INTERIOR OF THE ABYSSINIAN LIBRARY, IN THE MONASTERY OF SOURIANI ON THE NATRON LAKES.INTERIOR OF THE ABYSSINIAN LIBRARY, IN THE MONASTERY OF SOURIANI ON THE NATRON LAKES.Abyssinian monk clothed in leather.The dining table.The blind abbot leaning over the Author.Abyssinian monk.Coptic monk.The books hanging from wooden pegs let into the wall.The Author's Egyptian servants.
The disposition of the manuscripts in this library was very original. I have had no means of ascertaining whether all the libraries of Abyssinia are arranged in the same style. The room was about twenty-six feet long, twenty wide, and twelve high; the roof was formed of the trunks of palm trees, across which reeds were laid, which supported the mass of earth and plaster, of which the terrace roof was composed; the interior of the walls was plastered white with lime; the windows, at a good height from the ground, were unglazed, but were defended with bars of iron-wood or some other hard wood; the door opened into the garden, and its lock, which was of wood also, was of that peculiar construction which has been used in Egypt from time immemorial. A wooden shelf was carried in the Egyptian style round the walls, at the height of the top of the door, and on this shelf stood sundry platters, bottles, and dishes for the use of the community. Underneath the shelf various long wooden pegs projected from the wall; they were each about a foot and a half long, and on them hung the Abyssinian manuscripts, of which this curious library was entirely composed.
The books of Abyssinia are bound in the usual way, sometimes in red leather and sometimes in wooden boards, which are occasionally elaborately carved inrude and coarse devices: they are then enclosed in a case, tied up with leather thongs; to this case is attached a strap for the convenience of carrying the volume over the shoulders, and by these straps the books were hung to the wooden pegs, three or four on a peg, or more if the books were small: their usual size was that of a small, very thick quarto. The appearance of the room, fitted up in this style, together with the presence of various long staves, such as the monks of all the Oriental churches lean upon at the time of prayer, resembled less a library than a barrack or guard-room, where the soldiers had hung their knapsacks and cartridge-boxes against the wall.
All the members of this church militant could read fluently out of their own books, which is more than the Copts could do in whose monastery they were sojourning. Two or three, with whom I spoke, were intelligent men, although not much enlightened as to the affairs of this world: the perfume of their leather garments and oily bodies was, however, rather too powerful for my olfactory nerves, and after making a slight sketch of their library I was glad to escape into the open air of the beautiful garden, where I luxuriated in the shade of the palms and the pomegranates. The strange costumes and wild appearance of these black monks, and the curious arrangement of their library, the uncouth sounds of their singing and howling, and the clash of their cymbals in the ancient convent ofthe Natron lakes, formed a scene such as I believe few Europeans have witnessed.
The labour required to write an Abyssinian book is immense, and sometimes many years are consumed in the preparation of a single volume. They are almost all written upon skins; the only one not written upon vellum that I have met with is in my own possession; it is on charta bombycina. The ink which they use is composed of gum, lampblack, and water. It is jet black, and keeps its colour for ever: indeed in this respect all Oriental inks are infinitely superior to ours, and they have the additional advantage of not being corrosive or injurious either to the pen or paper. Their pen is the reed commonly used in the East, only the nib is made sharper than that which is required to write the Arabic character. The ink-horn is usually the small end of a cow's horn, which is stuck into the ground at the feet of the scribe. In the most ancient Greek frescos and illuminations this kind of ink-horn is the one generally represented, and it seems to have been usually inserted in a hole in the writing-desk: no writing-desk, however, is in use among the children of Habesh. Seated upon the ground, the square piece of thick greasy vellum is held upon the knee or on the palm of the left hand.
The Abyssinian alphabet consists of 8 times 26 letters, 208 characters in all, and these are each written distinctly and separately like the letters of anEuropean printed book. They have no cursive writing; each letter is therefore painted, as it were, with the reed pen, and as the scribe finishes each he usually makes a horrible face and gives a triumphant flourish with his pen. Thus he goes on letter by letter, and before he gets to the end of the first line he is probably in a perspiration from his nervous apprehension of the importance of his undertaking. One page is a good day's work, and when he has done it he generally, if he is not too stiff, follows the custom of all little Arab boys, and swings his head or his body from side to side, keeping time to a sort of nasal recitative, without the help of which it would seem that few can read even a chapter of the Koran, although they may know it by heart.
Some of these manuscripts are adorned with the quaintest and grimmest illuminations conceivable. The colours are composed of various ochres. In general the outlines of the figures are drawn first with the pen. The paint brush is made by chewing the end of a reed till it is reduced to filaments and then nibbling it into a proper form: the paint brushes of the ancient Egyptians were made in the same way, and excellent brooms for common purposes are made at Cairo by beating the thick end of a palm-branch till the fibres are separated from the pith, the part above, which is not beaten, becoming the handle of the broom. The Abyssinian having nibbled and chewed his reed till hethinks it will do, proceeds to fill up the spaces between the inked outlines with his colours. The Blessed Virgin is usually dressed in blue; the complexion of the figures is a brownish red, and those in my possession have a curious cast of the eyes, which gives them a very cunning look. St John, in a MS. which I have now before me, is represented with woolly hair, and has two marks or gashes on each side of his face, in accordance with the Abyssinian or Galla custom of cutting through the skin of the face, breast, and arms, so as to leave an indelible mark. This is done in youth, and is said to preserve the patient from several diseases. The colours are mixed up with the yolk of an egg, and the numerous mistakes and slips of the brush are corrected by a wipe from a wet finger or thumb, which is generally kept ready in the artist's mouth during the operation; and it is lucky if he does not give it a bite in the agony of composition, when with an unsteady hand the eye of some famous saint is smeared all over the nose by an unfortunate swerve of the nibbled reed.
It is not often, however, that the arts of drawing and painting are thus ruthlessly mangled on the pages of their books, and notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the writers labour, some of these manuscripts are beautifully written, and are worthy of being compared with the best specimens of calligraphy in any language. I have a MS. containing the book ofEnoch, and several books of the Old Testament, which is remarkable for the perfection of its writing, the straightness of the lines, and the equal size and form of the characters throughout: probably many years were required to finish it. The binding is of wooden boards, not sawn or planed, but chopped apparently out of a tree or a block of hard wood, a task of patience and difficulty which gives evidence of the enthusiasm and goodwill which have been displayed in the production of a work, in toiling upon which the pious man in the simplicity of his heart doubtless considered that he was labouring for the honour of the church,ad majorem Dei gloriam. It was this feeling which in the middle ages produced all those glorious works of art which are the admiration of modern times, and its total absence now is deeply to be deplored in our own country.
Having satiated my curiosity as to the Abyssinian monks and their curious library, I returned to my own room, where I was presently joined by the abbot and his companion, who came for the promised bottle of rosoglio, which they now required the more to keep up their spirits on finding that the box of treasure was only a large old book. They murmured and talked to themselves between the cups of rosoglio, and so great was their disappointment that it was some time before they recovered the equilibrium of their minds. "You found no treasure," I remarked, "but I am alover of old books; let me have the big one which you thought was a box and the others which I have brought out with me, and I will give you a certain number of piastres in exchange. By this arrangement we shall be both of us contented, for the money will be useful to you, and I should be glad to carry away the books as a memorial of my visit to this interesting spot." "Ah!" said the abbot. "Another cup of rosoglio," said I; "help yourself." "How much will you give?" asked the abbot. "How much do you want?" said I; "all the money I have with me is at your service." "How much is that?" he inquired. Out came the bag of money, and the agreeable sound of the clinking of the pieces of gold or dollars, I forget which they were, had a soothing effect upon the nerves of the blind man, and in short the bottle and the bargain were concluded at the same moment.
The Coptic and Syriac manuscripts were stowed away in one side of a great pair of saddle-bags. "Now," said I, "we will put these in the other side, and you shall take it out and see the Arabs place it on the camel." We could not by any packing or shifting get all the books into the bag, and the two monks would not let me make another parcel, lest, as I understood, the rest of the brethren should discover what it was, and claim their share of the spoil. In this dreadful dilemma I looked at each of the books, not knowing which to leave behind, but seeing thatthe quarto was the most imperfect, I abandoned it, and I have now reason to believe, on seeing the manuscripts of the British Museum, that this was the famous book with the date ofA.D.411, the most precious acquisition to any library that has been made in modern times, with the exception, as I conceive, of some in my own collection. It is, however, a satisfaction to think that this book, which contains some lost epistles of St. Ignatius, has not been thrown away, but has fallen into better hands than mine.
The Convent of the Pulley—Its inaccessible position—Difficult landing on the bank of the Nile—Approach to the Convent through the Rocks—Description of the Convent and its Inhabitants—Plan of the Church—Books and MSS.—Ancient excavations—Stone Quarries and ancient Tombs—Alarm of the Copts—Their ideas of a Sketch-book.
TheCoptic monasteries were usually built in desert or inaccessible places, with a view to their defence in troubled times, or in the hope of their escaping the observation of marauding parties, who were not likely to take the trouble of going much out of their way unless they had assured hopes of finding something better worth sacking than a poor convent. The access to Der el Adra, the Convent of the Virgin, more commonly known by the name of the Convent of the Pulley, is very singular. This monastery is situated on the top of the rocks of Gebel el terr, where a precipice above 200 feet in height is washed at its base by the waters of the Nile. When I visited this monastery on the 19th of February, 1838, there was a high wind, which rendered the management of my immense boat, above 80 feet long, somewhat difficult;and we were afraid of being dashed against the rocks if we ventured too near them in our attempt to land at the foot of the precipice. The monks, who were watching our manœuvres from above, all at once disappeared, and presently several of them made their appearance on the shore, issuing in a complete state of nudity from a cave or cleft in the face of the rock. These worthy brethren jumped one after another into the Nile, and assisted the sailors to secure the boat with ropes and anchors from the force of the wind. They swam like Newfoundland dogs, and, finding that it was impossible for the boat to reach the land, two of the reverend gentlemen took me on their shoulders and, wading through a shallow part of the river, brought me safely to the foot of the rock. When we got there I could not perceive any way to ascend to the monastery, but, following the abbot, I scrambled over the broken rocks to the entrance of the cave. This was a narrow fissure where the precipice had been split by some convulsion of nature, the opening being about the size of the inside of a capacious chimney. The abbot crept in at a hole at the bottom: he was robed in a long dark blue shirt, the front of which he took up and held in his teeth; and, telling me to observe where he placed his feet, he began to climb up the cleft with considerable agility. A few preliminary lessons from a chimney-sweep would now have been of the greatest service to me; but in this branch of art my educationhad been neglected, and it was with no small difficulty that I climbed up after the abbot, whom I saw striding and sprawling in the attitude of a spread eagle above my head. My slippers soon fell off upon the head of a man under me, whom, on looking down, I found to be the reis, or captain of my boat, whose immense turban formed the whole of his costume. At least twenty men were scrambling and puffing underneath him, most of them having their clothes tied in a bundle on their heads, where they had secured them when they swam or waded to the shore. Arms and legs were stretched out in all manner of attitudes, the forms of the more distant climbers being lost in the gloom of the narrow cavern up which we were advancing, the procession being led by the unrobed ecclesiastics. Having climbed up about 120 feet, we emerged in a fine perspiration upon a narrow ledge of the rock on the face of the precipice, which had an unpleasant slope towards the Nile. It was as slippery as glass; and I felt glad that I had lost my shoes, as I had a firmer footing without them. We turned to the right, and climbing a projection of the rock seven or eight feet high—rather a nervous proceeding at such a height to those who were unaccustomed to it—we gained a more level space, from which a short steep pathway brought us to the top of the precipice, whence I looked down with much self-complacency upon my companion who was standing on the deck of the vessel.
The convent stands about two hundred paces to the north of the place where we ascended. It had been originally built of small square stones of Roman workmanship; but, having fallen into decay, it had been repaired with mud and sunburnt bricks. Its ground plan was nearly a square, and its general appearance outside was that of a large pound or a small kitchen garden, the walls being about 20 feet high and each side of the square extending about 200 feet, without any windows or architectural decoration. I entered by a low doorway on the side towards the cliff, and found myself in a yard of considerable size full of cocks, hens, women, and children, who were all cackling and talking together at the top of their shrill voices. A large yellow-coloured dog, who was sleeping in the sunshine in the midst of all this din, was awakened by its cessation as I entered. He greeted my arrival with a growl, upon which he was assailed with a volley of stones and invectives by the ladies whom he had intended to protect. Every man, woman, and child came out to have a peep at the stranger, but when my numerous followers, many in habiliments of the very slightest description, crowded into the court, the ladies took fright, and there was a general rush into the house, the old women hiding their faces without a moment's delay, but the younger ones taking more time in the adjustment of their veils. When peace was in some measure restored, and thepoor dog had been pelted into a hole, the abbot, who had now permitted his long shirt to resume its usual folds, conducted me to the church, which was speedily filled with the crowd. It was interesting from its great antiquity, having been founded, as they told me, by a rich lady of the name of Halané, who was the daughter of a certain Kostandi, king of Roum. The church is partly subterranean, being built in the recesses of an ancient stone-quarry; the other parts of it are of stone plastered over. The roof is flat and is formed of horizontal beams of palm trees, upon which a terrace of reeds and earth is laid. The height of the interior is about 25 feet. On entering the door we had to descend a flight of narrow steps, which led into a side aisle about ten feet wide, and which is divided from the nave by octagon columns of great thickness supporting the walls of a sort of clerestory. The columns were surmounted by heavy square plinths almost in the Egyptian style.
As I consider this church to be interesting from its being half a catacomb, or cave, and one of the earliest Christian buildings which has preserved its originality, I subjoin a plan of it, by which it will be seen that it is constructed on the principle of a Latin basilica, as the buildings of the Empress Helena usually were; the Byzantine style of architecture, the plan of which partook of the form of a Greek cross, being a later invention; for the earliest Christian churches were not cruciform, and seldom had transepts, nor were they built with any reference to the points of the compass.[8]
Plan of the church, the convent of the Pulley.Plan of the church, the convent of the Pulley.1.Altar.6.Two three-quarter columns.2.Apsis, apparently cut out of the rock.7.Eight columns.[6]3.Two Corinthian columns.8.Dark room cut out of the rock(there is another corresponding to it under the steps).[7]4.Wooden partitions of lattice-work, about 10 ft. high.9.Steps leading down into the church.5.Steps leading up to the sanctuary.10.Screen before the Altar.
The ancient divisions of the church are also more strictly preserved in this edifice than in the churches of the West; the priests or monks standing above the steps (marked No. 5), the celebrant of the sacrament only going behind the screen (No. 10); the bulk of the congregation stand, there are no seats below the steps (No. 5), and the place for the women is behind the screen marked No. 4. The church is very dimly lighted by small apertures in the walls of the clerestory, above the columns, and the part about the apsis is nearly dark in the middle of the day, candles being always necessary during the reading of the service. The two Corinthian columns are of brick, plastered; they are not fluted, but are of good proportions and appear to be original. The apsis is of regular Grecian or Roman architecture, and is ornamented with six pilasters, and three niches in whichare kept the books, cymbals, candlesticks, and other things which are used for the daily service. Here I found twenty-three manuscript books, fifteen in Coptic with Arabic translations, for the Coptic language is now understood by few, and eight Arabic manuscripts. The Coptic books were all liturgies: one of them, a folio, was ornamented with a large illumination, intended to represent the Virgin and the infant Saviour; it is almost the only specimen of Coptic art that I ever met with in a book, and its style and execution are so poor, that, perhaps, it is fortunate that they should be so rare. The Arabic books, which, as well as the Coptic, were all on cotton-paper, consisted of extracts from the New Testament and lives of the saints.
I had been told that there was a great chest bound with iron, which was kept in a vault in this monastery, full of ancient books on vellum, and which was not to be opened without the consent of the Patriarch; I could, however, make out nothing of this story, but it does not follow that this chest of ancient manuscripts does not exist; for, surrounded as I was by crowds of gaping Copts and Arabs, I could not expect the abbot to be very communicative; and they have from long oppression acquired such a habit of denying the fact of their having anything in their possession, that, perhaps, there may still be treasures here which some future traveller may discover.
While I was turning over the books, the contents of which I was able to decypher, from the similarity of the Coptic to the Greek alphabet, the people were very much astonished at my erudition, which appeared to them almost miraculous. They whispered to each other, and some said I must be a foreign Copt, who had returned to the land of his fathers. They asked my servant all manner of questions; but when he told them that he did not believe I knew a word of Coptic, their astonishment was increased to fear. I must be a magician, they said, and some kept a sharp look-out for the door, to which there was an immediate rush when I turned round. The whole assembly were puzzled, for in their simplicity they were not aware that people sometimes pore over books, and read them too, without understanding them, in other languages besides Coptic.
We emerged from the subterranean church, which, being half sunk in the earth and surrounded by buildings, had nothing remarkable in its exterior architecture, and ascended to the terrace on the roof of the convent, whence we had a view of numerous ancient stone quarries in the desert to the east. They appeared to be of immense extent; the convent itself and two adjoining burial-grounds were all ensconced in the ancient limestone excavations.
I am inclined to think, that although all travellers in Egypt pass along the river below this convent, fewhave visited its interior. It is now more a village than a monastery, properly speaking, as it is inhabited by numerous Coptic families who are not connected with the monks. These poor people were so surprised at my appearance, and watched all my actions with such intense curiosity, that I imagine they had scarcely ever seen a stranger before. They crowded every place where I was likely to pass, staring and gaping, and chattering to each other. Being much pressed with the throng in the court-yard, I made a sudden spring towards one of the little girls who was foremost in the crowd, uttering a shout at the same time as if I was going to seize her as she stood gazing open-mouthed at me. She screamed and tumbled down with fright, and the whole multitude of women and children scampered off as fast as their legs could carry them. Some fell down, others tumbled over them, making an indescribable confusion; but being reassured by the laughter of my party, they soon stopped and began laughing and talking with greater energy than before. At length I took refuge in the room of the superior, who gave me some coffee, with spices in it; and soon afterwards I took leave of this singular community.
We walked to some quarries about two miles off to the north-east, which well repaid our visit The rocks were cut into the most extraordinary forms. There were several grottos, and also an ancient tomb withhieroglyphics sculptured on the rock. Among these I saw the names of Rameses II. and some other kings. Near this tomb is a large tablet on which is a bas-relief of a king making an offering to a deity with the head of a crocodile, whose name, according to Wilkinson, was Savak: he was worshipped at Ombos and Thebes, but was held in such small respect at Dendera that the inhabitants of that place made war upon the men of Ombos, and ate one of their prisoners, in emulation probably of the god he worshipped. Indeed, they appear to have considered the inhabitants of that city to have been a sort of vermin which it was incumbent upon all sensible Egyptians to destroy whenever they had an opportunity.
In one place among the quarries a large rock has been left standing by itself with two apertures, like doorways, cut through it, giving it the resemblance of a propylon or the front of a house. It is not more than ten feet thick, although it is eighty or ninety feet long, and fifty high. Near it a huge slab projects horizontally from the precipice, supported at its outer edge by a single column. Some of the Copts, whose curiosity appeared to be insatiable, had followed us to these quarries, for the mere pleasure of staring at us. One of them, observing me making a sketch, came and peeped over my shoulder. "This Frank," said he to his friends, "has got a book that eats all these stones, and our monastery besides." "Ah!" said theother, "I suppose there are no stones in his country, so he wants to take some of ours away to show his countrymen what fine things we have here in Egypt; there is no place like Egypt, after all. Mashallah!"
Ruined Monastery in the Necropolis of Thebes—"Mr. Hay's Tomb"—The Coptic Carpenter—His acquirements and troubles—He agrees to show the MSS. belonging to the ruined Monastery, which are under his charge—Night visit to the Tomb in which they are concealed—Perils of the way—Description of the Tomb—Probably in former times a Christian Church—Examination of the Coptic MSS.—Alarming interruption—Hurried flight from the Evil Spirits—Fortunate escape—Appearance of the Evil Spirit—Observations on Ghost Stories—The Legend of the Old Woman of Berkeley considered.
Ona rocky hill, perforated on all sides by the violated sepulchres of the ancient Egyptians, in the great Necropolis of Thebes, not far from the ruins of the palace and temple of Medinet Habou, stand the crumbling walls of an old Coptic monastery, which I was told had been inhabited, almost within the memory of man, by a small community of Christian monks. I was living at this period in a tomb, which was excavated in the side of the precipice, above Sheick Abd el Gournoo. It had been rendered habitable by some slight alterations, and a little garden was made on the terrace in front of it, whence the view was very remarkable. The whole of the vast ruins of Thebeswere stretched out below it; whilst, beyond the mighty Nile, the huge piles of Luxor and Carnac loomed dark and mysterious in the distance, which was bounded by the arid chain of the Arabian mountains, the outline of their wild tops showing clear and hard against the cloudless sky. This habitation was known by the name of "Mr. Hay's tomb." The memory of this gentleman is held in the highest honour and reverence by the villagers of the surrounding districts, who look back to the time of his residence among them as the only satisfactory period of their miserable existence.
One of the numerous admirers of Mr. Hay, among the poorer inhabitants of the neighbourhood, was a Coptic carpenter, a man of no small natural genius and talent, who in any other country would have risen above the sphere of his comrades if any opportunity of distinguishing himself had offered. He could read and write Coptic and Arabic; he had some knowledge of astronomy, and some said of magic also; and he was a very tolerable carpenter, although the only tools which he was able to procure were of the roughest sort. In all these accomplishments he was entirely self-taught; while his poverty was such that his costume consisted of nothing but a short shirt, or tunic, made of a homespun fabric of goat's hair, or wool, and a common felt skull-cap, with some rags twisted round it for a turban. With higher acquirementsthan the governor of the district, the poor Copt was hardly able to obtain bread to eat; and indeed it was only from the circumstance of his being a Christian that he and the other males of his family were not swept away in the conscription which has depopulated Egypt under the present government more than all the pillage and massacres and internal feuds of the followers of the Mameluke Beys.
On those numerous occasions when the carpenter had nothing else to do, he used to come and talk to me; and endeavour to count up, upon his fingers, how often he had "eat stick;" that is, had been beaten by one Turkish officer or another for his inability to pay the tax to the Pasha, the tooth-money to some kawass, the forced contribution to the Nazir, or some other expected or unexpected call upon his empty pocket,—an appendage to his dress, by the by, which he did not possess; for having nothing in the world to put in it, a pocket was clearly of no use to him. The carpenter related to me the history of the ruined Coptic monastery; and I found that its library was still in existence. It was carefully concealed from the Mahomedans, as a sacred treasure; and my friend the carpenter was the guardian of the volumes belonging to his fallen church. After some persuasion he agreed, in consideration of my being a Christian, to let me see them; but he said I must go to the place where they were concealed at night, in order that no one might followour steps; and he further stipulated that none of the Mahomedan servants should accompany us, but that I should go alone with him. I agreed to all this; and on the appointed night I sallied forth with the carpenter after dark. There were not many stars visible; and we had only just light enough to see our way across the plain of Thebes, or rather among the low hills and narrow valleys above the plain, which are so entirely honeycombed with ancient tombs and mummy pits that they resemble a rabbit warren on a large scale. Skulls and bones were strewed on our path; and often at the mouths of tombs the night wind would raise up fragments of the bandages which the sacrilegious hand of the Frankish spoilers of the dead had torn from the bodies of the Egyptian mummies in search of the scarabæi, amulets, and ornaments which are found upon the breast of the deceased subjects of the Pharaohs.
Away we went stumbling over ruins, and escaping narrowly the fate of those who descend into the tomb before their time. Sometimes we heard a howl, which the carpenter said came from a hyena, prowling like ourselves among the graves, though on a very different errand. We kept on our way, by many a dark ruin and yawning cave, breaking our shins against the fallen stones until I was almost tired of the journey, which in the darkness seemed interminable; nor had I any idea where the carpenter was leading me. At last, after afatiguing walk, we descended suddenly into a place something like a gravel pit, one side of which was closed by the perpendicular face of a low cliff, in which a doorway half filled up with rubbish betokened the existence of an ancient tomb. By the side of this doorway sat a little boy, whom I discovered by the light of the moon, which had just risen, to be the carpenter's son, an intelligent lad, who often came to pay me a visit in company with his father. It was here that the Coptic manuscripts were concealed, and it was a spot well chosen for the purpose; for although I thought I had wandered about the Necropolis of Thebes in every direction, I had never stumbled upon this place before, neither could I ever find it afterwards, although I rode in that direction several times.
I now produced from my pocket three candles, which the carpenter had desired me to bring, one for him, one for his son, and one for myself. Having lit them, we entered into the doorway of the tomb, and passing through a short passage, found ourselves in a great sepulchral hall. The earth and sand which had been blown into the entrance formed an inclined plane, sloping downwards to another door sculptured with hieroglyphics, through which we passed into a second chamber, on the other side of which was a third doorway, leading into a magnificent subterranean hall, divided into three aisles by four square columns, two on each side. There may have been six columns, butI think there were only four. The walls and columns, or rather square piers which supported the roof, retained the brilliant white which is so much to be admired in the tombs of the kings and other stately sepulchres. On the walls were various hieroglyphics, and on the square piers tall figures of the gods of the infernal regions—Kneph, Khonso, and Osiris—were portrayed in brilliant colours, with their immense caps or crowns, and the heads of the jackal and other beasts. At the further end of this chamber was a stone altar, standing upon one or two steps, in an apsis or semicircular recess. As this is not usual in Egyptian tombs, I have since thought that this had probably been altered by the Copts in early times, and that, like the Christians of the West in the days of their persecution, they had met in secret in the tombs for the celebration of their rites, and had made use of this hall as a church, in the same way as we see the remains of chapels and places of worship in the catacombs of Rome and Syracuse. The inner court of the Temple of Medinet Habou has also been converted into a Christian church; and the worthy Copts have daubed over the beautifully executed pictures of Rameses II. with a coat of plaster, upon which they have painted the grim figures of St. George, and various old frightful saints and hermits, whose uncouth forms would almost give one the idea of their having served for a system of idolatry much less refined than the worshipof the ancient gods of the heathen, whose places they have usurped in these gigantic temples.
The Coptic manuscripts, of which I was in search, were lying upon the steps of the altar, except one, larger than the rest, which was placed upon the altar itself. They were about eight or nine in number, all brown and musty looking books, written on cotton paper, or charta bombycina, a material in use in very early times. An edict or charter, on paper, exists, or at least did exist two years ago, in the museum of the Jesuits' College, called the Colleggio Romano, at Rome: its date was of the sixth century; and I have a Coptic manuscript written on paper of this kind, which was finished, as appears by a note at the end, in the year 1018: these are the oldest dates that I have met with in any manuscripts on paper.
Having found these ancient books we proceeded to examine their contents, and to accomplish this at our ease, we stuck the candles on the ground, and the carpenter and I sat down before them, while his son brought us the volumes from the steps of the altar, one by one.
The first which came to hand was a dusty quarto, smelling of incense, and well spotted with yellow wax, with all its leaves dogs-eared or worn round with constant use: this was a MS. of the lesser festivals. Another appeared to be of the same kind; a third was also a book for the church service. We puzzled overthe next two or three, which seemed to be martyrologies, or lives of the saints; but while we were poring over them, we thought we heard a noise. "Oh! father of hammers," said I to the carpenter, "I think I heard a noise: what could it be?—I thought I heard something move." "Did you, hawaja?" (O merchant), said the carpenter; "it must have been my son moving the books, for what else could there be here?—No one knows of this tomb or of the holy manuscripts which it contains. Surely there can be nothing here to make a noise, for are we not here alone, a hundred feet under the earth, in a place where no one comes?—It is nothing: certainly it is nothing;" and so saying, he lifted up one of the candles and peered about in the darkness; but as there was nothing to be seen, and all was silent as the grave, he sat down again, and at our leisure we completed our examination of all the books which lay upon the steps.
They proved to be all church books, liturgies for different seasons, or homilies; and not historical, nor of any particular interest, either from their age or subject. There now remained only the great book upon the altar, a ponderous quarto, bound either in brown leather or wooden boards; and this the carpenter's son with difficulty lifted from its place, and laid it down before us on the ground; but, as he did so, we heard the noise again. The carpenter and I looked at each other: he turned pale—perhaps I didso too; and we looked over our shoulders in a sort of anxious, nervous kind of way, expecting to see something—we did not know what. However, we saw nothing; and, feeling a little ashamed, I again settled myself before the three candle-ends, and opened the book, which was written in large black characters of unusual size. As I bent over the huge volume, to see what it was about, suddenly there arose a sound somewhere in the cavern, but from whence it came I could not comprehend; it seemed all round us at the same moment. There was no room for doubt now: it was a fearful howling, like the roar of a hundred wild beasts. The carpenter looked aghast: the tall and grisly figures of the Egyptian gods seemed to stare at us from the walls. I thought of Cornelius Agrippa, and felt a gentle perspiration coming on which would have betokened a favourable crisis in a fever. Suddenly the dreadful roar ceased, and as its echoes died away in the tomb, we felt considerably relieved, and were beginning to try and put a good face upon the matter, when, to our unutterable horror, it began again, and waxed louder and louder, as if legions of infernal spirits were let loose upon us. We could stand this no longer: the carpenter and I jumped up from the ground, and his son in his terror stumbled over the great Coptic manuscript, and fell upon the candles, which were all put out in a moment; his screams were now added to the uproar which resoundedin the cave: seeing the twinkling of a star through the vista of the two outer chambers, we all set off as hard as we could run, our feelings of alarm being increased to desperation when we perceived that something was chasing us in the darkness, while the roar seemed to increase every moment. How we did tear along! The devil take the hindmost seemed about to be literally fulfilled; and we raised stifling clouds of dust, as we scrambled up the steep slope which led to the outer door. "So then," thought I, "the stories of gins, and ghouls, and goblins, that I have read of and never believed, must be true after all, and in this city of the dead it has been our evil lot to fall upon a haunted tomb!"
Breathless and bewildered, the carpenter and I bolted out of this infernal palace into the open air, mightily relieved at our escape from the darkness and the terrors of the subterranean vaults. We had not been out a moment, and had by no means collected our ideas, before our alarm was again excited to its utmost pitch.
The evil one came forth in bodily shape, and stood revealed to our eyes distinctly in the pale light of the moon.
While we were gazing upon the appearance, the carpenter's son, whom we had quite forgotten in our hurry, came creeping out of the doorway of the tomb upon his hands and knees.
"Why, father!" said he, after a moment's silence, "if that is not old Fatima's donkey, which has been lost these two days! It is lucky that we have found it, for it must have wandered into this tomb, and it might have been starved if we had not met with it to-night."
The carpenter looked rather ashamed of the adventure; and as for myself, though I was glad that nothing worse had come of it, I took comfort in the reflection that I was not the first person who had been alarmed by the proceedings of an ass.
I have related the history of this adventure because I think that, on some foundation like this, many well-accredited ghost stories may have been founded. Numerous legends and traditions, which appear to be supernatural or miraculous, and the truth of which has been attested and sworn to by credible witnesses, have doubtless arisen out of facts which actually did occur, but of which some essential particulars have been either concealed, or had escaped notice; and thus many marvellous histories have gone abroad, which are so well attested, that although common sense forbids their being believed, they cannot be proved to be false. In this case, if the donkey had not fortunately come out and shown himself, I should certainly have returned to Europe half impressed with the belief that something supernatural had occurred, which was in some mysterious manner connected with the opening of the magicvolume which we had taken from the altar in the tomb. The echoes of the subterranean cave so altered the sound of the donkey's bray, that I never should have discovered that these fearful sounds had so undignified an origin; a story never loses by telling, and with a little gradual exaggeration it would soon have become one of the best accredited supernatural histories in the country.
The well-known story of the old woman of Berkeley has been read with wonder and dread for at least four hundred years: it is to be found in early manuscripts; it is related by Olaus Magnus, and is to be seen illustrated by a woodcut, both in the German and Latin editions of the 'Nuremberg Chronicle,' which was printed in the year 1493. There is no variation in the legend, which is circumstantially the same in all these books. Without doubt it was partly founded upon fact, or, as in the case of the story of the Theban tomb, some circumstances have been omitted which make all the difference; and a natural though perhaps extraordinary occurrence has been handed down for centuries, as a fearful instance of the power of the evil one in this world over those who have given themselves up to the practice of tremendous crimes.
There are many supernatural stories, which we are certain cannot by any possibility be true; but which nevertheless are as well attested, and apparently as fully proved, as any facts in the most veracious history.Under circumstances of alarm or temporary hallucination people frequently believe that they have had supernatural visitations. Even the tricks of conjurers, which have been witnessed by a hundred persons at a time, are totally incomprehensible to the uninitiated; and in the middle ages, when these practices were resorted to for religious or political ends, it is more than probable that many occurrences which were supposed to be supernatural might have been explained, if all the circumstances connected with them had been fairly and openly detailed by an impartial witness.
The White Monastery—Abou Shenood—Devastations of the Mamelukes—Description of the Monastery—Different styles of its exterior and interior Architecture—Its ruinous condition—Description of the Church—The Baptistery—Ancient Rites of Baptism—The Library—Modern Architecture—The Church of San Francesco at Rimini—The Red Monastery—Alarming rencontre with an armed party—Feuds between the native Tribes—Faction fights—Eastern Story Tellers—Legends of the Desert—Abraham and Sarah—Legendary Life of Moses—Arabian Story-tellers—Attention of their Audience.
Mountingour noble Egyptian steeds, or in other words having engaged a sufficient number of little braying donkeys, which the peasants brought down to the river side, and put our saddles on them, we cantered in an hour and a half from the village of Souhag to the White Monastery, which is known to the Arabs by the name of Derr abou Shenood. Who the great Abou Shenood had the honour to be, and what he had done to be canonized, I could meet with no one to tell me. He was, I believe, a Mahomedan saint, and this Coptic monastery had been in some sort placed under the shadow of his protection, in the hopes of saving itfrom the persecutions of the faithful. Abou Shenood, however, does not appear to have done his duty, for the White Monastery has been ruined and sacked over and over again. The last outrage upon the unfortunate monastery occurred about 1812, when the Mamelukes who had encamped upon the plains of Itfou, having no better occupation, amused themselves by burning all the houses, and killing all the people in the neighbourhood. Since that time the monks having returned one by one, and finding that no one took the trouble to molest them, began to repair the convent, the interior of which had been gutted by the Mamelukes; but the immense strength of the outer walls had resisted all their efforts to destroy them.
The peculiarity of this monastery is, that the interior was once a magnificent basilica, while the exterior was built by the Empress Helena, in the ancient Egyptian style. The walls slope inwards towards the summit, where they are crowned with a deep overhanging cornice. The building is of an oblong shape, about two hundred feet in length by ninety wide, very well built, of fine blocks of stone; it has no windows outside larger than loopholes, and these are at a great height from the ground. Of these there are twenty on the south side and nine at the east end. The monastery stands at the foot of the hill, on the edge of the Libyan desert, where the sand encroaches on the plain. It looks like the sanctuary, or cella, of an ancienttemple, and is not unlike the bastion of an old-fashioned fortification; except one solitary doom tree, it stands quite alone, and has a most desolate aspect, backed, as it is, by the sandy desert, and without any appearance of a garden, either within or outside its walls. The ancient doorway of red granite, on the south side, has been partially closed up, leaving an opening just large enough to admit one person at a time.
The door was closed, and we shouted in vain for admittance. We then tried the effect of a double knock in the Grosvenor Square style with a large stone, but that was of no use; so I got one still larger, and banged away at the door with all my might, shouting at the same time that we were friends and Christians. After some minutes a small voice was heard inside, and several questions being satisfactorily answered, we were let in by a monk; and passing through the narrow door, I found myself surrounded by piles of ruined buildings of various ages, among which the tall granite columns of the ancient church reared themselves like an avenue on either side of the desecrated nave, which is now open to the sky, and is used as a promenade for a host of chickens. Some goats also were perched upon fragments of ruined walls, and looked cunningly at us as we invaded their domain. I saw some Coptic women peeping at me from the windows of some wretched hovels of mudand brick, which they had built up in corners among the ancient ruins like swallows' nests.
There were but three poor priests. The principal one led us to the upper part of the church, which had lately been repaired and walled off from the open nave; and enclosed the apsis and transepts, which had been restored in some measure, and fitted for the performance of divine service. The half domes of the apsis and two transepts, which were of well-built masonry, were still entire, and the original frescos remain upon them. Those in the transepts are stiff figures of saints; and in the one over the altar is the great figure of the Redeemer, such as is usually met with in the mosaics of the Italian basilicas. These apsides are above fifty feet from the ground, which gives them a dignity of appearance, and leaves greater cause to regret the destruction of the nave, which, with its clerestory, must have been still higher. There appear to have been fifteen columns on each side of the centre aisle, and two at the end opposite the altar, which in this instance I believe is at the west end. The roof over the part of the east end, which has been fitted up as a church, is supported by four square modern piers of plastered brick or rubble work. On the side walls, above the altar, there are some circular compartments containing paintings of the saints; and near these are two tablets with inscriptions in black on a white ground. That on the left appeared to bein Abyssinian: the one on the other side was either Coptic or uncial Greek; but it was too dark, and the tablet was too high, to enable me to make it out There is also a long Greek inscription in red letters on one of the modern square piers, which looks as if it was of considerable antiquity; and the whole interior of the building bears traces of having been repaired and altered, more than once, in ancient times. The richly ornamented recesses of the three apsides have been smeared over with plaster, on which some tremendously grim saints have been portrayed, whose present threadbare appearance shows that they have disfigured the walls for several centuries. Some comparatively modern capitals, of bad design, have been placed upon two or three of the granite columns of the nave; and others, which were broken, have been patched with brick, plastered and painted to look like granite. The principal entrance was formerly at the west end; where there is a small vestibule, immediately within the door of which, on the left hand, is a small chapel, perhaps the baptistery, about twenty-five feet long, and still in tolerable preservation. It is a splendid specimen of the richest Roman architecture of the latter empire, and is truly an imperial little room. The arched ceiling is of stone; and there are three beautifully ornamented niches on each side. The upper end is semicircular, and has been entirely covered with a profusion of sculpture in panels,cornices, and every kind of architectural enrichment When it was entire, and covered with gilding, painting, or mosaic, it must have been most gorgeous. The altar on such a chapel as this was probably of gold, set full of gems; or if it was the baptistery, as I suppose, it most likely contained a bath, of the most precious jasper, or of some of the more rare kinds of marble, for the immersion of the converted heathen, whose entrance into the church was not permitted until they had been purified with the waters of baptism in a building without the door of the house of God; an appropriate custom, which was not broken in upon for ages; and even then the infant was only brought just inside the door, where the font was placed on the left hand of the entrance; a judicious practice, which is completely set at nought in England, where the squalling imp often distracts the attention of the congregation; and is finally sprinkled, instead of being immersed, the whole ceremony having been so much altered and pared down from its original symbolic form, that were a Christian of the early ages to return upon the earth, he would be unable to recognise its meaning.
The conventual library consisted of only half-a-dozen well-waxed and well-thumbed liturgies; but one of the priests told me that they boasted formerly of above a hundred volumes written on leather (gild razali), gazelle skins, probably vellum, which were destroyed by the Mamelukes during their last pillage of the convent.
The habitations of the monks, according to the original design of this very curious building, were contained in a long slip on the south side of the church, where their cells were lit by the small loopholes seen from the outside. Of these cells none now remain: they must have been famously hot, exposed as they were all day long to the rays of the southern sun; but probably the massive thickness of the walls and arched ceilings reduced the temperature. There was no court or open space within the convent; the only place where its inhabitants could have walked for exercise in the open air was upon the flat terrace of the roof, the deck of this ship of St Peter; for the White Monastery in some respects resembled a dismasted man-of-war, anchored in a sea of burning sand.
In modern times we are not surprised on finding a building erected at an immense expense, in which the architecture of the interior is totally different from that of the exterior. A Brummagem Gothic house is frequently furnished and ornamented within in what is called "a chaste Greek style," andvice versâ. A Grecian house—that is to say, a square white block, with square holes in it for windows, and a portico in front—is sometimes inhabited by an antiquarian, who fits it up with Gothic furniture, and a Gothic paper designed by a crafty paper-hanger in the newest style. But in ancient days it was very rare to see such a mixture. I am surprised that the architect of theenthusiastic empress did not go on with the interior of this building as he had begun the exterior. The great hall of Carnac would have afforded him a grand example of an aisle with a clerestory, and side windows, with stone mullions, which would have answered his purpose, in the Egyptian style. The only other instance of this kind, where two distinct styles of architecture were employed in the middle ages on the inside and outside of the same building, is in the church of St. Francesco, at Rimini, which was built by Sigismond Malatesta as a last resting-place for himself and his friends. He lies in a Gothic shrine within; and the bodies of the great men of his day repose in sarcophagi of classic forms outside; each of which stands in the recess of a Roman arch, in which style of architecture the exterior of the building is erected.
About two miles to the north of the White Monastery, in a small village sheltered by a grove of palms, stands another ancient building called the Red Monastery.
On our return to Souhag we met a party of men on foot, who were armed with spears, shields, and daggers, and one or two with guns. They were led by a man on horseback, who was completely armed with all sorts of warlike implements. They stopped us, and began to talk to our followers, who were exceedingly civil in their behaviour, for the appearance of the party was of a doubtful character; and we felt relieved when wefound that we were not to be robbed, but that our friends were on an expedition against the men of Tahta, who some time ago had killed a man belonging to their village, and they were going to avenge his death. This was only one detachment of many that had assembled in the neighbouring villages, each headed by its sheick, or the sheick's son, if the father was an old man. The numbers engaged in this feud amounted, they told us, to between two and three hundred men on each side. Every now and then, it seems, when they have got in their harvest, they assemble to have a fight. Several are wounded, and sometimes a few are killed; in which case, if the numbers of the slain are not equal, the feud continues; and so it goes on from generation to generation, like a faction fight in Ireland, or the feudal wars of the barons of the middle ages,—a style of things which appears to belong to the nature of the human race, and not to any particular country, age, or faith.
Parting from this warlike band with mutual compliments and good wishes, and our guides each seizing the tail of one of our donkeys to increase his onward speed, we trotted away back to the boat, which was waiting for us at Souhag. There we found our boatmen and a crowd of villagers, listening to one of those long stories with which the inhabitants of Egypt are wont to enliven their hours of inactivity. This is an amusement peculiar to the East, and it is one in which I took great delight during many a long journeythrough the deserts on the way to Mount Sinai, Syria, and other places. The Arabs are great tellers of stories; and some of them have a peculiar knack in rendering them interesting and exciting the curiosity of their audience. Many of these stories were interesting from their reference to persons and occurrences of Holy Writ, particularly of the Old Testament. There are many legends of the patriarch Abraham and his beautiful wife Sarah, who, excepting Eve, is said to have been the fairest of all the daughters of the earth. King Solomon is the hero of numerous strange legends; and his adventures with the gnomes and genii who were subjected to his sway are endless. The poem of Yousef and Zuleica is well known in Europe. And the traditions relating to the prophet Moses are so numerous, that, with the help of a very curious manuscript of an apocryphal book ascribed to the great leader of the Jews, I have been enabled to compile a connected biography, in which many curious circumstances are detailed that are said to have taken place during his eventful life, and which concludes with a highly poetical legend of his death. Many of the stories told by the Arabs resemble those of theArabian Nights; and a large proportion of these are not very refined.