CHAPTER IV
Themen who are digging history out of the earth with pick and shovel rely upon something more than chance to obtain their results. The general idea of a man casually strolling out into the desert, and uncovering a city which has never been heard of, has little relation to the facts. It would be just as reasonable to start fishing for Japanese pearls in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, as to start blindly digging through the sands of Egypt in the hope that something would turn up.
Ancient monuments, papyri and wall-paintings, even the legends of the country, are carefully considered with a view to finding a clue to the past. The sites of the ancient tombs and palaces and cities have gradually been located, and the explorers naturally select a spot which holds out some prospect of success. They generally have a definite object in view when they start their search. For instance, Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter were hoping to find another tomb when they came across that of Tutankhamen. WhenMaspero made his discovery of so many of the Pharaohs about forty years ago, the mummy of Tutankhamen was missing, and there was accordingly the possibility that some diligent man might eventually unearth it.
For forty years the search went on. Other tombs were found, but that of Tutankhamen still eluded discovery, until the autumn of 1922. The digger always has hopes of finding a certain thing, but as often as not he comes across something else.
Before a pick is stuck into the ground, the digger will spend several days on the spot, going over it carefully, and noting any irregularities. Long experience teaches him many things. What the ordinary man cannot see, even when it is pointed out to him, may be quite plain to the trained eye. A slight depression may indicate to the expert the site of a buried building, a tiny bank may tell him where the sand of the desert has blown against a wall and gradually accumulated until the wall is covered beneath the drift. It is invisible, but there is the slight slope to prove that the sand has been heaped against something, to show that its path has been stayed by some object. These are some of the things which help the experts to select the spot on which to dig. The man who prospects for gold knows what signs to look for, and the scientist prospecting for relics of pastages is equally proficient in reading the signs. The gold prospector digs a hole, and washes the contents to find a colour of gold; the seeker for relics prospects by digging a trench to see if he can find a bit of brick or stone showing traces of man’s handiwork.
Egypt happens to be a particularly happy hunting-ground, inasmuch as it not only possessed an extremely ancient civilization, but also enjoys a wonderful climate, which preserves the relics of the past. The sun is always shining, and rain falls so seldom that things are preserved almost indefinitely from damp and mildew where in other countries they are destroyed in a few years.
The ancient cities of Egypt were founded on the banks of the Nile, just as are the modern cities. Away from the river, life is insupportable. It has often been said that the Nile is Egypt, and Egypt is the Nile. This is true, for the cultivable land of Egypt above the Delta is just a green strip a mile or two wide on each side of the river all along its course. On the margin is the encroaching desert, which only the waters of the Nile prevent from overwhelming the land. Where the waters of the Nile flow into the little irrigation canals and feed the fields, there abundant crops of cotton, sugar-cane, and other things are raised. Beyond, are the arid hills, and the cruel sands where the rock insummer becomes so hot that it is possible to bake bread by the heat of the sun.
The people living in lands that are blessed with an adequate rainfall can have no conception of what the Nile means to Egypt. The drought which occasionally affects our own country brings home to us the importance of rain to the land. Our whole country-side soon begins to complain about lack of water. Wells begin to run dry. Water has even to be carried to some villages by train.
A traveller spent a night at an old inn on the Sussex downs, and found an inch of chalk sediment at the bottom of his small jug of shaving water in the morning. Crops which should have been 4 feet high had struggled up only a few inches. There was no moisture to help them to develop. Fields of heavy land were all ploughed up, but before the farmer could harrow them and prepare a fine tilth for the seeds, the clods were baked as hard as iron, so hard that it was impossible to do anything with them, and the fields carried no crops at all. A succession of such seasons would have a profound effect on the life of this country, and compel our people to live where water could be obtained.
That is why the Egyptians were—and are—chained to the Nile. The floods fed the land. When the river failed to rise, and the water was confined within the banks, there was famine. Nowonder those ancient Egyptians worshipped the Nile. Their lives depended on it.
They watched the river anxiously to see what it was going to do, scanning the chocolate-coloured waters as they went flowing by. They wondered whether the river was going to condemn them to starvation, or whether it was about to scatter plenty over the land. Far away from Cairo, up at Khartoum, the rise began about the end of April, but so great is the distance that no perceptible increase was to be noticed at Cairo until the end of June.
As the water rose, so did the spirits of the natives. We can imagine with what joy they saw the flood break over the banks and sweep into the fields on either side. Stone pillars were put up to measure the rise. They were marked off in cubits, and the officials would watch the water stealing up and up. If it only reached 12 cubits there would be wailing throughout the land, for the people knew that famine would overtake them, that the life-giving water would not reach their fields. Another 3 cubits would suffice to feed them until the next harvest came round, if they exercised care and were not unduly wasteful, while 16 cubits, or 28 feet, would fill their granaries to overflowing, and every one would have enough and to spare.
ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GRAND AVENUE OF SPHINXES AT KARNAK, ORIGINALLY A MILE LONG, TO REMIND US OF THE GLORIES OF EGYPT LONG AGO (see page71)
ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GRAND AVENUE OF SPHINXES AT KARNAK, ORIGINALLY A MILE LONG, TO REMIND US OF THE GLORIES OF EGYPT LONG AGO (see page71)
ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GRAND AVENUE OF SPHINXES AT KARNAK, ORIGINALLY A MILE LONG, TO REMIND US OF THE GLORIES OF EGYPT LONG AGO (see page71)
They prayed long and earnestly to the Nile god, and held great festivals in his honour in a templebuilt in the vanished city of Nilopolis. Here they performed their rituals and made their offerings, and gave thanks to the god in years of plenty, expressing their joy and gratitude for the bounty they had received. They worshipped the Nile as the source of their blessings, just as they worshipped the sun.
The sun worshippers built a magnificent temple to their god, whom they called Ra, at Heliopolis, and Cleopatra’s Needle, now standing on the Thames Embankment, is one of the two monuments which ThothmesIIIset up before the Temple of the Sun on the banks of the Nile. Here they remained until the legions of Augustus Cæsar defeated Cleopatra just before the dawn of the Christian era. Eight years after the dramatic death of the beautiful Egyptian queen, whom Julius Cæsar loved and Mark Antony worshipped, Augustus set his engineers and slaves to work transporting the obelisks down the Nile, to set them in front of the wonderful palace of the Cæsars built in Alexandria. The new palace of the Roman invaders grew old, decayed, and fell in ruins, but the ancient obelisks of Heliopolis still reared their pinnacles to the skies. For fifteen hundred years Cleopatra’s Needle stood firm before crashing to the ground, to lie half buried in the drifting sands for three centuries, leaving the twin obelisk standing alone.
Then British soldiers, flushed with their victory over the French in Egypt in 1801, craved a memento of their triumph. Seizing on the fallen obelisk, they subscribed their hard-earned money, and sought to remove the stone to England. That weight was too much for them; it defied their efforts, so, fixing a commemorative brass plate, they left the stone lying in the sands.
Mehemet Ali, knowing the British were interested in the obelisk, presented it to GeorgeIV. That monarch made no effort to remove the unwieldy present. Once more, in 1831, Mehemet Ali approached the British Government, and this time offered to ship the monument free to Great Britain. The offer was politely declined. By the time the British Government decided to remove the stone, in 1849, there was such opposition to spending £7000 on its removal, that the matter was dropped.
Eighteen years later, the land on which the monolith lay was sold, and the new owner quickly requested the British Government to remove their property. The Government were so loath to do anything at all that the Khedive informed them they must either remove it, or forfeit the title to it. The threat had no effect. The Government seemed to look upon the present much as a suburban dweller would look upon the present of an elephant.
The owner of the land began to plan to break up the obelisk, and use it for building purposes. For ten years all the efforts of General Alexander were needed to induce the landowner to refrain from such an act of vandalism, and at last, when it was seen that the Government would do nothing, Sir Erasmus Wilson came forward and offered to remove the obelisk to England.
Accordingly a mighty iron cylinder 100 feet long was made. The obelisk, which measures 86½ feet high, and weighs 186 tons, was dug out of the sand, and after tremendous trouble safely housed in the cylinder, which, upon being completely sealed, was quite buoyant. Eventually it was floated, and taken in tow for England. All went well until the Bay of Biscay was reached, when a terrific gale sprang up, so terrific that Cleopatra’s Needle threatened to drag the tug to the bottom. At midnight the situation became so desperate that the captain ordered the obelisk to be cut adrift, feeling certain it was sinking, and when he arrived in England Cleopatra’s Needle was given up for lost.
But the monument, which had survived the accidents of Time for so long, was fated to survive the storm. Instead of plunging to the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, it tossed about on the heaving waters for nearly three days. Then it was sightedby a steamer, and taken in tow, to be brought at last to England.
It is remarkable that this same monolith, which a Pharaoh erected on the banks of the Nile to tell the sun-worshippers of his glorious deeds in war, should now be reposing on the banks of the river Thames, and that it has survived the age of bows and arrows to be damaged by bombs from aeroplanes. What a story Cleopatra’s Needle would tell if it could only speak.
Kings were more than kings to the common people of Egypt. They were looked upon as gods, the possessors of divine power. They were called the sons of Ra, and Ra often figures in their titles. From being called the son of Ra, the ruler in the eyes of the people acquired the mythical power of the god himself, and was worshipped by his subjects, who shielded their faces from the glory which the monarch spread around him.
The Egyptians have worshipped many gods in many ages. Gods have risen, grown powerful, and been superseded, but always the kings have shared the powers of the various gods, and the people looked upon the king as the living image of the god they worshipped.
Their religions, after the lapse of ages, seem very strange to peoples in other lands. Yet they had much to commend them, and many of the teachingsof the Christian religion were anticipated in the religions of the ancient Egyptians.
We look upon the Nile dwellers as pagans, but we cannot deny the logic of the religion which taught them to worship the sun and the Nile, on which they depended for light and life.