers of things, and tried to assimilate our half-baked knowledge.
We were in a mixed state of temples and tombs and dynasties and localities—of sacrificial processions, and gods of the "Underworld." The sun had got into our heads, too, and some of the refreshments had been of strange color and curious brands. It is no wonder that we drifted into deliriums of verse. Ihave forgotten who had the first seizure, but from internal evidence it was probably Fosdick—Fosdick of Ohio. This is it:
Queen Hatasu, of Timbuctoo,She lived a busy life;She fell in love with King Khufu,And she became his wife.She put him in a pyramid—He put her in another,And now four thousand years have goneYou can't tell one from tother.
I do remember how we tried to reason with the author; how we explained to him carefully that Hatasu, who was also called Hatshepset and certain other names, did not hail from Timbuctoo; also that King Khufu, alias Cheops, had been in his pyramid at least two thousand years, with fourteen dynasties on top of him, when that lady of the Nile was born. It was no use; he turned a glazed eye on us and said all periods looked alike to him, that art was long and life fleeting, that a trifle of two thousand years was as a few grains on the Egyptian sands of time. We saw, then, he was hopeless, but later he improved and seemed sorry. It did not matter; another member of the party had been taken with the poetic madness, and we gave room for his attack. It was of milder form, and mercifully short:
King Rameses, he strove to please,And put his foes to flight;To celebrate his victoriesHe toiled both day and night.He filled full threescore temples withHis statues vast and grim,And some of Mrs. RamesesWho wa'n't knee-high to him.
I don't know why a malady of this sort should fall upon our party. Such things never happened on the ship, but then Egypt is different, as I have said. There was one more outbreak before we got the germ destroyed:
Behold the halls of Seti I.,And also Seti II.;Likewise of old AmenhetepAnd haughty Hatasu.They lived in state, their days were greatAnd glided gayly by;Sometimes they used to rail at fate,The same as you and I.Oh, Seti I., your race is run,And also Seti II.,And lizards sleep where ages creepIn the house of Hatasu.
It was time to check the tendency; it was getting serious.
We went up to the "House of Hatasu"—all that is left of it—a beautiful fragment of what was built by the great Queen as her Holy of Holies. It is unlike other temples we have seen, with its square columns; its beautiful open portico; its fine ceiling, still perfect in workmanship and coloring. Queen Hatasu had ideas of her own about building; also, her own architect. His name was Senmut, and his tomb, a mile from the temple, commands a view of it to this day.
Hatasu once made a notable expedition to the lower east coast of Africa—to Punt, as it was called then, and she has recorded it on these walls. It shows the natives bringing valuable presents—woods, spices, gold, and the like—in exchange for glass beads and tin whistles, after the customary manner of such barter. A part of the relief shows the Prince of Punt and "Mrs. Punt," whose figure was certainly remarkable, followed by their family, all with hands raised in deference to the Egyptian Queen.
It was near here, in 1881, that the cave or pit was found containing the mummies of many kings, including Seti I., Rameses II., and others who had been stored here for safety. Arabs had been selling royal scarabs for some time, and the archæologists finally discovered the secret of their supply. It was a priceless find, and with the treasures of the tomb of Amenophis II., made the museum of Cairo the richest archæological depository in the world.
We put in the afternoon visiting temples, mostly of Rameses the Great, and looking at statues which he had caused to be erected of himself wherever there was room. I remember one colossal granite figure of that self-sufficient king, lying prostrate on the sand now, estimated to weigh a thousand tons—which is to say two million pounds. That statue was sixty feet high when it stood upright, and it is cut like a gem. It was brought down from Assuan in one piece, by barge, as was the enormous granite base, which is thirty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and eight feet thick.
I remember, too, some sun-dried brick—brickmade by the Israelites, maybe—with the imprint of Rameses still on them, uneffaced after thirty-three centuries. The sun bakes hard in Egypt; no other kiln is needed. I remember a temple of Rameses III. and a pictorial record of one of his victories. His soldiers had reported a killing of twelve thousand of the enemy; he said:
"Go bring the evidence. If you have those dead men anywhere you can bring something to prove it."
So the army returned and got the right hands of their victims. The story is all cut there on the walls, and the hands are there too.
Rameses III. knew the custom inaugurated by his ancestor "The Great," of eliminating old names with new ones, and he took measures accordingly by cutting his own inscriptions deep. Some of them sink ten inches into the walls and will stay there a good while.
I had noticed one curious thing along the outer walls of all these old temples, to wit: row after row of smooth egg-shaped holes, ranging irregularly, one above the other, from the base upward—sometimes to the very top. It was as if they had been dug out by some animal or insect. I asked Gaddis, at last, what they were, and he told me this curious thing.
The childless Arab woman, he said, for ages had believed that some magic in these walls could make them fruitful, so had come and rubbed patiently with their fingers until they worked a few grains of the sandstone into a cup of water, which they drank with a prayer of hope. They had begun, he said, in that far-off time when the temples stood as clear ofrubbish as they do to-day; and, as the years heaped up the débris, these anxious women had rubbed higher and higher up the walls until, with the drift of the ages, they had reached the very top. So there the record stands to-day, and when one realizes how little of that stone can be rubbed away with the finger-end; how comparatively few must have been the childless mothers, and then sees how innumerable and deep those holes are, he gets a sudden and comprehensive grasp of the vast stretch of time these walls stood tenantless, vanishing, and unregarded, save by those generations of barren women.
We raced away for the Colossi of Memnon, where, I fear, we did not linger as long as was proper. It was growing late—we were very tired and were overfull of undigested story and tangled chronology. Also the scarab men and flies were especially bad just there. We were willing to take a bare look at that majestic pair who have watched the sun rise morning after morning while a great city vanished away from around them, and then go steaming away across the sands for the Nile and the cool rest of the hotel.
Such a time as we had settling with those donkey-boys—the old white-turbaned sheik, owner of the donkeys, squatting and smoking indifferently while the storm raged about him. But it was over at last, and the boatmen sang again—a quiet afterlude of that extraordinary day—and collected baksheesh on the farther shore.
There could hardly be a daintier boat than theMemnon. It just holds our party; it is as clean and speckless as possible, and there is an open deck the full width of the tiny steamer, with pretty rugs and lazy chairs, where we may lounge and drowse and dream and look out on the gently passing panorama of the Nile.
For we have left Luxor, and are floating in this peaceful fashion down to Cairo, resting in the delight of it, after those fierce temple-hunting, tomb-visiting days. Not that we are entirely through with temples and the like. Here and there we tie up to the bank, and go ashore and scamper away on donkeys to some tumbled ruin, but it is a diversion now, not a business, and we find such stops welcome. For the most part we spend our days just idling, and submitting to the spell of Egypt, which has encompassed us and possessed us as it will encompass and possess any one who has a trace of the old human tendency to drift and dream.
It has been said of Boston that it is less a locality than a state of mind. I wishIhad said that—of Egypt. I will say it now, and without humor, for of this land it is so eminently true. A mere river-bank; a filament of green; a long slender lotus-stem,of which the Delta is the flower—thatis Egypt. Remote—shut in by the desert and the dead hills—it is far less a country and a habitation than a psychological condition which all the mummied ages have been preparing—which the traveller from the earliest moment is bound to feel. It has lived so long! It had made and recorded its history when the rest of the world was dealing in nursery-tales! The glamour of that stately past has become the spell, the enchantment of to-day. The magic of the lotus grows more potent with the years.
It is such a narrow land! Sometimes the lifeless hills close in on one side or the other to the water's edge. Nowhere is the fertile strip wide, for its fertility depends wholly on the water it receives from the Nile, and when that water is drawn up by hand with a goat-skin pail and a well-sweep—ashaduf, as they call it—it means that fields cannot be very extensive, even if there were room, which as a rule there is not.
THINK OF WATERING A WHOLE WHEAT-FIELD WITH A WELL-SWEEP AND A PAILTHINK OF WATERING A WHOLE WHEAT-FIELD WITH A WELL-SWEEP AND A PAIL
Think of watering a whole wheat-field with a well-sweep and a pail! Furthermore, where the banks are high the water is sometimes lifted three times between the Nile and the surface, and much of it is wasted in transit. It is the oldest form of irrigation; the hieroglyphics show that it was in use in Egypt five thousand years ago. It is also still the most popular form in Upper Egypt. We saw a good many of thesakkieh—primitive and wasteful water-wheels propelled by a buffalo or a camel or a cow—and at rare intervals a windmill, where some Englishman has established a plantation, but it is theshadufthat largely predominates.
The mud villages among the date-palms are unfailingly picturesque; the sail-boats of the Nile—markabthey call them—drifting down upon us like great butterflies, have a charm not to be put in words; the life along the shores never loses its interest; the sun sets and the sun rises round the dreamy days with a marvel of color that seems each time more wonderful. Then there is the moonlight. But I must not speak of Egyptian moonlight or I shall lose my sense of proportion altogether, for it is like no other light that ever lay on sea or land.
We do not travel through the night, but anchor at dusk until daybreak. It is curious to reflect that one sees the entire country on a trip like this, if he rises early. We do rise early, most of us—though the cool nights (nights are always cool in Egypt) and the stillness are an inducement to sleep—and we are usually very hungry before breakfast comes along. One may have coffee on the deck if he likes—the picturesque Arab will bring it joyfully, especially where there is a baksheesh at the end. It is good coffee, too, and the food is good; everything is good on theMemnonexcept the beverages and the cigars. The wine could be improved and the cigars could be thrown away. I paid a shilling for one that was as hard as a stick and crumbled to dust when I bit it. Never mind the flavor. That brand was called "The Scarab." It should have been named "The Mummy"—it had all the characteristics.
The pilot commands this boat—the captain merely conducts the excursion. The captain wears European dress and speaks English, but the pilot is Arabthroughout—dark-faced, heavily turbaned, silent—watching the water like a sphinx. Now and then he makes a motion and says a word to the steersman at his side. Whenever we lie up or strike safe water he locates Mecca, prostrates himself, and prays. I should think his emotions would be conflicting at times. Doctrinally, of course, it is his duty to pray for the boat to sink and exterminate this crowd. Professionally, it is his duty to take us safely to Cairo. Poor old Abbas! how are you going to explain to the prophet by-and-by?
We may not reach Cairo, however. The Nile is shallow at this season, and already we have scraped the sand more than once. It is a curious river—full of currents and shifting sand—the water getting scantier as you descend. That seemed strange to us until we realize that its entire flow comes from the far interior; that it has no feeding tributaries, while the steady evaporation, the irrigation, and the absorption of these burning sands constitute a heavy drain. It is hard to grasp a condition like that, or what this river means—has always meant—to the dwellers along its shores. Not alone an artery of life, it is life itself—water, food, clothing, cleanliness.
They don't take as much advantage of that last blessing as they should—nor of the next to the last. It is true that most of them have some semblance of clothing, but not all of them. In this interior Nile, as we may call the district between Luxor and Cairo, early principles to some extent still prevail. At first we saw boys—donkey-boys and the like—without any perceivable clothing, and more lately we have seen men—brown-skinnedmuscular creatures loading boats—utterly destitute of wardrobe. Yet, somehow, these things did not shock us—not greatly. They seemed to go with the sun, and the dead blue sky and the other scenery. A good deal depends on surroundings.
Our stops were not all brief. We put in a full day at Abydos, where there is a splendid temple built by Seti I., and Rameses the Great (of course), and where the donkeys are as poor as they are good in Luxor. Not that they were wretched in appearance, or ill-cared for, but they were a stiff-necked, unwilling breed. Mine had a way of stopping suddenly and facing about toward home. Twice I went over his head during these manœuvres, which the others thought entertaining.
But they had their troubles, too. The distance to the temple was long—eight miles, I should think—and part of the way the road was an embankment several feet high. Some of the donkeys seemed to think it amusing to suddenly decide to go down this embankment and make off over the desert. We were a scattering, disordered cavalcade, and what with the flies and distracting donkey-boys who were perpetually at one's side with "Mister, good donkey—fine donkey—baksheesh, mister," the trip was a memorable one. Once when my donkey, whose name was "Straight Flush" and should have been "Two-spot" got behind the party, I caught my attendant, not only twisting his tail, but biting it.
It was a good excursion, on the whole. We had luncheon in the great hall of the temple, and I couldnot help wondering who had held the first feast in that mighty place where we were holding the last, to date.
We feel at home now in a temple, especially when we see the relief of our faithful Rameses, and of Osiris, king of the underworld, and his kind. We have become familiar and even disrespectful toward these great guardians of the past. This makes it hard on Gaddis at times; especially after luncheon, when we are in a sportive mood.
"Zis is ze temple of Rameses ze Great"—he begins.
"Ah, so it is—we suspected it all along."
"Here you will see hees seventy-two son—"
"Sure enough—our old friends."
"And hees fourteen wive."
"Happy man, but why a king and so few?"
"An' here all zose seventy-two son carry gift to Osiris—"
"King of the underworld—so they do, we would recognize that gang anywhere."
Truly, it is time we were giving up temples; we are no longer serious. But in this temple of Seti I., at Abydos, we sometimes forgot to jest. Frivolous and riotous as we have become, we were silent in the presence of one splendid decoration of Seti offering sacrifice before the sacred boat, and again where we confronted in a corridor that precious and beautiful relief carving, the Tablet of Egypt's Kings. The cartouche of every king down to Seti I. is there—with one exception: the name of Amenophis IV., the king who abandoned his faith and worshipped his mother's gods, has no place in that royal company.Otherwise the story is as complete as it is impressive, and I recognized something of what that document means to those of Egypt who know (like Gaddis), when I put out a finger to touch the exquisite work and he whispered, "No, please."
What record will there be of our history thirty-five centuries from now? Not a book of all those printed to-day will last any considerable fraction of that period. A tablet like this sets one to wondering if we should not get an appropriation to preserve at least the skeleton of our chronology on plates of bronze to be stored in some deep vault safe from the ravages of fire and flood and earthquake.
We also stopped at Assuit, or Asyut, or Suit—I like these Egyptian names—you can spell them any way you please. Every one of them has all the spellings you can think of; you could not invent a new one if you tried. It is at Assuit they make the spangled shawls, and the natives flock down to the boat-landing to sell them. Gaddis had probably telegraphed ahead that a floating asylum of Americans was on the way and they had assembled accordingly. Long before we were in trading distance they began to dance about and gesticulate—the sheen of their fabrics blazing in the sun—crying the prices which they did not expect to get.
Some of our ladies were quite eager, and began to make offers when we were still many yards from shore. I suppose they thought the supply was limited. By the time we touched the landing the wildest trading was already going on. Shawls rolled in a ball were being flung aboard for examination,and flung back wildly with preposterous under-bids, only to come hurtling back again with a fierce protest of refusal. For a time it was a regular game of snowball and fireworks. There were canes to sell, too, and fly-whips—beautiful ivory-handled things. Commerce swelled to high tide. In the midst of the melée somebody happened to notice, what we had not seen before, another steamer lying a little way ahead—an English party, we were told—the ladies and gentlemen quietly reading or pityingly regarding our exhibition. I know, now, that the English have no sense of humor. Another American boat would have been in spasms of delight at our antics. Also, the Englishman's Egypt is not as ours, and he does not enjoy it as much. How could he, without loading up, as we did, with those wonderful Assuit shawls?
Only one more stop along the Nile will I record. This was at Tell al-Amarna, where, in the desert a little beyond the green, lies all that is left of the city built by the heretic king, Amenophis IV., who abandoned Amen-Ra for the sun-worship of his Mesopotamia mother, Queen Thi.
It was a splendid granite city once, but it is all gone now. Only a little of the floor of the palace is left, Queen Thi's apartment, Gaddis said, but it held for us a curious interest. For it is painted, or perhaps enamelled, in colors, and the decorations, still in a good state of preservation, are not Egyptian in design, but Syrian or Persian! The Princess who had left her land to marry an Egyptian king could not forsake her gods and her traditions, and that old floor remains to-day after thirty-fivecenturies to tell the story of her loyalty and her love.
We should have made other stops, perhaps, but we met disaster. The Nile was low, as I have said, and a hundred miles below Cairo we awoke one morning to find our boat hard and fast aground. We had, in fact, grounded the evening before, and Abbas and his men had been working all night, putting out anchors and pulling on ropes, a picturesque group, to the chorus "Ali sah—ali ya seni—ali hoop!" which is an appeal to the god of the Nile, Gaddis said, in this case unavailing. We were there to stay for the summer, unless we took train to Cairo, so after breakfast Gaddis and I went ashore with Abraham, still semi-officially attached to our party, and walked three miles to the nearest railway station to see what might be done. It was a fine walk, even though a warm one, across the Egyptian fields, and I saw some papyrus plant and bought a distaff and spindle from a man who was sitting by the road spinning after the fashion of the earliest race of men.
It was Fachen that we reached, an Arab town to which tourists never come, and the donkeys we arranged for there, to carry our party from the shore landing to the station, were a nondescript lot without saddle or bridle—with no gear, in fact, except a remnant of rope tied around the neck. Then we walked back opposite the boat, another three miles, and sat on the bank, and sweat and waved our hands and called to those people, half a mile away in mid-stream, who for some reason could not see our signals.
It was not uninteresting, though. The natives came to inspect us—an unusual opportunity for them—and some women came down to the Nile with great stone jars for water. Those jars must hold eight or ten gallons, and are heavy enough empty, yet those women will balance them on their heads and go stepping away chatting lightly, indifferent to their great burdens. They were barefooted and wore anklets which I wanted to buy, but Gaddis did not seem interested, and I could not transact a delicate business like that without careful interpretation.
Our people saw us at last and came for us in a boat. Then there was a bustle of preparation; a loading into the markab which we had engaged to take us ashore; a good-bye to our pretty, unfortunate littleMemnon; a drifting down to the donkey landing, and a sorry-looking procession to the railway.
Our guides had difficulty settling with donkey-men, who, never having had tourists before, had engaged, no doubt, at their usual rates; then suddenly they had awakened to the idea that they were missing the chance of a fortune. The baksheesh we gave them must have opened their eyes. Probably they had never received so much at one time before. At all events, they came back for a new settlement, surrounded Gaddis and Abraham, and for a while we thought inferno had broken loose. Gaddis finally resorted to a stick, but Abraham, who is as big as a camel, first delivered an admonition, and then ran bodily upon the whole crowd and swept them like chaff from the platform.
The wait at Fachen was not overlong, but it becamea trifle tedious after the novelty of the place had passed. We telegraphed Cairo of our coming, and Abraham entertained us with a few marvels to while away the time. He said that the stone used in building the pyramids had been brought across the Nile; that such stone was light like pumice-stone when quarried; that it floated across, and that the water it soaked up solidified and turned it into hard, heavy stone on the other side. The Credulous One believed this statement. He said theMemnonhad grounded on a reef of crocodiles, at this season asleep, tucked up in the bed of the Nile. The Credulous One believed that, too. Several of the party did. He said that all telegrams in Egypt are sent in English, for the reason that the Arabic characters get tangled up in the wires. I believed that myself. He would have enlightened us further, only the train came just then.
We had to change at Wasta, where it was night, and I shall never forget that fevered scene of Arab faces and flaring lamps, and heat, and thirst—the one hot night in Egypt—as we wandered about that Egyptian station waiting for the Cairo express. Suddenly we came upon another party of our ship-dwellers, whose boat, ahead of ours, had grounded too. Finding them there in that weird place was all like something in a fever. Then we were on the express at last, roaring away through the dust and dark and heat to Cairo—a flight out of Egypt so modern that one could imagine the gates of the dead centuries behind us rushing together with a bang.
The Reprobates were at Shepheard's when we returned, enjoying Egypt thoroughly. Shepheard's is a good place in which to enjoy Egypt. Some of the sights there are quite wonderful, and American refreshments are connected with an electric bell.
The Reprobates had done Upper Egypt, however. They had done it in one day. They had left Cairo in the evening, telegraphing ahead for carriages to meet the train at Luxor, where they had arrived next morning. They had driven directly from the train to Karnak, from Karnak to the temple of Luxor, from Luxor to the hotel for luncheon. In the afternoon they had soared over to the Valley of the Kings; from the Kings they had dropped down on the House of Hatasu, the temples of Rameses and others; they had come coursing back by the Colossi of Memnon in time to catch the Cairo express, which landed them at Shepheard's about daybreak. The Reprobates had enjoyed Upper Egypt very much, though I could see they regretted the necessity of devoting all that time to it when Shepheard's still remained partially unexplored.
I had hardly landed in my room when a call-boy from the office came up to say that a police-officer wasbelow, asking for me. For a moment I wondered a little feverishly what particular thing it was he wanted me for. Then the boy said, "Pyramid police," which brought a gleam of light. "Oh, why—yes, of course—show him up!"
And now, while we are waiting for him, I am going to record a circumstance which I suppose a good many readers—especially those familiar with the East—may find it difficult to believe. Nevertheless, it is authentic and provable.
In Egypt, baksheesh is a national institution. Everybody takes it—every Egyptian, I mean; if I should begin by saying I had met an exception to this rule I could not expect any one who knows Cairo to read any further. This by-the-way.
It was during our first stop in Cairo, and we had been there a day or two before we made our official visit to the Pyramids and Sphinx. We went in carriages then, attended by two guides. For some reason, however, our protectors left us to shift pretty much for ourselves when we got there, and it was a pretty poor shift. The fortune-tellers and scarab-sellers and donkey-men and would-be guides swarmed about us and overran us and would not be appeased. When we repulsed them temporarily they rallied and broke over us in waves, and swept us here and there, until we became mere human flotsam and jetsam on that tossing Egyptian tide.
It was all like a curiously confused dream. Members of our party would suddenly turn up, and as suddenly disappear again: there would be moments of lull when we seemed about to collect, then, presto! without anyapparent cause there would occur wild confusion and despair.
It was no use. Laura and I wanted to go inside the Great Pyramid, and we did not want to climb it. It was impossible to do one, and it was about equally impossible not to do the other. Out of the confusion of things at last I remembered a young officer of the police, whom I had met riding home that first night on the trolley—a mere lad of nineteen or twenty, but a big fellow, who spoke excellent English and said he was Superintendent of the Pyramid Police. I decided now to see if this was true, and, if so, to ask his advice in our present difficulties.
I remembered that the police station was near the trolley terminus, and we gradually fought our way back there. Yes, there he was, at his desk, a handsome Soldierly figure in a tall red fez. He rose and bowed, remembering us immediately.
We would like to look about a little, I said, and to go inside the big Pyramid, but we preferred to be alive when we got through; also fairly decent as to appearance. Couldn't he pick us out a guard or two, who would keep the enemy in check, and see us through?
He bowed with easy grace.
"I will accompany you myself," he said.
Now, I already knew the custom of Egypt, and I began to make a hasty estimate of my ready money, wondering if I had sufficient for a baksheesh of this rank. It was by no means certain. However, there would be ship-dwellers about: I could borrow, perhaps.
I decided presently that whatever the duty imposed, it was worth it. With that big uniformed fellowat our side we were immune to all that hungry horde of Arab vultures. We walked through unscathed. Our protector procured the entrance tickets for us; he selected two strong men to push and pull us up the long, dark, glassy-slick passage that leads to the sepulchre of Khufu in the very heart of the Pyramid; he went with us himself into that still mysterious place, explaining in perfect English how five or six thousand years ago the sarcophagus of the great king was pushed up that incline; he showed us the mortises in the stone where uprights were set to hold the great granite coffin when the laborers stopped to rest. It was a weird experience in the cool, quiet darkness of that mightiest of tombs with the flaring candles and eager sure-footed Arabs; it seemed to belong in Rider Haggard's story ofShe. Then, after we had seen the old black sarcophagus, which is empty now, and had remained a little in that removed place, trying to imagine that we were really in the very centre of the big Pyramid, we made our way out again to light and the burning desert heat. I settled with our Arabs with little or no difficulty, which is worth something in itself, and when we had found a quiet place I thanked our guardian and tendered him what I thought a liberal honorarium—fairly liberal, even for America.
He drew back a little.
"Oh no," he said, "I beg your pardon."
I had not made it large enough then. I glanced about for some of the party who would have funds.
"I am sorry," I began, "it is not more. I will—"
"I beg your pardon," he repeated, "but I couldnot accept anything for what is but my duty. I am only very glad to do what I may for you. I will do something more, if you wish."
Then, of course, I knew itmustbe a dream, and that I would wake up presently in Shepheard's Hotel to find that we hadn't started for the Pyramids yet. Still, I would keep up the blessed trance a moment longer.
"You mean that you will not allow me to acknowledge your great favor to us?" I said in that polite manner for which our ship is justly famous.
"Not in money," he said. "The Government pays me a salary for my work and this is only part of my work. It has also given me pleasure."
I surreptitiously pinched myself in certain tender places to see if I couldn't wake up. It was no use. He persisted in his refusal, and presently produced an ancient corroded coin, Greek or Roman, such as is sometimes found among the débris.
"I should like to offer you this," he said. "I found it myself, so I am sure it is genuine."
Ah, this was the delicate opportunity.
"You will let me buy it, of course."
But no, he declined that, too. He wished us only to remember him, he insisted. He added:
"I have two scarabs at home; I should like to bring them to your hotel."
It was rather dazing. The seller of scarabs—genuine or imitation—will not let a prospective purchaser get out of sight. I wondered why we should be trusted in this unheard-of way; I also wondered what those two scarabs were likely to be worth.Could he come to-night? I asked; we should be sight-seeing to-morrow and leaving for Upper Egypt in the afternoon.
But no, he would not be home in time. He would wait until we returned from Upper Egypt.
So it was we had parted, and in the tumult of sight-seeing up the Nile I had forgotten the matter altogether. Now, here he was. I counted up my spare currency, and waited.
He had on his best smile as he entered, also a brand-new uniform, and he certainly made a handsome figure. He inquired as to our sight-seeing up the Nile, then rather timidly he produced two of those little Egyptian gems—a scarab and an amulet, such as men and women of old Egypt wore, and took with them to their tombs.
"I got them from a man who took them from a mummy. They are genuine. I want to give them to you and the little lady," he said.
"But you must notgivethem to us—they are too valuable," I began.
He flushed and straightened up a little.
"But that is why I wish you to have them."
Now, of course, no one who knows Cairo can ever believe that story. Yet it all truly happened, precisely as I have set it down. He was just a young Egyptian who had attended school in Alexandria, and he spoke and wrote English, French, Italian, and the dialects of Arabic. The Egyptian acquires the lore of languages naturally, it would seem, but that this youth should acquire all those things, and such astandard of honor and generosity, here in a land where baksheesh is the native god, did seem amazing. When we left, he wrote down our address in the neatest possible hand, requesting permission to send us something more.