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 Illustrations have been included from the print version. Egypt: Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque G. EBERS

Translation of: Aegypten in Bild und Wort. Translated from the original German by Clara Bell

 vol. 1 of 2 v. : ill., ports. ; 34 cm. Cassell & Co. London New York 1887 From the John E.T. Milsaps Collection, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, 916.2 Eb32

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 Library of Congress Subject Headings 1887 English Greek Egypt -Description and travel Egypt--Antiquities August 2007 LMSed. Spellchecked, corrected tagging errors, verified and enhanced metadata. Auto-encoded place names against NIMA names database.

EGYPT: DESCRIPTIVE, HISTORICAL, AND PICTURESQUE.

ISRAEL IN EGYPT.

FROM THE PICTURE BY E. J. POYNTER, R. A. (By permission of the Autotype Company.)
Illustration of title-page
EGYPT DESCRIPTIVE, HISTORICAL, AND PICTURESQUE. BY G. EBERS Translated from the Original German BY CLARA BELL. WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY S. BIRCH, D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A., Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum; President of the Society of Biblical Archœology, etc., etc., etc. VOL. I. CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: NEW YORK, LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE. [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
PREFACE.

WHEREIN lies the mysterious attraction which is peculiar to the land of the Pharaohs? Why is it that its name, its history, its natural peculiarities, and its monuments, affect and interest us in a quite different manner from those of the other nations of antiquity?

Not only the learned and cultivated among the inhabitants of the Western world, but every one, high and low, has heard of Egypt and its primeval wonders. The child knows the names of the good and the wicked Pharaoh before it has learnt those of the princes of its own country; and before it has learnt the name of the river that passes through its native town it has heard of the Nile, by whose reedy shore the infant Moses was found in his cradle of rushes by the gentle princess, and from whose waters came up the fat and lean kine. Who has not known from his earliest years the beautiful narrative, which preserves its charms for every age, of the virtuous and prudent Joseph, and heard of the scene of that story—Egypt—the venerated land where the Virgin, in her flight with the Holy Child, found a refuge from His pursuers?

But the Holy Scriptures, which first familiarise us with the land of the Nile

valley, say nothing of its Pyramids and other monuments of human labour, which, apparently constructed to endure for ever, seem as if they were not subject to the universal law of the evanescence of all earthly things. And yet who has not, while yet a child, heard of those monuments, on which the Greeks bestowed the proud name of “Wonders of the World”?

The name “Pyramid” is given to a simple mathematical solid form, which frequently occurs in Nature, and the name was derived from the Egyptian structures which have that form, not vice versâ; just as we call any confused and complex arrangement a “Labyrinth,” from that magnificent palace, built by Egyptian kings, from whose intricate series of chambers it was difficult to find an issue. Thus, too, “Hieroglyphic” has come to mean any idea veiled by its mysterious mode of exposition—another metaphor derived from the picture-writing of the ancient Egyptians. Every day and every hour, though generally unconsciously, it is true, we have something to do with objects and ideas whose first home was the land of the Pharaohs. The paper on which I write these words owes its name to the Egyptian Papyrus, which was also called Byblos, whence the Greek word Βιβλος and our word Bible. A hundred other current words and ideas might be mentioned whose native land is Egypt, and if it were here possible to go deeper into the matter and to lay bare the very roots of the artistic possessions and learning of the West we should find more and more reason to refer them to Egypt; but we must not in this place linger even at the threshold of this inquiry.

We invite the reader, in these pages, to accompany us to Egypt. Enchanting and quite peculiar it remains to this day, as when Herodotus, the father of history, declared that the valley of the Nile contained more marvels than any other country; and just as the climate of Egypt is exceptional, and the great stream itself differs in character from every other river, so the inhabitants of the land differ in almost every respect from other nationalities, as much in their manners as in their laws.

The Nile with its periodical fertilising overflow, the climate of the country, and many other circumstances, remain just as Herodotus described them, and the lapse of time has had but little effect even to this day in counteracting the influence of the natural peculiarities of Egypt. The customs and laws, it is true, are wholly changed, and only a diligent inquirer can find in those of the present day any relies or records of antiquity.

To the Pharaonic period succeeded the Greek, the Roman, the Christian; and after all these came the dominion of Islam, the unsparing revolutioniser. At the present day a sovereign sits on the throne of Egypt who is striving with success to adapt the forms of European culture to his Mohammedan subjects; but Civilisation, that false and painted daughter of the culture of the West, with her horror of all

individuality and her craving for an ill-considered and monotonous equality, has forced her way into Egypt, and robs the streets and market-places in the villages and towns of the magical charm of their primitive character, sprung of the very soil of the East; she finds her way into the houses, and in place of the old luxurious abundance of space she introduces a meagre utilisation of it; she strips the men of the stately splendour of their flowing robes and decorated weapons; and makes the women covet the scanty draperies and smart clothing of their envied European sisters. The whistle of the steam-engine, as it drives across plain and desert, laughs to scorn the patient strength of the camel and the docile swiftness of the Arab horse; the uniform and arms of the soldiers are made to resemble those of the West more and more. The people's festivals still preserve their peculiar character, but European carriages are beginning to supplant the riding horse, and Egyptian military bands play airs by Wagner and Verdi. In well-appointed Arab houses sofas and cabinets from Europe are taking the place of the divans and beautifully carved or inlaid chests, and coffee is no longer sipped from a “Fingan” of finely chased metal, but from cups of Dresden china. All the stamp and character of the East in great things and small are being more and more destroyed and effaced, and are in danger of vanishing entirely in the course of years.

As yet, however, they have not entirely disappeared; and the artist, as he wanders on through the towns and villages, by streets and houses, under the wide heaven and in the tent, among the magnates and the citizens, the peasants and the sons of the desert, at the solemn occasions of rejoicing or of mourning; as he watches the labours or the repose of the dwellers by the Nile, may still detect forms of antique, various, picturesque, attractive, and characteristic beauty.

Glorious remains of the three great epochs of art—the ancient Egyptian, the Greek, and the Arab—still survive in Egypt. The last, indeed, will endure a little longer; but much of what is most fascinating in the peculiarities of Oriental life will have disappeared within a decade, much even before a lustrum has passed —everything probably by the beginning of the next century.

For this reason the writer of these pages, who knows and loves Egypt well, has with pleasure undertaken the task of collecting all that is most beautiful and venerable, all that is picturesque, characteristic, and attractive, in ancient and modern Egypt, for the enjoyment of his contemporaries and for the edification and delight of a future generation.

Yes! for their delight; for the pictures, which it is his duty to explain in words, are unsurpassed of their kind. Our greatest artists and most perfect connoisseurs of all that the East can offer to the painter's art have produced them

for us, and Egypt is thus displayed not merely as it is, or as it might be represented on the plate of the photographer, but as it is mirrored on the mind of the artist.

In treating of the solemn festivals held by the Cairenes, and of the tales they narrate, Dr. Spitta, of Hildesheim, the librarian to the Khedive, has given much valuable assistance; and Dr. J. Goldhizer, of Buda-Pest, an accomplished and well-known Orientalist, who was himself one of the students in El Azhar, the University of Cairo, has contributed a fine chapter on that centre of Mohammedan life and Mohammedan science in Cairo.

Those who already know Egypt will in these pictures find all that they have seen illuminated by the magic hand of genius; those who hope to visit the Nile valley may learn from these pages what they should see there, and how to see it; and those who are tied to home, but who have a desire to learn something of the venerable sites of antiquity—sacred and profane—of the scene of the “Thousand and one nights,” of the art and magic of the East, of the character and life of Orientals, will here find their thirst for knowledge satisfied, and at the same time much to interest them and give them the highest kind of pleasure.

GEORG EBERS. LEIPSIC, 1878. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

I have had the advantage of the assistance of Dr. EDWARD MEYER, long a resident in the East, in the orthography of the Arabic words and names that occur in this Work. The vowels are pronounced as follows:— A as in ant; aw as in jaw; ce as in seen; ey as in whey; i as in sin; oo as in boot; y (consonant) as in yet.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE PREFACE iii INTRODUCTION BY DR. S. BIRCH xvii ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA 1 The Position and Importance of Alexandria as a Centre of Commerce (p. 1). Founding of the City (3). Its Rapid Progress under the Ptolemies; the Island and Pharos (4). A Glance at the Site of Ancient Alexandria; Gates and Main Streets; the Bruchium (7). Festival of Adonis, and Syracusan Ladies of Theocritus (9). Dionysiac Festivals (12). Its Magnificence under the first Ptolemies; PTOLEMY SOTER, 323— 284 B.C. (13). Commerce, Art, and Science under him (14). His Son, PHILADELPHUS, 284—246 B.C. (15). The Height of Alexandria's Splendour; its Museum and Library (16). Euergetes, 246—221 B.C. (17). Ptolemy V. Epiphanes, 204—181 B.C. (17). Euergetes II., Physkon, 169—116 B.C. (17). The Last Period of Alexandrian Trade (17). Pompey; Murdered 40 B.C. (19). Cæsar and Cleopatra; Roman Influence (19). The Burning of the Library (19). Antony and Cleopatra, 42—30 B.C. (20). Octavian: Egypt a Roman Province, 30 B.C.—A.D. 302; Building of the Suburb of Nicopolis (22). Serapeum; its Library, and Destruction (24). Pompey's Pillar (25). Diocletian, A.D. 284—305. Caracalla, 211—217. Hadrian, 117—138 (27). His Letter to Servianus (29). The Science and Commerce of Alexandria under the Romans (30). The Produce of its Industry (30). MODERN ALEXANDRIA 31 Its Neglected Condition during the last Centuries until the Accession of the Khedive (31). First Century; its favourable position as a Cradle of Christianity (32). Persecutions; first of the Christians, and then of the Heathen (33). ST. CATHERINE, and HYPATIA (34). Dogmatic Subtleties; Sects; Anchorites (35). Alexandria as a Rival to Byzantium; Hatred of the Copts for their Greek (Byzantine) Oppressors: they join the Arabs, and Alexandria falls under the Dominion of the Mahommedans (38). Founding and Growth of Cairo; Ruin of Alexandria as an Emporium (40). Its Recovery at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century; French Invasion (42). Mohammed Ali; Mahmoudeeyeh Canal (42). The Present Position, Trade, and Splendour of Alexandria (43). SA'ID PACHA (45). Suez Canal. ISMAIL PACHA, the Khedive, 1863; Completion of the Suez Canal (46). Water Works and Gas Lighting. Hospitals and Christian Churches (48). Peculiar Character of Alexandria among the Cities of Egypt even at the Present Day; Merchants, and the Struggle for Wealth (50). Suppression of True Oriental Character. Hareems (51). Palms; Camels (52). Embroidery and Weaving (57). THROUGH THE DELTA 59 Railway from Alexandria through the Delta (59). Vineyards (60). Aboukir (61). Damanhoor (61). The Nile (62). Excursion Inland (63). Culture of the Delta under the Pharaohs; Romans (64); Byzantines; Islam (66); at the Present Day (67). Fertility of the Soil; an Egyptian Village (69). Ruins of Saïs (71). Desook, Ancient Naucratis (74). Reshid (Rosetta), Rosetta Stone (79). To Tantah (80). Fair at Tantah, and Pilgrims to the Tomb of Seyyid el Bedawee (80). History of Ahmed el Bedawee (84). GOSHEN 88 From Tantah to Zakazeek (87). Nature of the Country; Pilgrims to Mecca (88). Ancient Bubastis, the Centre of the Pilgrimages to Aphrodite (91). Fakoos (92). Ride through the Desert; its Charm and its Terrors (94). Crossing the Mu'izz Canal (97). Ruins of Tanis; History of the City (97). The Hyksos (100). SETI I. and RAMESES II. cir. 1400 B.C. (101). Jews in Egypt (103). Tablet of Tanis, or Decree of Canopus (104). Fish Auction (105). A Trip on the Lake of Menzaleh (108). Damietta and its Neighbourhood (110). Papyrus and Paper (111). Mansoorah; Ruins of the Iseum, now Behbeet el-Hagar (113). MEMPHIS AND THE PYRAMIDS. 117 Ruins of Memphis and its Necropolis, Bedraschên (118). Mitrahîne; a General View of the Necropolis (118). Founding of Memphis; Menes; Temple of Ptah; Apis (121). Memphis at the Theban Period (123). Its Fall after the Rise of Alexandria, and subsequently of Cairo (123). Abd-al Lateef on the Ruins of Memphis (125). From Cairo to Ghizeh (126). Size of the Pyramid; Climbing the Pyramid of Cheops (129). View from the Top (130). Pyramids of Chefren and Mykerinos (132). Pictures in relief in the Tombs (133). Mastabas of the Egyptian Nobles (135).

Country and Domestic Life of the Period (138). The Pyramids not an Evidence of Oppression (139). Mode of Structure (141). Materials (142). Cost of Feeding the Labourers (145). The Interior of the Pyramid of Cheops (145). Significance of the Pyramidal form (147). Plundering of the Pyramids in Later Times (148). The Coffin of Mykerinos (149). Legends of Rhodope; Pyramid of Chefren (151). Sphinx (153). Visit to Sakkara and Beth Mariette (156). Pyramid of Sakkara (157). Serapeum; Origin of Monasticism before Christ (158). The Apis Bulls and their Tombs (161). Mastaba of Ti; Paintings on its Walls (167). Shipbuilding Site among the Ancient Egyptians (168). Games (169). Music (169). The other Antiquities at Sakkara (171). Mastaba Far'ûn (171). CAIRO: THE FOUNDING AND RISE OF THE CITY 172 The Praises of Cairo by the Orientals (173). Its Attractive Charm for Europeans (175). Memphis, the Mother of Cairo; Taroue and Babylon (179). Ride to the Ruins of Heliopolis (182). The Virgin Mary's Sycomore (183). Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis (186). Obelisks and Ancient Worship (186). Benu-bird or Phœnix (189). Old Cairo or Fostât. Babylon, and the Island of Rôda (190). Conquest by Islam (193). The Tent of AMROO (195). Nilometer (197). Measuring the Height of the Nile (197). Fatima's Tree in Rôda (199). Mosque of Amroo (201). The Oldest Specimens of Arab Mosques (203). The Three Famous Pillars in the Mosque of Amroo (206). Prayer among Moslems (207). Rapid Progress of Arab Influence in Egypt (209). Of Science under MAMÛN A.D., 813—833; AHMED-IBN-TULOON, 870—884 (210). His Mosque (212). OBEID ALLAH and his Great Grandson, MU'IZZ (215). Djohar Conquers Egypt, and Founds Cairo Proper to the North of Fostât (217). CAIRO UNDER THE FATIMITES AND EYOOBIDES 218 MU'IZZ and the Beginning of the Fatimite Dynasty, A.D. 969—1171; Djohar Founds the Mosque of el-Azhar (219). Trade and Industry of the Nile Valley under the Successors of Mu'izz, 219. Persian Luxury, Delicacies of the Table (222). Perfumes, Opium, Hashish, and Wei. (242) Gardens (226). Buildings and Decorations (227). Mosque of HAKIM, A.D. 996—1020; Power of the Wezeers (230). SALADIN, 1169—1193, and the Eyoobide Dynasty, A.D. 1171—1250 (230). The Citadel of Cairo (234). The Eunuch, Karakoosh (234). Erection of the Palace of the Khalifs; Joseph's Well (241). MELIK EL-ADIL, A.D. 1193—1218 (241). MELIK ES-SALÊH, 1240—1249 (242). The Mamelooks; Poet; Beha ed-Din (243). CAIRO UNDER THE MAMELOOK SULTANS 245 Bahrite Mamelook Sultans, A.D. 1250—1380. EIBEG (245). BÊBARS, A.D. 1260—1277; General Character of the Mamelook Rule (246). KALAÛN, A.D. 1277—1290 (248). His Hospital (251). Beggars, Schools, and Fountains (252). EN-NASIR, A.D. 1293—1341 (253). His Second Reign; His Victory over the Mongols; Oppressions of the Christians (254). Improvement of Cairo by Nâsir (258). His Love of Horses and Sport (258). His Patronage of Learned Men (Abu 'l-Feda), and Admiration of the Fair Sex (259). SULTAN HASAN, A.D. 1346—1361 (261). The Plague in the Year 1348 (261). Mosque of Hasan (264). Tombs of the Khaleefs and of the Mamelooks (269). The Burgite, or Circassian Sultans, A.D. 1382—1517; BARKOOK, 1382—1399 (270). FARAG; MU'AIYAD (270). Mosque of (271). BURS BEY, A.D. 1422—1438, is made Protector of Mecca (275). Djidda and Alexandria, the Two Great Marts for the Trade with India (275). Wealth, Luxury, and Expenditure under BURS BEY (277). KAIT BEY, A.D. 1468— 1496; His General, Ezbek (278). The Ezbekîye Square in Cairo (278). Okella and Mosque of Hait-Bey (282). MUHAMMED, his Son (285). KANSUWE-EL-GHOORI, A.D. 1501 to 1516 (285). The Period of Arab Legend and Romance; Origin of the “1,001 Nights” (287). Annihilation of Egyptian Commerce by the Portuguese (292). Conquest of Egypt by the Turks, 1517 (292). Courageous Defence by the last of the Mamelook Princes, TERMAN BEY, MELIK EL-ASCHRAF (293). CAIRO: ITS DECADENCE AND TOMBS 294 Turkish Governors (294). The Beys and their Mamelooks; Ali Bey, A.D. 1771 (296). The Decay of all Ancient Splendour, and its Causes (296). Religious Character of the Cairenes (297). Their Indifference to the Ancient Monuments (299). Absence of the Historical Spirit (302). Architecture of the Turkish Period (301). Legends Attaching to the Old Buildings (304). Powers attributed to Certain Buildings (306). Tombs of the Welis (306). Dervish Dance (307). Tombs of the Companions of the Prophet (311). Worship of Tombs on the Karâfeh (311). Tomb of Seyth ibn Sa'ad and the Legend Attaching to it (313). Tombs of the Chiefs of the Dervish Orders (313). Tomb of El-Farid (314).

LIST OF ARTISTS EMPLOYED IN THIS VOLUME.

BERNINGER, E. BURGER, LUDWIG. DILLON, FRANK. FIEDLER, BERNHARD. GENTZ, WILHELM. GNAUTH, ADOLF. HECHT, WILHELM. HEYN, ERNST. HUBER, C. RUDOLF. JERICHAU-BAUMANN. KELLER, FERDINAND. KÖRNER, ERNST. KRETZSCHMER, HERM. KÜHN, GUSTAV. LENBACH, FRANZ. LÖFFLER, AUGUST. MACHYTKA, J. MAKART, HANS. MÜLLER, LEOP. CARL. RAMSTHAL, AUGUST. RICHTER, GUSTAV. SCHMORANZ, F. SCHÖNN, ALOIS. SEEL, ADOLF. STRASSBERGER, B. TADEMA, L. ALMA. THEUERKAUF, G. WEIDENBACH. WELSCH, F. C. WERNER, CARL.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE Israel in Egypt By E. J. POYNTER, R.A. Frontis . Ancient Alexandria By ADOLF GNAUTH 1 Pharos in Ancient Alexandria By ADOLF GNAUTH 1 Head of Alexander By LUDWIG BURGER 3 Ruins of the City Wall of Alexandria By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 4 The Muezzin's Call to Prayer By WILHELM GENTZ 5 Modern Lighthouse at Alexandria By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 6 Catacombs in Alexandria By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 7 Group among the Ruins of Alexandria By BERNHARD FIEDLER 8 A Greek Lady of Alexandria By FERDINAND KELLER 9 Egyptian Women Drawing Water By HANS MAKART 10 Dionysiac Trophy By FERDINAND KELLER 12 Coin of Ptolemy Soter By LUDWIG BURGER 13 Coin of Alexander the Great By LUDWIG BURGER 13 A Lady of Alexandria in a Robe of Transparent Bombyx Silk By FERDINAND KELLER 14 Coin of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes By LUDWIG BURGER 16 “Father Nile” By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 17 Cleopatra Carried into the Palace By FERDINAND KELLER 18 Alexandrian Ornaments By FERDINAND KELLER 19 Cleopatra on the Cydnus By HANS MAKART 20 Cleopatra's Needle By CARL WERNER 21 Pompey's Pillar By GUSTAV THEUERKAUF 24 An Egyptian Girl By GUSTAV RICHTER To face p. 25 Arab Cemetery By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 26 Night on the Red Sea By F. C. WELSCH 28 Old Egyptian Vase By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 29 Gem, with Portraits of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and Arsinoë, Daughter of Lysimachus By LUDWIG BURGER 29 Head of Serapis, and Zodiac By LUDWIG BURGER 30 Frieze from an Ancient Arab Mosque By F. SCHMORANZ 31 Desk for the Koran By ADOLF GNAUTH 31 Isis Suckling Horus By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 32 Coptic Maiden By GUSTAV RICHTER 33 A Copt By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 35 The Palm, the Characteristic Tree of the East By F. C. WELSCH 36 Court of an Egyptian House of the Time of the Khalifs By GUSTAV RICHTER 37

“Place Mohammed Ali” By B. STRASSBERGER 39 The Old Harbour of Alexandria By CARL WERNER 40 The Banks of the Mahmoudeyeh Canal By WILHELM GENTZ 41 Watering the Roads By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 43 A Sais, or Running Footman By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 44 Alexandrian Lady with her Black Attendant By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 45 Mosque of Said Pacha By BERNHARD FIEDLER 47 What will come of it all? By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 48 Protestant Church at Alexandria By B. STRASSBERGER 48 A Youthful Follower of the Prophet By GUSTAV RICHTER To face p. 49 Sarrâf, or Money-Changer By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 49 Arabian Cemetery By F. C. WELSCH 50 Window of the Harem By F. C. WELSCH 50 Palace of the Khedive By B. STRASSBERGER 51 Eunuch By WILHELM GENTZ 52 The Jewel of the Harem By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 53 Palms By GUSTAV RICHTER 54 Gathering Dates By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 55 Shearing Camels By WILHELM GENTZ 56 A Silk Embroiderer By CARL WERNER 57 Embroidered Slippers By ADOLF GNAUTH 58 Ornament from the Mandarah of the Mufti at Cairo By F. SCHMORANZ 59 A Nargileh By ADOLF GNAUTH 59 Ancient Egyptian Representation of the Vintage By WEIDENBACH 60 Minaret of the Mosque of Werdanee, at Cairo By F. SCHMORANZ 61 Widow Mourning By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 62 A Dyke in the Delta at the Time of the Inundation By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 63 A Papyrus Thicket By B. STRASSBERGER 64 Bronze Coin of the Leontopolite Nome By LUDWIG BURGER 64 Bronze Coin of the Mendesian Nome By LUDWIG BURGER 64 The Pilot Omar By GUSTAV RICHTER 65 Tomb of a Sheikh at the Time of the Khalifs By CARL WERNER 66 On the Rosetta Branch of the Nile By F. C. WELSCH 67 Arabic Decorative Painting By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 68 Village in the Delta By BERNHARD FIEDLER 68 A Water-Wheel By F. C. WELSCH 69 Ruins of Sais By B. STRASSBERGER 70 Palm Capital By B. STRASSBERGER 71 Neith, Goddess of Sais By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 71 Market at Desook By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 72 Fooa By F. C. WELSCH 74 Outside the Gate of Rosetta By F. C. WELSCH 74 Mosque of the Holy Ibraheem at Desook By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 75 House in Rosetta with Projecting Storeys By B. STRASSBERGER 76 The Rosetta Stone By B. STRASSBERGER 76 Window of a Harem By BERNHARD FIEDLER 77 Door of an Arabian House By BERNHARD FIEDLER 77 Zenab By GUSTAV RICHTER 78 Seller of Date Bread By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 79 Market at Tantah By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 81 Fatima By GUSTAV RICHTER 86 Frieze from the Gama es-Soon, Cairo By F. SCHMORANZ 87 Moses among the Bulrushes By ADOLF GNAUTH 87

Tent of Bedaween Arabs By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 88 A Veiled Beauty By F. C. WELSCH 88 Tunisian Pilgrim By ALOÏS SCHÖNN 89 Black Granite Statue of Sekhet By B. STRASSBERGER 90 Mummy of a Cat By B. STRASSBERGER 90 The Father of the Cats, with the Caravan of Pilgrims By WILHELM GENTZ 91 Cotton Plant By B. STRASSBERGER 92 A Ride through the Desert By F. C. WELSCH 93 Egyptian Wheat By B. STRASSBERGER 94 Herdsman in the Desert By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 95 Ruins of Tanis By B. STRASSBERGER 96 Joseph and Pharaoh By ALMA TADEMA To face p. 97 Excavations at Tanis By B. STRASSBERGER 98 Hykshos Sphinx By B. STRASSBERGER 99 Rameses II. By LUDWIG BURGER 100 The Finding of Moses By FERDINAND KELLER 102 Brick with the Prenomen of Rameses II. By WEIDENBACH 104 Forced Labourers of the Semitic Race stamping out Bricks By WEIDENBACH 104 Forced Labourers of the Semitic Race making and carrying Bricks By WEIDENBACH 104 Menephtah By LUDWIG BURGER 105 Malapterurus Electricus—Electrical Shad By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 106 Tetrodon Hispidus By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 106 Head of the Pimelodus Auratus By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 106 Assembly of Birds on the Lake of Menzaleh By WILHELM GENTZ 107 Fish Auction at San By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 108 Mormysus Oxyrrhynchus By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 108 Polypterus—Finny Pike By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 108 Fishing Boat on the Lake of Menzaleh By BERNHARD FIEDLER 109 Water Wheel for Irrigation, in the neighbourhood of Damietta By BERNHARD FIEDLER 110 Nymphæa Nelumbo—Lotus Flower—with Fruit By B. STRASSBERGER 111 Nymphæa Lotus—Lotus Flower By B. STRASSBERGER 111 Papyrus Plant By B. STRASSBERGER 112 River Wall on the Damietta Arm of the Nile By F. C. WELSCH 113 Native of the Nile By F. C. WELSCH 115 The Main Stream of the Nile By BERNHARD FIEDLER 116 Sarcophagus By LUDWIG BURGER 117 Pyramid and Sphinx By ADOLF GNAUTH 117 The Village of Bedrasheyn By BERNHARD FIEDLER 119 Façade of a Tomb By B. STRASSBERGER 120 A Citizen of Memphis By ALMA TADEMA To face p. 121 Ptah, the god of Memphis By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 121 Bull Apis By B. STRASSBERGER 121 Sacred Uræus Snake By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 122 Fallen Colossus of Rameses II. By BERNHARD FIEDLER 124 At the Foot of the Pyramid of Cheops By CARL WERNER 126 Bedaween and Fellah By GUSTAV RICHTER 127 The Pyramids and Sphinx By BERNHARD FIEDLER To face p. 128 Ascent of the Great Pyramid By C. RUDOLF HUBER 128 Second and Third Pyramids By ERNST HEYN 130 Door of a Tomb at Ghizeh By B. STRASSBERGER 131 Scribe By B. STRASSBERGER 131 Slaughter of Victims By WEIDENBACH 133 Herd of Asses By WEIDENBACH 133

The Nobleman Urkhu inspecting his Fields By WEIDENBACH 133 Bondmen Felling Trees By WEIDENBACH 134 Fishing with Net By WEIDENBACH 134 Crocodiles and Hippopotamus in the Nile By WEIDENBACH 134 Group of Eastern Women By HANS MAKART 136 The Two Great Pyramids at the Time of the Inundation By F. C. WELSCH 137 The Building of the Pyramids By GUSTAV RICHTER 140 Pyramid of Dashoor By B. STRASSBERGER 141 Quarries of Tourah By B. STRASSBERGER 142 Weighing Stones By GUSTAV RICHTER 143 Lamentation of a Widow of Memphis at the Coffin of her Husband By ALMA TADEMA 144 Ruins of Chefren By CARL WERNER To face p. 145 Fossil Limestone, with Shells, from Mokattam By B. STRASSBERGER 145 Entrance to the Pyramid of Cheops By BERNHARD FIEDLER 145 Gallery in the Pyramid of Cheops By B. STRASSBERGER 146 Wooden Coffin of Men-ka-ra By B. STRASSBERGER 148 Sepulchral Chamber of Men-ka-ra By B. STRASSBERGER 149 Statue of Chefren By B. STRASSBERGER 150 The Sphinx Cleared from the Sand By B. STRASSBERGER 151 Modern Sphinx-like Face By GUSTAV RICHTER 152 House of Mariette Pacha at Sakkarah By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 154 Pyramid of Sakkarah By BERNHARD FIEDLER 155 Sphinx from the Serapeum By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 156 Scarabæus Beetle By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 157 Tomb of the Apis By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 158 Anubis, the Guardian of the Lower World By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 158 Door of the Mastaba of Ti By B. STRASSBERGER 159 Mastaba of Ti By ERNST KÖRNER 160 Cranes By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 161 Bringing in the Overseer for the Reckoning By WEIDENBACH 162 Ship-building By WEIDENBACH 162 Ploughing By WEIDENBACH 163 Cattle Treading out Corn By WEIDENBACH 163 Horned Cattle driven through the Water By WEIDENBACH 163 Enjoyments on the Water By WEIDENBACH 164 Salting Fish By WEIDENBACH 164 Wrestling By WEIDENBACH 164 Bedaween Camp By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 165 Acrobatic Exercises and Game of Morra By WEIDENBACH 166 Enjoyments of Hunting By WEIDENBACH 166 Captured Animals of the Wilderness By WEIDENBACH 166 A Musical Entertainment By WEIDENBACH 167 Pigeons By WILHELM GENTZ 167 Flock of Pigeons By WILHELM GENTZ 167 Sandstorm in the Desert By AUGUST LÖFFLER To face p. 170 Huts and Household Companions of the Fellaheen By WILHELM GENTZ 170 Mastaba Far'oon By B. STRASSBERGER 171 Funeral Ceremonies By LUDWIG BURGER 172 A Border, or Frieze, in Wood, from the Moristan of Kala'oon ADOLF GNAUTH 173 Lane in the Copt Quarter By BERNHARD FIEDLER 174 Mashrebeeyeh Window By B. STRASSBERGER 175 Street Dogs By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 175

General View of Cairo By BERNHARD FIEDLER 176 Driving through the Town By C. RUDOLF HUBER 177 A Learned Man absorbed in the Koran By WILHELM GENTZ 178 Public School in the Heart of Cairo By BERNHARD FIEDLER 180 Black and White Jockeys By C. RUDOLF HUBER 181 Dromedary Race By C. RUDOLF HUBER 182 Garden on the Road to Heliopolis By BERNHARD FIEDLER 183 Sycamore of Matareeyeh By B. STRASSBERGER 184 The Flight into Egypt By FERDINAND KELLER 185 Representation of the Bennu By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 187 Obelisk of the Temple of the Sun, at the old Heliopolis By CARL WERNER 188 The Island of Roda By ERNST KÖRNER 189 Mokattam By BERNHARD FIEDLER 191 The Tent of Amroo By WILHELM GENTZ 192 Old Cairo By F. C. WELSCH To face p. 193 The Nilometer By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 193 Old Arabian House By GUSTAV RICHTER 194 Scale of the Nilometer By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 195 The Sacrifice to the Nile By WILHELM GENTZ 196 Court of the Mosque of Amroo By ERNST HEYN 198 Sacred Tree of Fatima By F. C. WELSCH 200 Minaret of the Memorial Mosque of Barkook By F. SCHMORANZ 202 Liwan, or Sanctuary of the Mosque of Amroo By ERNST HEYN 204 Mimbar, or Pulpit of the Mosque of Kayt Bey By B. STRASSBERGER 205 The Pillars of Ordeal By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 206 Row of Suppliants By C. RUDOLF HUBER 208 Morning Prayer of Bedaween By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 209 Alley of the Old Time By BERNHARD FIEDLER 210 Arabian Horse By C. RUDOLF HUBER 211 Arch Ornament from the Mosque of Ibn-Tuloon By B. STRASSBERGER 212 The Liwan or Sanctuary of the Mosque of Ibn-Tuloon By B. STRASSBERGER 213 Capitals of Columns from the Mosque of Ibn-Tuloon By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 214 Pattern of the Mimbar in the Mosque of Ibn-Tuloon By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 215 The Consort of the Sultan By J. F. PORTAELS 216 Ahmed By GUSTAV RICHTER To face p. 217 Minaret and Court of the Mosque of Ibn-Tuloon By B. STRASSBERGER 217 Ornament By ADOLF GNAUTH 218 Tripod By ADOLF GNAUTH 218 Ancient Egyptian Vases By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 219 Harem of a House in the Time of the Khalifs By ADOLF SEEL 220 Egyptian Coins (Aboo Bekr, Omar, Othman, Alee) By F. SCHMORANZ 221 Halberd and Spear for Lion Hunting, Time of the Fatimites By ADOLF GNAUTH 221 Arabic Silk Damask of the 11th Century By ADOLF GNAUTH 222 Arab Stuff By ADOLF GNAUTH 222 Wife of the Sheykh of the Cooks By GUSTAV RICHTER 223 Princely Garden in Cairo By BERNHARD FIEDLER 225 Garden on the Road to Heliopolis By BERNHARD FIEDLER 227 Console of the Balcony of the Minaret of the Mosque of Ezbek By F. SCHMORANZ 228 Perso-Turkish Stalactite Capital By F. SCHMORANZ 228 Mosque of El-Hakim By B. STRASSBERGER 229 Bab en-Nasr By BERNHARD FIEDLER 231 Bab el-Footoh By CARL WERNER 232

Citadel of Cairo By FRANK DILLON 233 Door of the Alley of Sukkarije By ADOLF SEEL 235 Door of the Mamelukes in the Citadel of Cairo By HERM KRETZSCHMER 236 Roomeleh Place and Mosque of Hasan By BERNHARD FIEDLER 238 Malkafs By B. STRASSBERGER 239 Pot from Joseph's Well By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 240 Shaft of Joseph's Well By AUGUST RAMSTHAL 240 Coins of Melek el-Adil By ADOLF GNAUTH 242 Old Arabic Enamelled Glass Cup By ADOLF GNAUTH 243 A Mosque Lamp By ADOLF GNAUTH 244 Mameluke Emir By HANS MAKART To face p. 245 Tassel Ornament By ADOLF GNAUTH 245 Arab Saddle and Trappings By ADOLF GNAUTH 245 Door of the Moristan of Kala'oon By CARL WERNER 247 Ornamental Girdling, Moristan of Kala'oon By F. SCHMORANZ 248 Window in the Mausoleum of Kala'oon By F. SCHMORANZ 249 Interior of the Mosque of Kala'oon By J. MACHYTKA 250 Rosette of a Primary School in Cairo By F. SCHMORANZ 251 Public Drinking Fountain By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 252 Court in the Moristan of Kala'oon By ADOLF GNAUTH 254 Fountain and School By F. SCHMORANZ 255 A Street in Cairo By BERNHARD FIEDLER 256 A Blind Beggar By LEOPOLD CARL MÜLLER 257 Among the Old Houses By BERNHARD FIEDLER 258 On the Old Canal at Cairo By F. C. WELSCH 259 Horse Race By C. RUDOLF HUBER 260 Hawking of the Heron By C. RUDOLF HUBER 261 Interior of the Mosque of the Sultan Hasan CARL WERNER 262 Ornament of the Headpiece of a Door of the Mosque of Schaban By F. SCHMORANZ 263 Frieze in the Mosque of the Sultan Hasan By F. SCHMORANZ 263 Remains of Constructions of the Time of the Mameluke Sultans, in a Modern Fountain By CARL WERNER 264 The Death of the First-born By ALMA TADEMA To face p. 265 Ornament from a large Porch of the Mosque of the Sultan Hasan By F. SCHMORANZ 265 Carpet Merchant in the Khan el Khaleel By CARL WERNER 266 Niche for Prayer By BERNHARD FIEDLER 267 Porch of the Mosque of the Sultan Hasan By G. THEUERKAUF 268 Ornaments from the Great Porch of the Mosque of the Sultan Hasan By F. SCHMORANZ 269 Tomb, with Mosque, of Barkook By B. STRASSBERGER 270 Ornaments from the Mosque, of Barkook By F. SCHMORANZ 271 Fountain at the Tomb and Mosque of Barkook By BERNHARD FIEDLER 271 Necropolis at the foot of the Citadel By HERM KRETZSCHMER 272 Niche for Prayer in the Mosque of the Sultan Mo'ayyad By J. MACHYTKA 273 Details of the Principal Door of the Mosque of Mo'ayyad By B. STRASSBERGER 274 Abyssinian Female Slave By J. F. PORTAELS 276 Country Residence and Water Wheel at Cairo By BERNHARD FIEDLER 278 Spouse of the Sultan on her way to the Country Residence By RUDOLF HUBER 279 An Architectural Detail from the School of the Mosque of Ezbek By F. SCHMORANZ 280 Interior of the Mosque of Ezbek By ADOLF SEEL 281 Minaret of the Mosque of Kayt Bey By F. SCHMORANZ 282 Arab Sword of Ceremony By ADOLF GNAUTH 283 Ornaments of the Mosque and Tomb of Kayt Bey By F. SCHMORANZ 283 Interior of the Mosque and Tomb of Kayt Bey By ADOLF GNAUTH 284 The Sultan's Favourite Songstress By DE BIEFVÉ 285

Portal of the Mosque el Ghooreeyeh By F. SCHMORANZ 286 Ornament of the Mimbar of the Mosque of el Ghooreyeh By F. SCHMORANZ 287 Eastern Story Teller By WILHELM GENTZ 288 Darb El-Ahmar By CARL WERNER To face p 289 A Young Popular Hero of To-day By GUSTAV RICHTER 289 Mausoleum of Kansooweh el Ghoore By B. STRASSBERGER 290 An Arab of Rank By C. RUDOLF HUBER 291 Dervishes and other Strange Devotees By WILHELM GENTZ 294 Before the Walls of Masr-el Kahira By C. RUDOLF HUBER 295 The Ruined Mosque of Ibn-Tuloon By B. STRASSBERGER 296 Arab Family among the Ruins By F. C. WELSCH 298 The Tombs of the Khalifs By FRANK DILLON 300 Night Birds By F. C. WELSCH 301 Fragments of a Column By CARL WERNER 302 Hamida, a Cairene Maiden By WILHELM HECHT 303 Tomb of a Sheykh on the Island of Roda By F. C. WELSCH 305 Tomb of Ibraheem Aga By B. STRASSBERGER 306 A Dervish in Ecstatic Excitement piercing his Cheek By WILHELM GENTZ 307 Vaulted Cellar in an old Street By ADOLF SEEL 308 Mameluke Tomb By CARL WERNER 309 The Karafeh, outside Cairo By F. C. WELSCH 310 Sarcophagus of Ibraheem Pacha By B. STRASSBERGER 312 Part of the House of the Sheykh Sadat To face p. 313

INTRODUCTION.

HOW often has that wonderful land—the subject of the present work—been visited and described, from the time of Herodotus in the sixth century before Christ to the nineteenth after! What numerous narratives of its history, its monuments, its physical condition, and its political state, have flowed from a thousand pens! How many eyes have scrutinised its remotest nooks, with a view to its condition—past, present, and future! What, after all, is Egypt—the gift of the river, the products of the Nile, the bed of that old serpent of the waters, varying with the change of season, broad in winter, narrow in summer, by turns sheeted with water like a lake, or the slimy dark alluvial of a marsh, or else verdant with vegetation, or yellow with the harvest—the granary of the Old World, the cotton, tobacco, and indigo field of modern times, with its five millions of acres of cultivable land and its four millions and a half of population, with a river of fifteen hundred miles for its highway, at the edge of the Libyan Desert, close to the Red Sea, remote from the Atlantic, bathed on its north coasts by the Mediterranean, clinging to Asia by an isthmus, which, now divided by the thin streak of a canal, makes Africa a gigantic island? Egypt, too— the result of the outpour of the great African lakes—the reservoirs of the tropical rains—with its rainless sky, its tropical climate, has from times remote had the charm of historical recollections—the first cradle of the human race, the earliest
evolution of civilisation, the oldest theatre on which the great drama of mankind was played, with all its shifting scenes and startling incidents. To Egypt also point the arts and sciences as the cradle of their earliest infancy: sculpture, architecture, and painting, there first started forth from small beginnings; literature there began; and religion, the mental bond of civilised communities, there sprang into life, with all its Protean phases of polytheistic forms.

Whence came the first man who trod its alluvial plain? Was he a rude savage, clad with skin, and equipped for the chase with implements of stone, to do battle with the hippopotamus and the crocodile, with which the stream and its estuaries abounded, or to spear the African lion, hunt the howling hyæna, or shoot the countless flocks of birds of the banks of Nile? Came he as a Nigritic wanderer, from Equatorial Africa, from the fringe of the Libyan coast, or from the Semitic races beyond the Suez isthmus? Was he an aboriginal—some type of mankind which, blended with all sorts of races, has melted away and left no representative except some occasional and abnormal form, such as Nature throws out from time to time like a recurrent thought in the cosmic mind, some dim recollection of a vanished past? The long duration of civilisation has cleared away, even from the preserving valley of the Nile, nearly all the evidences of palæothetic ages or neolithic remains, although here and there fragments attest the use of stone prior to the employment of metal, but so rare as to cast shadows of doubt on the existence of prehistoric man.

This Egypt, whose tradition recounts the reign of gods and demi-gods, first gives evidence of its existence by its Pyramids—those tombs of geometric form which prove the highest knowledge of the exactest of the human sciences, raised with wonderful care, and evincing unrivalled knowledge of the principles of construction. They show an enormous population, a long antecedent period of human experience, and a development of technical skill in its way unrivalled at the present day, a combination of profound thought and trained dexterity evolved by motives of intense belief and religious enthusiasm, while at the same time everything necessary to an advanced civilisation marked the period, minute divisions of the religious systems and civil administration, a practical knowledge of all the arts and sciences, without which architectural conceptions would be failures, the conquest of the Arabian peninsula and search for mineral wealth, the subjugation of the South, and the successful extract from its primitive rocks of the granite and basalt required to case the pyramid or mould into sarcophagi, and these blocks transported in vessels of

great size down the river at its highest flood or annual increase, to their destination. Civil and military requirements were met with careful organisation, and the sable races of Egypt's southern border drilled to expel the hostile tribes that infested its adjoining deserts. Since Ebers wrote three more pyramids of the Sakkarah group have been opened, and have revealed, by the details of their long inscriptions, that at the remote period of the VIth Dynasty the religious thought or belief in the circle of gods was as complete as at the close of its faith, of its polytheism. Pepi or Phiops, Merenra or Haremsaf, and Neferkara or Nephercheres had their costly sepulchres adorned with prayers and formulæ from the myth of Osiris, and direct declaration of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

The age of pyramids once past, and Egypt assumes another feature: the arts still improve, architecture rises to a higher conception. The temple surpasses the tomb at the time of the XIIth Dynasty, and the Doric column springs into life. The South is conquered for its gold and slaves; the North is advanced on for its mineral wealth; the Libyan or African wanders, as an itinerant juggler or a mercenary soldier, to Egypt. The Semitic families render obeisance to their Hamitic superiors, and enter Egypt as friends or vassals. The grasp which held the valleys of the Sinaitic peninsula retains it still more tightly, and Egyptian adventurers receive a lordly welcome at the court of Edom. The hereditary nobility are fostered by the Pharaohs of this and the subsequent line. Hydraulic engineering constructs vast reservoirs for irrigation, and the lake Mœris alone marks an era. The Labyrinth and the Obelisk, which attain a world renown, complete the circle of its civilisation, and are imitated by the other races of mankind. Literature still flourishes, religion retains its ancient features. From hence till the XVIIIth Dynasty there is a decline or an eclipse; but in the long interval, and towards its close, a new race of men—the so-called Shos, or Shepherds, Nomads, or Crossers — make their appearance. They seize the Delta, subdue the Egyptians, whom they drive back upon the swarthy Æthiopian. The ethnological relations of the Shepherd races are as obscure as the Egyptians. They resemble in type the Semitic; but some have endeavoured to connect them with the Hittites. Inferior in civilisation to the Egyptians, they adopted Egyptian arts, and their ascendency does not seem to have influenced in any remarkable degree Egyptian civilisation. The religion was also connected, through the god Set, with that of Egypt. At Tanis, their capital, are their remains; and the only distinctive marks of their rule is the appearance of the horse, which, brought from the plains of Asia, had probably contributed to the conquest of the valley of the Nile. Egypt expels the

Shepherds, and a new native dynasty—the XVIIIth—surpasses the glories of those which preceded it. Thothmes III. defeats at Megiddo the combined hosts of Eastern Asia, and marches to the Euphrates. Nineveh and Babylon become his tributaries; and the world known to the Egyptians contributes its united wealth to the treasuries of the Temple of Amen. His sisters had already sent embassies and naval expeditions to the eastern coast of Africa. It is no longer an age of gigantic pyramids, but one of colossal temples. Thebes inflates to overwhelming proportions; stones and temples are piled on one another, and the statue of Amenophis III., lisping to the rising sun, adds another wonder to the list of Egyptian marvels. Subject to vicissitudes, religious animosities impair the extent of empire, the Delta falls into anarchy or foreign hands; but a new dynasty, itself of Semitic origin, wrests back the country, re-conquers Palestine, and breaks the strength of its great rival, the Khita, or supposed Hittites. One heroic figure—Rameses II., the Sesostris of Greek legends—stands out in the fierce glare of historic light. Poems and official inscriptions record his unwonted prowess, and his great battle of Kadesh, on the banks of the Orontes, restores the independence, if not the supremacy, of Egypt. The canal to join the two seas is commenced by his father, a long wall is built to resist the return of Asiatic hordes to Egypt. The Exodus takes place under his successor; and Egypt, now attacked by Libyans and other Mediterranean nations, victorious at the brunt, again relapses to another decadence, to be again restored to its pristine condition. After an intestine struggle, another Rameses III.—equally devoted to the life of the camp and the palace—drives off the invaders. From north and south, east and west, Libyans, Asiatics, Europeans, and negroes are all repelled. Thebes especially, the quarter of Medinat Habu, is embellished and increased. But here end the glories of the line; a long and inglorious suite of feeble successors led to sacerdotal usurpation. Assyria, emerging from its Western struggles, directs its attentions to the East, and in Egypt a dynasty with ambitious views and powerful armies marches its hosts into Palestine, under Shishakh, and pillaged Jerusalem. Henceforth possession of Egypt was alternately disputed. Assyria and Æthiopia, Sabaco and Tirhakah (B.C. 727) appear on the scene, to retreat before the victorious hosts of Nineveh; and when Assyria succumbs to Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar defeats Necho at Carchemish—Necho, who renews the attempt of the canal of Seti, and first endeavours to circumnavigate the continent of Africa. But Babylon has fallen to the Persian Cyrus, and Cambyses conquers Egypt (B.C. 527); the supremacy of Persia, shaken and contested for almost two centuries, is riveted, in B.C. 340, on the country, and the fall of Persia to the Greeks (B.C. 330) ends by the establishment of
the Greek rule of the Ptolemies: the whole civilisation changes—arts, language, and organisations, are Hellenised. It is no longer Memphis or Thebes, but Alexandria, that is the capital; wealth accumulates, but men decay; the religion is not altogether effete, for splendid temples of inferior art are still erected, as evidences of a failing faith. Pedantic disputes and philosophic sophisms replace the mysterious dogmas of the old religion at the Court of the Ptolemies, and one monument alone—the Pharos or Light Tower—marks an addition to the progress of civilisation. The dramatic incidents of the ultimate fall of the Ptolemies, and the final conquest of Egypt by the Romans after the battle of Actium, are the story of a foreign race, and no magnificent ruins attest the Greek rule in Egypt. The Roman sway was a mere continuation of the Greek in its development. A superstitious veneration of Egyptian polytheism repaired or added to some of the older monuments, and built some newer temples, or continued those of the Ptolemies, but arts and sciences declined, and the rise of Christianity was the signal for the neglect or abolition of the devices of Paganism, without adorning the country with monuments of architecture or art, and subtle disputations on points of faith replaced Egyptian culture and Greek philosophy, while monks and hermits meditated in deserts political revolution, or the destruction of ancient edifices, and the Patriarchs of Alexandria consented to the pillage of its temples and its libraries.

But the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs in B.C. 630, although at first attended by destruction and disaster—owing to the religious fanaticism of the Mohammedan victors—gave an entirely new phase to the arts and sciences; and if sculpture disappeared, architecture took a new development. Manners, customs, and civil organisation, were all remodelled or absolutely changed. Under the Abbaside khalifs in the eighth century A.D. it had attained the highest grandeur during the reign of Haroun-er-Rashid, and continued still to develop under the rule of the Touloonide and Fatimite khalifs. The present work illustrates all this in the most striking manner, and exhibits all the peculiarities of Arab life and art—the marked influence in architecture which the pointed arch, in metallic products the damascened or inlaid work, in pottery the brilliant glazes, in the woof the embroidered garments, and in design the fantastic and interlaced patterns—exercised on the material civilisation of the West. The age of the khalifs was an age alike of poetry and romance, of enormous wealth and capricious prodigality to favourites, poets, and musicians, intermingled with vain ostentation, love of learning, and public oppression, which preceded the arrival of the Crusaders in the East, and their entrance into Egypt

in A.D. 1217. These warriors, however, left no memorial more important of their advent than a rare and insignificant coinage struck at Damietta. This was, however, the age of Saladin, Richard Cœur de Lion, and Louis the Saint of France, and the termination of a vain enterprise of a rival fanaticism. The Sultans of the different dynasties have left, however, behind them magnificent mosques and splendid sepulchres, fallen into neglect and destined to ruin unless the interposition of public sentiment in Europe demands that they shall be preserved. The Turkish rule in Egypt, which began in the sixteenth century, had no great influence on the country, and collapsed under the rival intrigues of the Mamelukes and the Porte, but the French Expedition in 1798 renewed the old acquaintance with Egypt, which had been much impaired and almost lost since the first Crusade. For the conquest of Egypt by the French under Napoleon, the enlightened administration and scientific inquiry which accompanied the arms of France opened the eyes of Europe to the vast interest revealed by the oldest centre of human civilisation. All the ancient remains of Egypt were studied; those apparently most important were correctly engraved, and, for the first time, accompanied by scientific descriptions.

The French Expedition discovered the trilingual inscription known as the Rosetta Stone—the key to the interpretation of the hieroglyphs—and this monument enabled Young and Champollion to decipher and interpret the lost language of ancient Egypt, which, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, had been laid aside as a problem apparently hopeless to solve, or taken up as a toy for the amusement of pedantry. The solution of the question in its fullest details by Champollion is one of the great literary discoveries of the century, and, when accomplished, astonishment and delight possessed all inquirers not inveterate in error or malignant by design, and a new charm pervaded every inscription, for the meaning, the age, and the object of which had been previously obscure, was rendered intelligible and plain. Religious history, manners, and customs, all were illustrated in a novel and surprising manner; the very walls, hitherto inarticulate, appeared to be endowed with speech. Stores of information contained in the various texts on the monuments, —mythological, historical, or explanatory—the speech of the noble and the exclamations and replies of slaves and peasants, were revealed. The papyri relating to the mythology, or the ritual to the funeral ceremonies, hymns to the gods, historical documents of all kinds, lists of monarchs, the epic poems of Pentaur in honour of Rameses II., the record of the donations of Rameses III. to the principal shrines of Egypt, an extensive literature and correspondence of scribes during the XIXth

Dynasty, and earlier treatises on ethics, even works of fiction, sales, marriage contracts, and accounts, have, in consequence of the discovery, stood exposed to the eye, and form a new and extensive literature.* How much the charm of Ebers' work is enhanced by his deep acquaintance, not only with the monuments and works of art, but with their interpretation of them, and with all that has been said or written on the subject!

The modern period, from the ascension of Mohammed Ali in 1811, after the destruction of the Mamelukes, is distinguished by the plans of that ruler for the civilisation of the country on the European model, and the efforts of his successors to improve its prospects and attractions by excavations of the principal ruins, and the preservation of its antiquities by Saïd Pasha; the completion of the Suez Canal by Ismail Pasha, in 1869; the grand scheme of M. Ferdinand de Lesseps; and the extension of the limits of the country on its southern confines. The administration of its finances, and the consequent improvement of the country by the joint action of France and England, close the history of a period of nearly seven thousand years.

The modern Egyptians, the manners and customs of the different races, have been already described by Lane, Poole, Whately, Audouard, Goltz, Klunzinger, Zincke, and innumerable authors and travellers; and the personal experiences of Professor Ebers, besides his extensive knowledge of the principal authors in Arabic literature, have been added to the labours and remarks of his predecessors. His discovery of the ancient medical treatise of the old Pharaonic period, written in Hieratic, known as the Papyrus Ebers, and his scientific and philological works on Egypt and the books of Moses, hieroglyphical system of writing, in the “Zeitschrift fur Ægyptische Sprache” of Berlin, attest his researches into old Egypt; and his successful novels, “An Egyptian Princess,” besides “Homo Sum,” “Uarda,” and “The Sisters,” published in 1870, prove the power he possessed of popularising a subject hitherto deemed recondite. In the present work is the latest account of the Egyptians, for whom there will probably be a more brilliant future as civilisation advances, and more correct principles of political economy, and the importance of European civilisation as a means of political * The archæological discoveries of Egypt are by no means exhausted, for quite lately the tombs of the monarchs of the XXIst dynasty accidentally revealed at Thebes, with thirty-nine mummies and their coffins, comprising kings of the XVIIth and XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, and the remains of the great Thothmes III, and the heroic Rameses II., or Sesostris, and the sacerdotal monarchs of the XXIst line, with their papyri and other objects, receive illustration from the labours of Champollion.

regeneration, become diffused in the far East. The interest offered by modern Egypt from all points of view, the comparison of its past and present condition, the striking difference between them and European costume and custom, receive a striking illustration from the aid afforded by photography and engraving, which give precision to descriptions however brilliantly animated or severely exact; and although Egypt, like the rest of the East, is intensely conservative, gradual change still insinuates itself, though rapid improvement lingers on its path.

It has been necessary in the English edition to add occasional notes to guide the reader as to the dates and other facts mentioned in the German text, which will thus receive illustration of points which might otherwise appear obscure; for although Egyptian chronology has been long debatable ground, and opinions on the remotest period vary to the extent of at least one-third of the whole chronology, history without some chronological indications presents only a hazy succession of events to the mind. In all cases, however, a probable date has been given, and even at the remotest period of the vast antiquity of the age of Pyramids the most recent discoveries tend to show the hoar antiquity and great age of these monuments, already preceded by a long duration of civilised human life and knowledge of arts and sciences. The importance of Egypt, both past and present, increases daily in the minds of Europe, as well as the conviction that it rivals with Greece and Rome, and shares with Assyria and Babylonia, the claims of attention to the past and future of the present day.

S. BIRCH. ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA.

PHAROS IN ANCIENT ALEXANDRA.
WHOEVER arrives in Egypt, be he a native of the North or of the West, must first set foot on the soil of Alexandria. Weary of the long sea-voyage and of all the novel pictures that meet his eye in this strange quarter of the world, he retires to his night's rest, and closes his eyes to think of home.

Suddenly, a clear resounding song breaks the silence of the night; it is the Muezzin's call to prayer—the bell's chime of the East—nature having bestowed on man a tongue and tone fitted to rouse a response in the heart of every hearer.

The Muezzin sings out his benediction over the sleeping city in deep long-drawn tones. “Prayer is better than sleep,” he cries to the sleepless; and his voice rises to its highest pitch when he shouts with three-fold iteration: “There is no God but God!” or “Allah, Allah, Allah!” as introductory to a beautiful prayer.

Before rising from bed to make acquaintance with the Alexandria of to-day—the half-European threshold of the Nile valley—let us turn our minds to the past, and attempt in some degree to depict to ourselves the great Græco-Egyptian city, the most celebrated spot of later antiquity.

Alexandria, one of the youngest cities of the ancient world, was at the same time the largest and the most brilliant. The rate of its increase in extent, population, and commerce was in no way behind that of the greatest cities of the New World; and as regards the rapid development of the higher gifts of humanity—

the arts and sciences—no American city even can offer anything approaching a parallel example.

Was it to its happily chosen situation that this great centre of learning and commerce owed its marvellously rapid growth? This is hardly evident at a first glance.

The northern coast of Egypt is flat, uniform, and unlovely, and though the waves of the Mediterranean sparkle in the sunshine in the harbour of Alexandria no less blue than on the orange-scented shores of Sorrento, or in the sunny bay of Malaga, they here break on many and dangerous rocks. In spite of the far-gleaming beacon of the Pharos of Ras-et-Teen, no vessel at the present day can enter the harbour of Alexandria by night.

An artificial canal begun by Mohammed Ali, the founder of the Vice-regal house, and named after the then reigning sultan the Mahmoudeeyeh Canal, washes the city precincts—but it is no branch of the Nile—and yields drinking water which could not be otherwise procured by digging wells, for from the soil of Egypt only salt springs rise. The coast in the vicinity of Alexandria, during the winter months, is beaten by storms of wind and rain; and the sky, whose pure azure is, at Cairo, rarely veiled, and then only by clouds that are dispersed in passing showers, is not less often obscured at Alexandria than in the peninsulas of southern Europe. Besides these drawbacks, the spot chosen by Alexander to be the site of a mart where the riches of Egypt might be exchanged for the treasures and marvels of the Indies, was at the extreme north-west of the Delta, equally remote from the Red Sea and from the high-road of the caravans by which Egypt and Syria held communication.

Nevertheless, the site selected by the genius and penetration of Alexander was the only one in Egypt which combined all the conditions indispensable to such a metropolis as he dreamed of, and such as, in fact, arose in fulfilment of his purpose.

A great Græco-Egyptian city, according to his idea, was to fill a double function; first, its harbour was to be a central mart both for the produce of the Nile valley and for goods imported from the south by way of the Red Sea, and these wares were to be dispersed throughout the world by the Greek merchants; while, in the second place, all the beauty of Hellenic life and culture in the new emporium was to be brought to bear upon Egypt. He had found the ancient realm of the Pharaohs still and stark as its mummied dead; in Alexandria the genius of the Greek was to find a new home, to release Egypt from the bonds of centuries, and to transform the barbarian nations of the Nile country, making them a controllable member of that mighty body of universal Greek dominion, which was the end he had proposed to himself as the goal of his heroic course.

On the eastern Egyptian coast lay the ancient harbours of Pelusium and Tanis on arms of the mouths of the Nile. He selected neither of these for the site of the new Greek city; for it did not escape his observant eye, or that of the scientific men who accompanied his armies, that the current of the Mediterranean bathing the Egyptian coast sets from west to east; and that, by carrying the alluvial earth annually brought down by the inundations of the Nile constantly eastward, it was destroying the harbours to the east of the delta.

How just was his foresight has since been proved; for at the present day, while thousands of ships crowd the quays of Alexandria, the ports of older fame—Pelusium and Ascalon, Tyre and Sidon—are choked by alluvial deposits, barred and useless.

In the year 332 B.C., Alexander laid the foundation of the new city, encouraged to the great work by dreams and omens which promised it a glorious future.

Directly opposite to the Egyptian port of Rhacotis to the north, close to the coast, lay the island of Pharos, of ancient fame; and behind the town, to the south, the Lake Mareotis, connected with the western arm of the Nile by an artificial canal which it would be easy to extend. The bay where the island lay offered ample space for many sea-going vessels, and thousands of Nile-boats could find room in the inland lake. A city rising between the two would be situated advantageously alike for imports and for exports, and Hellenic life would thrive and flourish unhindered; all the more because the Egyptian town on which it would be grafted was an insignificant one.

In Homer's Odyssey we find these lines:—

“A certain island call'd Pharos, that with the high-waved sea is wall'd, Just against Egypt … And this island bears a port most portly, where sea-passengers Put in still for fresh water.” CHAPMAN.

These lines, it is said, were heard by the sleeping Alexander at Rhacotis, uttered by a venerable old man who appeared to him in a dream.

Orders were given for the measurement of the ground and foundations, and the architect Dinocrates was commissioned to prepare a plan. This took the form of a Greek peplum, or of a fan, and the work of indicating the direction to be followed by the roads, and the extent of the market-places, was begun by strewing white earth on the level ground. The supply of this material falling short, it was supplemented by the assistants of the architect taking the meal which had been provided in abundance for the labourers. The legend goes on to say that hardly had this been sprinkled on the soil when numbers of birds came flying down to feed on the welcome supply of food. Alexander hailed the appearance of these feathered guests as a favourable omen, signifying the rapid prosperity and future wealth of the city.

And in truth, as birds fly to corn, so, from all Hellas, enterprising immigrants soon

RUINS OF THE CITY WALL OF ALEXANDRIA.
came streaming in; merchants and fugitives from Syria and Judæa, labourers and dealers from Egypt crowded to the new mart; and Alexander's distinguished general Ptolemy, the son of Lagus—who received the surname of Soter, or the preserver— fixed his magnificent residence there, first as governor1 and then as king.2 His talented successors, Philadelphus3 and Euergetes,4 not only did their utmost to promote the external power of Egypt, as well as its wealth and commerce, but strove eagerly to concentrate in Alexandria the culture and genius of their time; so that the learned men of the East and West crowded to the city, and learning and commerce vied with each other in the splendour of their bloom.

There is no city of antiquity of which we have such abundant records, and yet of which so few recognisable remains are left as of Alexandria. In vain we seek for an island opposite the city, although the little islet of Pharos does in fact still exist. The Ptolemies connected it with the mainland by a mole of quarried stone; and this huge mass of masonry was called the Hepta-stadion, from measuring seven stadia5 in length. It contained the aqueduct by which the island was supplied with water, 1 B.C. 324. 2 B.C. 305. 3 B.C. 284. 4 B.C. 247. 5 About 1,410 yards, or 7/8 of a mile.

THE MUEZZIN'S CALL TO PRAYER.
and divided the harbour into two basins, which still exist. The Eastern, or New Harbour, which is no longer used, was in ancient times called the Great Harbour; the Western basin, in which the traveller from Europe disembarks, and which is being greatly extended by the Viceroy of Egypt, is now known as the Old Harbour, and in the time of the Greeks was called the Harbour of Eunostus, as it would seem after the son-in-law of Ptolemy Soter and Thais; this name, meaning “good return,” survived for a long period. The two communicated by channels that were bridged over; they have long since been closed up by mud and detritus, and a broad tongue of land has been formed by the falling in of the piers of the bridges erected by the hand of man, and by the pebbles and ruins flung upon them by the waves, supplemented by artificial
MODERN LIGHTHOUSE AT ALEXANDRIA.
additions. Many houses of the modern Alexandrians stand on the ancient Heptastadion, and its soil is the first to be trodden by the newly-arrived stranger; for the largest of the western steamships cast anchor by its eastern quay.

The Pharos island now forms its northern point; it still bears a lighthouse, but this stands at the western angle, while the old renowned structure of Sostratus—which from its site was named “the Pharos,” and from which we to this day call a lighthouse a Pharos—stood at the opposite end of the island. It served to show the way into the rocky harbour, and was reckoned one of the most remarkable wonders of Alexandria and of the ancient world. It surpassed even the Pyramid of Cheops in height; but, thanks to the advanced state of science in our day, the light of the present lower tower shines out farther into the night than the beacon-fire which flared from the summit of its predecessor. Ptolemy Philadelphus caused it to be constructed of white marble by Sostratus of Cnidus, and he dedicated it to his deified parents. The famous architect carved his name, with an inscription, in the stone at the top of the tower. Over this, it is said, he spread plaster, and wrote on that the name of the royal builder or architect, so that when the more fragile material should have perished his own name might be read by future generations.

Let us now return to the mainland and seek the traces of the principal quarters, streets, and public buildings of the city.

By far the most magnificent portion was the Bruchium,1 bathed by the waters of the Great Harbour, and adjoining the oldest part of the city, namely, the original fishing port of Rhacotis. This old quarter was always the residence chiefly of Egyptians; and, as in all Egyptian cities, on its western side lay its “City of the Dead.” For, as the sun after its day's course sinks in the west, so the soul, after its life's course, found its rest there where spread the desert inimical to all life, and where the realm of death was supposed to lie. The colonists, following the example of the

CATACOMBS IN ALEXANDRIA.
Egyptians, interred their dead there too, until late Christian times; and the traveller who at this day visits the neighbourhood of Pompey's Pillar, and wanders westward along the sea-shore, will come upon tombs hewn in the rock, and farther inland will find catacombs of considerable extent. Even in Alexandria the native Egyptian citizens had their dead embalmed, while the Greeks adhered to their national custom of cremation.

In the eastern part of the Bruchium dwelt the Jews; they had their own quarter, kept up but a slight connection with their brethren in Palestine, and at some periods exceeded in wealth and influence all the rest of the population, though at other times they suffered severely, and not altogether without fault on their part.

1 The name of this quarter has been given by different classical authorities as Bruchion, Bruchium, Proucheium, and Puroucheion. Its name is supposed to mean the granary or height.

These quarters were connected by a maze of streets, in which riders and vehicles could move with comfort; they debouched on two main thoroughfares that crossed each other. The longer of these, running south-west and north-east, went from the City of the Dead to the Jews' quarter, and ended, eastwards, at the Canopic Gate— the Rosetta Gate of the present day; the other, cutting it at a right angle, led to the two gates of the Sun and Moon, and a layer of mould which has lately been discovered mingled with the pavement seems to indicate that both roads were ornamented with plantations. They must have been unusually broad and handsome. The vehicles of the rich, the loaded waggons, and the lordly processions on horseback which entered

GROUP AMONG THE RUINS OF ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA.
the city from the Hippodrome by the Canopic Gate, found ample room on the paved way of square granite, forty mètres1 broad; and when the sun was blazing hot, or when violent storms of rain fell, the pedestrian found shelter, for the wide side-paths were overarched by colonnades.

The gates of the Sun and Moon have vanished, the colonnades are overthrown, and recent layers of soil overlie the ancient pavement; however, the aqueducts under that pavement were, a few years ago, restored to their original purpose. Little remains of the houses of the inhabitants; yet the inquirer, if he quits the quarter occupied by the well-to-do Europeans, and betakes himself to the more modest Egyptian quarter on the western side of the city, and follows the line of the coast, or, passing through the Canopic Gate (the Rosetta Gate), walks across the open country, may come across many traces of ancient houses and public buildings. He has only to look round him. It is certainly vain to expect to discover monuments of any particular artistic merit; but he will find tanks of very early structure, traces of the foundation-walls of temples and palaces, thresholds, door-posts, and architraves in marble; in the mosques beautifully carved pillars from the Greek sanctuaries; a stone sarcophagus serving as a trough from which an ass quenches his thirst; the shaft of a pillar on which some Arab mother sits nursing her child, or which lies before a doorway, half covered with sand and overgrown with the herbs of the desert. The daily traffic of the Alexandrians was from the inner harbour by the Lake Mareotis to the sea and back again; on high festival days they betook themselves principally by the larger streets to the Bruchium. Here stood the Palaces of the kings with the Museum 1 About 136 feet.

and its library, the noblest temples of the Greek gods, the Mausoleum called the Soma, containing the body of Alexander the Great, the circus and the theatre, the gymnasium, the Hippodrome with its winding course, and many other public buildings to which the principal officials, the learned and the artists, the freeborn youth, and the pleasure-seeking crowd constantly flocked.

Theocritus1 has given us a picture of the crowd on the day of the festival of Adonis, which two women—intimate acquaintance, and wives of citizens of Syracuse settled in Alexandria—have gone to assist at together. Gorgo and Praxinoa2 behave under

the circumstances exactly as if they had been born in the nineteenth century after Christ instead of in the third century before.

Gorgo appears and Praxinoa orders her maid-servant:—

“Quick, Eunoa, find a chair, And fling a cushion on it.”

When Gorgo has taken her place and recovered her breath, she sighs out—

“Oh what a thing is spirit! Here I am, Praxinoa, safe at last from all that crowd And all those chariots—every street a mass Of boots and soldiers' jackets. Oh! the road Seemed endless, and you live so far away.”

Praxinoa laments over her “odious pest of a husband” who has taken this dwelling at the end of the world (probably near the Gate of the Sun). Gorgo warns her not, in her child's presence, to speak thus of its father, and Praxinoa calls out to the boy:—

“There, baby sweet, I never meant papa.”

But the small citizen is too sharp, and his “aunt” Gorgo says:—

“It understands, by 'r lady!3 dear papa!”

At last Praxinoa has completed her toilet with the help of the maid, who does not get through the business without a scolding, and Gorgo exclaims:—

“My dear, that full pelisse becomes you well. What did it stand you in, straight off the loom?” 1 Idyll 15. 2 As they speak in Doric their names are spelled so, instead of Praxinoe, Eunoe. 3 Proserpine.

EGYPTIAN WOMEN DRAWING WATER.

To which her friend replies:—

“Don't ask me, Gorgo; two good pounds1 and more; Then I gave all my mind to trimming it.”

The smart lady then has her mantle thrown round her, her sun-shade elegantly put up, and when all is done she gives the child in charge of the nurse, desires her to call in the dog and to lock the door, and then hurries off with her friend, down the road towards the royal palace on the Bruchium. They get through the crowd unharmed as far as the palace gate, but there the mob and confusion are much greater, and Praxinoa cries out:—

“Your hand please, Gorgo, Eunoa, you Hold Eutychis—hold tight or you'll be lost. We'll enter in a body—hold us fast! Oh! dear, my muslin2 gown is torn in two, Gorgo, already! Pray, good gentleman, (And happiness be yours) respect my robe.”

The gentleman appealed to is gallant, and when they have reached their destination Eunoa says, laughing:—

“We're all in now, As quoth the goodman, and shut out his wife.”

We will follow the Syracusan ladies to the Bruchium and the king's palaces, which stood on the eastern side of the harbour, and eastward of the spot where Cleopatra's Needle lately stood, southwards from the peninsula of Lochias, which, however, can now hardly be recognised. Magnificent gardens surrounded the palaces of the Ptolemies, and adjoining them stood the most celebrated of all the institutions founded by the dynasty of the Lagidæ, the Museum with its library. If the Syracusan ladies had in fact come from the neighbourhood of the Gate of the Sun, they must have crossed the market-place, and thence have followed the Canopic way a little to the east; then they would have turned to the left by a side street, have passed the huge Circus of the amphitheatre—where tickets and programmes of the games to be performed would be offered them for sale, and horn or ivory passes for the performances at the festival. But Gorgo and Praxinoa resisted the temptation, and did not rest till they reached the grove of trees which was planted on the top of the artificial mound of Soma, the Mausoleum of Alexander.

The body of the great founder of the city had been already brought from Babylon3 by the first Ptolemy,4 and it remained in its golden sarcophagus till a degenerate son of the Lagidæ sacrilegiously melted down the metal and substituted a glass sarcophagus for the golden one.

The ladies went up by the citizens' steps, for the levelled way which led out from the palace through the Bruchium to the high streets might be used only by members of the court. It was called the “Royal Road,” and it was in reference to 1 Minæ, or 200 drachmæ, about £7 10s. 2 The Theristrion, or thin summer garment, covering the head and face. 3 It was visited by Augustus, who touched, and so injured the nose of the corpse. 4 Supposed to be represented on the gold staters or didrachms of this monarch.

this that Euclid made the famous reply to Ptolemy Soter, who asked him for some easy method of attaining to a knowledge of his propositions—“There is no Royal Road to mathematics.”

The gymnasium to the right as they go on, is empty to-day, for all the youth of Alexandria are taking part in the festival; even in the courts and halls of the

Museum, which for the present we will pass by, all is still; for the king has invited the most illustrious of those who dwell there to be his guests. Our Syracusan ladies are allowed to enter the vestibule of the palace, where the statue of Adonis lies on costly drapery spread on a silver framework, and surrounded by beds of flowers, and where the form of the lovely Cypris1 is to be seen on a not less magnificent couch. They are permitted to hear the festal song of the noble singer who was crowned mistress of song in the Ialemos2 the year before; but they have to hasten home, for Gorgo's husband has not yet broken his fast, and “without his supper,” says she, “Diocleides is simply vinegar.”3

Just as the feast of Adonis tempted the two ladies to the Bruchium, so the greatest festival of the Alexandrians, the Feast of Dionysus, brought all the men to the palaces and their vicinity. This Feast of Dionysus was celebrated with even greater delights and tenfold more splendour than at Athens itself, though, no doubt, with less of the true sentiment of beauty. The Ptolemies made it the occasion for displaying the full extent of their wealth, and all the wild enjoyments of life and sensual desires that fermented and seethed in the souls of the excitable inhabitants of the metropolis of the world, at these feasts threw off all control, and rioted and revelled without restraint. Moderation was accounted a crime, and the Bruchium was the scene of a vast orgy.

Only a privileged few could share in the magnificent banquets within the precincts of the king's palaces; but every one was free to partake of the bounty bestowed on the people at the festal procession. The account of this feast as given by Callixenus, who was an eye-witness, sounds quite fabulous; nevertheless it must 1 Aphrodite or Venus. 2 “In singing the dirge.” Ialemos is the dirge or threne. 3 Theocritus in English verse. C. S Calverley.

have some claim to be believed, even though it is allowable to make deductions from the numbers he gives. The representations given on this solemn occasion were connected with the myth of Dionysus, not however kept free from all admixture with Egyptian traditions and customs.

The procession with the mythological impersonations must have been interminably long. In the time of the

COIN OF PTOLEMY SOTER.
native kings the ancestral images of the Egyptian gods and Pharaohs had been introduced;1 and in the same way the gods of Olympus with the Macedonian princes, Alexander the Great, Ptolemy Soter, and his son Philadelphus, were now represented. To add to the delights of the feast splendid sham fights were held, where the victors, and among them the king, received golden crowns as prizes. One such feast-day under the Ptolemies cost between £300,000 and £400,000; and how enormous must the sums have been which they expended on their fleet—eight hundred splendid Nile-boats lay in the inner harbour of the Lake Mareotis alone—on the army, on the court, on the Museum and the Library!

No sovereign house of that

COIN OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
period could compare with the Lagidæ in wealth, nor have any kings ever applied their treasure to more profitable purposes than the first Ptolemies.

Ptolemy Soter, first as governor under Alexander2 and subsequently as king, was the founder of the splendid edifices on the Bruchium, many of which were only finished by his son Philadelphus. He expended but little on his own palace, for he was wont to say that a king should be lavish to others and not to himself. He was a frugal and at the same time a wise and powerful sovereign, who sowed the seeds of most of the learning, and laid the foundations of most of the institutions that afterwards made Alexandria great and famous; and his disposition to promote science and art was inherited even by the most worthless of his descendants. He followed Alexander's example in leaving to the Egyptians their old laws and 1 A series of statues of deceased kings carried in the procession of the festival of the god Amsi or Khem, in the reign of Rameses III., of the XXth dynasty, is given by Wilkinson, “Manners and Customs,” Vol. III. Pl. lx. (New Edition.) 2 B.C. 331.

gods; but he held them in subjection by establishing military colonies. He might even have succeeded in engrafting Hellenic life and the Greek spirit throughout the
LADY OF ALEXANDRIA IN A ROBE OF TRANSPARENT BOMBYX SILK.
Nile valley if he had not denied all municipal rights to the children of mixed marriages, with a view of keeping the blood of the Greek colonists pure. Many as there were among the inhabitants of Alexandria who were not Greeks, the council was always addressed as “Men of Macedonia.”

Soter was equally zealous in the cause of commerce; he had the harbours of the city enlarged and improved; he brought eight thousand ship-builders from Phœnicia, and a great number of cedar trunks from Lebanon to use in increasing his fleet. The old Egyptian merchants had not known the use of a coinage, but had carried on their dealings by weighing out metal, which was commonly wrought into the form of rings. Ptolemy Soter1 followed the example set by the states of the Greek metropolis, and caused coins of gold, silver, and copper to be struck in Alexandria. Many of the Ptolemaic heads, particularly those on the more precious metals, are hardly surpassed in beauty of workmanship, and enable us to form a personal acquaintance, so to speak, with the different individuals of the family of the Lagidæ. The mathematician Euclid, the physicians Erasistratus and Herophilus, the Athenian Demetrius Phalereus, were among the circle of learned men which Soter gathered round him; Demetrius Phalereus he first took into his council as learned in law, and it was from him that the suggestion to collect a library afterwards emanated. He wrote a history of the wars of Alexander the Great, which is unfortunately lost to us. Among the artists who flourished under him in Alexandria, we need only name the painter Apelles and his rivals, and the sculptor Antiphilus. Buildings were needed in the new metropolis, pleasure and splendour were in great request in the great emporium of the products of three continents; what wonder then that Alexandria attracted artists of every description, that architects and pleasure-loving Greeks congregated there, that the East and West clasped hands there, the sovereign house setting the example of adorning life with all that was most lovely and delightful?

The hetaira Thais was Soter's first wife; his second was the Macedonian Berenice.2 Both these queens taught the Alexandrian ladies how the Greek feeling for beauty could be combined with the oriental love of splendour. The most exquisite of all the gems that have been handed down to us were engraved for the Ptolemies, and it was especially for the ladies of Alexandria that the weavers of Cos 1 Ptolemy Soter coined gold staters, or didrachms, 55 grains in weight, equal to 25 silver drachms; and pentadrachms, of 275 grains, in the same metal, equal to 125 silver drachms; and silver tetradrachms, of 220 grains. It is uncertain if he coined large copper, which was issued on the old Egyptian standard, but must have been employed for small change. 2 From this name a whole set of words is derived, including Bernstein, the German for amber, and through a series (vernice, vernix, vernis) the modern forms—varnish, Eng.; vernis, Fr.

manufactured a delicate fabric of bombyx or silk,1 a kind of firm but transparent gauze, which covered without concealing the fair form of the wearer.

This is not the place to enlarge on the wars conducted by Ptolemy Soter. Towards the end of his reign, B.C. 284, he associated Philadelphus, his son by Berenice, in the government. This prince found Alexandria in an advanced state as to its structures, to which only the ornamentation was lacking—and nothing could more perfectly accord with his talents and tastes than the fulfilment of this task. A man of much smaller powers than his father, he would never have been equal to the effort of creating a great city out of nothingness; but the disciple of Straton2 and Philetas,3 the wealthy and tasteful patron of science, was eminently fitted to finish and elaborate that which lay under his hand. He and his father have been happily compared to Solomon and his father David.

Under him Alexandria reached the summit of its glory. No member of his family, with the exception of the last Cleopatra, earned a greater celebrity than he; and that not by the splendour of warlike deeds, but by the quiet arts of peace for which his reign of three-and-thirty years and an unheard-of influx of wealth gave him ample time and means. Under him was made that translation of the Bible into Greek which is known by the name of the Septuagint; but the story which tells of Seventy translators who, although they worked apart in different rooms, produced renderings which perfectly agreed, must be consigned to the class of legends.

The greatest and most valuable work of Ptolemy Philadelphus was his anxious care for the Museum, which under him attained its most flourishing development. In this magnificent structure the most distinguished sages of the time of the Ptolemies found a welcome, and such protection from external worries as conduced to their advantageous co-operation in study and in teaching. It was situated in the same quarter as the king's palace, and consisted of a “Grove,” i.e., a large court with fountains and arbours; an extensive open hall protected from the weather by a colonnade in which the learned met, disputed, and found room to gather their disciples around them; and a large building with a spacious dining-hall. Here the members of the institute reclined at their meals—for the Greeks always ate reclining—classed according to the schools to which they belonged; the Aristotelian reclining by the Aristotelian, the Platonist by Platonists. Each mess chose its principal (or president), and the body of principals constituted a senate whose sittings were presided over by a neutral High Priest chosen by the government.

The structure was spacious, the decoration of its courts and halls was splendid and artistic, and the independence of the individual sages appears to have been perfect; they were always at liberty to teach or to pursue their investigations in the quiet of seclusion.

In the time of Philadelphus the Museum was the focus which collected all the rays of the spiritual and intellectual life of the period, and the means of culture put at the disposal of its members were unequalled; for Philadelphus displayed so much 1 A kind of silk, according to some authors (Yates, “Textrinum Antiquorum,” 1843, p. 168, where all the classical authorities upon the Bombyx and the Coian garments are cited and discussed). A description of their transparent fineness is given by Seneca, “De Beneficiis,” vii. c. 9. The transparent garments of Cleopatra are mentioned by Lucan, x., 1. 141. 2 A philosopher, who taught physics and material pantheism. 3 Poet and grammarian.

judgment and liberality in extending the collection of books made by his father, and had it so admirably arranged and catalogued, that this library—which was in connection with the Museum of Alexandria, and contained four hundred thousand rolls—was justly regarded as the finest of all antiquity. By the time of Cæsar, when these treasures, which had guided the labours of many Alexandrian sages, fell a prey to fire, the collection begun by the Ptolemies seems to have increased to nine hundred thousand rolls.

There is no province of science which was not

COIN OF PTOLEMY V. EPIPHANES.
cultivated in the Museum of Alexandria, no branch of learning which was not promoted there; but the most important and permanent results were produced in the departments of grammar—philology in the modern sense of the word—and in natural sciences.

It is to the critical labours of the Alexandrians that we owe the preservation of the literature of the Greeks, and the decisive influence that this has had on the culture of western Europe need hardly be pointed out. As regards natural science it is quite certain that the splendid advance it has made in our own time is indissolubly linked with the results obtained, and more particularly with the methods introduced by the Alexandrian school. The revival of science was in the first instance no more than a return to the principles of the Alexandrians.

The Ptolemies took delight in their intercourse with the sages of the Museum, and they strove to gather together within its walls all the most eminent minds of the time. Letters have been preserved from the hand of Menander, the great Athenian author of comedy, and from his lady-love Glycera. Menander writes to her:—“I have received letters from Ptolemy the King of Egypt, in which he invites me and Philemon in the most pressing manner, promising us in a princely fashion the good things, as they call them, of the earth..... Let him consult for himself. I shall want no advice. Thou, my Glycera, art my Hellenistic jurisdiction; thou art to me a whole council of Areopagites, hast ever been and shalt continue to be my every thing.”

Glycera answers:—“As soon as you sent me the letters of the king I read them. I call Calligenia [Ceres] to witness, in whose temple I am now serving, that I rejoiced, Menander, beyond the power of containing myself, nor did my joy escape the notice of those who were present. There was my mother, with my sister Euphronion, and a female friend whom you are acquainted with.....Seeing unusual joy in my countenance and eyes, they enquired of me: ‘What great piece of good fortune, my dear Glycera, has befallen you, that you appear so totally changed in body and mind, while a certain gleam of joy and pleasure shines through your whole frame.’ ‘Oh!’ said I, in a tone and voice loud enough for every one who was present to hear me, ‘Ptolemy the King of Egypt has sent for my Menander promising him in a manner half his kingdom!’ and when I spoke this I held out and brandished in my hands the letter with the royal seal.”1

1 Alciphron's epistles, translated by Beloe, p. 121.

If these letters are not genuine, they at any rate show us with what feelings the Greeks received an invitation to Alexandria. Menander certainly could not quit Athens, but many other poets and philosophers accepted the bidding of the Ptolemies, and found in Alexandria a new and congenial home, dear to them even long after the glories of the Ptolemaic dynasty were extinct.

Soter and Philadelphus were succeeded by Euergetes I., the son of the latter king; he greatly extended the frontier of Egypt eastward, and at the same time found time, taste, and means to maintain Alexandria as the metropolis of art, learning, and commerce.

FATHER NILE. (In the Vatican, Rome.)

During the minority of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes, and after the defeat at Paneas,1 the protectorship of this king was placed in the hands of the Roman Senate, and from that time Roman influence was increasingly felt in Alexandria, even under Euergetes II., surnamed Physcon, B.C. 146, whose strong, though crime-stained, hands and far-seeing ability availed to postpone for a short time the inevitable fall of his degenerate house. During the last peaceful interval of his stormy and interrupted reign, he found means greatly to develop Alexandrian trade; but his next successors lost all that they might still have preserved. The Roman general Pompey was appointed protector of the famous Cleopatra and her husband, who was also her brother; 1 The battle of Paneas was fought between Scopas, the general of Epiphanes, and Antiochus, B.C. 198, and resulted in the defeat of the general of Epiphanes.

CLEOPATRA CARRIED INTO THE PALACE.
and after the battle of Pharsalia he was murdered off the Egyptian coast at the instigation of his ward. Cæsar himself disembarked a few days later at Alexandria, and after defending himself on the Bruchium against a superior force, he, with the aid of Mithridates, routed his Egyptian foe. Ptolemy sank with the ship in which he was, in the battle with the Romans that was fought on an arm of the Nile by the Delta, and from that time, B.C. 47, Egypt, including Alexandria, belonged to Rome; although Cleopatra and her young brother, only eleven years of age—who was at first co-regent with her, but from whom she soon freed herself—continued to wear the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.

While Cæsar was defending himself on the Bruchium, Cleopatra, then seventeen years of age, had had herself rolled up in

a carpet like a bale of goods, and smuggled into the palace on the back of a servant. Her marvellous gifts of body and mind soon achieved the conquest of the heart of the great Roman; but, unlike Antony, who not long after sacrificed his duty and his fame to the intoxicating joys of a life with this woman, Cæsar never showed himself greater as a general than at the defence of the palace of Alexandria. In those days of extreme peril the famous library of the Museum fell a prey to the flames; Cleopatra subsequently endeavoured to repair the mischief, and induced Antony to transport the two hundred thousand volumes of the library of Pergamus to Alexandria. By so doing she carried out the traditions of her house, which always supported science and those who fostered it. Under her the aged physician Dioscorides produced his works, and the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, who was no stranger to the Egyptian mode of computing time, assisted Cæsar in the introduction of that new method of calculating the calendar which is now universally known as the Julian Era.

On the occasion of Cæsar's triumph at Rome, a statue of the Nile and a model of the Pharos of Alexandria in many coloured lights were exhibited to the people of the Tiber; and when, three years later, B.C. 44, the dagger of the assassin pierced the heart of the great Dictator, Cleopatra was living with her son and his, named Cæsarion, in a villa on the banks of the Tiber.

Days of the greatest splendour and most intoxicating delight were destined once more to shine on the Bruchium in Alexandria when Cleopatra, then five and twenty, induced her judge and conqueror Antony, after the battle of Philippi, to follow her to Alexandria and devote himself to her cause; attracted by a passion which she seems to have returned, and which was at any rate most romantic. The dazzling splendour of the boat in which the enchantress of the Nile went to meet the Roman conqueror, the irresistible fascination of her beauty and charm, and the

admirable talents of the woman who could talk to each officer in his native tongue, have been painted by Plutarch in such glowing colours that Shakespeare, in describing the first meeting of these famous lovers, has closely followed the historian's narrative.

“The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne Burnt in the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick: with them the oars were silver Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made The water, which they beat, to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggared all description: she did lie In her pavilion, (cloth of gold, of tissue,) O'erpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy out-work nature; on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool And what they did, undid. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes And made their bends adornings: at the helm A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle Swells with the touches of those flower-soft hands That yarely frame the office. From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast Her people out upon her; and Antony, Enthroned in the market-place did sit alone, Whistling to the air.”

CLEOPATRA ON THE CYDNUS.

The life of debauch led by Antony and Cleopatra has become a byword, and in fact the unlimited variety of sensual delight indulged in by this pair, the new pleasures invented by them, and their immeasurable expenditure remain as unparalleled as

CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE.
their indefatigable powers of enjoyment. At their banquets the guests waded through roses, the vessels were of unheard-of value, the food of unrivalled delicacy; and not only were the revels carried on through the night in the palace, but the guests wandered in disguise through the streets of the slumbering city. Music and song resounded, and costly perfumes floated in the air, in constant accompaniment to the games, the feasts, the hunting, and the boating of this famous couple who, with appropriate reference to the gold and silver splendour of their lives, called their children Alexander Helios (the Sun) and Cleopatra Selene (the Moon). The treasures at their disposal seemed to be inexhaustible; Cleopatra was the first to dissolve a pearl in order to increase the costliness of a draught of wine, and she came to the conclusion, as a connoisseur in luxury, that nothing was so extravagant as the most expensive incense; everything else having some certain value or outcome, while the worth of four hundred denarii1 of spices used but once to anoint the hands was wafted away on the air and lost for ever.

The days of repentance followed when Antony was defeated at the sea-fight of Actium, without attempting to avail himself of his powerful infantry, and forgetful even of his own often-proved and heroic courage. After this disgraceful defeat, he withdrew into a tower on a spit of land washed by the waters of the great harbour of Alexandria, which he called his Timoneum, after the misanthropical philosopher of Athens, concerning whom the most famous poet of the Alexandrian Academy wrote the following epigram:—

A. Timon, who Timon art no more— Light, darkness, which is worst a bore? B. Darkness—for in the grave I find Worse swarms of those I'd leave behind.2

But once more Antony, abandoned by his followers, met his Cleopatra for a brief spell of wanton luxury. Once more, in his struggle with Octavian, he found his old manly spirit, and then the hour of doom fell upon him and his queen. Both fell into the hands of the conqueror, but only in death. Antony evaded the hopeless future by a stroke of his sword, and Cleopatra by the bite of a poisonous asp.

When Augustus mounted the throne of the Cæsars, B.C. 30, Egypt bowed unresistingly to his sceptre, and became a Roman province. All the subsequent emperors were acknowledged by the priests, even in the inmost chambers of the temples, as Autocrats3 (or independent rulers), and enjoyed the divine honours paid to the Pharaohs, even in the sanctuaries at the Cataract and in the Oases of the desert. Augustus caused the suburb of Necropolis to be founded on the plain to the east of Alexandria, where he had defeated Antony; and later emperors still contributed to decorate the Egyptian capital with splendid buildings. The Alexandrians erected the so-called Sebasteum in honour of Tiberius on that spot, by the great harbour, where now stands an obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle, to which the city of Trieste 1 About £12. 2 Callimachus, Major R. G. MacGregor's translation. 3 The word autocrator is a Greek equivalent of the Roman Imperator, and appears with Augustus in Egypt, as the official language of the country was Greek, not Latin. In the hieroglyphical inscriptions of the Roman period the word autocrator, or its equivalent (in hieroglyphics), is used as a prenomen and inclosed by a royal oval or cartouche.

pretends to lay claim.1 Its companion, which for a long period lay on the earth, has been erected in London. It escaped the perils of an adventurous voyage, in a singular vessel constructed for the purpose, and was landed safely near the Thames. Neither of the obelisks has anything whatever to do with Cleopatra, nor is it true that that queen built the Sebasteum in honour of Cæsar after the birth of Cæsarion. The obelisk was only named after her because her name is one of the few among those of antiquity which has remained familiar to the memory of succeeding generations, and is therefore associated with all the great works of ancient times. The celebrated obelisk that decorated the Sebasteum was brought from the old city of the Sun, Heliopolis. It is 21·6 metres high (about seventy feet), and the sister obelisk, now for ever parted from it, stands on a London quay, the Thames Embankment, as the obelisk of Luxor2 has long stood on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. King Thothmes III. erected the obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle at the most splendid epoch of ancient Egypt, in the sixteenth century before Christ. The hieroglyphics engraved in the granite to perpetuate the glory of his name, were inlaid with silver-gilt,3 and its point was capped with the same metal. It was dedicated to the Sun-god Ra, and formerly the beams of the day-star were mirrored in the polished surface of the granite and gold. These obelisks stood before the door of the Sebasteum, around which lay gardens, and its colonnades were decorated with paintings and statues. This magnificent edifice was burnt down during a revolt of the heathen against the Christians, A.D. 366. How and when it was again destroyed after its restoration is uncertain. At the present day a stone-mason has established his store and yard on the site of this once splendid structure, and the whistle of the locomotive from the neighbouring station of Ramleh disturbs the contemplative visitor. The venerable monument in its sordid surroundings arouses no sentimental feelings, and it is only when it was seen from the sea that it had some picturesque charm or reminded us of the past greatness of the Greek city.

The famous “Pompey's Pillar,” too, carries us back to the Alexandria of the Roman emperors. It stands south-west of the city, and marks the spot where once the Serapeum must have stood, and where the Necropolis adjoined the Egyptian quarter of Rhacotis.

The Serapeum was by no means merely a temple to the god Serapis, whose worship was introduced by the Ptolemies, in order to give to the mixed races they governed a deity which Greeks and Egyptians might worship with equal devotion. It was also a learned institution, with numerous branches annexed, and it became at a later period a centre for the spiritual and mystical requirements of all the various shades of creed and opinion that met in Alexandria. In the time of the 1 This obelisk has been conveyed to New York. 2 The obelisk stood on four bronze crabs, which supported it, and on one of these was found a Greek and Latin inscription, that it had been re-erected by the architect Pontius, in the 8th year of Augustus, A.D. 24. The inscriptions show it was originally erected by Thothmes III., at Heliopolis, and erected again by Rameses II. at the same place. 3 The expression on the obelisk itself, tasm, or uasm, appears to mean gilded, for this word does not appear in any lists of metals, nor does it enter into the computations of metals, or lists recording the weight of different kinds of gold. It is. however, occasionally mentioned on obelisks that they were capped with this material; or, perhaps, merely tipped with it. One idea is that the expression meant copper; but the already-mentioned objection is equally adverse to that idea, although Abdallatif notices that in his time some obelisks remained capped with that material.

Cæsars only the Capitol of Rome excelled it in splendour. It towered far above its surroundings, carriages approached it by a well-paved way, and pedestrians went
POMPEY'S PILLAR.
up to it by a flight of a hundred steps that grew wider towards the top. The fore-court was entered by a circular domed gateway, supported on four pillars, and at last the Temple itself came into view with its obelisks, its fountains, its subterranean rooms, and cells for penitents; with its library, containing three hundred
EGYPTIAN GIRL.
thousand volumes, its halls and the gigantic pillars which could be seen from afar, even at sea. Paintings attracted the visitor, and the glitter of precious metals and stones dazzled his sight. A pious thrill filled his soul as he approached the sanctuary where the statue of the god—probably executed by Bryaxis—sat enthroned. It consisted of plates of precious metal, skilfully overlaying and concealing a nucleus of wood; it wore the Calathus on its head, and at its feet lay a Cerberus, with the heads of a lion, a wolf, and a dog, entwined by a snake. Through an opening, which was cunningly contrived in the half-dark sanctuary, rays of light fell on the lips of the god as though to kiss them. Under Marcus Aurelius fire broke out in the Serapeum, but the library and the statue of the god escaped injury. All that was destroyed was restored with new splendour, for Alexandria proudly styled herself the city of Serapis, and this god, like the Egyptian Isis, found priests and votaries throughout almost the whole Roman Empire.

When, under Aurelian, A.D. 273, the Bruchium was destroyed, and with it all the Museum buildings, the Serapeum became the meeting-place of the learned. It was not until Christianity rapidly took root in Egypt that the worship of the god was endangered; and when Theodosius promulgated his decree against the images worshipped by the heathen, and Theophilus, archbishop of Alexandria, devoted himself to carrying it out with fanatic zeal, the temple of Serapis was razed to the ground, and with it the statue of the god. The history of its destruction is full of dramatic interest. Every one believed that if any man ever dared to lift a sacrilegious hand against the sacred person of the god, heaven and earth would fall in ruins. But a soldier was found bold enough to lay a ladder against the statue, to seize a heavy axe, and to mount the steps. The blood curdled in the veins of the spectators, and even the Christians who were looking on watched the soldier's deed in trembling, and held their breath, awaiting some monstrous issue. The soldier swung his axe and hit the image on the cheek, which fell off rattling to the ground. All listened and none dared stir; but no lightning fell, no thunder roared; the sun shone brightly; no quakings shook the earth! The soldier struck another blow, a third and a fourth; the precious metal fell ringing down, and the mutilated body of the god was dragged through the streets—those probably who had trembled most with terror being those who treated it with the most impudent contempt. Finally it was burnt in the amphitheatre.

Nothing remains of the splendid edifice but a few shafts of columns lying on the ground, and Pompey's Pillar. An Arab cemetery with innumerable graves now occupies the site of its former splendour, and the mourners who come with palm-branches to the resting-place of their dead, and tell how bitter a loss has fallen on them, little guess how fitting an echo their lamentations over the transitory nature of all earthly things find on this spot. Pompey's Pillar, the last witness to the splendour of the past, still stands up against the sky, tall and stark, and little injured. It is the only work of art in the Greek style that can compare in magnitude with the work of Pharaonic times, and it is a masterpiece of elegant proportion. It is constructed of red granite from the first cataract, it stands on a quadrangular plinth, and, with this and the capital, is about 99 feet high. The capital, which is Corinthian, either is much weather-worn or was never finished; on the top a

ARAB CEMETERY.
statue formerly stood. This pillar does not in any way owe its name to the great Pompey who was murdered off the Egyptian coast by his ward Ptolemy, but to a Roman prefect of the same name who, as is proved by the inscription it bears, erected it in honour of the Emperor Diocletian, the “guardian genius of the city,” in gratitude for a gift of grain he had sent to the Alexandrians.

The citizens erected another monument to the same emperor, namely, the bronze image of a certain horse, to which, indeed, they owed much gratitude. One Achilleus1 had set himself up as emperor in opposition to Diocletian; the Alexandrians took up his cause, and Diocletian had to besiege the city for eight months before it surrendered. Achilleus was killed, and the emperor ordered that as many of the citizens should be massacred as would bring the blood up to his horse's knees. The butchery began, and he went towards the place of execution; suddenly his horse stumbled over a body and fell on his knees, that were wetted with blood. The emperor's threat was fulfilled, and the horse deserved the gratitude of the citizens, for far worse had befallen them some time previously.2 Caracalla, roused to anger by some jests and epigrams of the satirists of the great city—which had received him joyfully and worthily—fell upon the elders at a banquet, and on the youth of the city at the gymnasium, and had them all killed. The massacre and plundering lasted for several days; the waters in the harbour gleamed red with the blood of the slaughtered citizens, and the number of the killed was so enormous that the emperor dared not render any account to the senate; in his report he boasted that he had spent these days in pious offices, and had sacrificed the men with beasts to the gods.3 He had a strong wall, with forts at intervals, erected all across the city, to reduce the inhabitants to unresisting submission.

Happier memories were associated with the visit of another and earlier emperor, namely, with that of Hadrian, who disputed with the philosophers of the Museum, and was thanked by them with much flattery.4 The poet Pancrates, for instance, offered him a rare red lotus-flower, and declared the blossom had grown from the blood of a lion that the emperor had slain with his own hand in the Libyan desert. At that time posts in the Museum were indeed mere sinecures, but many men of conspicuous merit were happy to fill them, besides a number of less worthy persons— curiosity-hunters and dealers in trifles; we may instance the grammarian (or, as we should say, philologist) Apollonius Dyscolus, and the astronomer Claudius Ptolemæus,5 whose system of cosmogony was pre-eminent for more than a thousand years in the Mohammedan and Christian worlds.

Even at a later date philosophers of distinction were not lacking at Alexandria, and it was still the soil where Athenæus6 could live and flourish—a man to whom no sage saying, no anecdote of antiquity was unknown; and where so keen a judge of mankind as Lucian7 found food for his satirical tastes and powers.

1 An usurper who reigned four months, A.D. 296. 2 A.D. 284. 3 A.D. 216. He was present during the time of the massacre at the Serapeum. 4 A.D. 130. Coins were struck to record his visit, with figures of the Nile, Egypt, and Alexandria; the most remarkable represents Hadrian and his wife Sabina sacrificing to Serapis and Isis. 5 Supposed to have lived about the period. His observatory was at Alexandria. 6 Born at Naucratis, he wrote the Deipnosophistæ, or banquets of the learned, about A.D. 228. 7 A.D. 170.

Indeed, a marvellous vitality seethed in the blood of even the later Alexandrians. Under the Egyptian sun all that has any inherent capacity for growth must thrive luxuriantly. The quick blood of the Greek throbbed here with a more rapid pulse; but Greek vivacity degenerated to an insatiable craving for civil revolution, the spirit of enterprise to rash temerity, energy to a fevered struggle and contention for wealth, and the wit of the Greeks to reckless and frivolous mockery, which too often met with a sanguinary revenge. At the same time the sources of wealth, in the city which the Romans so often laid under contribution, seemed to be so inexhaustible that it was asserted on the shores of the Tiber that the Alexandrians

NIGHT ON THE RED SEA.
possessed the secret of making gold. And yet they enriched themselves in a very natural way; the exports of the produce of Egypt—the granary of the ancient world—lay in their lands; all the paper needed alike in the East and the West was prepared from the Papyrus, indigenous to Egypt, and had to pass through Alexandria; all the treasures of the interior of Africa—ivory, ebony, ostrich-feathers, and the gaudy fells of beasts of prey—were discharged on the banks of Lake Mareotis, and either carried in barques by way of the navigable canal to the harbour of Eunostus, or forwarded to the great mart on the quay of the larger harbour. Enormous profits also poured into the merchants' coffers from their dealings with Arabia—the land of spices—with the Somali coast, Ceylon, and the ports of Malabar and India, whence costly rarities were brought for which the luxurious Romans paid insane sums. The most valued were diamonds, and next to them pearls, and a pound of silk was exchanged against its weight in gold. The fleets sailed from
Myos-Hormos at the season of the longest nights, down the Red Sea, and returned
OLD EGYPTIAN VASE.
usually by the next December. The wares were disembarked at Berenice, conveyed by beasts of burden to Coptos on the Nile, and then forwarded by ship down the river to Alexandria. Here merchants from all nations awaited their arrival, but most found their way to Rome. The business done in the inner harbour of Lake Mareotis was more important than that of the maritime port, where the exports far exceeded the imports in quantity and value.

The industrial activity of the Alexandrians was as restless as it was successful. When Hadrian passed some time among them, he wrote a letter to Servianus1 which has come down to us, and is of great value, first, because it shows that even in his time the Christians—whom indeed he did not distinguish from the worshippers of Serapis—were a conspicuous body, and also for the picture that the emperor cannot forbear sketching of the activity of the Alexandrians, whom, however, he describes as a frivolous, capricious, refractory, and worthless community, running after every new rumour. “Their city [Alexandria].” he says, “is wealthy, splendid, and industrious; no one lives there in idleness. Glass is made there; some work in paper-making, others in weaving linen, and all the busy population seem to exercise some handiwork. The gouty, the blind, even the crippled find something to do. They all have but one God [Mammon?]. Christians, Jews, and all nationalities worship him. It is a pity that the manners of the city are so corrupt, for by its importance and size it is worthy to be the capital of all Egypt.”

The emperor's praise was as well founded as his blame.

GEM. WITH PORTRAITS OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS AND ARSINOË, DAUGHTER OF LYSIMACHUS.
Gibbon says very justly of the Alexandrians that they united the vanity and instability of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians. Perfect peace in the city was rare after the time of the Ptolemies, and quite unknown after the introduction of Christianity. The most trifling cause — a temporary lack of beasts or of grain, an oversight as to some customary greeting, an 1 Given in Flavius Vopiscus' Life of Saturninus.
error as to precedence in the public baths, or some religious dispute, at all times sufficed to stir up a tumult among the vast populace, whose vengeance was at once furious and implacable.

It is amazing to note what this hot-blooded, superstitious, and restless race was capable of in industrial produce, not to mention the mechanical inventions of such men as Ctesibius1 and Heron,2 who devised their automata in the peaceful seclusion of the Museum, such as clepsydra (or water-clocks), hydraulic engines, organs, and the like, and discovered the power of steam. Alexandrian woven stuffs were famous throughout the world,—from the coarsest horse-cloth to the most gorgeous hangings covered with artistic embroidery—from white cotton to the most gaily-lined silken robes. Their ship-building was the most perfect then known, and the carriages which the Alexandrians used in their promenades through the streets were not less famous than their fine cabinet-work. The tables which they made of thya3 wood, with feet of ivory, were purchased for as much as 1,400,000 sesterces (about £10,500). The engraved and incised works in the finer and baser metals were carried to the highest pitch of perfection in Alexandria, and of all the gems that have been preserved to our day the finest were executed in Alexandria. In goldsmiths' work and the setting of jewels for ornaments, cups and vases, as well as in the fabrication of arms, beautiful specimens were produced, as also in glass-blowing, an art which was brought from Alexandria into Italy. Even glass mirrors, window-glass, and coloured glass Mosaic (millefiori)—a sort of work previously known to the ancient Egyptians—were produced here, and the Alexandrians devoted great attention to grace of form in their vases of artificial crystal. We shall presently take the opportunity of speaking of the arts of masonry in Egypt, and of the manufacture of papyrus, but must now make an end of our wanderings through heathen Alexandria, the magnificent burial-place of the great and splendidly endowed Conqueror whose name it bears.

1 A.D. 251. 2 A.D. 284. 3 The wood of Callitris quadrivalvis, one of the Cupressinæ. A minute and interesting account of the tree is given in “A Journal of a Tour in Morocco,” by Hooker and Ball. App. D, p. 389.

HEAD OF SERAPIS, AND ZODIAC.

MODERN ALEXANDRIA.

A TRAVELLER named Norden, visiting Alexandria in the middle of the last century, compared it to an orphaned child who had inherited nothing of its father's possessions, but only his name. The traveller who at the present day goes down to the swarming quay of Alexandria, where steamships of every nationality lie at anchor—who surveys the enormous new buildings in the harbour— who walks through the splendid quarter of the Franks, and in the afternoon follows the string of carriages which drive through the Rosetta Gate, the old Canopic Gate, out into the country, would think this judgment too hard, and would be inclined to believe that not only the name, but a good share of the wealth of the famous father, had been handed down to the orphan. And yet Norden was right, for in his time the city had only as many thousand inhabitants as it could count hundreds of thousands in the flower of its prosperity. Its commerce had fallen off by degrees; one of the harbours—the only one in which European vessels were permitted to anchor—was so ruinous and insecure that, when Volney visited the city,1 one single storm of wind wrecked forty-two ships against the harbour quays, and every vessel that entered was in 1 A.D. 1782.
danger of running aground; while the other—now called the old port—which Turks only might enter, was, with true Oriental indifference, being utterly ruined, ballast being constantly thrown overboard, and gradually choking it.

The population was pauperised and wretched; dearth affected every necessary of life; even water, that most indispensable requisite, was wanting when the season of the inundation was over, and the Nile ceased to supply the cuttings which connected it with the city. The houses were low and squalid; nothing was to be seen in the market but dates and flat round cakes of bread, and the streets were choked by rubbish and ruins. The howl of the jackal and the screech of the owl disturbed the night, and on the neglected fortifications hardly four cannon were to be found in a proper place and condition. At the beginning of this century

ISIS SUCKLING HORUS.
the great city founded by Alexander was perishing of inanition and want; its life and wealth had vanished; but the last quarter of the century finds it healthy and thriving, the sick man is convalescent. Let us see how it happened that the tree lost its first bloom, and how a new spring has caused it to blossom again.

Within the first century after the birth of the Saviour, Christianity had extended rapidly throughout Alexandria and the Nile valley. It is believed that St. Mark the Evangelist himself preached the new doctrine there, and the Egyptians were better prepared to receive it than any other nation of antiquity. They had been accustomed for ages past to turn their thoughts to a future life; to regard this world as “a tabernacle,” and the next world as man's true home. The initiated among the priesthood worshipped the One God, whom they declared to the people under many names and forms. They represented the course of life under a beautiful myth, in which the hero triumphed over death, darkness, and sin. The images of Isis, with the child Horus at her breast, are the first representations of a divine mother and child, and repentance and penitential exercises were familiar to the Egyptians.1 In Alexandria, even, there were cells attached to the temple of Serapis, in which world-weary souls secluded themselves from the turmoil of life;2 and a Roman satirist ridicules the pious ladies among the votaries of Isis who allowed the priests to inflict on them any penance, even bathing in the river in midwinter, as a punishment for pleasant sins. This readiness to do penance, which was foreign to the pagan Roman spirit, won many disciples to Christianity on the shores of the Nile. Among the numerous Hebrew inhabitants of the city, too, it spread rapidly, for the cold theism of the Jews had become much modified in Alexandria by the religious and philosophical efforts to which the spiritual leaders of the Hebrew community had devoted themselves—men who had all experienced Greek culture, and who spoke and wrote the Greek language. The religion of the East and the 1 Figures of the goddess Isis seated, of bronze or porcelain, have been found in great numbers. They are generally of the period of the 26th dynasty, about B.C. 650, and continue till the period of the Roman conquest, B.C. 30. 2 They were called en katoché in Greek, and are mentioned in the Greek Papyri of the Serapeum of Memphis.

COPTIC MAIDEN.
philosophy of the West here solemnised their union. The new doctrine of redemption was received from Palestine with open arms on the Nile, and in Alexandria—the city of philosophical thought and methodical interpretation—its unfixed traditions were cast into a mould and established on a basis which made them hard to refute, and at the same time attractive to the Western mind.

Christianity was born in Palestine, but it was educated in Alexandria.

This is not the place to relate the struggles which the Christian community in Alexandria were forced to carry on against the heathen authorities that ruled them. Those days of persecution came to be known as the Epoch of Martyrs,1 and many of the noblest blood-witnesses of the Catholic Church were dragged to execution in Alexandria. However, when Christianity was made the state religion, heathendom also had its martyrs; and by the side of the touching figure of Saint Catherine we may well grant a place to the maiden form of the fair philosopher Hypatia,2 whom Cyril the Bishop caused to be slain by the hands of fanatical monks.

It was as early as the third century after Christ that the Patriarch Thomas ventured to dedicate a church in Alexandria to the Virgin Mary, and in the fourth, after the death of Julian the Apostate, who had vainly attempted to restore the heathen gods to the place they had lost, all Egypt embraced Christianity. But the Gospel of Peace had no power to control the stormy and irrepressible nature of the mixed races of Alexandria, or to cool their hot blood. The unbridled love of rioting possessed by the excitable natives of the great city now took another bent, and displayed itself in other scenes. These arose from questions of creed. Just as in former times they had been ready to seize the sword in petty and worldly quarrels, so now they were prompt to use it when the matters in dispute were shades of dogmatic meaning; and there was no lack of such occasions for its use in this city of disputants, of critics and hair-splitters, who now began to analyse the nature of Christ, just as they had formerly exercised their subtle wits in investigating philosophical systems, grammatical forms, and historic data. A lamentable spectacle! and yet grand in its way; and unique as evidencing how deeply the life of that time was penetrated and permeated by religious feeling.

The most famous of these disputes, and involving the most important consequences, were those as to whether Christ was of a similar or identical nature with God, and whether it was to be received that two natures, or only one— the divine—existed in Christ. The latter view, defended by Eutyches, was also supported by Dioscorus, the patriarch of Alexandria, and his congregation, while at the Council of Chalcedon it was rejected and stigmatised as a heresy. The Alexandrian emperors who governed Egypt, and who submitted to the decision of this council, combated the error of the Monophysites—those, that is to say, who acknowledged only one nature in Christ—but the Egyptians clung to their creed nevertheless, and poured contempt on the followers of the orthodox doctrine, calling them “Melikites,” which we may interpret as “King's Men.” To this day the native Christians of Egypt, the Copts, are adherents of the Monophysite confession.

The officers and troops of the orthodox emperors persecuted their fellow-subjects 1 Commencing 20th August, A.D. 281. 2 Massacred A.D. 416; daughter of the mathematician Theon, and teacher of an eclectic system of philosophy.

of the heretical creed with great cruelty, and these on their part resisted a compulsory change of bishop; sanguinary street-fights, in which the soldiers commonly remained victors, decimated the citizens of Alexandria, where now a new and stormy element was introduced. An enormous number of servants of the Church, contemners of the world, monks and anchorites, came streaming in from all parts of Egypt, which from the end of the fourth century was richer in monastic institutions than any other country of the world.

A COPT.

It might appear as if, at that remarkable period, true religious feeling had ceased to exist, and all Christendom was animated by merely the spirit of dogma. It was not, however, really so; only in the works of historians, who at that time had so much to narrate of grand foundations and conversions, of martyrdoms and visions, of fights with word and sword for the faith, no space was found for describing the inner life of Christian homes and families, or the lives of those hermits and penitents who, by an existence full of physical privations and rich in spiritual rapture, silently and sincerely strove for redemption and purification. Many of these had unostentatiously given all their possessions to the poor, in order to withdraw from the world and win Paradise by prayer and mortification.

Orthodox Byzantium was a more dangerous foe to Christian Alexandria than

THE PALM, THE CHARACTERISTIC TREE OF THE EAST.
heathen Rome had been, for it not only demanded the wealth and blood of her sons, but sought, too, to rob her of her noblest and proudest title—the Metropolis of Learning. Besides the heathen philosophers, the greatest Christian teachers of the
COURT OF AN EGYPTIAN HOUSE OF THE TIME OF THE KHALIFS.
time of the empire had lived in Alexandria—Clemens, Origen, and Athanasius. But now even the higher spiritual life and endeavour of the city were extinguished, for Alexandria was destined to escape no possible misfortune.1

The Byzantine garrisons were too weak to protect the frontiers of Egypt 1 Alexandria was decimated and burnt by Narses A.D. 553.

against the incursions of the marauding desert tribes, and the governors were too avaricious to take due care for the irrigation of the country. The harvests and exports of corn fell short, commerce became stagnant, and the industry of the country was paralysed. Added to these came pestilence and famine, and furious insurrection of the starving citizens, oppressed as they were on all sides. Only a few had been able to preserve the wealth they had inherited from their fathers; among them the converted Jew Urbib, who relieved the sufferings of his starving fellow-citizens with princely liberality.

It was from Byzantium, from the adherents of the opposite confession, the Melikites, that the heaviest blows fell upon the city and the country. What wonder, then, that when a Mohammedan army invaded the Nile valley, not long after the death of the Prophet, those Egyptians who adhered to the Monophysite doctrine should make common cause with the invaders, and finally, obeying the counsel of their Bishop Benjamin, go over to the general of the Khalif to put an end to the dominion of the hated Greeks.1

The Egyptian governor of the city, Makaukas, set the bad example to his Monophysite followers, and when the emperor reproached him in a letter, because, in spite of the hundred thousand Greeks whom he commanded, he would rather pay tribute than fight against the Arabs, Makaukas exclaimed: “By God! these Arabs with their handful of men are stronger than we with our multitudes; one man of theirs is equal to a hundred of ours; for they seek death and love it better than life.” When he immediately after made peace with the Mohammedan general, he promised him a poll-tax of two dinars2 for every Egyptian; but he made it a condition that no peace should be made with the Greeks till they were all reduced to slavery and their property confiscated, for that was what they deserved.

But in spite of the secession of the Copts, the Greeks resisted valiantly, and fighting went on for a long time round Alexandria, which was strongly fortified with many towers that mutually flanked each other; till on the 1st of Moharram, in the year 20 of the Hegira,3 the city fell into the hands of the Arabs.

At that time the inhabitants are said still to have numbered nearly 600,000, besides 70,000 Jews who had all taken flight before the city fell. Of those remaining behind 40,000 were Israelites and 200,000 Greeks. These large numbers are very surprising, and no less so is the estimate given of the amount of property of certain particularly rich Egyptians at that time. One Copt, who was convicted of having betrayed the weakness of the Moslems to the Greeks, was possessed of 13,000,000, and another named Petrus of 12,000,000 dinars.4

Amroo,5 the Mohammedan general, treated the conquered with much consideration. The story has been often repeated that he caused the four thousand baths of Alexandria to be heated during six months by burning the books in the library, in obedience to the orders of the Khalif Omar, who declared that “if they contradicted the Koran they were mischievous, and if they agreed with it they were useless”— but this is an invention of a later period. The great public libraries had been dispersed, 1 A.D. 640. 2 Two dinars equal 15 francs (about 12 shillings per head). 3 December 10th, A.D. 641. 4 13,000,000 dinars about £3,900,000; 12,000,000 dinars about £3,600,000. 5 Also called Amr-ben-el-Aas.

and the most valuable of the books had certainly been carried to Constantinople a long time before Alexandria fell into the hands of the Arabs.

Before the Emperor Constantine finally relinquished Alexandria and Egypt, he sent one more fleet to the Nile. It is said that the Greeks of Egypt appealed to him for aid under the following circumstances. Amroo, being asked by the commandant of a town to what sum the poll-tax was likely to be raised, pointed to the

“PLACE MOHAMMED ALL.”
walls of a church, and replied, “If you were to give me a mountain of gold pieces reaching from the foundations to the roof I still would not say ‘enough,’ for you are our treasury; if we want much, we shall take much, if we want little, we will take little.”

They joined battle at Nakyoos. Victory was hardly won by the Arabs, and when they had defeated the Greeks, Amroo had breaches made in the walls of Alexandria, for he had sworn that he would throw the city open on all sides like the house of a courtesan.1

All Egypt henceforth belonged to the Arabs; a new culture struck root in its soil, and spread and grew luxuriantly.

1 The city was taken, after a siege of fourteen months, on the 22nd December, A.D. 640.

The rapidity with which Islam was in those times able to engraft its vitality and its forms on the stock of conquered countries was quite magical. It is true that many of the Coptic communities clung to their old faith with true Egyptian tenacity, but thousands were converted to the religion of the Prophet. Churches and monasteries were destroyed, and slender crescent-crowned minarets stood up high above the towers of the Christian churches. A new and fruitful life soon bloomed in the Mohammedan country. Art and science, commerce and home-trade soared up again;

THE OLD HARBOUR OF ALEXANDRIA.
and the grand results of that peculiar culture and strongly marked period have even left the stamp of their influence on Europe, where, as we shall see, their effects are still felt. Egypt was destined once more to take precedence of all the Oriental nations in the highest and noblest walks of life; but the centre of its power and influence was no longer Alexandria.

Cairo sprang up from the camp1 that had surrounded the tent, Fostaat, of Amroo, and Omar2 himself had already passed sentence on the turbulent Greek city, which seemed to him ill-fitted to be the residence of a ruler of Egypt; it was in Cairo that the vice-gerents of the Khalifs and the Khalifs themselves held their court; it was there that the caravans, to whom now the commerce of both the East and West was thrown open, established their emporium; and though Alexandria still served as a port for communication by sea with the West and North, the lion's share 1 A.D. 641. 2 Omar restored the Nilometer and the canal of the two seas, called the canal of the Prince of the Faithful.

THE BANKS OF THE MAHMOUDEEYEH CANAL.
of the profits was snatched from her by the newly founded Arab metropolis, and by the rapidly increasing ports of the Mediterranean, Venice and Genoa. After the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled, and a new way opened to the Indies, and after the discovery of America, the number of ships in the harbours of Alexandria constantly diminished, and they gradually fell into decay. The Turkish Beys and the overbearing Mamelukes, who, after the incorporation of Egypt with the Ottoman Empire, drained it to the utmost, brought it to utter ruin, and it was, indeed, a beggared orphan when the French army landed here under Bonaparte, who by the splendid battle of the Pyramids1 made himself master of Egypt, and kept it till Nelson, the English hero, destroyed the French fleet in the bay of Aboukir, a little way to the east of Alexandria.2

This is not the place to relate the history of the short period of French dominion in the Nile valley, and the unfortunate issue of the enterprise undertaken by Bonaparte with so much admirable foresight. One thing only must be specially pointed out; the result of the French invasion was not merely that the whole course of the political history of Egypt was diverted into a new channel, but that the attention of European savants was directed to the ancient wonderland of the Pharaohs, and to those gigantic monuments which had endured for thousands of years. By the help of these it has been possible to study one of the most remarkable and ancient epochs of the human race in all its aspects, impulses, and results, and to resuscitate it, as it were, like a man buried alive.

It was as a subaltern in the Turkish army sent against the French in 1802 that the man first trod Egyptian soil who, by his unhesitating energy and statesmanlike talents, was destined to effect a revolution in the position of affairs throughout the Nile valley. Mohammed Ali's name is one of the most illustrious of this century and he is universally known as the founder of the dynasty to which the present Viceroy, Tewfik Pacha, belongs, and as the victorious hero who, but for the intervention of the European powers, would have gained possession of the throne of Constantinople. But few know all that he did for the internal development of Egypt, or understand that the country owes to him that impetus towards innovation which has proved a blessing in the present, and on which rest all its hopes for the future. To him Alexandria owes its renewed bloom, and it is with good reason that his equestrian statue now decorates the finest piazza—named after him—of the handsomely built Frank quarter.

Mohammed Ali understood that the great designs formed in his restless mind could only be carried into effect by the help of means borrowed from the civilisation of the West. He invited the aid of European engineers and architects, as it was necessary that the old harbour, which he now re-opened to the ships of all nations, should be deepened, extended, and made secure. With the assistance of the most distinguished French scientists he turned his particular attention to the irrigation of the country he governed, and he was not slow to perceive that, for a healthy development of the resources of Alexandria, the city needed above all things a regular supply of water, and a canal to connect it with the Nile.

1 21st July, A.D. 1798. 2 1st August the same year.

As he was the despotic and unrestrained master of all the human labour of the country, peasants from every part of Egypt were put under requisition of forced labour, and a deep navigable water-way was dug, embracing the lake of Edkoo in its wide circuit, and fed by the Rosetta branch of the Nile at Foom el Mahmoudeeyeh. Two hundred and fifty thousand fellaheen were employed in carrying out this undertaking. We cannot but pity these miserable creatures, of whom thousands perished, insufficiently fed or sheltered, and worked beyond their strength; but we must admire the work, which perfectly fulfils its object of

WATERING THE ROADS.
conveying the produce of Egypt once more to the harbour of Alexandria, of watering its parched soil, and supplying its inhabitants with the most indispensable necessary of life.

If we now walk along the bank of the canal, it is difficult to believe that hardly fifty years have elapsed since the first sod was turned for its formation. Where the closely-packed Egyptian boats unload, spreading palmtrees grow on the raised banks; and in the vicinity of the city, heavily-laden barques and small steam-tugs lie at anchor side by side with humble boats from the provinces, and elegantly-fitted dahabeeyehs for the pleasure trips of the wealthy. Proud palaces line the banks, and villas in long rows, many of them enclosed in gardens where the vegetation of every zone thrives and flourishes.

The wealth restored to the impoverished city by the construction of this canal nowhere strikes us more impressively than when we pass through the Rosetta Gate in the afternoon, and walk towards its banks. On the Arab and Christian holidays particularly, Fridays and Sundays, as we walk down the road, dusty in spite of the sprinkling of the black watermen, we are met by a crowd of pleasure-seeking citizens, on foot, on horseback, or in carriages. The dusky drivers of the pretty hired carriages, with their capital horses, on these days and at this hour demand double and treble fares, and the sais or out-runner bounds on in front of the millionaire's carriage with bare brown feet, never tiring even when the spirited horses behind him make their swiftest pace. The ladies and gentlemen in the carriages, and most of those on foot, are in European costume; only the Arab tarboush, known to us under the name of “fez” —a red cap with a black silk tassel—holds its own against the European hat. Those who wear it do not remove it in greeting, but instead of airing their heads, wave their hand at an acquaintance. Silks rustle, jewellery glitters, and handsome feathers wave wherever the fair Alexandrians show themselves in public; and there are among them not a few whose husbands can well afford to order their toilets from Paris, their carriages

from Vienna or Milan, and to secure them a box for the Italian opera at the Zizinia Theatre. Immense fortunes have been made here, particularly during the American war. Foreign commerce at the present time enriches enterprising merchants of all nations, and has attracted during the last few years three thousand vessels per annum to the harbour of Alexandria. The export of a comparatively new commodity,
A SAIS, OR RUNNING FOOTMAN.
cotton, has proved particularly lucrative, and the exchange business of the banks of Alexandria is far more considerable than that of the houses of business in the capital. The poor orphan has grown rich again, and its wealth flows in from many of the same sources whence its forefathers filled their treasuries. In the marketplace, which in Norden's time was deserted, everything may now be found that can serve to deck the tables of the wealthy, whether Orientals or Europeans. The fruit and vegetable sellers are for the most part Egyptians, but the purchasers are Europeans of all ranks, and among them we meet many a fair and elegant housewife, followed by her black servant, like a dusky shadow. With the single exception
of Abbas Pacha, who was always inimical to foreigners, Mohammed Ali's successors have followed the example of the great founder of their house, availing themselves of every advance in European culture for the advancement of Alexandria also, and devoting particular attention to those means of communication which keep up its intercourse with Europe and the other parts of Egypt.

Said Pacha, the predecessor of Ismail, had the Mahmoudeeyeh Canal cleared of silt and deepened, and the waters are now kept at their level by enormous forcing-pumps.

ALEXANDRIAN LADY WITH HER BLACK ATTENDANT.
He completed the railway connecting Alexandria with Cairo, and began the construction of that network of iron ways which overspreads the Delta with constantly increasing meshes, and which now joins the port on the Mediterranean with Suez, and connects all the most important towns of the Delta.

Said Pacha resided principally in Alexandria, for which he had retained a preference from his earlier life, when he was an admiral of the Egyptian fleet. He lived in his castle of Gabari at the extreme west of the city, on the site of the ancient Necropolis, where now races are run in the European style. The castle is falling into ruins day by day, but it was surrounded by gardens, and there the prodigal and eccentric prince, who was by no means deficient in talent, loved to inspect the manœuvres of his troops. The traces may still be discerned of the iron causeway which he had laid to enable him to overlook the march past of his soldiers without inconvenience from dust; they, in the polished black boots of civilised life, must have suffered fearfully from the metal heated by the sun of those latitudes. He had a railroad constructed to connect his summer palace at Maryoot with Alexandria, and to convey necessaries to the troops which were encamped there under his eye. The twenty-three miles of iron road passed through an utter desert, and had no other purpose whatever. In spite of this and many similar follies, the whimsical and extravagant Governor was open to great ideas; he had been brought up by an admirable instructor, Kœnig Bey, who had not left him ignorant of any of the nobler and more important features of European thought and culture; and history will not forget that it was Said Pacha who encouraged Monsieur de Lesseps' grand scheme of cutting through the Isthmus of Suez to connect the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and who provided the talented and persevering Frenchman with means to carry out his idea. He was not so happy as to live to see the completion

of this undertaking, which has been productive of vast results for the commerce of Alexandria. He died in January, 1863, after great suffering, and his mortal remains rest in a small mosque at Alexandria. Only a few, faithful to his memory, visit the modest mausoleum of the illustrious dead whose next of kin, in consequence of the most unfortunate law of succession then in force, had no claim to the viceregal dignity. This law is now abrogated.

Said's successor, Ismail, was the son of Ibrahim Pacha, the great victor of Nezib, and grandson of Mohammed Ali. The title of Khedive was bestowed on Ismail Pacha, ruler of the Nile country, by the Sublime Porte in 1867. We shall use this Turkish title, which means much the same as the word Viceroy, whenever we have occasion to speak of this man, whose prudence, industry, energy, and unprejudiced judgment raised the outward dignity and internal prosperity of his country in a wonderful degree. We will, in another chapter, more closely investigate the character and influence of Ismail Pacha, and show what enormous difficulties he had to grapple with in carrying out his grand work of education and reformation. He nevertheless, intended to carry them out, if not to the end, at any rate to a promising stage of progress, if his powers had not failed, and he had not been fettered by external influences. It must suffice here to give a sketch of what Alexandria alone owes to him.

Every one knows that it was the Khedive who brought the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez to its termination, and attracted the attention of the whole world to the success of the enterprise by the splendid ceremonies at its opening; in fact, it was an undertaking from which not only a single nation, but every commercial country, has derived benefit. For, so soon as the first vessels had navigated the canal, new shipping companies were called into existence, and at the present time Austrian and Italian, English and French, Russian and Turkish lines of steamships are in regular communication with Alexandria. Every year saw an increased number of ships entering the ancient harbour of Eunostus, and the Khedive undertook to make it in every respect one of the first ports, not of the Mediterranean only, but of the whole world.

It is at El Meks, to the south-west of the city, that the works are situated in which an enormous number of blocks of stone are squared, while others are hewn in the quarries of the rocky hills that coast the river. The breakwater is a work which is exceeded in magnitude only by a few structures remaining from the time of the Pharaohs. It lies opposite the little island of Pharos, and extends for a distance of above three kilomètres (more than a mile and three quarters), forming an obtuse angle towards El Meks, and many millions of tons of rough and squared stone have been used in constructing it. A second mole, almost a kilomètre1 long, is connected with the old station, and that and the new quay on the western side of the Heptastadium, east of the harbour, give the port altogether an extent of open space and a degree of safety that it can scarcely have had even under the Ptolemies.

A great deal has been said in Europe about the enormous sums spent, with true Oriental recklessness and lavishness, by the Egyptian Government during the 1 Rather more than half a mile English (4 furlongs 212 yards 1 foot 9 1/3 inches long, or more than 1,000 yards).

last decade, but too little has been thought about the millions which have been applied to great public enterprises, and which, like an acorn dropped in the ground, will bear full interest only to future generations, though already Alexandria has profited by them more than any city in Egypt. Protected against
MOSQUE OF SAID PACHA.
all storms by efficiently constructed bulwarks, and against every foe by strong fortifications, ships of all nations are here invited into a sheltered harbour, in which the largest fleets may find room. Here is the terminus of all the railways which directly connect the city with Cairo, Suez, and Rosetta. Here converge the telegraph-wires, by which it communicates with almost every part of the world, even with the interior of Africa. A well-constructed aqueduct supplies the houses of the citizens, and an elaborate system of gas-pipes ramifies through even the remotest
parts of the city, providing light during the night. It is only to the narrow alleys of the Arab quarter that this truly European illumination has not yet
WHAT WILL COME OF IT ALL?
penetrated; for when it was introduced there it filled the sons of the soil with such alarm as for a long time made it the ruling theme of conversation. The main thoroughfares are paved, and are furnished with side-walks. That love of planting trees which the Khedive inherited from his grandfather, Mohammed Ali, also proved advantageous to Alexandria, and a special office of health takes zealous care of the resuscitated city.

Several hospitals exist, and owe their foundation to that benevolence which characterises not only the Christian, but also the Arab religion. Even in the Egyptian infirmaries, strict regulations, imported from the West, maintain a discipline which multiplies tenfold the value of the gifts of the benevolent. Physicians of every creed exercise their calling in the hospitals of Alexandria, and the traveller, as he walks through the city, constantly finds the Christian cross adorning a church or chapel in close contiguity to the crescent crowning a mosque. Copts and Greeks of both confessions,

PROTESTANT CHURCH AT ALEXANDRIA.
Roman Catholics and Protestants, Anglican and Presbyterian congregations, have here their places of worship; and the Jews perform their devotional services in stately synagogues, unhindered by the Moslems, whose mosques in Alexandria are, in fact, little worthy of notice.

It is greatly to the credit of the successors of Mohammed Ali that they not only do not interfere with the religious observances of the colonists of other creeds, but have aided them in erecting their places of worship with gifts of building ground. Mohammed Ali gave up sites of considerable extent to the Roman Catholics, and the little Protestant Church, in which a German pastor preaches to a German congregation, stands on a plot of ground given to the Evangelical German colonists by Said Pacha. It stands on the shore of the socalled New Harbour, which ships can no longer enter, and on the soil of the ancient Bruchium. Services are also held here in French for Protestants who are neither Germans nor attached to any English denomination.

This German church was dedicated in 1866, on the Emperor William's birthday, and the congregation were liberally assisted in establishing it, not only by the

A YOUTHFUL FOLLOWER OF THE PROPHET
King of Prussia, as he then was, but by the Khedive himself. Erbkam, who is now dead, and who during his lifetime was well known to every lover of ancient Egyptian art, designed the little church in the Romanesque style. M. Lüttke, author of a work on Modern Egypt, was the first minister, and he could say with
SARRÂF, OR MONEY-CHANGER.
justifiable pride, at the termination of the work to which he had contributed much good counsel—“This neat little edifice, in connection with its situation in the broad harbour of Alexandria, which opens out on the broad blue sea, makes a pleasing and touching impression, and the Crown Prince of the German Empire (then Crown Prince of Prussia), like many other foreign visitors, felt this when he visited it in 1869, and gave lively expression to his sentiments.”

As we have seen, people of every creed have found a home in Alexandria, and labour and toil in complete freedom, not only in religious matters, but in

practical life also—practical life which, unfortunately, absorbs the lion's share of all the powers of colonists and natives alike. That life for the ideal, that struggle for intellectual wealth, that nurture of science and art which ennobled Alexandria
ARABIAN CEMETERY.
of yore, have not accompanied the resurrection of the great metropolis, and yet the circumstances of the new city appeal to us in many particulars as a reflection of ancient Alexandria. Just as the old town remained a Greek colony in the midst of Egyptians, so the new has received little of that impress of the Mohammedan mind which is visible throughout the rest of the Nile valley. The Alexandria of our day, like its predecessor two thousand years ago, has developed from an unimportant Egyptian town, by the influx of enterprising Europeans—chiefly Greeks and Italians—while the native Egyptian element has been thrust into the background. Now, as then, the citizens of Alexandria may well be called a turbulent and mixed population of South European stamp, and the saying of Hadrian, in writing to
WINDOW OF THE HAREM.
Servianus, “They all know but one God [Mammon],” is only too true of the greater part of the traders living here now, who far more often strive to attain the goal of their lives, a large and rapid fortune, by some happy hit in a risky speculation than by quiet industry.

Of course there are not wanting most respectable representatives of the merchant class, English and French, German and Swiss, Hellenes and Levantines; but the man who ventures into the Greek drinking shops, and their innumerable gaming hells, will meet with the very dregs of society— than whom nothing more worthless, dissolute, and reckless can be found in any great city.

The Jewish community plays an important part in New, as it did in Old, Alexandria, and counts many wealthy men among its members. A great part of the exchange business is in the hands of Hebrews, as we may perceive from the names of the most important firms, or by a glance at the humble money-changer, the Sarrâf, who conducts his business squatting behind a little table at the corner of a street.

Any one really desirous of studying Oriental life will not find what he seeks

in this centre of commerce; rather will he pack up at once and turn southwards to the beautiful city of the Khalifs; for in Alexandria the Arab is at home only in the poorest and humblest quarters, and the cemeteries where his dead lie at rest are almost more numerous than the spots where he dwells while living. Also the Turks pass for little. Many of them live in the island of Pharos in houses which, though humble indeed, are often pleasant enough. They are overlooked by the lordly palace of the Khedive, which is situated on the tongue of land known as Ras-et-Teen (the Cape of Figs), and was erected by Mohammed Ali and restored by Ismail Pacha. But even this building, though the sea washes round it in imitation of the
PALACE OF THE KHEDIVE.
Seraglio at Constantinople, is devoid of character, and would hardly be suggestive of the East but for the adjoining harem and its gardens. Here the inquisitive European need not hope to catch a glimpse of fine eyes half hidden behind a veil and trellis, though he may indeed meet with one of the eunuchs that are never absent from an Egyptian establishment of any pretension, as guardians of the ladies, and on whom, in ancient times, the highest offices constantly devolved in all Oriental countries.

Eunuchs were by no means first employed by the Mohammedans; on the contrary they were introduced from Byzantium, for the Mohammedans under the early Khalifs assigned a high social position to women, and Byzantium always returned with interest the abuses she had borrowed from the East. It is now long since eunuchs have been excluded from offices of state; but, although they all belong to

the black races of the upper Nile, and their repulsive and sleepy aspect gives small indication of it, they are said to be to the present day conspicuous for their prudence and energy, and they generally manage the household they belong to. In Cairo we as often meet them as here we rarely see them.

If in Alexandria we do at last succeed in realising that we are indeed in the East, the next instant something carries us back to Europe; and the time is not far distant when Western life will have destroyed the last trace of Oriental life in this spot. Only two unmistakable tokens survive—one in the vegetable and the

EUNUCH.
other in the animal kingdom—the Palm and the Camel; and these will uphold the Eastern character of Alexandria when the last minaret of the last mosque shall have disappeared.

Whoever remembers Egypt remembers its palms, those noble trees with slender fibrous stems, standing up like pillars, with umbrageous crowns that spread out like shading roofs; fair daughters of the East that are the ornament of the fertile land, and that break the monotony of the desert; under whose shade it is so delightful to rest, whose crowns are stirred by the lightest breath of wind, and at whose feet, when they form a grove, light and shade play in incessant variety. Wherever Islamism has penetrated this tree has followed it, the tree of which the Prophet himself said, “Honour the palm, for it is your maternal aunt; on the stony soil

THE JEWEL OF THE HAREM.
of the desert it offers you a fruitful source of sustenance.” The pious revere it as a gift bestowed by God on the lands of the faithful, and wantonly to injure a palm-tree would be a deadly sin. Throughout the East there are no gifts
PALMS.
of nature more useful than the palm-tree and the camel, and how incomparable the blessings which they secure to the Oriental seem in his eyes is sufficiently proved by the common saying, “The palm is the camel and the camel the palm of the desert.”

Every part of this beautiful tree, from the root to the summit, is of value. Its trunk is in many parts of the East the only building timber; mats and ropes are

woven of its fibre; of its branches roofs, beds, seats, cages, and baskets are made; and it is well known that it affords an abundance of nutritious food in the heavy clusters of fruit that ripen in the autumn under its crown of leaves.

The precious trees, male and female (for the palm is diœcious), are tended with care, and even the ancient Egyptians distinguished them as the father and mother

GATHERING DATES.
trees, and understood the art of assisting nature and of transferring the pollen to the female flowers by hand.

As the Swiss when abroad pines for his native mountains, so the Arab longs for the palms of the East. The first Ommeyyade Khalif in Spain could not exist in his new home without the lordly palm, and had a young tree brought from Syria, which he planted in the garden of his country-house at Ruhzafa, near Cordova. He gave utterance to his home-sick longing for the tree of his native land in the following expressive verses:—

“Oh! Palm, like me a stranger here, An exile in the alien west, Driven from home and dispossessed— But, ah! thou'rt mute, nor canst thou shed a tear. “Happy to have no sentient soul! Heart-ache like mine thou canst not know; Could'st thou but feel, thy tears would flow In yearning love and grief, without control. “Aye, home-sick tears for Eastern groves That shade Euphrates; but the tree Forgets; and I, compelled to flee By hate, almost forget my former loves.”

The palm-tree so pathetically sung has been the parent of thousands of descendants, which at this day wave their broad crowns in the breeze of Southern Spain.

We, at the present time, find it as difficult to think of Egypt without camels as without palms, and yet the “patient ship of the desert” was not naturalised on the shores of the Nile until a comparatively late date. It was not used in the time of the Pharaohs, though we find it mentioned on the monuments.1 and the conquerors of Western Asia often met with it in their expeditions. Even in the other parts of North Africa and in the Sahara, from which in our minds the camel is an inseparable feature, it was not in general use till after the Christian era. Barth has proved 1 As the kamaru or kamalu, as early as the thirteenth century B.C. It does not appear on the coins till the time of Hadrian, A.D. 130, although it is mentioned as introduced by Ptolemy, B.C. 304. In Assyria the two-humped camel of Bactria was known in the time of Shalmaneser, B.C. 850, and the one-humped at the time of Assur-bani-pal or Assurbani-habla, B.C. 627.

SHEARING CAMELS.
that even the Phœnician merchants of Carthage, whose caravans traversed the desert in many directions, made no use of this humped beast of burden.

They were introduced into the Nile valley in thousands by the Arab hosts, and followed them in their advance to the West. The facility with which they become naturalised wherever the necessary conditions exist is shown by the history of the

A SILK EMBROIDERER.
last few years. After the Crimean war Tartars migrated with their camels into the Dobrudscha, where that animal was previously unknown, and a short time since Von Kremer found it completely naturalised, and saw Tartar wagons in Galatz drawn by camels which had crossed the frozen Danube.

In Egypt the humped beast bears all kinds of burdens, draws the plough, drives the water-wheel, scours the desert with Bedaween or pilgrims, and yields milk to its owner, as well as its wool, which serves for weaving both coarse and fine materials. We shall often meet with the camel in the course of our further journeying, and shall have much to say about it, and need only add here that it is constantly employed in all sorts of ways in Alexandria. At Ramleh, to the east of the city, where the Khedive's summer palace is situated, and whither the Alexandrians adjourn in the hottest months for the sake of the sea-breezes, there are encampments of Bedaween who keep herds of camels in order to sell their valuable hair to the merchants and weavers of the city.

Of all the industrial arts of the early days of Alexandria one only still survives, that of fine embroidery. In the time of the Khalifs this had reached an admirable pitch of perfection. In those days the European princes procured their more costly dress-stuffs from the East, and even the coronation mantle of the Roman-German emperors, preserved in the treasury of Vienna, was worked by Arab hands; indeed the “Tirâz,” an arabesque representing in its artistic curves the name and titles of the illustrious wearer, is conspicuously embroidered upon it. Venice and Genoa obtained their silk-stuffs from Alexandria, and all the gold thread required in Europe in the days of chivalry—when the nobility loved gorgeously embroidered garments— was brought from the East, where it was made, as is now known, of finely divided threads of the intestines of animals killed for food. The island of Cyprus was the emporium for these wares, of which great quantities were used in the silk embroidery

done at Alexandria. We do not know whether it was in Alexandria that Said Pacha, the predecessor of Ismail Pacha, had his large state tent constructed; but it was made of heavy silk stuff covered with rich embroidery, and was so large that a hundred guests could be accommodated in it, its height being more than fifty feet. Embroidery and weaving are at this day the arts best understood in the East, and are practised by men as well as by women. One of the prettiest blossoms in the Arab anthology is addressed to a girl weaving. The last verses run as follows:—

“There at her loom her task she plies, Through quivering threads the shuttle flies; So thrill and tremble—while he sighs— The fibres of the poet's heart. “I watch her often as she sends The weft across the warp, and bends To tie or cut the floating ends— Fate-like—and sports with every heart. “Or, tangled in the ravelled snare Of threads, sometimes I must compare The maid to some wild fawn or hare Caught by the cunning hunter's art.”

The weaving of the East is still in high repute, but it is not what it formerly was, and the same is true of the embroidery; but both arts will continue to flourish so long as the Arabs retain their delight in gorgeous garments and fine carpets, and their wives love to cover their little feet with richly embroidered slippers, on which, among the gold, here and there gleams a pearl or a precious stone.

We are now on the threshold of the mysterious East, but its secrets will not be unlocked to us in half-European Alexandria. Away, then, to the south! through the Delta—“that verdurous fan,” as the poet says, “with Cairo sparkling like a costly diamond on the handle.”

THROUGH THE DELTA.

DIRECTLY the signal is given, with a shrill whistle we are off to the south by the railway. The houses and villas to our right, the morocco cushions on which we sit, the shape of the little tickets, the long wires running by the way-side, which bring men's thoughts into closer communication than the railway does their cities, the look of the locomotives and carriages—how European it all is! Aye, and the machines are fed with coal, ordinary black coal, and not with fragments of mummies, as an American author informed his readers not long since. And yet we are in the East. Palms are waving in the breeze, crescent-crowned minarets stand up against the sky, and the dust which pours in only too freely through the open window is genuine and unadulterated desert sand. Nor does the brown face of the guard under its tarboush belong to any European, and on the ticket there are Arabic letters and numbers, side by side with the French. The sleepers of the rails, too, are peculiar, for they are made of iron, the valley of the Nile being too poor in timber to supply them of oak.

To our left we see the sails of the ships that navigate the Mahmoudeeyeh Canal; on our right lie the brackish, level waters of Lake Mareotis, where formerly thousands of vessels found deep and commodious anchorage, and on whose shores—in those ancient times with which we

have sought to make the reader familiar—houses and vineyards stood in fair array. “And Thasian vines there are, and Mareots white,”91 sings Virgil. Strabo celebrates the Mareotic wine as keeping to a great age, and Athenæus, who had drunk it at many a feast in Alexandria, praises its pale colour and its delightful bouquet, and says it is light and wholesome, and does not affect the head. Horace, too, sings of the juice of Mareotic grapes, which, like all the better vintages of Egypt, grew on such spots on the shores of the Nile as were never invaded by its inundations, or overlaid by the rich alluvium they deposited.

In tombs of the very earliest date we find pictures exhibiting the processes of vine-culture among the ancient Egyptians. An example is here given, but we

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF THE VINTAGE. (From a Tomb at Sakkara.)
shall meet with many. Some of the vintagers are busy gathering the clusters from the vines, while others tread out the must. Above them is written, “Vintage of the grapes of the estate.” The name of the noble possessor was Ptah-hotep, and he lived about 5,000 years ago, at the time of the building of the Pyramids. Wine is no longer produced on the shores of Lake Mareotis, though many ruined walls remain on its banks, which the Arabs, with a reminiscence of old traditions, call “wine-presses.” In the rest of the Delta excellent grapes are grown, and, which is curious, not on vine-stocks, but still on arbour-like espaliers, as in the time of the Pharaohs. The wine-forbidding creed of Islam has interfered with the manufacture of wine; the cultivation of the grape has died out, and though the Egyptian grapes might very likely prove excellent for the purpose, none are ever pressed. They are of very good flavour, ripening in June and July, and are sold with other fruit in the markets.

Meanwhile we are being hurried onwards. Once more a bright sheet of water gleams to our left. This is the lake of Aboukir, so called after a miserable fishing-village on a little promontory to the west of Alexandria; but its name deserves, as few others do, to be held famous and sacred. The greatest sea-fight of the last century was fought opposite Aboukir, when, on the 1st of August, 1798, the British hero Nelson succeeded in destroying the French fleet under the command of the brave but hapless Admiral Brueys.

1 Georgic II., 9. Blackmore's translation.

This is not the place to lay before, the reader the varying fortunes of the

MINARET OF THE MOSQUE OF WERDANEE AT CAIRO.
extraordinary war which was carried on in Egypt against England; but how can we fail to recall, in sight of the waters of Aboukir, that battle, in which laurels were won alike by the conquerors and the conquered, while death gathered so rich a harvest, first at this very sea-fight, and subsequently in 1801, when the British besieged Alexandria? A hundred and fifty villages and hamlets were then wiped off from the face of the earth like an inscription from a tablet, for the English cut through the low hills that protected the fertile country, at a point not far from Aboukir, and let the salt tide through—a terrible ally on their side—flooding the defenceless plain.

Now the lakes are left behind; the level ground on each side of the railway grows greener and greener as we proceed. Damanhoor is the name of the first station, and here the locomotive takes in water. This is the old town of Horus, the Greek Apollinopolis parva, and now the residence of the governor, or Mudeer, of an extensive and fertile province. Grey houses of handsome size stand on the slope of the modest hill behind the station; slender minarets point to heaven here as everywhere, and the white tombstones of the Arab cemetery gleam in close proximity to the iron road. A widow, sitting on the grave of her lost husband, gazes into vacancy, not heeding the train as it rushes by.

It was by a mere chance that no less a man than General Bonaparte escaped joining the dead in the cemetery of Damanhoor. He narrowly evaded the threatened danger of being captured by a division of the Egyptian horse, and when Desaix remonstrated with him on his imprudence, he made the reply which was so strangely justified by subsequent events as to seem almost prophetic, “It is not written above that I should fall into the hands of the Mamelukes; of the English— perhaps.”

The foot-prints of a great man leave a significant impression, even in the most inconspicuous spots, and we shall often trace those which were left by Bonaparte and his followers on the land of the Nile.

The train now carries us through the highly-cultivated plain of the Delta, and we find it hard to believe that the French army found Damanhoor situated in the midst of a desert. It is true that the country we are speeding across is uniform, but the very features that repeat themselves—all, in fact, that meets the eye from Damanhoor as far as Cairo, and on both sides of the railway, bears witness to the extraordinary fertility of the black soil, and to the industry of its inhabitants.

An endless breadth of green fields spreads on every side, interspersed with villages that look from afar like tumuli, or ant-hills, shaded by palms, and not

WIDOW MOURNING.
unfrequently clustering round the rubbish heaps and ruins of some destroyed city. Camels and asses, with their drivers, pass in long files along the dykes that stand up high above the plain; black buffaloes go down to the water to drink, and birds, large and small, far more numerous than in Europe, people the air. Here buffaloes are grazing, there half-naked men and women, in long blue garments, are labouring in a cotton-field. New pictures multiply under our gaze, but we hurry past them; each as it vanishes is merged in the next. But stay! what is that? Sails fluttering— the sheen of water—a broad stream opens on the sight. That is the Nile; not the great undivided main stream of the Nile, but one of the two chief branches by which at the present day its waters join the sea.

The train rattles and thunders across an iron causeway. “Kafr et Zayat” is painted up on the whitewashed station, and we get out, for the fair at Tantah, at which we purpose to assist, does not begin till Friday, and it is well

worth while to stay and inspect more closely the great granary of the ancient world. It was the Delta that filled those ships whose delayed arrival threatened all Rome and Byzantium with starvation, and here, on sites of ancient fame, we may more vividly recall those famous times.

A boat can be hired at once, and wind and stream carry us down the Rosetta branch of the Nile, away to the Delta proper, whose soil the father of history1 very justly designates as the gift of the river. For a long series of ages man has availed himself of this gift, utilising it in various ways according to the requirements of each period. There was a time when on this island trickling brooks made their way through marshes and barriers formed by the vegetation, tangles of weeds

A DYKE IN THE DELTA AT THE TIME OF THE INUNDATION.
and wreaths of flowers. Islets and spits of land stood out of the water, and the luxuriant and unchecked vegetation which we see represented in the oldest tombs formed hedges, thickets, dykes, and fences, behind which the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and many kinds of reptiles and wild beasts lurked unmolested. Presently the land was occupied by man: Egyptians came to it from the south— Egyptians who, probably, had first crossed from Arabia by the strait of Bab-el Mandeb to settle by the Nile; and from the north came colonies of Semitic origin. The thickets were cleared, the streams made navigable for the canoe and oar, the wild beasts hunted down; and when abundant crops were found to thrive on the first reclaimed elevation, parcel after parcel of land was rescued from the marsh, the waters being forced to keep to their prescribed channels, and to serve the ends of the cultivator. New courses were dug for the stream, which in the time of the Pharaohs discharged itself into the sea by seven mouths. Flourishing 1 Herodotus.
A PAPYRUS THICKET. (From a Tomb at Benihassan.)
cities ere long stood on its banks, and two-and-twenty Zat1 or Nomarchs governed an equal number of circuits, and watched over the welfare of the district entrusted to them. This division of the Delta existed down to the time of the Romans, and we learn from large and small coins that, at any rate from the reign of Trajan to that of Domitian,2 each nome or district was free to coin its own money.3 A very marked individuality, as we shall see, distinguished these districts, and was made more patent by the circumstance that each prayed to its own circle of gods, and worshipped its own sacred animal, of which select specimens were kept in the temples. Images of them were borne in the processions, and, at a later period, stamped on the coins as the arms or badge of the city. The money struck at Mendes, the city of the sacred ram, shows the image of a he-goat; that of the nome Leontopolite, the province of the lion-city, represents the king of beasts, the god Horus having chosen that form when he vanquished the enemies of his father Osiris in the neighbourhood of Tsar, the city of the lion.

The Rosetta branch of the Nile, which we are now navigating, corresponds to the ancient Bolbitine mouth of that river.

The papyrus reed4 was diligently cultivated on its banks, as on those of every stream in the Delta; on its surface floated the lotus, not only as an ornament, but also as a plant for nourishment; for its seeds, like 1 Ebers writes Zat for Tsat, but the nomarch was called Hat or Ha (“First”). 2 Domitius Domitianus, who usurped the imperial dignity in Egypt, probably about 296 A.D., but was soon deposed by Diocletian. 3 Although Egypt coined its own currency as late as Domitius Domitianus (who is supposed to be the usurper otherwise known, under the name of Achilleus), copper coins inscribed with the names of the nomes or districts were limited to a very short period, the earliest being of the eleventh year of Trajan, A.D. 108, and the latest of the eighth year of Antoninus Pius, A.D. 145. They have been described by Zoega, Tochon d'Annecy, and De Rougé. 4 The papyrus is represented on the monuments as early as the IVth dynasty, and until the close of hieroglyphic writing. Its name papu occurs in an early hieratic text.

BRONZE COIN OF THE LEONTOPOLITE NOME (ANTONINUS PIUS, A.D. 145).
BRONZE COIN OF THE MENDESIAN NOME (ANTONINUS PIUS, A.D. 145).
THE PILOT OMAR.
the pith of the papyrus, were often eaten by the poor. This reed has entirely disappeared, not only from the Delta, but from the whole of Egypt, and has retreated to the south, where it grows abundantly on both the Blue and White Nile. The hippopotamus and crocodile have followed it, though they were still to be found in the Delta under the Arab sway; occasionally specimens of the crocodile are, however, still killed in Upper Egypt. Even the lotus-flower, once the most universally distributed and conspicuous of all the Egyptian water-plants, is become
TOMB OF A SHEIKH AT THE TIME OF THE KHALIFS.
comparatively rare;1 in its blossom the infant Horus2 was born, and its graceful form was constantly taken as a model by the architects and artists of Pharaonic times. However, many specimens of both the white and blue lotus may still be found in the stream in the vicinity of Damietta, and Rohrbach saw its poppy-like seeds eaten there.

Under the Byzantine dominion the culture of the Delta retrograded sadly. The Khalifs and the governors under them revived it by their care for the wise distribution of the waters of the Nile, and many a solitary building, in some remote spot rarely trodden by the foot of a European, testifies to the more 1 Called Sshnin, still found, according to Mariette Pacha, in the canals of Lower Egypt. 2 Horus was born of Isis, but at a later period is seen seated on the lotus. It is said to be a symbol of the new birth of the sun, and of the resurrection.

flourishing life which blossomed even there when Islam was at the summit of its glory.

After the fall of the Fatimite dynasty and the death of the great Saladin (Salah-ed-deen)1 the cultivation of the Delta deteriorated more and more, first under

ON THE ROSETTA BRANCH OF THE NILE.
the sway of the Mameluke sultans, and subsequently, after the incorporation of Egypt with the Ottoman Empire by Selim, as the inevitable consequence of the rapacity and greed of the Turkish Pachas and Beys. In process of time the mouths of the Nile became choked with alluvial mud, and the outlet for the discharge of the flood became so small that it was forced to find a new and deeper bed. The eastern or Pelusiac arm found a convenient issue through the Sebennytic channel and into the sea at Damietta; the western or Canopic branch was diverted into an artificial channel, the Bolbitine mouth, now known as the Rosetta branch, down which, in fact, we are this moment travelling. The ancient main branches of the river gradually disappeared entirely; their waters were distributed throughout the interior of the Delta by new subsidiary channels, and it is almost exclusively by these that at the present day the Nile discharges its flood into the sea. Since the time of the Romans the veins, so to speak, that traverse the Delta in all directions have changed beyond all recognition, and that which is true of the river-courses is equally applicable to the vegetation which owes its existence to the Nile. New and foreign products have displaced not the papyrus and lotus only, but in some measure even the grain of the ancient Egyptians; trees of new species overshadow the roads and hamlets, and it may be confidently asserted that all the arable land which was lost to culture under the rule of the Mamelukes and Turks has been reclaimed under the fostering care of Mohammed Ali and his successors, more especially under Ismail Pacha. Bonaparte's saying that under good management the Nile would extend to the desert, and under bad management the desert would extend to the Nile has been verified; and the traveller visiting the neighbourhood of Damanhoor in the month of October— Damanhoor, where the French troops complained loudly that they were starving— will see with double surprise the endless spread of fields of maize as tall as a man, where the golden spathes swelled with grain now await the reaper, though they were sown only a few weeks since.

A gentle southerly air fills the lateen-sail of our modest bark; we squat, Turk-fashion, on the deck, and the fields and meadows, the villages and hamlets glide 1 A.D. 1192.

past us. There is abundant food for curiosity and not a little for the lover of landscape beauty, as here and there a reach of the river brings graceful groups
ARABIC DECORATIVE PAINTING.
of palms and shrubs into view, or we see long files of the village women coming down to the river to draw water. The bronze-hued men, women, and children are busy in every field, busy from the rising of the sun till its last level rays glow above the western horizon. The whole earth can show us no more fertile plains than those that lie around us; but few make greater demands on the industry of the husbandman. Only a certain portion of the soil, known as the Rayah fields, is steeped and enriched in the inundation; the higher-lying grounds—Sharakee—demand artificial watering from year's end to year's end, and a considerable amount of manuring also. We frequently meet with fellaheen labouring at the shadoof, or bucket and pole, in Upper Egypt; but here the fields are watered by means of wheels to which water-jars are attached—the sakeeyeh— or by the taboot, a wheel constructed with hollow box-shaped appendages to the spokes. Buffaloes or camels turn the water-works, which are heard clanking from afar; but nowadays the rural quiet is not unfrequently disturbed by the regular snort and rhythmical clatter of a steam-pump on the bank.

VILLAGE IN THE DELTA.

The water thus raised serves to irrigate here a cotton plantation—of which the shrubs are covered in their season with flowers that much resemble those of the wild rose—or there fields of indigo, hemp, or grain. Broad levels, gay with many-coloured blossoms, are sown with poppy—“the father of sleep” (Aboo'n-noom) as the Arabs

A WATER-WHEEL.
call it—and the beds of pumpkin, melon, and cucumber are resplendent with spherical golden fruit and green cylindrical gourds. Most of the soil yields two or even three crops in the year, but it requires a proper rotation of crops, and in some cases to lie fallow for a time.

We are now approaching a village which, being built close to the shore, invites us to land. The huts of the poorer fellaheen are constructed of Nile mud and roofed

with palm stems and leaves daubed over with earth; the richer peasants live in houses built of sun-dried bricks, while the magistrate of the village not unfrequently has a handsome dwelling of properly burnt bricks. None of the windows open to the street; over many of the doors we see some modest decoration—a torus, a fillet in ovolo, or a spiral ornament. Here some small, coloured china plates have been used as a decoration; there a fancifully designed representation of the king of beasts; there, again, a painted picture of the camel or steam-boat on which the master of the house performed his pilgrimage to Mecca across the desert and the Red
RUINS OF SAIS.
Sea. The order of art to which all these decorative paintings belong—and we shall find them common even in the capital—is certainly that of our first innocence, or of the famous “Livre des Sauvages” by which the Abbé Domenech made himself notorious. Heaps of rubbish choked with weeds, among which cowardly yelping dogs seek a subsistence, lie in the middle of the village street, where we may very likely come upon the rotting carcase of an ass. A minaret towers above the houses and hovels, and a few umbrageous sycamores spread their leafy crowns, the chief ornament of the village; slender date-palms sway in the breeze, the long racemes of the acacia shed their delicate perfume by the side of thorny Sont-trees; evergreen tamarisks, and the carob with its long pods of seeds—the St. John's bread or locust-bean—mingle with that child of distant India, the Lebbek-tree (albizzia lebbek), which has been naturalised here only within the last twenty or thirty years.

Notwithstanding the extreme poverty of such villages, we rarely meet with beggarly misery, but seldom, on the other hand, with a well-to-do peasantry such as we

should have been justified in looking for in this favoured climate. Most of the land belongs to the Khedive, to the Pacha, or to the Bey; the fellah tills it merely as a
NEITH, GODDESS OF SAIS.
tenant or day-labourer, and the taxes he is forced to pay if he owns the soil absorb a disproportionately large share of the profit he derives from it. The patient peasant submits to the oppression which has been his lot ever since the foundation of the dominion of the Pharaohs as to an inevitable law of nature; it reached its culminating point under the Mamelukes and Beys, and it has by no means ceased even under the more judicious rule of the present government, which can spare nothing for ameliorating the domestic condition of the lower classes.

We have reached our first destination in the course of our journey. We will quit the boat and walk inland; presently we come upon a village, and a little to the northward lie some mounds of ruins and a small lake. By the water's edge stand some storks, and a flock of herons allow us to approach within a few yards of them before they turn their graceful necks and spread their wings, soaring away towards the Nile like a white cloud.

We are now among the ruins of the ancient Sais,1 the splendid residence of Pharaohs and the city of sages, where flourished an academy which was no less

PALM CAPITAL.
famous among the Greeks than among the Egyptians themselves. The little village, crowned by a mosque, which has engrafted itself on the site preserves the proud name of Sais in the form of Sa or Sa el Hagayr.

The writer of these pages attempted many years since to realise in his mind's eye the now vanished city of Sais as it was at the time of its splendour,2 to people its temples with priests and sacred animals, its streets with a living humanity, its palaces with princes and potentates. It is impossible to describe the feelings which stirred his soul as he trod the soil of the venerable spot, while the fallen edifices stood before his fancy, and the illustrious dead rose again before his dreaming spirit. Wandering and searching through the wide extent of ruins he could find no trace of those noble buildings—not a hall, not a room, not a pillar—nothing but an ancient rampart wall, which for colossal dimensions has not its fellow even in Egypt. It consists of huge unburnt bricks, and encloses the meagre remains of the once magnificent city. The citadel with the ancient palace of the 1 The city of Sais is mentioned under the Vth dynasty, and continues to be so in Egyptian texts till the XXVIth. Its most flourishing period was during this dynasty (B.C. 670 to B.C. 527), when Egypt fell into the power of the Persians, and was conquered by Cambyses. The capital under the XXVIth dynasty was at Sais, and the tombs of that line are said to have been there. Many of its monuments were of basalt. 2 In “An Egyptian Princess.” (Sampson Low & Co.)

MARKET AT DESOOK.
Pharaohs must have stood on yonder mound; that pool at the side of the northern enclosure is the sacred lake on which the history of Isis and Osiris was represented at night, on richly decorated vessels, in a splendid and mystical drama or mystery-play. The lake undoubtedly lay within the precincts of the temple of Neith, the divine mother, the Female Principle in the life of the Cosmos and of man. She was Nature, whose mysterious order must remain a secret to the sons of earth. Her statue bore the inscription, “I am all in all; the Past, the Present, and the Future, and my veil hath no mortal ever raised.” It was this sentence which inspired Schiller, the great German poet, with the motive of his “Veiled Statue of Sais.” The youth who dared to raise that curtain never revealed what he had found hidden behind it.

“Senseless and pale, Prostrate before the dais of Isis' shrine Next day they found him; that which there he saw He never uttered.”

Here, as in other temples, the image of the divinity or of her sacred animal, the cow, was carved out of one block and enshrined in a sanctuary. The enormous and finely-worked mass of granite, which must have weighed about 880 tons, was brought by order of Amasis from the first cataract at the utmost south of Egypt, and dedicated by him to the goddess; his first name, Se Neth (son of Neith), designated him as her son. This gigantic monument formerly graced the sanctuary of the goddess, with obelisks and sphinxes, with pillars crowned by capitals of palms, and with colossal statues—of which we are told by trustworthy authorities; but the same fate has befallen them all, as well as the palaces, the houses of the citizens and princes, the tombs of Osiris and of the Saite kings. The excavations in the soil of the dead city carried on by Mariette Pacha, the chief commissioner for antiquities in Egypt, have brought to light little that is noteworthy.

They have also yielded but a small number of those stone relics and images which are preserved in all the museums of Europe, and yet we know from records on other monuments that the arts of sculpture in Egypt reached a high pitch of development under the dynasty which had its origin in Sais. We may be specially grateful to the good fortune which gave to the museum of the Vatican one monument as a witness of the most fateful period of Saite history, namely, of the time that followed the Persian conquest of the city. An inscription on this monument relates how Cambyses, after entering the city, at first proved himself gracious to the priesthood, and even caused himself to be initiated into the mysteries of Neith.1 It was at a later period that the son of Cyrus first showed himself as the frenzied tyrant that is painted in history. Until long after his time the sages of the academy of Sais continued to enjoy the high estimation which they had won in the earliest ages. The greatest medical work of the Egyptians that has come down 1 Known as the Pastophorus Statue of the Vatican. It has been published in the “Museo Pio Clementino VII.,” Plate 6. A complete translation of the whole inscription is given in the “Records of the Past,” Vol. X. p. 45, by Mr. Le Page Renouf. It is the narrative of Utahorresenet, an officer of state and admiral who lived under Cambyses and Darius, and differs from that generally received

to us was written by them; they told Solon of “Atlantis,” the engulfed land of the far west, and Plato's account of their discourse makes us admire and wonder at
FOOA.
their sagacious observations of the starry heavens. Herodotus sought instruction from them, and legend tells us that Cecrops, the founder of Athens, came forth from Sais. All the Hellenes called Neith—in Egyptian, Neth—Athene; and ΑΘΗΝΑ , as has been observed, if read from left to right, yields Neth (Α)ΝΗΘ(Α). This goddess, who was also worshipped by the tribes of Libya, was represented with a weaver's shuttle on her head, and the linen stuffs, carpets, and other costly tissues of Sais were famous throughout the ancient world.

The external prosperity of Egypt, and the number of her cities and population at no time reached a greater height than under her Saite rulers, who were always friendly to the Greeks.1 And now! A chill runs through our veins as we look down on the deserted plain and the wretched heaps of grey ruins that surround us. Sais was still important enough to be mentioned as a bishopric in the first centuries after Christ; but after that its existence is forgotten. Its memory, however, must continue to live in the minds of men.

We return to our boat, which carries

OUTSIDE THE GATE OF ROSETTA.
us still farther to the north. It is now growing dusk, and our thoughts recur to the “lamp-burning,” as it was called, the great festival of Neith of Sais, when every citizen lighted his lamp, and a splendid illumination, which extended throughout Egypt, turned the night into day.

After a voyage of three hours we enter the harbour of the pretty and attractive town of Desook, where we cast anchor. Sleep is short and uneasy on the hard deck-couch, and the Egyptian sun inevitably forces us to open our eyes. Bedaween, who have come to the camel-fair, have pitched their tents on the quay, and with the first morning twilight they are up and stirring, praying with their faces turned towards the East.

The sky flushed, and as the fiery globe arose, glorious and mighty, I was irresistibly 1 Psammetichus I. owed his elevation to the Greek troops sent to him by Gyges, King of Lydia. They were Ionians and Carians.

MOSQUE OF THE HOLY IBRAHEEM AT DESOOK.
reminded for the first time of those sublime verses of the Bible, which so often afterwards recurred to my mind as I watched many an Eastern sunrise:—

“In them [the heavens] hath he set a tabernacle for the sun: which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course. It goeth forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and runneth about the end of it again: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” (Ps. xix. 5, 6, Prayerbook Version.)

HOUSE IN ROSETTA WITH PROJECTING STOREYS.

The Orientals sometimes seek their beds early, but they never lie late. The prayer at sunrise may on no account be omitted; besides, it is considered unwholesome to let the sun shine on the head of a sleeper, and the cool morning hours are the pleasantest of the day. Hence, every Arab unfailingly performs his first morning ablutions as soon as he can “tell a white thread from a black one.” This is the day of the weekly market and camel-fair of Desook, and the peasants and Bedaween are seen standing in picturesque groups in front of the mosque of the Holy Ibraheem, chaffering, bargaining, chatting, or gambling. The noble cupola of the Gamah, or mosque, has been lately whitewashed, for in a short time—only eight days after the Festival at Tantah — the “Molid,” or birthday festival of the patron saint of Desook—who is considered second only to the holy Seyyid el

THE ROSETTA STONE. (In the British Museum.)
Bedawee of Tantah—is to be held, with all the accompaniments of the annual fair, with solemn prayer and recitations of the Koran, with religious dancing and various festivities.

All that here meets the eye is purely and genuinely Oriental in character, and many a picturesque face and form may be seen among the women who bring vegetables and fowls to market, or who come to fetch water for household uses; but our attention is for the moment diverted by our desire to solve this problem: Does Desook occupy the site of the ancient Naucratis or not?

What was Naucratis?

It was the predecessor and precursor of Alexandria—for centuries the only city in Egypt in which the Greeks were permitted to settle and carry on commerce unmolested; it was, in fact, to the Nile valley what the Dutch factory of Desima,

ages later, was to Japan. And the Hellenes were very capable of taking advantage of this privilege. Ionians, Dorians, and Æolians here united in a sort of Hanseatic
WINDOW OF A HAREM.
league, with special representatives and a common sanctuary, the Hellenion, which served as a tie among them; while close to it the Samians raised a temple of their own to Hera, the Milesians one to Apollo, and the Æginetans one to Zeus. This rich colony remained in faithful connection with the mother-country, contributed to public works in Hellas, received political fugitives from that home as guests, and made life fair for them, as for its own children, after the Greek model. The women and the flower-garlands of Naucratis were unsurpassed in beauty, and all Hellas sang the praises of Rhodopis, whom Charaxos, the brother of the poetess Sappho, purchased and married, and whose memory was long revered in legend and story.1

Naucratis must have stood somewhere near where Desook now stands; but

DOOR OF AN ARABIAN HOUSE.
it is in vain that we seek a trace of the ancient days. Not a shard, not a stone is to be found to support this conjecture. It is certain that Naucratis belonged to the nome of Sais, but it may have been situated farther to the west than Desook—on what spot we cannot exactly know, and we are not able to support any hypothesis by evidence.

Away then, still farther north! We must hasten onwards if we would visit Resheed, or Rosetta, and still reach Tantah in time for the opening ceremonies of the great festival on Friday.

A favouring breeze swells our sails; we have the pretty little town of Fooa on our right. Foom el Mahmoudeeyeh lies to the left. There it is that huge and well-managed steam-engines work the pumps that force the waters of the Nile into the canal which connects the river with Alexandria. First one and then another village, each crowned with its minaret, comes into view and 1 The story of her sandal seems to be the origin of the tale of Cinderella.

ZENAB.
disappears; the richest cultivation is everywhere apparent. Before nightfall we have passed the palm-groves and hill of Aboo Mandoor, and the harbour of Resheed comes in sight, crowded with Arab barques. We find a hospitable reception in the house of an American, who is now commander-general of the fortifications, and who in his own country won a name for himself during the Civil War. The well-informed son of this veteran hero is our guide next day through the streets and bazaars, the mosques and gardens of the city.

Many Greek columns and pillars—used in building private houses and mosques, or lying on the ground under the open sky—are relics of the ancient Greek

SELLER OF DATE BREAD.
Bolbitine period, but there are no monuments or inscriptions of any earlier date; while, on the other hand, many handsome houses, ornamented with projecting storeys, and almost European in style, testify to the importance of the city in more recent times. A large part of the commerce of Alexandria, particularly in the products of Egyptian soil, was at one time diverted to Resheed, but it was forced to surrender it again as soon as the Mahmoudeeyeh Canal had once more opened the road from Alexandria to the Nile. Wherever we go we feel that the city is all too spacious for its 20,000 inhabitants; it is like a deserted palace, where humble citizens dwell in the halls and saloons. The gardens are inviting and neat. Resheed in Coptic is called Ti Rashit, which may be translated the “city of pleasantness.” If we pass through the northern gate, and walk on, we come upon some fortifications, and among them Fort St. Julien. It was here that a French captain of engineers, named Bouchard, was employed in throwing up entrenchments, when his workmen discovered a stone, which made his name immortal and gave new fame to that of Rosetta.1

Who has not heard of the “Rosetta Stone,” the tablet or key which has upon it the three famous inscriptions which made it possible for European investigators to unlock the lips of the Egyptian Sphinx, closed as they had been for ages—that is to say, to decipher the hieroglyphic writings of the ancient Egyptians? By the fortune of war the inestimably precious block of basalt fell into the hands of the English, who have worthily enshrined it in the British Museum. We must defer telling the reader how it was possible, by the aid of the Egyptian inscription with its Greek translation incised on this slab, to decipher other hieroglyphic records until we stand before other monuments, which are preserved at Boolak, near Cairo, and which tested and proved the hypotheses of Egyptologists.2

1 A.D. 1799. 2 It is a decree of the priests of Egypt assembled (B.C. 198) at a synod at Memphis in honour of Ptolemy V., to whom it accords certain honours in consideration of the services rendered to the priesthood by the monarch. It consists of three versions: hieroglyphical, demotic or enchorial—used as a kind of written handwriting at the time, and employing the popular language, which differed from the extinct hieroglyphic—and Greek. About one-third of the hieroglyphical writing is wanting. Some decipherment was first attempted in 1802. Young, in 1818, deciphered the names of Ptolemy and Berenice in hieroglyphics, and his discovery of the phonetic principle—namely, that the hieroglyphs were used for sounds—led to the discovery of the whole by Champollion in 1822.

This famous tablet has lost a corner; how happy would he be that might find it!

But we have lingered too long on our voyage northwards. By dawn next day we are once more on board, and sailing back to Desook by the way by which we came. There we take the train, and reach our destination in time for the opening of the festival.

Tantah is an Egyptian city of moderate size, and the residence of the Mudeer of a considerable province. Opposite the railway station there stands a row of handsome houses, half-European in style; the viceregal barrack-like castle is as hideous as it is huge, and the white dust of the broad roadways is scorching under the mid-day sun. We will take one of the narrow, cool, and shady streets which lead to the heart of the city, and which in the true Arab fashion shows only bare walls on the side facing the street. Here and there a sort of oriel, or turret, closely latticed, projects from the grey wall, or the well-wrought masonry of a gate or archway pleases the eye. But all this we shall meet with again in Cairo, and infinitely more beautiful.

We will enter the chief bazaar, the great Sook of the city; it is difficult to make our way through the crowd of men that are constantly streaming through it, and still more difficult to fight for and keep a place by the small, closely-packed stalls of the merchants; but there is nothing to be procured here that cannot be found in far greater choice in the city of the Pyramids.1

We must simply allow ourselves to be carried onwards by the dense stream of people, and presently we find ourselves standing in front of the tall and well-kept new mosque. Its debased type of architecture affords small pleasure to the eye, which turns with more satisfaction to the medreseh, or school-house belonging to the mosque, which is an elegant structure of a more ancient date.

Opposite to it glitter the bright panes and gaudy bottles of the apothecary's shop, an indispensable institution in a town which has, too, a large hospital of its own. The apothecary himself we find to be a well-informed German, who has been a great traveller, and has done worthy service in his own country in natural history. From his shop—which for brilliant neatness and cleanliness might serve as a pattern for many an one in Europe—we can gaze comfortably at the motley files of men as they crowd into the mosque, and next day, Friday morning, may look on at the solemn procession which opens the festival. The destination of this procession is the tomb of the Mohammedan saint, Seyyid el Bedawee.

No resort of pilgrims in all Egypt is more attractive than this. Festivals are held there three times a year. In January, and again at the spring and autumn equinoxes, thousands of people assemble at Tantah, and at the time of the great Molid, or birthday festival of the saint, the pilgrims often number half a million.

It is not wholly in the interest of religion, it is true, that these masses converge on Tantah, but with very secular purpose as well. Supply and demand are active at the festival, and Moslems are allowed to trade even on the pilgrimage to Mecca. 1 Cairo.

MARKET AT TANTAH.
Many horses and camels, as well as horned cattle, sheep, and goats are driven hither for sale; the trade in all the produce of the soil must be very considerable, and booths are erected in the city, where, as in our annual fairs, goods of every description are offered to the buyer. Often the handicraftsman may be seen hard at work behind his counter. This is to show that all his wares are to be sold at first hand, and that the maker himself is responsible for the excellence of his own workmanship. The cooks' shops are closely surrounded, but the humbler customers treat themselves only to a cake of date-bread; this consists of dates with the kernels removed and then pressed together, and it is even more attractive to the flies than to the customers; the seller has to wage incessant war against them.

As the sparrow-hawks follow birds of passage so do thieves follow at the heels of those who come to the festival, and no one who has a friend to advise him goes out on the broad square, where the horse market is held, without having been warned against them.

Here every form of amusement known to the Oriental is offered to the pilgrim. But the delights of the Molid are by no means confined to this spot; on the contrary, every coffee-house in the city is brilliantly illuminated, and we can hear from afar the shrill Arab music, the clatter of castanets, and the shouts of “Ya salam” (bravo) of the audience within. All the painted and overdressed votaries of Venus, all the singers and dancers of the Nile valley have met together there. At Tantah we met and recognised a Ghaziyeh, or dancer, whom we had admired before this in the house of the German consular agent at Luxor, in remote Upper Egypt. The famous Almehs1 or singers of Cairo, however, keep away from the annual gathering at Tantah; but among those who come to it we see women of rare and peculiar beauty. They constitute a distinct race, distinguished from the Egyptians proper by many peculiarities, and particularly by the shape of the face, and they have among themselves lady-presidents, one of whom we heard called—perhaps in jest only—“Makhbooba-Bey.”2 We shall meet with them again in Upper Egypt, and have an opportunity of studying their costume, their rich jewels, and their treatment of their art when free from these crowded and noisy surroundings. Wherever we turn our eyes during the festival at Tantah we see these women, and with them male dancers, dressed as women, besides jugglers and conjurers of every degree, who usually ply their art best in the open air, in the midst of a circle of spectators squatting on the ground. The naïveté and good-humour of the Oriental is very conspicuous under these circumstances.

It is a thing to see how kindly the elders make way for the children, and seat them in the front rows; how the tall make way for the short, and the men for the women, that they all may see; what horror is expressed by every face when the juggler lifts his dagger, and how reverently the whole circle bow if Jack Pudding names Allah, the Most High! Never have we heard heartier laughter than from the auditors of the unmentionable jokes of Karagyooz and Ali Kaka: 1 The Almehs appear at the earliest Pharaonic times, and particularly flourished under the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, B.C. 1500—1200. They danced naked with a girdle only round the loins, and appeared at entertainments. Some are represented on the paintings of tombs in the British Museum. 2 Literally, “my Lord Mistress.”

but, it must be confessed, we were never more sincerely grieved by seeing women and children among an audience.

A little-known poet named Freudenberg has described the scene of turmoil at this festival better than we can do in dry prose. The gifted but restless Wilibald Winkler, who spent a long time in Egypt, includes him among the “whimsical dreamers” of whom he counts himself one, and says he was “a little old gentleman hardly four feet high.” But he was certainly a poet who wrote the verses of which the following is a modest translation. The English language, however, does not lend itself to any worthy rendering of the brilliant, sportive jingle of the German syllables with the happy intermixture of Arabic words:—

Loud is the sound of ballad-singers shouting While, with her wanton grace and paces pretty, Like some alluring, sly coquette A dancer with her castagnette Displays herself in subtle pantomime; And singers chant an old Arabian ditty Of Saladin and of his time. Seesaws are creaking, all their bells are tinkling, Gaudily-painted vans and coaches clatter; The Berberee1 guitars are humming, The Darabookkahs2 round us drumming; A thousand people push and shove and hustle, A thousand voices buzz and roar and chatter, The fair is at the height of bustle. Lounging at leisure through this giddy rabble— This rout—this Oriental Paradise— A man, with hands behind his back, Rich—passing rich—though gold he lack— A little man comes quietly to ponder, With gentle smiles and kindly thoughtful eyes, Upon the happy turmoil yonder. Before a cook's stall presently he pauses; Zemith and Baklawah and dainty cakes And Kuslokum and almond tarts And Shekerlee3 of many sorts, Bardoo sherbet4 and syrups violet-scented Tempt him—alas! his empty purse he shakes; He feasts his eyes—and is contented. He stops to watch the swings rocking and swaying; The youngsters laugh as they are tossed and whirled; It must be nice to ride up there In rhythm to that gay Nubian air! To rush through space and feel the breezes blow, To mount and soar and float above the world! But—para yok5—he stays below. He joins the circle crowded round a wizard Who wakes the dead and conjures up the devil, Who blows a horn—and at the sound His empty jug at once is found Full—filled by Afreets;6 nuts to serpents turn Within their pockets—puzzled still they revel; Abundant bakhsheesh he can earn. A short way on he finds the Alateeyeh7— There sound the feeble, fiddling Hemengheh,8 The dulcimer and tambourine, Zither and songs of Bedaween; The weird old airs cradle and soothe his care With sweet fantastic dreams, half sad, half gay; A mystic language charms his ear. There, 'mid the tents where garish lamps are flaring Dervishes spin in wild delirious dances, Ecstatically drunk as it were. Coffee, sherbet, and pipes9 out there Mingle their scent with musk and ambergris; Fumes of Hasheesh inspire voluptuous fancies— Oh! for a sou to purchase bliss! 1 A mandoline. 2 A drum chiefly used in harems. It is of wood, often inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl, and shaped like a bottle. The skin is stretched over the broad side; the neck is open. 3 Favourite sweetmeats among the Orientals, and especially the Egyptians. 4 There are various kinds of sherbet; a favourite variety is a syrupy eay sucrée flavoured with crushed violets. 5 Para yok—not a sou. 6 The Arab bogey or kobold. 7 Dancers and singers, often wearing women's apparel. 8 A kind of violin with a very small body of pierced cocoa-nut. The bridge rests on a piece of the skin of a fish, which is stretched over the cavity of the nut like a drum-skin. 9 Sheesheh. Persian glass. These pipes have a glass bowl and a long flexible tube.

His humour merry and his mind diverted, He glides about among the scenes that please him; The little man can see and hear. His heart is soon beguiled of care, In age still fresh and young, and will not listen To petty cares like gnats that buzz and tease him: In rosy hues the pictures glisten. Satiate at last, and silent, homewards turning As from a feast of gods away he went. Quoth he:—“Have I not had my share? I poor!—there is no better fare Than mirth with liberty—to those who know it.” Who was this wight, contented with content? A little fond old man—a poet.

It is clear that a pilgrimage to Tantah is not merely an affair of religion; but no doubt there are many among the pilgrims who are full of sincere devotion, and have but one aim in view, namely, to pray by the coffin of the great saint Seyyid Ahmed el Bedawee. The history of this miracle-worker is highly characteristic, and shall be given here; for it is well calculated to show to what sort of men Islam attributes the style and title of sanctity.

He is said to have been born about A.D. 1200 at Fez, whither his family, who were of course direct descendants of the Prophet, had fled from Irâk. In his seventh year he accompanied them on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and there he spent a stormy youth, showing more taste and aptitude for wild pranks than for serious study, so that he earned the title of “scatter-brains” among his companions. When he was eight-and-twenty his father died, and soon after he experienced an extraordinary change. It was under his brother's roof—for he himself scorned to set up a house and family—that the afflatus of divine love, the Walah of the Moslem, came upon him, and converted the licentious and reckless youth into a saint. His hasty tongue seemed to be spell-bound, he expressed himself only by signs, he mortified his body by forty-day fasts, and would keep his eyes, that glowed like live coals, fixed heavenward all day long. At the same time he heard inward voices, and strange visions visited him at night; his fellow-citizens began to venerate him as a man favoured by Heaven, and the fame of his sanctity preceded him when, urged by a mystical longing, he made a journey on foot, first to Irâk and then to Egypt, where he was received with distinction by the reigning Sultan Beybars. He settled finally in Tantah, and performed unheard-of feats of mortification and asceticism. He would never put on a new garment until the old one had rotted upon him; his fixed contemplation of the heavens became more and more prolonged; and miracles of every kind, even to the resuscitation of the dead, were reported of him. He gave mysterious counsel and support to his followers in all their need, his contemners were persistently punished by suffering and death. He is said to have died at the venerable age of ninety-six; but the solemn festival of his Molid, or birthday, was not instituted until much later, and grew more and more popular, attracting a constantly increasing number of votaries. The exact description which we possess of his person is particularly attractive, because it represents him as a thorough Arab, and as a man whose characteristic peculiarities could not fail to exercise a powerful influence on others. Nothing was to be seen of his head, we are told, but two large, sunken black eyes and a prominent aquiline nose, with the contiguous portion of the cheeks and the lower portion of the forehead—of a light brown hue—and the general outline of a massive countenance. All else was concealed by two face-cloths, Litám, such as the Bedaween wear to the present day. From the period when he began his ascetic exercises he

never removed these cloths, and his disciple Abd'el Medjeed, when at his earnest entreaty he lifted only the upper wrapper, is said to have been so impressed and overcome by that sacred countenance that he shortly afterwards gave up the ghost. Many scars, graced his countenance, and on each side of his nose he had a mole, which is considered a sign of great beauty by the Orientals. This remarkable head crowned a tall and slender form; his arms were long—the unfailing mark of a true Arab—and his legs strong.

As the festival of Tantah is wont to give rise to many frays and commotions, the Government at Cairo has frequently decreed that it should cease to be held; but no Mufti has ever dared to carry this edict into effect, for religious prejudice clings too tenaciously to the saint who was so ready to aid the faithful, and whose vengeance fell so heavily on those who attacked his honour. Even at the present day he is believed to work abundance of miracles, and to exercise a decisive influence even in trivial family affairs—nay, especially in these, for the Arabs attribute the function of direct intercession with the Almighty to the Prophet alone, and not to their saints, who, on the contrary, are permitted only to draw, as it were, on the store of miraculous power bestowed upon him, and to distribute favours in greater or less measure to the votaries who visit their tombs.

How sacred is the mausoleum where, behind a finely-wrought bronze railing, his sarcophagus, covered with red velvet, stands on one side and that of his son Farag on the other! The most fervent devotion is expressed in the faces of the pious devotees who pray here, and they quit the mausoleum filled with hope and contentment; for not only does the great Ahmed hear their prayers, but Kutb also, the miraculous being who rules over the Walees, or saints, and who is especially present here. Excepting the dome of the Kaaba at Mecca, there are few spots where the devotee is more fain to linger than by the mausoleum of the holy Seyyid Ahmed el Bedawee at Tantah.

We may omit any closer inspection of this modern mosque itself. The splendid mosques of Cairo, of a better period, will be of much greater interest; but in none of those have I ever seen so many or such zealous worshippers as here on one occasion, when, for the first and last time in the course of my many visits to the Nile valley, the fanaticism of the Moslems turned upon me with such fury that nothing but my own deliberate coolness and the intervention of the Sheikh of the Mosque saved me from serious injury.

The festival at Tantah resembles in many respects the feast solemnly held at Bubastis, and described by Herodotus;1 and it may perhaps be regarded as its outcome and successor.

Before we quit this sacred spot to wend our way across the eastern Delta— known to us by name from early infancy as the land of Goshen—we will visit the tents outside the city, where thousands of pilgrims are encamped, and where, on the shores of the canal that waters Tantah, we may witness many scenes that remind us of the encampments of the tribes of Jacob, whose fertile territory we are now about to traverse.

1 Lib. II. c. 59, celebrated, according to the tablet of Canopus, on the first of the Egyptian month Payni and four following days, in the ninth year of Ptolemy Euergetes I., B.C. 238.

FATIMA.

GOSHEN.

WHO ever saw the great meeting-place of the ten thousand pilgrims outside the gate of Tantah without being reminded of the camp of the wandering Israelites? The most beautiful illustrations of the Bible narrative were before my eyes, tangible and in the flesh, as I gazed at the groups of figures — bearded men, with sharply-cut features and glittering black eyes; wearing turbans, but clothed otherwise in the simple shirt-shaped coat of Eastern nations; barefoot, and yet not without dignity and distinction in the freedom and breadth of their motions. Here they were meditatively resting, there tending their cattle, or engaged in vehement discussion; there again veiled women were helping their camels to water.

We are on the borders of the land of Goshen, and the Biblical pictures which here offer themselves in living actuality to our sight prompt us to visit the venerated spot which Pharaoh assigned to his steward Joseph as a dwelling-place for his brethren and their families and herds.

In the first instance, we can once more avail ourselves of the railway. We change carriages first at Benha-l'Asal, and again at Zakazeek. We are now on the very soil of Goshen proper, the eastern province of the Delta. As far as it is possible to fix its ancient limitations, it exhibits the form of a cornucopia, bounded towards the east, at the widest end or opening of the cornucopia, by the water-way that divides

Africa from Asia. The fresh-water canal which already existed at the time of the sojourn of the Jews in Egypt, and which was reopened by M. de Lesseps, washes its southern frontier; the Lake of Menzaleh lies to the north of it, and to the west the Tanitic arm of the Nile, which has now dwindled to a narrow water-course.

Many and great as are the changes that the centuries have wrought in Goshen, they have not been able to efface the characteristic peculiarities of the landscape.

TENT OF BEDAWEEN ARABS.
Wherever the Nile-flood reaches the fields, even on the shores of the fresh-water canal, the fertilised soil yields a rich harvest to the husbandman; but on the higher levels, and towards the east generally, spread wide parched flats, on which only a variety of desert weeds can find sustenance, and where numerous nomad tribes pitch their tents and pasture their cattle. It is towards the north, in the vicinity of the lake of Menzaleh, that the nature of the land seems to have undergone the most conspicuous change. Where formerly the Semitic herdsman could pasture innumerable cattle on the rich marshy land lie pools of bitter, brackish water; and where a peaceful community laboured and accumulated wealth in handsome towns a few poor fishermen now dry their nets in front of their miserable huts.

We now invite you, Reader, to accompany us in an excursion to the lakes, through the pasture-land and desert of the province of Goshen.

We will start from Zakazeek, the ancient Bubastis.

A VEILED BEAUTY.
There is a great deal worth seeing in the station of this flourishing town, which is the central dépôt for the vast trade in cotton from the eastern province, and the chief functionaries of that part of Egypt also reside here. The waiting-rooms have the same look of western neatness as the counting-houses of the European merchants in the city itself; but many a traveller has been tempted to neglect the excellent breakfast that was served him, watching the strange and motley groups of travellers that gather on the platform. Particularly there are pilgrims to Mecca from every part of the East, and they crowd the ticket-office and the platform, especially during the weeks preceding the month of pilgrimage, attracting the attention of the traveller from the West. Every Mussulman ought to accomplish a pilgrimage to the Holy Places at least once in his lifetime, and the fulfilment of this injunction is now-a-days very essentially facilitated by railways and steamboats. Moslems from the three quarters of the earth meet here. The most stately-looking are the tall Kabyles from Algeria, and the Moors of Tunis in their white
burnous; the most comfortable seem to be the Tartars, who carry their samovar or Russian tea-urn, with them, and never cast off their high over-shoes and fur caps, even on the parched sand of the desert and under the African sun. Yonder
TUNISIAN PILGRIM.
you may see three wives of a Turk, squatting on the ground in charge of an old nurse or duenna; their lord and master jealously paces up and down in front of his little harem, and casts an evil glance on you; he is suspicious lest your eyes may meet those of his youngest wife, for the light Turkish veil leaves the eyes uncovered. A pretty and elegant European lady gazes inquisitively at her less independent sisters; and what would they say if they could know that this young
and unveiled girl has travelled all the way from the distant land of the Nemsâwee (Germans) quite unaccompanied, and is going, relying only on herself, as far as India, to bring up boys in the knowledge of many sciences?

There is a perpetual stir and bustle in the station at Zakazeek; but there was a time when this place was not a mere resting-place for passers-by, but was

BLACK GRANITE STATUE OF SEKHET.
MUMMY OF A CAT.
itself the goal of many travellers, and attracted more pilgrims than any city in Egypt.

Out yonder, within a few minutes' walk of the station, rises a tall and narrow heap of ruins on the site of the ancient Bubastis. The populous city has disappeared from the face of the earth, and the words of the prophet Ezekiel have been fulfilled there—her young men were to perish by the sword, and her women to be led away into captivity.1 The city must have been destroyed by fire, as we 1 Ezekiel xxx. 17. Pi-beseth is Bubastis.

learn from fragments of melted glass and blackened stones, and with it the temple which stood in its midst—that famous temple of which Herodotus says that there were many larger and more splendid, but not one that he had seen that would compare with it in beauty of proportion.

The Arabs call the ruins of

THE FATHER OF THE CATS, WITH THE CARAVAN OF PILGRIMS.
Bubastis Tel Basta. Here, about seven years since, I found the fragments of two statues of the cat-headed goddess who was worshipped here, sometimes under the name of Bast, sometimes as Sekhet.1 She was the goddess of love and passion; the daughter of the Sun-god, who with her fiery teeth warred against all her father's enemies, and who in the nether world punished the guilty. But she was also Aphrodite, and with a sceptre of flowers in her hand presided over the joys of love and the pleasures of feasting and intoxication. She is represented sometimes with the head of the furious lion, and sometimes with that of the caressing cat, corresponding to her two natures. Vast crowds of men—Herodotus reckons them at 700,000-collected to keep her festivals. Men and women alike found place in the flat boats that conveyed them, and the latter outdid the men in audacity. Singing, flute-playing, clatter, and the clapping of hands never ceased throughout the voyage. The stay-at-home folks in the towns by which they passed were greeted with coarse jests, and in Bubastis itself vast offerings of beasts were sacrificed, and more wine was drunk than elsewhere in the whole course of the year.

1 Her name is generally Sekhet. She was the wife of Ptah or Vulcan, and as such called Merienptah, “beloved of Ptah.” Their son was Nefer Tum. Other names she also bore, as Urheq, and Menhi or Menhit. Statues of her were made by Amenophis III, about B.C. 1400, of dark granite. Mystically she was male and female. 2 Her cat-headed type is much later, and appears about our era in bronze figures.

The historian to whom we owe the description of this festival tells us that dead cats were embalmed and then sent to be buried at Bubastis. No trace remains of the tombs of the cats; but, on the other hand, the memory of the ancient sanctity of this animal has not altogether died out. It is not very long since, in Cairo, a considerable sum was bequeathed by will for the maintenance of starving cats. Until within a few decades each caravan of pilgrims to Mecca was accompanied by an old woman who carried with her a number of cats, and was known as “the mother of the cats;” and to this day a man with cats travels with

COTTON PLANT.
each caravan. This singular custom is probably a relic or memorial of the cats which used to be brought to Bubastis.

It can hardly be a mere coincidence that makes 700,000 the number of the Egyptians that had to make the pilgrimage to Bubastis, while 70,000 Moslems must every year visit Mecca. If any are wanting to make up the number of believers Heaven supplies the deficiency by sending angels.

Under the lion-headed form the monuments sometimes mention this goddess as Astarte,1 and say that the people of Asia were under her special protection. There can be no doubt that there were many men of Semitic race among the citizens of Bubastis. The whole eastern portion of the Delta was peopled by them, and there were few places in it that, at the time of the Pharaohs, had not a Semitic as well as an Egyptian name.

The capital city, from which the province assigned to Joseph's tribe took its name of Gosen (Goshen), bore the name of Pa or Pha-Kos (Phacousa). The Hebrews called it and the province Goshen, and to this day there are mounds of ruins near the Arab village of Fakoos, among which I myself found the name of Pharaoh the Oppressor.

Fakoos may now be reached by railway. Formerly I visited it on horseback, and rode all about its pasture-land and the desert-strip of the Delta. I found hospitable entertainment in the houses of the Egyptian officials, of the Greek cotton-merchants, and of the well-to-do village magistrates; and I shall never forget the night I spent in the neighbourhood of Fakoos, at the house of a young Englishman who had erected a steam-engine for working machines to pick and clean cotton in the factory of a certain Bey, and who was now employed in working and repairing it. My kind host had been for two years the manager of his Turkish master's plantation and factory, and his charming young wife had joined him in 1 At Edfoo, lion-headed, wearing a solar disk.

A RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT.
Egypt. Both had given up present comfort and pleasure to lay the foundation of an independent existence at home in the future. A fixed sum—stated in figures—was the goal that they looked forward to, and as soon as the sum should be made up both were ready to leave the luxuriant country that lay around them as far as the eye could reach—but not before. To attain this end both husband and wife submitted to every privation: not even the smallest ornament decorated their
EGYPTIAN WHEAT. (Triticum Sativum.)
meagrely-furnished rooms, not a drop of wine had ever sparkled in the few glasses they owned; the temptations of an expedition to Cairo or to Alexandria were steadily resisted, and nothing bound them to the world but an English newspaper and a little heap of letters, read almost to pieces, and lying on the work-table of the gentle creature whom the Arab women of the village avoided as an outcast, because she showed her pretty face unveiled among the men. “For two years,” she said, “I have not spoken a word to any European woman, and I cannot understand the Arab women; and besides they scorn me.”

I had a few bottles of red wine and much news for them of the outer world, and so it fell out that we three spent half the night in chat, and that they parted from me as from a brother when my tall bay horse was brought round, and I mounted for my ride to San—the ancient Zoan—the city where Moses performed his miracles before Pharaoh.

The first part of the way led me across a well-tilled pasture and corn land, intersected by canals, and differing but little from the country I had passed through on the way from Rosetta. I found a few peasants' houses, with orchards in full bloom and many an European tree and shrub interspersed among the palms, and the Egyptian wheat with its heavy ears reminded me of home. At last I came to an end of the fields and was on the dry soil of the desert, that showed patches here and there of a salt incrustation looking like a film of ice. Ere long the desert spread round me on every side, and it was here that for the first time I felt the magical charm of its solitude, and, with it, that mysterious excitement which takes possession of the traveller's fancy and exhibits its results so conspicuously in the vivid imaginativeness of the Arabs themselves, who people the lifeless waste with a legion of marvellous and fantastic beings. Here dwells the whole world of spirits; here riot the Djins and the Ghouls that rush through the air riding on weird beasts, on locusts, lizards, and spiders. And even the devout may believe in them, for the Prophet himself respected them, and many confessed Islam; but others are evil spirits and oppress men, and the devil is their ruler. The Djins dare even mount up to Heaven to spy its secrets, but the angels keep watch, and the falling stars that

the wanderer in the desert sees at night are fiery arrows which fall upon these audacious spirits.

As you wander through the silent waste at the hours of prayer a clear long-drawn cry may greet your ear. Your eye can see no living thing, but the voice grows more and more distinct. A secret shudder runs through your veins, you spring up a slope which conceals the horizon, and now you perceive a lonely herdsman, surrounded by his sheep, who shouts out his prayer as loud as ever he can

HERDSMAN IN THE DESERT.
to empty space. This is in order that the spirits may hear the solitary shepherd and be witness for him at the day of judgment. Is there on earth a more ghostly apparition than an Arab traveller mounted high on his camel, wrapped in light-coloured garments, and escorted by vultures who follow him on his silent way in the twilight along the sandy track? When the moon is up and its beams are reflected in the micaceous fragments on the ridges, the ghouls are transformed into dancing lights, and the Djins appear in human form, floating above the ground or pacing silently along, or riding on black horses with their faces black too, and claws like the coulter of a sickle.

These are the terrors of the desert, which is nevertheless full of an indescribable charm which I hope to communicate to the reader in another place. This present ride through the desert is too short.

Nor was it wholly deserted, for I came upon three different encampments of Bedaween with a few camels and small herds of lean kine. By sunrise I had reached

RUINS OF TANIS.
JOSEPH AND PHARAOH.
the strip of fertile land that borders the old Tanitic arm of the Nile. This stream in the time of the Pharaohs watered the most important part of Goshen far more liberally than it does at present; it is now called the Mu'ïzz, or the Canal of San-el-Hager. On the farther side of this stream stands the fishing hamlet of San. We called out, but no one appeared to ferry us over; then a fisherman, who had joined company with me from a neighbouring village, offered himself to carry me across the shallow river. In an instant he had thrown off his fellah's shirt and, stooping before me, invited me to mount on his broad back. I hesitated a moment with an uncanny feeling of astonishment, for it was as if one of the Hykshos sphinxes of San —to which I will shortly introduce the reader—had come to life, and invited me to mount. Through how many generations have these knotty vertebræ, these thick lips, and these sturdy muscular limbs, which are so different from the graceful and slender native Egyptian type, been transmitted? And not I alone, but the celebrated archæologist, Mariette Pacha, met with hundreds of men of the same stamp when, by command of the Khedive, he cleared so many of the monuments of Egypt from the sand, and among them those of Tanis, restoring them to the light of day and the scientific study of antiquarians.

I need not relate how the broad-shouldered descendant of the Hykshos carried me through the water, how my servant followed him, and the horse-boy, with the saddle on his head, leading the horse by the bridle; how I reached the opposite shore, half dry, half dripping, and soon after sundown found shelter under the hospitable roof of the worthy Ahmed Bakhsheesh. The pottage or soup, the fowl stuffed with rice and raisins, and the baked fish which were set before me were as much relished by the hungry traveller as the contents of my last bottle of wine were by the finely-grown son of the house, who, to gratify his guest, sacrificed some of the joys of Paradise, and sinned against the prohibition of the Prophet ever to drink wine. I would rather say nothing about that night's sleep, for I lay on a carpet spread on the floor. Only a few feet from me slept my servant and horse-boy, not to speak of a number of fisher-lads—and I had forgotten my insect powder!

I hailed the dawn as a release, took a bath in the icy-cold arm of the Nile, and then followed my host's son to the ruins of Tanis.

In a few minutes I was standing in their midst. Many of the remains of the cities and temples that have come down to us from the period of Egypt's splendour are of greater extent and in better preservation, but no ruins excel these in picturesque charm. I wandered from monument to monument, seeking a vantage-ground from which to overlook them all, and before beginning to investigate and copy the separate inscriptions I ascended a mound of rubbish to the north of the ruins, and sat down by the dilapidated tomb of some Sheikh. From this spot, whither I often returned, it was possible to overlook the whole extent of the ruins.1 The city must have been a large one, and one of the most splendid residences and centres of culture in the kingdom. Only in Thebes are there so many and such large 1 The most interesting are of the period of the Hykshos, or Shepherds, of the XVIIth dynasty. Traces of the XIIIth dynasty have been found there. Although the capital or seat of government was removed thence under the XXVIth dynasty, it was not entirely abandoned, for monuments of the period of the Ptolemies have been found there. It fell under the edict of Theodosius, A.D. 381.

monuments of hard granite to be found; but of all the magnificent buildings which once stood here not even the ground-plan can be recognised. The great sanctuary erected by Rameses (Ramses) II.—Pharaoh the Oppressor—has crumbled into dust. Granite pillars with palm-leaf capitals, colossi, and no less than twelve broken obelisks lie, by the side of less important monuments, in grand confusion on the earth. An Arabic legend relates that the Pharaohs were giants, who could move the mightiest
EXCAVATIONS AT TANIS.
masses of rock with a magic rod; but if it needed giants to erect these monuments, it must have required the will and the strength of a God thus to overthrow them.

It is impossible here to enumerate all the monuments separately; it must suffice to say that among them there are several of the greatest importance and interest.

Every period of Egyptian history, excepting the very oldest, here finds a representative; and when I, in perfect solitude, looked round on the brick foundations of the ruined houses that lay close to me on the slope of the hill, at the overthrown temples and palaces just below my feet, and farther off at the fields and pasture-land, splendid visions of those by-gone days rose before my inward eye; the glorious past of Tanis—how far removed from the melancholy actuality!—became to me a living presence.

It was at This, in Upper Egypt, the neighbour-city to Abydos, that the power of the race of the Pharaohs was developed. Its first offshoots founded Memphis, and ere long the culture of the Nile valley had spread from the first cataract to the coast of the Mediterranean. Here, at the time of the builders of the Pyramids, a stock of Semitic blood, derived from the East, acquired a firm foothold. Some of the new-comers pastured their flocks in marshes near the Lake of Menzaleh, while others navigated the sea—which the Egyptians hated and dreaded—in swiftly sailing vessels,

HYKSHOS SPHINX.
and established trading ports on the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile. At the early part of the third century before Christ the foreigners were beginning to crowd the Egyptian inhabitants, and even to overmatch them. Their princes—who resided at Heracleopolis, in the Sethroitic district, close to the eastern boundary and not far from Tanis—made themselves masters of the throne of the Pharaohs and of the Nile valley, until the descendants of the deposed Egyptian kings succeeded in overpowering and exterminating them. By the middle of the third millennium before Christ a dynasty of native race wielded the sceptre at Thebes over the whole of united Egypt, including the province of the foreigners; and the Amenemhas and Usertesens, whom we shall often meet with again, erected proud sanctuaries at Tanis to the Egyptian gods, and set up their images, carved out of hard stone, in front of their throne. They fortified the eastern frontier; but, secure in the sense of their own power, they allowed ingress to Semitic immigrants, who approached them submissively and with gifts. The glorious XIIth dynasty became extinct in a woman. A weaker race mounted the throne of the Pharaohs, and the migration of a Semitic stock on horse and on foot from Syria pressed southwards on the Egyptians, who, though they attempted to oppose the incursion of these barbarous tribes, were vanquished, and their kings were forced to retire to Upper Egypt. Meanwhile, the Asiatics settled in the Eastern Delta, added strong fortifications to Pelusium—which was also called Abaris1— and raised Tanis to be the capital of their princes; and ere long they mingled with their 1 Called in Egyptian Ha-uar, and in Greek Auaris. The Egyptian appellation has been supposed to mean “the place of flight.” Chabas, “Les Pasteurs en Egypte,” p. 41.
fellow Semites, the earlier settlers in the Nile valley. It is an historical law that the conquerors of a highly cultivated and civilised country must inevitably adapt themselves to its manners and customs, and thus actually by their conquest be forced into subjection; and it proved true in this case. We know them by the name of Hykshos, that is to say, princes of the Shasu, or Bedaween, and we
RAMSES II. (From a Statue at Turin.)
know, from the few monuments that remain to us of their work, that they assimilated themselves to Egyptian life in every particular, even in their works of art. Like the Pharaohs, they had sphinxes made as symbolical representations of themselves, with the bodies of lions and heads of men; and the faces of these figures were treated as portraits of their own features. The finest of these Hykshos sphinxes had already been transported to Cairo when I first visited Tanis, but a few still looked up at me out of the sand, and they exactly resembled the people I had to deal with at San and by the Lake of Menzaleh.

The Hykshos remained in power more than four hundred years.1 The national hatred of the vanquished branded their memory, painted them as an accursed race of devastators, could hardly forgive them for setting up their god Ba'al in the place of the old gods, and bestowed on him the name of Seth,2 or Typhon, which was that of the Egyptian divinity who was worshipped first as the god of war and of foreign lands, and was subsequently execrated as the impersonation of all that was gloomy and discordant in nature and in the life of man. Of Evil in the positive sense, as opposed to Good, the Egyptian religion had no knowledge. Their feeling as to evil was that it was but transitory, a passage to future 1 The exact duration of the Shepherd rule is a difficult point. Two statements are given by Manetho—259 years two months, according to one version; and 511 years, according to another. 2 The name of Set, or Seth, is found as early as the VIth dynasty.

salvation; as dying was merely the process of death, which was in fact the threshold of the true and everlasting life. The highest honours were paid to Seth in the cities of the Hykshos, and not only kings were called by his name, but also the territory known as the Sethroitic district, which lay adjoining the nome, or province, of Tanis, and to the east of it.

During the dominion of the Hykshos in the northern part of the Nile valley, the old Egyptian royal house ruled in Upper Egypt. A papyrus informs us that a dispute about a spring in the desert gave the Pharaohs an occasion for turning against the Asiatic interlopers. A great war of deliverance began, which lasted many decades, and ended by the taking of Abaris, Pelusium, after a siege both by land and sea.1 We still find traces of the camp of the Hykshos at Tel el Heyr, and at Tanis the remains of their kings' palaces; while in the north-eastern portion of the Delta we meet with their living descendants, still bearing the features of their ancestry.

The victorious Egyptians forced the main body of the Hykshos army to retire. Part of the vanquished withdrew by land to Asia; others, taking to the sea, colonised the islands of the Carpathian Sea, an ancient name for a part of the Mediterranean near Crete; and a third division, who had devoted themselves to peaceful occupations, remained behind in the Delta.

The strength of the Egyptians had gained in temper during the long war against the intrusive foreigners. The enterprising spirit of the kings of the XVIIIth dynasty, who resided at Thebes, helped them to penetrate Asia as far as the Euphrates, and to fill the treasuries of the city of Amon with the spoils of the East. The Hebrews, to whom a grateful Pharaoh had abandoned the rich pastures of Goshen, herded their flocks unmolested. Every one knows the story of Joseph, the king's steward, and the Biblical narrative of the multiplying and increase of Jacob's race to a nation. Here we are standing on the very scene of the events which preceded the Exodus of the Israelites.

Rameses I. overthrew the last descendants of the conquerors of the Hykshos, who had wasted their strength in religious struggles, and usurped their throne. His son was Seti I., and his grandson, Rameses II., is the Sesostris of the Greeks and the “Pharaoh the Oppressor” of the Israelites; his great-grandson Menephtah is the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Many bas-reliefs and portrait-statues make us familiar with the physiognomy of most of the members of this family, whose peculiar features confirm the idea—which is supported by many other reasons—that they were of Semitic origin. The military glory of Sesostris has been immortalised by the narratives of classical writers, but all that he and his father achieved as patrons of architecture is less well known. We shall have occasion at Thebes to marvel at their stupendous creations, and we learn from an inscription in the temple at Karnak that Seti I. had planned a canal to connect the Nile with the Red Sea, and at the same time to water the plains of Southern Goshen. The ruins of a city, built by Rameses, have been discovered near its ancient bed; and on the same spot, Mashoota, we saw, besides a monument of granite, strong walls composed of 1 The war began under Aahmes I., or Amosis.

THE FINDING OF MOSES.
bricks which were stamped with the name of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Similar bricks are found at Tanis, which the monuments also call the city of Rameses, and which is the Raamses of the Bible. Here and at Pithom it is said in the Scripture that “the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field” (Exodus i. 13, 14). In Exodus v. 7 we find that the taskmasters and their officers were commanded, “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.”

Can there be any better illustration of this speech than the brick mixed with straw brought from Goshen and preserved in the Berlin museum, and of which we give a drawing? It bears the name of Rameses, who frequently resided at Tanis, started thence on his warlike expeditions, and brought one of his greatest wars to a happy termination by signing a treaty there with his chief antagonists, the princes of the Kheta.

He was wont to turn his arms against Semitic nations; what wonder then that he severely oppressed the kindred race who were subject to him, and strove to burden them with hard labour? Venerable papyrus-rolls contain the accounts of the taskmasters of the Hebrews as rendered to the overseers, and show us how unremittingly the officers watched the labourers, and endeavoured to promote their material comfort. The officials praise the neighbourhood of Tanis and the fertility of Goshen in words of rapture. Paintings in the tombs at Thebes show us the labourers at their work; but the people whom we here see—drawing water, hewing up the earth, kneading the clay, filling it into wooden moulds, and piling the bricks in layers while the taskmaster watches them, stick in hand—are not Jews, but Asiatics of some other race who had been carried captive into Egypt at an earlier date under Thothmes III., and there forced, as the inscription tells us, “to make bricks for the new buildings of the provision houses, or granaries, of the city of Amon.” By the side of the second picture it is written, “Prisoners, brought by his Majesty to labour at the temple of his father Amon.” A third inscription celebrates the vigilance of the taskmasters, and the gods are entreated to reward the king for remembering them with wine and good food. An overseer calls out to the people, “I carry the stick, be ye not idle.”

It is impossible to study these pictures without thinking of the oppression of the Jews. Perhaps the very wall on which I sat so many hours was the work of their hands. Perhaps it was on the very stream that I crossed yesterday that the heart-sick mother of Moses floated the rush basket containing her child; and it is expressly testified by the Psalmist (Psalm lxxviii. 12, 43) that the Pharaoh before whom Moses wrought his miracles lived at Tanis. It was hence that the cry went out for the flight of the enslaved multitude, and hence that Menephtah set forth with his chariots and horses to overtake the fugitives. We are able to present the reader with a portrait of the vacillating king, who in his terror gave the promise which he retracted as soon as he thought himself secure. Another portrait of the same prince, with even a weaker countenance, is preserved in the museum at Boolak. All the general human interest in Tanis ends with the Hebrew exodus; but the

populous city continued to be of the greatest importance to Egypt, and in the eighth century before Christ a new, though not very illustrious, race of kings came
BRICK WITH THE PRENOMEN OF RAMESES II.
thence to govern Egypt.

We will now quit our seat on the sheikh's tomb and wander, pencil in hand, from one mound of ruins to another. Most of the inscriptions are addressed to the gods Amon, Ptah, or Ra Harmachis. Many monuments attract our attention, but for the most part they lie half buried in the sand, and overseers are appointed who are forbidden under heavy penalties to allow strangers to clear them. The happy accident is too fresh in the memory of the inspector of excavations by which the illustrious Lepsius and his companions discovered a monument of immense importance

FORCED LABOURERS OF THE SEMITIC RACE STAMPING OUT BRICKS. (Tomb of Rekhmara at Thebes.)
which he himself had overlooked. This stone has become famous under the name of the tablet of Tanis, or the decree of Canopus. We shall find it in
FORCED LABOURERS OF THE SEMITIC RACE MAKING AND CARRYING BRICKS. (Tomb of Rekhmara at Thebes.)
the museum of Boolak, where it was deposited. Only cursory mention can in this place be made of a great tablet of granite, which still lies among the ruins, and which is dated by the years of an era beginning from the epoch of the Hykshos,
which occurs nowhere else;1 of the colossus of Rameses II. in porphyry, on which there are traces of painting in various colours; of the shrine of granulated alabaster-like marble; of the female torso with the characteristics of an Amazon, the left breast being larger than the right; of the black statues of Sekhet with the lion-head, the sombre sitting figures of basalt, and the almost purple ones of red granite.

On the morning after my second sleepless night at Tanis all was bustle in front of my host's house. Numbers of fishermen had come in in their large boats,

MENEPHTAH.
on which the nets were hung in orderly array, and offered the fish they had caught in the lake, packed in large and small baskets, for sale to the highest bidder. This auction, which takes place every Tuesday and Friday, was in every way a singular picture, and I shall never forget it.

Nothing in Egypt is more purely African than the finny inhabitants of its waters. The Nile produces the same fish as the Senegal, and with their flat heads, minute eyes, and long cirri, or beards, they look as if they belong to some earlier epoch of creation than the graceful natives of our own fresh waters. By far the most common is the Shad, called Karmoot, and to the same family belongs the celebrated Electrical Shad, the Ra'ad, marked with black spots. Some of the species present an almost monstrous appearance, with their long thread-like fins on the back and belly. One of the drollest is the Fahaka, or Tetrodon, which, when blown out, looks like a pumpkin with a tail, twinkling eyes, and a little laughing mouth with four shining white teeth. The Kanooma fish, with its long snout bent downwards, is the Oxyrrhynchus of the ancient Egyptians. Perhaps the most interesting is the Finny Pike, Polypterus, which is a survivor of the primeval order of the Ganoid fishes; I do not remember ever having seen it, yet I believe it was the original of a hieroglyphic sign. In the fried or boiled stage of their existence I decidedly prefer our Northern fish to the Egyptian varieties, which are for the most part flabby and unsavoury. I have tasted many kinds, and can pay the tribute of praise to none but that known as the Bayad, of which very large specimens are caught, and which has flesh of a brilliant whiteness.

1 A translation of this tablet, which mentions an interval of 400 years from the Shepherds to Rameses II., is given in the “Records of the Past,” Vol. IV. p. 33.

The auction was a vehement business, and the dealers were not less calculated to attract the attention of an European than their wares. The passionate emotions, of which education and custom require us to control the exhibition, are here shown without concealment or check, and perhaps with the fullest unreserve when a question of “Mine” and “Thine” is to be settled. How the fishermen shout in wild confusion! how their black eyes flash and glare! how they snatch back

MALAPTERURUS ELECTRICUS—ELECTRICAL SHAD. (Ra'ad.)
their baskets in a rage! and how often the worthy Ahmed has to scream at them, “Wait a minute, I'm coming;” and to use his palm-rod! At the same time many a fine fish finds its way into the basket that stands behind him, for he is clever enough to temper his severity with kindliness, and whenever a hand-to-hand fight seems inevitable, he contrives to pacify the adversaries with conciliatory words and soothing gestures. What a wonderful variety of tones these people have at their
TETRODON HISPIDUS. (Fahaka.)
HEAD OF THE PIMELODUS AURATUS.
command to express every shade of feeling! I am thinking less of the shrieking vehemence of their anger than of the melting pathos their voices can assume in a caressing mood, or when seeking reconciliation.

Meanwhile retort answers abuse. “Where are your eyes, merchant?” shouts the fisherman, thinking the buyer's bid too small. The man, who thinks he is being cheated, cries out. “Bind a turban of straw about thine head” (be as great a fool as you will), “but never forget thy duty.” Some cutting answer is given: the man who is thus reprimanded asserts himself to be as good as his antagonist, and

ASSEMBLY OF BIRDS ON THE LAKE OF MENZALEH.
better too; but the enemy has the nimbler wit and the sharper tongue, and retorts, “Every beast that has a hump fancies itself a camel.”

When the auction was over the fishermen wanted me to buy a pelican and two fine herons that they had caught alive. They carried home but little money,

FISH AUCTION AT SAN.
for only a certain percentage of their earnings was paid to them; the principal profits accrue to the holder of the right of fishing in the Lake of Menzaleh, which is farmed out for about £60,000.

It was with a party of fishermen from the little fishing town of El Matareeyeh that I visited this remarkable inland sea, which is separated from the Mediterranean by only a narrow strip of land. It is of about the extent of the county of York, and is strewed with islets. So rich is it in waterfowl of every species that Brehm, who is a good authority, calculated that they must consume sixty thousand pounds of fish daily. The well-known story of Baron Münchhausen, who fired off his gun with his ramrod for a charge, and so shot and spitted a whole flock of ducks, here hardly seems impossible; for, particularly at breeding-time, the islands and reedy shallows of this lake are peopled with countless masses of feathered guests. The charming illustration by W. Gentz

MORMYSUS OXYRRHYNCHUS. (Kanooma.)
POLYPTERUS—FINNY PIKE. (Bishir.)
is not in the least an exaggerated representation of the scene. Ducks and shell-drakes, storks and herons, pelicans, the Aboo Monas, and the delicately-coloured flamingo—whose breeding-places are known to only a few hunters among the natives of Menzaleh—gulls and terns, dark and light hued eagles and falcons—who in their turn prey on the feathered murderers and avenge the fish—are found collected in legions in this paradise of birds. The sportsman who wanders from islet to islet can make an enormous bag, particularly when he is skilful enough to manage a little boat with his own hand. The water is in most places shallow, and overflows only the lowest of the islands during the inundation; those lying above this water-mark are called “mountains,” djebel, by the fishermen.

Vivid pictures, that I can never forget, stamped themselves on my mind as I traversed this wonderful lake in the roughly-constructed bark of the Matareeyeh fisherman: pictures of primeval nature, a silent but populous landscape, barely touched by the hand of man, affording at present much delight to the sportsman, but perhaps—indeed, it is to be hoped—before many decades are passed, to be restored to tilth and culture.

There can be no manner of doubt that broad expanses now covered by its waters were in former times fields and meadows, tilled by the peasantry, and

FISHING-BOAT ON THE LAKE OF MENZALEH.
affording pasture to the herdsman's cattle. Even at the present day, though it is connected with the sea by a narrow passage, Nile mud is deposited at the bottom of the lake; and experienced men have declared with conviction that, with the mechanical appliances of our day, it would be practicable to reconvert it into fertile land, and make it remunerative to those who might embark in the enterprise. On some of the islands there are to this day traces of ancient culture, not wholly extinct even a few centuries ago. Little remains of the city of Isis, Ta-n-Isis, on the island of Tenees, but it still shows some noble ruins; and Arab writers tell us that at the time of the Khalifate no finer tissues were woven than those produced here. The damask, fine gauze, and costly gold tissue of Tenees, or Tinnys, were famous throughout the East, and enriched the inhabitants, whose posterity have fallen indeed from their high estate, and now laboriously earn their scanty bread by net and sail.

And yet any one who has been in intercourse with these humble, simple men remembers them with kindliness. I can call to mind the crowd of figures that pressed round the large brazier, side by side with the stranger, at Matareeyeh; I can see the slight forms of the women who followed a dead body, lamenting: and I do not think that in all Egypt I met with a finer race. Faces more manly or more noble than those of the descendants of the Hykshos are nowhere to be seen throughout the Khedive's dominions. Like all Asiatics of Semitic origin, they were called “Amu” under the Pharaohs, and then Biamites, i.e., Pi-Amu. Even in the eighth and ninth centuries after Christ they gave much trouble to the Khalifs Merwân II. and Mamoon. The name of Malakeeyeen, which they themselves adopted, dates from the time when they embraced Christianity. When the rest of the

WATER-WHEEL FOR IRRIGATION IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF DAMIETTA.
Egyptians adopted the teaching of Eutyches, the determined Biamites remained faithful to the orthodox doctrine, and called themselves Melekites, or “imperial.” They remained unsubdued by the French, and it is only within a short time—in fact only a very few years—that the magistrates have dared to enlist their sons under the conscription for military service. The Lake of Menzaleh has had a new and perfectly straight eastern boundary set to it by the construction of the Suez Canal.

We will now turn westward, and in the neighbourhood of Damietta, Damyât, and the mouth of the ancient Phatnitic branch of the Nile—now the river of Damietta—we come upon a type of landscape which, though it is flat and level like the whole of the Delta, nevertheless has peculiarities of its own. The eye of the European will, in the first place, be struck by the neatly-planted fields of rice, which is here a favourite crop; and a harvest, which well repays the cultivator, is reaped in September or October. This cereal, it is true, was not unknown to the Egyptians at the time of Alexander's Macedonian successors, but

it was the Arabs who first introduced its culture on a large scale from its Indian habitat to the shores of the Nile.

There is little to be said about Damietta itself;

NYMPHÆA LOTUS—LOTUS-FLOWER.
a sand-bank bars the entrance to the harbour, which is surrounded by tall but ill-built houses. The Bazaar is of unusual length; some fine pillars from ancient buildings are found in the mosques, and there are splendid gardens outside the gates. The most beautiful belongs to the German Consul, a wealthy and most worthy Levantine named Suroor. Damyât at the present day contains from thirty to forty thousand inhabitants. It was not famous in antiquity: under the Arabs it was esteemed for woven stuffs, and workshops where the Christians manufactured the finest furniture-stuffs, ornamented with pictures and patterns, as well as brocades for dresses, one of which was valued at three hundred dinars, or forty pounds. It owes its place in history to its long siege and final conquest by the Crusaders.1 Among the farmhouses in the vicinity of Damietta sycamores of great girth and tall in proportion are to be seen, and other fine trees also grow near and shade the villages. Peach and other fruit trees flourish in the gardens. The clatter of water-wheels, driven by buffaloes, is audible on every side, pouring an abundance of water into the irrigation canals and the open runlets which
NYMPHÉ NELUMBO—LOTUS-FLOWER, WITH FRUIT.
convey it through the fields. Cattle certainly thrives here, and the buffaloes and oxen, the butter and cheese of the neighbourhood of Damietta have no equals throughout Egypt. The botanist who seeks rare plants in the water-channels will here find the last representatives of a species formerly so abundant in the Nile—the lotus-flower, both white and blue; its seeds when ground are still eaten by the peasants. But the plant, which was once the queen of all the products of the Delta, and which brought enormous wealth to the inhabitants, the Papyrus, has not been seen here by any trustworthy traveller. And yet it was here, on the very branch 1 By Jean de Brienne, A.D. 1217; it was lost, but retaken by Louis IX. A.D. 1248.
of the Nile which bathes this ground to the present day, that the most valuable variety of the Cyperus—to which our “paper” owes its name—was grown; nor
PAPYRUS PLANT.
was it for ancient Egypt only, but for every cultivated nation on the Mediterranean that this writing material was prepared from its pith. Manufactories of papyrus “paper” existed in the Delta down to the time of the Khalifs, but parchment was already competing with the Egyptian material, which was of such importance as an article of commerce that Firmus, a citizen of Alexandria who set himself up as emperor in opposition to Aurelian,1 could declare that his manufactories of papyrus brought him in a revenue large enough to maintain an army. In consequence of the introduction of new writing materials into Europe—parchment and rag-paper—the physiognomy of the Delta must have undergone a complete transformation In the place of those thickets which have been described as “a forest without branches, a shrubbery without leaves, a harvest in the water, a scene of beauty in a bog,” we now see rice, maize, indigo, and cotton fields. Every recollection even of the plant which for so many hundred years was so carefully tended, and which Strabo so graphically describes as “a bare stick with a tuft at the top,” has been lost to the natives of the Delta. The European sees it in hot-houses, or may have met with it on the shores of the Anapo while travelling to Syracuse, in Sicily,2 little thinking, perhaps, that he has every day occasion to use words and ideas which owe their origin to the Egyptian reed.

Papyrus and Byblus are different forms of the same word: from the first we derive our word “paper,” from the second the word “Bible.” The celebrated writing material was prepared by slicing the pith of the stem into thin laminae, which were laid side by side and overlapping each other, pressed together, and smoothed. The sheets thus prepared were stuck together to form a sheet, and the first leaf was known as the “protocollon,” hence the word “protocol.” Long sheets of papyrus could of course be preserved only in rolls; thus each book was a roll, and the part assigned to each actor in German theatrical parlance is still called his “rolle,” in French, “rôle.” The ancient Egyptians were accustomed to write with inks of two colours: the main text being transcribed with black ink, while red (rubra) was used for distinguishing the beginnings of 1 A.D. 274; he coined money and assumed the purple, but was soon defeated and put to death. 2 Thickets of Papyri have been also found at the Lake Merom, in Syria.

sections;1 hence the word “rubric.” Charta, or carta, was the name commonly given to this paper by the Romans,2 and it has given us the word “card.”

We know the various kinds of Egyptian paper, which were sometimes designated by the names of their place of manufactory, as Saitica, or Tanitica; sometimes after some person of distinction, as Liviana,3 Corneliana;4 sometimes according to the purpose for which they were intended, as hieratic, writing paper, theatre-ticket paper, or bag paper;5 and papyrus rolls of remarkable size, and in admirable preservation, have come down to us. This writing material was invented in Egypt at the earliest in the time of the Pyramids;6 but it was most lavishly used at the time when Alexandria was in its glory.

RIVER WALL ON THE DAMIETTA ARM OF THE NILE.

The papyrus grown in the Sebennytic district was particularly famous. On the site of the chief town of this nome, or government, where the historian Manetho was born, now stands the miserable town of Semennood, on the left bank of the Damietta branch, along which we once sailed up stream from Mansoorah.

Mansoorah the Victorious is, next to Tantah, the most important inland town of the Delta, and the chief town of the wealthy province of Dakheleeyeh, where numerous Europeans—principally Greeks, but also English, Germans, and Swiss— have settled, and carry on a trade principally in cotton. Mansoorah is a comparatively 1 The black was an animal carbon, the red colour an ochre. 2 The word “chartes” is found in Greek, and mentioned in an Athenian inscription of the time of Pericles; it was not, however, in much use among the Greeks till the time of Alexander the Great. 3 From Livia, wife of Augustus, who died A.D. 29. 4 After Cornelius Gallus, A.D. 26. 5 Taeniotica, a coarse kind sold by weight. 6 The oldest written dated Papyrus is of about the time of the Vth dynasty.

modern town, for it was built by command of the Sultan Melek el Kâmil during the Crusades, after the taking of Rosetta by the Christians (about 1220). A fortified bridge, close to the town, at that time connected the two shores of the Nile; while at the present day the opposite suburb of Talkha, where the railway-station is, can only be reached by taking a boat. However, the construction of an iron bridge, with a double line of rails, is about to be begun.

There is little to tell about the present town of Mansoorah, but stirring memories revive in our mind as we seek for the humble spot where one of the most powerful kings of the West is said to have lingered a captive. Louis IX. of France was conquered before the walls of Mansoorah by the army led by the young Sultan el Mo'azzam Tooranshah, and was forced to yield to the infidels with his brother, Charles of Anjou, and the flower of French chivalry.1 The Sultan treated his captive foe with consideration, but he met his death at the hand of his own warriors, while Louis, at the cost of an enormous ransom and the evacuation of the town of Damietta, regained his freedom and that of his fellow-captives.

With a favourable wind we may reach Behbeet el Hagar in two hours from Mansoorah, and it is one of the most remarkable of all the ruined cities of Egypt. The sight of the well-tilled fields on each side of the stream delights the eye as we sail along. Opposite the village of el Weesh I disembarked on an ancient river-wall, or quay; and, as I turned my face landwards, I could almost believe myself transported to my own country, for I rarely met with any palm-trees, but my road lay through white poplars, lime-trees, and willows; among which, however, grew Sont-trees and Lebbek, Tamarisk, and Bernouf shrubs. I walked quickly on, and in about half an hour found myself in front of the plainly recognisable traces of a wall enclosing a gigantic heap of ruins, the remains of the splendid temple of Pa-Hebit—that is to say, “the strong place”—where the great goddess was worshipped from whose name the Romans called this town Iseum. The streets and squares of the ancient city have completely disappeared; not a vestige of the dwellings of early ages can be detected among the huts of the fellaheen of the village of Behbeet; but here, as everywhere in Egypt, the abodes of the gods were built of more durable materials than those of man, and the granite ruins of the temple of Isis at Hebit are strong enough to defy many a century to come. There they lie, within the ancient temple precincts, one mighty mass of blocks, portions of pillars, fragments of architraves, slabs, and flights of steps. I have never seen anything more strange and impressive than this temple, fallen, as it might seem, at the command of a magician. Neither the slow injuries of time, nor the feeble hand of man could have effected the sudden and utter ruin of this edifice of granite. An earthquake felled it at one shock, and the legendary memory of such a catastrophe, as well as of the sacred beasts of the cow-headed goddess, survives in the minds of the fellaheen, for Isis long commanded the deepest veneration in this place, and her image is preserved on many stones. While I was resting by the ruins a man of Behbeet told me the following story, which is familiar to every inhabitant of the village:—“In the time of Solomon a beautiful temple stood here 1 A.D. 1250.

in which there dwelt a cow sent by God, and which no one dared touch. Once upon a time there was a woman who wanted the cow to give milk for her newborn child; she went secretly into the temple and attempted to milk the cow, but the udders yielded no milk; then the woman cursed the cow, and hardly had she uttered the last word when the huge building fell in with a fearful crash, and buried the blasphemous woman and her child under the ruins. If any one strikes the stones in the evening the cow is heard lowing. Many of the folks of the village have heard it, and they call our ruins here Hagar gamoos, or ‘the buffalo stones.’”

What a splendid spectacle this temple must have presented when the sunshine was reflected on the polished grey and brown granite of which it was constructed! Hundreds of the blocks have preserved the pictures and inscriptions which were chiselled on their surface with peculiar care, and they tell us that the ruined sanctuary of Isis was erected (B.C. 287 to 247) by Ptolemy II., Philadelphus. No record remains of the time of its fall, and it will never be possible to verify the plan of the foundation, for though so many blocks lie heaped up, literally not one stone remains upon the other. It takes four hundred paces to walk round the high mound of ruins, and to climb to the top is like climbing a mountain of granite. Very possibly the pavement of the temple-court lies preserved under the superincumbent soil, for very little corn grows within its precincts near the pool which indicates the situation of the sacred tank, which no Egyptian temple was ever without.

Before nightfall I got back to Mansoorah, whence it would be easy to reach the recently discovered ruins of Mendes, the city of the sacred ram. But we must leave it unvisited, for we are anxious to turn southwards, to the Pyramids and Cairo, the very heart of Egyptian life.

THE MAIN STREAM OF THE NILE.

MEMPHIS AND THE PYRAMIDS.

RE reaching the city of the Khalifs— long ere we arrive at the station of Kalyoob—the Pyramids are seen on the distant horizon.1 They are the tokens of Cairo, and it is with them that the most ancient records are connected of that vanished metropolis of which Cairo may be regarded as the later successor. So, before we enter the town, we will turn our steps to Memphis and the venerable structures that stand on the soil of its Necropolis.

Cairo has been constantly called the City of the Pyramids, and not without justice; from every elevated position the simple outlines of these marvellous structures are conspicuous; nevertheless the connection is but a superficial one between the gay and lively capital on the eastern bank of the Nile and the imperishable masses of stone on the opposite shore. Cairo has gazed at the Pyramids 1 The hieroglyphic word “per-am-us” (edge of the Pyramid) is the supposed origin of the word to which many fanciful derivations have been given. The solid content was called “abumir,” the word “peramus” meaning the four lines of the angles of the face or edge.

ever since its foundations were dug, but the most ancient of the Pyramids had seen the lapse of four thousand years before the first stone of the first house in Cairo was laid.

The capital with its lofty citadel is but an upstart that has thriven rapidly, and come into its vast fortune early by the overthrow of a reverend predecessor. Memphis fell, and Cairo grew out of its ruins. This is literally the fact, for, in the first place, the citizens of the old residence of the Pharaohs moved and settled in the city, which immediately it was founded by Amroo, Omar's general,1 increased very rapidly; and, in the second place, the ancient palaces of Memphis were pulled down, and the beautiful polished ornaments and stone slabs were conveyed across the Nile, and used for the foundation-stones of new buildings or the construction of strong walls. Monuments of marble and alabaster were broken up and burnt for lime. Many of the pillars, too, in the older mosque of Cairo were derived from the temples of Memphis. The old city was in short a quarry, with the stones ready wrought: and it was not spared; nay, so recklessly worked, that nothing— absolutely nothing—remains of the largest and most ancient city in Egypt at this day but some mounds of rubbish and a few more or less damaged monumental fragments.

The streets and squares, the palaces and temples, the academies and fortifications where so many hundred thousands of Memphites lived and worked, toiled and prayed, struggled and rested, laboured and thought, were joyful in time of peace or fought fiercely in time of war—all have vanished from the face of the earth. Memphis—the city of the living—is no more; but the Necropolis of Memphis—the city of the dead—has been as wonderfully preserved as though it had some share in the immortality of the souls of its inhabitants that rest in Osiris. Here, if anywhere, is the spot for recalling the striking saying by which the Greeks were wont to express the character of the Egyptian temperament: “They regarded their house as an inn, and their grave as an eternal home; their life on earth as a brief sojourn, and their death as true life!” And their burial-places have, in fact, outlived their cities, and their tombs have perpetuated the memory of their life to our time.

There is no more venerable site of human culture than that we propose to visit to-day, and no more ancient monuments than those we shall find there. Usually those who go to see the Pyramids first visit the Necropolis; we shall take our own way, and make acquaintance with the city of the living before we tread the city of the dead. We are bound by no considerations of time and comfort, so we prefer to entrust ourselves to a Nile-boat rather than take the railway which cuts across the province of Memphis, and we disembark at Bedrasheyn, a large fellah village. The palm-groves that surround it are among the finest in Egypt—and how could they be other than flourishing? for they are rooted in a soil where stood for ages the most populous city in the world. It is delicious to ride on the dyke road that traverses these groves, for under the palm crowns it is never altogether sunny or shady, and the incessant play of light and 1 A.D. 641.

THE VILLAGE OF BEDRASHEYN.
shade relieves us from any sense of monotony; and yet, taken separately, the trees of this extensive wood are exactly like each other, with their columnar trunks and feathered crowns. They all seem formed on one pattern—a beautiful one, it is true—and they are far from exhibiting the various individuality of our oaks and beeches.

In the little harbour of the village of Bedrasheyn lie large bundles of the ribs of the palm-leaves stripped of their feathery blades, and a strange spectacle is offered when the fellaheen climb up the smooth trunks and tie themselves to

FAÇADE OF A TOMB.
the summit of the tree, while they bend down the branches to fertilise the blossoms, or to gather the long bunches of dates.

Behind the palm-groves spread green and well-tilled fields; from the highest mound of ruins on the plain we can overlook the whole wide-spreading landscape once occupied by the famous city of the Pyramids.

There stand the houses of the Arab village of Mitraheeneh and to the south-west of it the villa of a wealthy Armenian, while south-east of it are the most considerable remains of the city; those most to the north belonging to a temple, while on the south the fallen colossus of Rameses II. may be seen. In a hut close by are preserved the fragments of the monuments discovered by Mariette Pacha in the soil of Memphis.

Looking towards the east nothing is to be seen but palm-trees and fields; but if we turn our eyes towards the west, beyond the cultivated land, and take in the whole extent of the horizon, our attention is rivetted by a marvellous panorama. It is true that the yellow limestone range which closes in the view like a wall with its bare and barren cliffs is neither varied in character, nor impressively high, nor pleasing in outline; but, instead of picturesque peaks and far-gleaming glaciers, as far as the eye can reach it is overtopped by pyramids. These hills of human workmanship stand in groups, and are various as to size and shape. It is as though they had grown together with the rock on which they stand, and were no less enduring.

If the citadel of Memphis and the king's palace stood on the hill from whose summit we are now gazing westward, the site was happily chosen. It was Lepsius who pointed out that this is the only spot far and wide whence a view could be obtained commanding the whole of Memphis, and whence each royal builder could watch the progress of his own Pyramid. Even the most northern group, that of Aboo Roâsh, could probably have been seen from here before it was destroyed.1 Now, at the very northernmost spot on the horizon, rise the greatest of the Pyramids,2 named after the village of Gheezeh, and, farther to the south, the groups of Zaweyet el ‘Aryan3 and of Abuseer.4 To the west, and not so remote, rise the proud steps of 1 The name of the monarch who built this pyramid is not known. 2 Built by Cheops, of the IVth dynasty. 3 Built by Userenra or Rathures. 4 Built by Sahura, of the Vth dynasty.

A CITIZEN OF MEMPHIS.
the Pyramid of Sakkarah1 with its sadly injured sisters, and farther south again the group of Dahshoor,2 exhibiting the curious peculiarity of a bent pyramid. The most southerly pyramids of all, which are invisible from our hill, do not belong properly to the Necropolis of Memphis; but, even without counting them, here are above eighty of these wonderful mausoleums. And what numbers of tombs, with more or less richly-decorated façades, have their openings in the face of the limestone
PTAH, THE GOD OF MEMPHIS.
cliff, and are covered with sand! The enormous extent of this, the vastest of all cemeteries—which, if we include the Pyramid of Meydoom,3 covers a stretch of country more than forty-five miles long—affords us a standard for estimating on one hand the magnitude and on the other the duration of the ancient city of Memphis.

Menes, the first king of Egypt, is said to have founded this city. Its name, in Egyptian —Men-nefer, signifies “the good place.” The priests told Herodotus that the Pharaoh, in order to make a site of suitable extent for his magnificent buildings, was forced to divert the stream of the river into a new channel, which divided the fertile land lying between the Libyan and Arabian ranges

BULL APIS.
into two equal halves, and the dams constructed by Menes to the south of the city were, when Herodotus travelled in Egypt (about 454 before Christ), still carefully kept up and annually restored by the Persian Governors. Traces of them may still be seen. After fortifying the site, and carefully attending to the necessary regulation of the inundation of the Nile, Menes raised a sanctuary to the god Ptah, which during the many ages that the city endured continued to be its central point, and was added to and enriched by all the Pharaohs, even down to the time of the Roman emperors.

Foremost in rank of all the Egyptian gods, as being the eldest and first of them all, stood the primeval and venerable divinity Ptah4 of Memphis. He was called the creator, from whom the germ and at the same time the laws and conditions of all being proceeded. He, “the beginning and the beginner,” was also the chief of the divinities of light, and was called the creator of the egg from which, when he had broken it, the sun and moon came forth. “Ptah” means “the opener,” and Ptah-Sokar-Osiris5—who was ruler of the Necropolis of Memphis, and 1 Age unknown; supposed tomb of the early Apis bulls. The building perhaps as old as the IInd dynasty. 2 Built by Unas, or Onnos, last king of the Vth dynasty; anciently called Nefer setu, “the most beautiful place.” Pyramid known as the modern Mastabat-el-Faraoun. 3 Built by Senefou, of the IIIrd dynasty; the pyramid was called Kha, or “the rising one.” Each pyramid had its special name placed in the inscriptions after that of the monarch who built it. 4 Ptah appears as a mere deity wearing a skull-cap, covered with a collar and counterpoise, and holding a dog-headed sceptre the uas, sometimes combined with the Tat, or so-called emblem of stability, and standing on a pedestal in the shape of truth or a cubit; gods and men were said to come out of his mouth. 5 A later form of the same god allied with the solar Seker, or Socharis, and with Osiris represented as a naked embryonic dwarf wearing a cap and beetle, scarab, on his head. The numerous figures and representations of him are not older than the XXVIth dynasty, or the seventh century B.C.

whose name is preserved in that of the village of Sakkarah—bestows on the departed sun its power of rising again, and on departed souls a resurrection to eternal life on the other side of the grave. Apis was the animal sacred to Ptah,1 and was carefully tended in his temple. He lay on a soft couch behind a curtain of costly material, was fed on a broth of wheat-flour and pearl-wheat, with milk and honey-cakes, and a harem of cows was kept for him in an adjacent building. Even his mother had reverence paid her, was splendidly tended, and had a stall of her own. The number of his servants was very great, and
SACRED URÆUS SNAKE.
greater still that of his votaries, for the power of seeing into futurity was ascribed to him. It is true he could answer the questions put with no more than “yes” and “no.” If he accepted the food offered him by a worshipper, the oracle was favourable; if he scorned it, things looked badly for the matter he was appealed to to decide upon. It betokened death to the astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus when the bull licked his garment instead of eating out of his hand, and Germanicus died soon after the oracle of Apis had pronounced itself unfavourable to him. Besides the bull Apis a sacred serpent was worshipped here; on the lake or tank, which was never wanting in an Egyptian temple, floated elegant boats dedicated to the god, and a sacred grove grew on its banks. All the Pharaohs who caused their bodies to be interred in Pyramids were worshippers of Ptah in this sanctuary, and its high-priest, the “Sam,”2 was the first in rank of all the priesthood of Egypt. The king frequently conferred this dignity on his own sons; it survived the dominion of the Hykshos, and at the time of the greatest splendour of the Pharaohs was borne by Khamus,3 the son and heir of the great Rameses, who, however, died before his father. This powerful prince, known to the Greeks as Sesostris, who decorated almost every city on the Nile with monuments of his triumphs, bestowed a special favour on this temple, gracing it with colossal statues of himself, which were erected before its gate.

We know the occurrence which gave rise to the dedication of these statues. When Sesostris—so the Greek traveller was told—came home from one of his warlike expeditions, the faithless viceroy whom he had left behind in the Nile valley received him at the frontier town of Pelusium with a costly banquet, and 1 He was called the “second life” of Ptah. His sepulchre was at the Serapeum of Sakkarah from the time of Amenophis III. to the Roman Empire, until about B.C. 30. 2 A sacerdotal title supposed to mean “foreman.” 3 Appointed Viceroy of Memphis, he was buried amidst the Apis bulls in the Serapeum of Sakkarah.

then had the wooden palace, which had been erected for the occasion, set on fire, after the king and his family had retired to rest, intoxicated from the feast. Rameses was miraculously preserved, and in his deep gratitude he decorated the temple of Ptah with those colossi, one of which—the solitary monument of any size that marks the site of the city, the living city, of Memphis—lies at a thousand paces to the south-west of the village of Mitraheeneh, extended on the soil and kissing the earth. This stone giant, which is more than seven times the height of a man, belongs to the English, and perhaps may some day follow the obelisk of Alexandria to the banks of the Thames.

Although after the expulsion of the Hykshos the residence of the Pharaohs was transferred from Memphis to Thebes, the city of Menes was highly prosperous, even in later times. Its harbour on the Nile, which is frequently mentioned, was an emporium for all the produce of the country, and the commerce of Memphis was not restricted to the Nile valley. A special quarter was given up to Phœnician merchants and their factories. Here stood the temple of the Aphrodite of the foreigners, Astarte-Ashera, with its sacred grove, in which the youth of the city gathered together to do honour to the goddess. This part of the city was the centre of pleasure, while in the purely Egyptian quarters the citizens lived quietly and in strict morality. A great variety of handicrafts were practised here, and science was held in high esteem among the priests of the highest class. The schools which were attached to the temples of Ptah, of his son Imhotep,1 and of other gods were very famous, and many writings, of which their disciples were the authors, have come down to us. The Pharaohs who lived at Thebes visited Memphis from time to time, and its citadel was at all times regarded as one of the most important bulwarks of the kingdom. It was still famous among the Greeks as “the White Wall,” by which name it was also known to the Egyptians; and the monuments, as well as the classical writers, speak of many sieges of this citadel and of many stormings of the walls of Memphis. Assyrians and Persians did not regard Egypt as conquered until this “White Wall” had fallen, and the soldiers' quarter, which lay within it, must have been densely populated. Memphis was not only one of the most populous, but one of the most extensive cities of antiquity, and even late into the period of its decay it was half a day's journey to walk through it from north to south.

The first fatal blow to its greatness fell when Philip's son founded Alexandria,2 and so created as it were a new heart for Egypt, which at once became the source and the recipient of all its vital streams. Then, when the hosts of Islam overran the Nile valley, and their leaders, avoiding Alexandria and Memphis, founded Fostât,3 adjoining the old Roman castle of Babylon, on the eastern shore of the Nile, and fixed their residence there, the new town—which subsequently developed into the city of Cairo—absorbed all the privileges and possessions of the ancient city of the Pyramids, and in a very few centuries Memphis was no more than a city of ruins, though, indeed, of ruins that had no equal. It is not more than seven centuries 1 Called Imouthos or Æsculapius by the Greeks. He does not appear honoured earlier than the time of the Ptolemies, although a king of the VIth dynasty bore his name. 2 B.C. 331. 3 A.D. 641.

FALLEN COLOSSUS OF RAMESES II.
since the learned and trustworthy Abd-al Lateef, of Bagdad, visited Memphis and wrote down what he saw there. “Enormous as are the extent and antiquity of this city,” he says, “in spite of the frequent change of governments whose yoke it has borne, and the great pains more than one nation has been at to destroy it, to sweep its last trace from the face of the earth, to carry away the stones and materials of which it was constructed, to mutilate the statues that adorned it; in spite, finally, of all that more than four thousand years have done in addition to man, these ruins still offer to the eye of the beholder a mass of marvels which bewilder the senses, and which the most skilful pen must fail to describe. The more deeply we contemplate this city the more our admiration rises, and every fresh glance at the ruins is a fresh source of delight.”

We cannot here enumerate all the different monuments which Abd-al Lateef admired, and they have now long since vanished. By the “lions” which stood facing each other he no doubt means sphinxes. The whole soil was covered with ruins, and the mass of broken statues—among which lay the above-mentioned one of Rameses II.—was enormous. After Abd-al Lateef the gradually diminishing remains of Memphis are rarely mentioned; stone by stone they were transported across the Nile, and many a noble work of art was destroyed by the folly of fanaticism. Thus, in the middle of the fifteenth century, an Emir caused the destruction of the much-admired “green shrine,” which was formed out of a single enormous block of a stone as hard as iron, and ornamented with figures and inscriptions. It was smashed to pieces. The golden statue, with eyes of precious stones, which had once been enshrined in this marvel of art—dedicated, probably, to the moon-god Chonsu—had long before disappeared. Abd-al Lateef describes the thirst for gold of his contemporaries with deep indignation; he calls it a disease, and relates how the ruins of Memphis had been systematically searched through and through in every spot, even the most unlikely, by treasure-seekers, to whom everything they could find was acceptable. The bronze clamps were torn from the walls, the hinges from the door-posts, and the statues bored into to search for treasure within. They crept into the clefts in the hills like thieves into a house; crawling on their faces, they slipped into every cranny in the hill-side, and many of them lost what they already had in these fruitless searches; while others who were penniless misled rich folks to their ruin, persuading them to risk their fortune, and at the same time their commonsense, in the hope of discovering great treasure. A thousand failures were at once forgotten as soon as a rich find was reported; but at last the plundered ruins could no longer yield even the smallest reward to the severest labour, till the husbandman expelled the treasure-seeker, and compelled the soil of Memphis to produce nobler wealth in the form of corn and fruit-trees.1

Now, as we turn westwards, and wander among the yellow sandy Pyramids and the wide expanse of tombs, we know what sort of city it was that laid her dead to their eternal rest in this vastest of graveyards. We will begin our excursion from the north, and first visit the largest Pyramids, called, from the village in their neighbourhood, the Pyramids of Ghizeh. We can reach them from our 1 Abd-al Lateef was translated into French by Sylvestre de Sacy, 1810.

inn in a comfortable conveyance after a rather long hour's drive. A visit to the Pyramids is a favourite Sunday “outing” with the Cairenes, and there is scarcely any “excursion” by land which can compare with it for the charm and variety of the feelings it gives rise to.

In the early morning sunshine the carriage, drawn by brisk horses, rattles across the iron bridge over the Nile which connects Cairo with the beautiful island of Gezeereh; this, with its castle and the western channel of the river that bathes it, is soon left behind us. The well-kept road runs as straight as a line under the

AT THE FOOT OF THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS.
shade of lebbek-trees; the castle and the viceregal gardens of Ghizeh, enclosed by walls, lie to our left; the dewy verdure of the fields, intersected by canals, refreshes the eye, and a delicate blue mist veils the western horizon. The air has that purity and that aromatic freshness which are peculiar to a winter morning in Egypt. Now the misty curtain that floats over the western landscape parts for a moment —the Pyramids are before us, with their sharp triangular outline; but the mist falls again. Right and left we see now wading buffaloes, now flocks of herons; here a solitary pelican within easy shot of our carriage, there half-naked labourers at their daily work, and their villages standing remote from the road. There soar two large grey eagles; the eye follows their flight, and, glancing upwards, perceives that the fog is disappearing by degrees, that the blue sky is growing brighter, till at last the sun shoots out his level rays in unshrouded splendour. At this hour, in the
time of the Pharaohs, the hymns of praise of the priests rang out from the temple-doors
BEDAWEEN AND FELLAH.
hailing the child Horus, the god of light,1 who had vanquished Seth, his father's foe—darkness and its allies, the fog and mist; the struggle was over, and there was a truce during the hours of daylight, but it would begin again in the evening, and end in the sun-god being worsted; he, on his side, must sink into the nether world, to return victorious on the following morning. “The child is the father of the man:” the child Horus has become the mighty sun-god Ra.

It is now bright and hot; before us the Pyramids stand unveiled, scarred with the injuries they have suffered in the course of ages. The horses now moderate their pace, for the road begins to mount, and a wall shuts it in on either hand; this was constructed as a protection against another enemy—the ally and minister of the same god as rules the darkness—against that foe to all life, the sand of the desert. His dominion extends as far as the desert reaches; where waters gleam and plains are verdurous, Osiris and his children wield the sceptre. Even where moisture reaches the fringe of the desert herbs and trees thrive. When Osiris— so runs the myth—embraced the wife of Seth, he left his wreath of melilot on her couch.2

This piece of the road is constantly covered with sand in spite of the wall. An inn, now abandoned, is left on our right; the road takes a sharp curve, and soon the panting horses halt on the rocky plateau where the highest of the Pyramids stand.

We find ourselves in front of the largest of those structures, which were esteemed by the ancients as wonders of the world. It is unnecessary to describe them, for the stereometrical form which took its name from them is familiar to all; nor is this the place for a numerical estimate of their size and bulk. It is only by comparison 1 In the later inscriptions Horus appears in the disk or orb of the sun in the first hour of the day. Horus is the youthful or nascent sun; as such he is Har-pa-chrat, or Harpocrates, a name meaning Horus, the child. 2 Plutarch, “De Iside,” 14. The goddess, wife of Seth or Typhon, was Nephthys, sister of Isis.

ASCENT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.
THE PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX.
with other objects more present to our mind's eye that we can form any idea of their size; thus we will only say that, while St. Peter's at Rome is 131 mètres high (430 feet), the great Pyramid of Cheops, if its summit were perfect, would measure 147 mètres (or 482 feet), thus being 52 feet the taller; so that, if the Pyramid of Cheops were hollow, the great Roman cathedral could stand within it like a clock under a glass shade. Neither the great church of St. Stephen at Vienna, nor the cathedral at Strasburg is as high as the great pyramid, and no building in England approaches it. St. Paul's, in London, as is well known, would stand within St. Peter's, and is just 100 feet lower than the pyramid. Old St. Paul's, the spire of which was destroyed by lightning in 1561, and the building itself in the fire of London in 1666, was somewhat taller; the tower, too, of the new cathedral at Cologne, just finished, exceeds it in height.1 In one respect no other building in the world can in the remotest degree compare with the Pyramids, and that is in the mass and weight of the materials used in their construction.2 If the great mausoleum of Cheops were pulled down, a wall could be built all round the frontier of France with the stones. When a good pistol is fired from the top of the great pyramid, aiming horizontally, the ball falls about half-way down the side. By such comparisons as these, they who cannot have the advantage of visiting Egypt may form a vivid conception of the dimensions of these enormous structures; the traveller who stands on the sandy platform face to face with them, and gazes up at their summits, needs no such aids to his imagination.

We get out of the carriage on the northern side of the great pyramid; in the sharply-defined triangular shadow squat groups of women selling oranges and various cates, donkey-boys are waiting with their grey steeds, and travellers are taking a rest after having accomplished the ascent of the pyramid. This labour now lies before us, and if we were disposed to shirk it, there would be no lack of attacks on our indolent resolve, for from the instant when we stepped out of the carriage we have been closely pursued by a ragged crowd of brown and sinewy guides, vehemently offering their assistance. They proudly call themselves “Bedaween,” though they have nothing in common with the true “sons of the desert” but their faults. Nevertheless, it is not only advisable but necessary to have recourse to their help, although the way up can scarcely be missed.

We begin to mount at a spot where the falling away of the external stone casing of the pyramid leaves the step-like interior structure most exposed, and all the way to the top we are on a sort of stairs of smooth-hewn stone; but the steps are unequal, and sometimes of considerable height—some half as high as a man. Two or three stout lads accompany me; one springs up first with his bare feet, holds my hands, and drags me after him; another follows, shoves behind, and heaves me forward; a third takes me under the arm, and lifts. Thus I half scramble up and half am lugged up, and the nimble guides give the climber no rest if he wishes to pause a moment for breath, or to wipe the sweat from his forehead. At the 1 The measurements of the height of the spire of old St. Paul's from the ground differ. Stowe makes it 520 feet; Camden, 534: this discrepancy may arise from the measurement having been made from or to different points. The towers of the cathedral of Cologne are 510 feet, and so, higher than the great pyramid. 2 The weight of the three great pyramids has been estimated at 12,659,460 tons; about twenty-three square feet thickness of skin and thirty feet of height have been lost in 5,000 years.

same time they never cease shouting all the way and clamouring for bakscheesh, and are altogether as pertinaciously annoying as if they wished us to forget the gratitude we owe them for their assistance.1

At last we have reached the goal. The point of the pyramid has long since crumbled away, and we find ourselves on a tolerably spacious platform. When our gasping lungs and throbbing pulses have a little subsided, and we have paid and got rid of the “Bedaween,” who torment us to exchange our money and to buy sham antiquities, we look down on the vast space before us, and the longer we

SECOND AND THIRD PYRAMIDS.
gaze and let this glorious landscape penetrate our soul the more full of meaning and the more unique it seems to us. Fertility and dearth, life and death lie nowhere in such close and intimate juxtaposition as here. Out there to the east flows the stately Nile, white lateen-sails fluttering across it; and fields and meadows, gardens and groves spread along its shores like a carpet of emerald verdure. The villages that nestle under the shade of the trees look like birds' nests among green foliage, and at the foot of the mountain of Mokattam—which at this hour is bathed in golden light, and presently, when the sun is setting, will reflect the rosy and violet glow of evening—rise the thousand mosques of the city of the Khalifs dominated by the citadel, and by those slenderest of minarets 1 Abd-al Lateef describes the difficulty of the ascent in his time, except to persons accustomed to mount by small holes cut in the casing.
which grace the mausoleum of Mohammed Ali and are visible from the remotest distance—an unmistakable feature of Cairo. Gardens and trees encircle the
DOOR OF A TOMB AT GHIZEH.
city as a garland round some fair head; there is nowhere a lovelier picture of prosperity, fertility, and life. The silver veins of the canals pervade the whole luxuriant scene and look like some shining, vital fluid. The sky is unclouded, and yet light shadows sweep across the fields; these are flocks of birds which here find abundance of food and drink. How lavish is the goodness of God! How fair and wealthy is the earth!

The Bedaween have left us; we are alone on the summit. All is still, not a sound reaches us from far or near. Turning now to the west the eye can see nothing but pyramids and tombs and cliffs and sand. Not a blade, not a shrub can find nutriment on this sterile soil. Yellow-grey and dull brown are the only hues to be seen, in unbroken monotony far and wide.

Only here and there a white object shines among the dust; that is the dried skeleton of some dead animal. Silent and void, the foe to every thing that has life—the desert stretches before us; and where is its end? For days, weeks, months the traveller would never reach it, even

SCRIBE. (In the Louvre.)
if he escaped alive from the choking, overwhelming sand. Here, indeed, if anywhere, Death is king without dispute; here, where the Egyptians saw the sun vanish every day, here, behind the mountain rampart of the Libyan desert, began a world which, compared to the blooming domain of the East, was like a corpse compared to the eager stirring living man. There is no more silent burial-ground on earth than this desert; and so tomb after tomb was arrayed here, and, as if to keep more closely the secret of the grave, the waste flung its shroud of sand over the tombs of the dead. Here loom the terrors of infinitude. Here, at the very gate of the other world where eternity begins, the work of men's hands seems to have evaded the common lot of earthly things and to have won some share of immortality.

“Time mocks all things, but the Pyramids mock Time,” says an oft-repeated Arab proverb. We turn from the western landscape and look round at the circle of these monuments which are close to the Pyramid of Cheops. They all stand on the rocky foundation of the sand-drifted desert-plateau. Though, no doubt, some deeper motive lay at the root of the choice of this situation, it was partly determined by a consideration which a nation of husbandmen, such as the Egyptians

were, could never have lost sight of: the bodies must be safe from the Nile floods, and at the same time no portion of the fertile land must be subtracted from the requirements of the living. This idea is expressed indeed in a Greek inscription which Arrian, the disciple of Epictetus, had engraved on the Great Sphinx, and which begins thus (Dr. Young's translation):—

“Thy form stupendous here the gods have placed, Sparing each spot of harvest-bearing land.”

In the whole of the Nile valley not one ancient grave has been found which could be reached by the inundation of the river.

Looking south-west we see in the immediate neighbourhood a pyramid which in point of size yields little to that of Cheops; the easing layer of smooth stone at the top is still well preserved, and its builder was King Chefren—named Khafra in the inscriptions—the second successor to Cheops, who would seem also to have completed the Great Sphinx, which is somewhat farther to the east. The third pyramid, which is considerably smaller, but built with great care and of fine materials, served as a mausoleum for Mycerinus (Men-ka-ra), one of the same race of kings. The smaller pyramids, lying east of us and close under our feet, and south of the structure of Mycerinus, cover the mortal remains of the sons and daughters of the same Pharaohs who caused the larger monuments to be erected. East again of these three pyramids we can detect the ruins of the temple of Isis, where sacrifices were offered to the manes of the departed kings. Isis, the maternal, took the divine part of the dead into her bosom and restored it to life as the child Horus, who grew up to be Osiris. This departed soul did not, as we say, return to God; but, if it were found pure and faithful, became absolutely one with the universal soul whence it was derived, and received the same name, Osiris.1 Thus the honours paid to the celestials could be offered to the souls of the Pharaohs that had passed through that apotheosis, and as long as Egypt was governed by independent sovereigns, there were prophets or priests of the Osirian or deceased Cheops (Khufu), and of the other principal pyramid-builders, who conducted the worship in the fallen temple of Isis, and who usually belonged to the oldest families of Memphis.

From this it appears that Herodotus was falsely informed when he tells us that Cheops and Chefren were both wicked contemners of the gods, who closed the temples and drew down on themselves the hatred of their subjects, so that no Egyptian would mention their names for detestation.

We may now descend, not wholly without difficulties it is true, and we will visit the best preserved of the tombs which stand up from the sand-drifts in regular rows, or contemplate the caves in the rock which open in from the face of the limestone plateau on which the Pyramids stand; thus we shall get an idea of the times of Chefren and his successor which will rescue them completely and for all time from the ignominious and odious character given them by Herodotus. While the Pyramids themselves bear no inscriptions, the inner chambers of all the tombs of the great of that early period are completely covered with pictures and hieroglyphics. The latter 1 The name of Mycerinus is found to be preceded by that of Osiris; but not those of his two predecessors.

refer to the relations in which the deceased stood to the Prince, to his titles and dignities, and to his possessions on earth. Only a few—as, for instance, that of the
SLAUGHTER OF VICTIMS.
general officer Una1—narrate any warlike achievements. The epoch of the Pyramids was a time of peaceful prosperity. The whole life of the citizens of those days is
A HERD OF ASSES.
set before our eyes by these representations. The wall of every tomb is a stone page of the most ancient of picture-books, and marvellously preserved by the sand which covered it. And if we ask whether, indeed, at so early a date the mechanical appliances of masons and sculptors were equal to giving worthy artistic expression to the manifold types of life, a simple “Yes” is hardly answer enough; for, in fact, the sculptors of the Nile at no time created more perfect
THE NOBLEMAN URKHU INSPECTING HIS FIELDS.
pictures than at that early period, divided from ours by the lapse of five thousand years. The figures and features of the kings, the nobles, and the officials were reproduced with realistic accuracy and absolute fidelity, and any one who has had the opportunity of admiring the statue of the scribe found in the Necropolis of Memphis, and now in Paris, cannot doubt that he has seen a perfect portrait of the keen-looking man that it represents. The various compositions which cover the walls of the tombs deserve less praise; but the hand must have been well skilled that could chisel in limestone, and with indifferent tools, all these 1 This has been translated more than once; there is an English version in the “Records of the Past,” Vol. II. p. 3.
characteristic forms with so clean an outline and such slight relief—often not more than a few lines in depth.

Nor is it only the art of the Egyptians that we find again in these tombs;

BONDMEN FELLING TREES.
all their culture and arts of life stand before us complete and fully represented. The type of writing is precisely the same as it continued to be at the time of
FISHING WITH NET.
the Romans; the scribe's implements represented thus
and the papyrus roll
are already in use as hieroglyphic symbols. We find from later writings that the most important scientific and religious works were written at this period.

CROCODILES AND HIPPOPOTAMUS IN THE NILE.

The great sempiternal calendar of the starry skies was already understood and used, and a highly elaborated theology was expounded to the people by a learned and well-organised priesthood. Every stone of the Pyramids was carefully measured, and the exactitude with which the four sides of the structures face the four points of the compass, proves that the architect—who could hardly have been acquainted with the use of the magnetic needle—worked hand in hand with the astronomer. The whole land was measured and distributed into districts under officers in charge of them. Every division had its governor, and above them all stood Pharaoh, not merely as unlimited ruler by the grace of God, but as the representative of the immortals, as the son and human incarnation of the sun-god Ra. A magnificent court surrounded the king, who was usually spoken of by the title of “The Great Gate” (in Egyptian, Per-aa; Hebrew, Pharaoh). Privy councillors, chamberlains, lords-treasurers, intendants of war material, of the women's house, of the abourers, of the granaries, of the minstrels, nay, even of the wardrobe and the bath, are mentioned. The governors of the districts and other officials near to the sovereign's person took the hereditary rank of Erpa-ha,1 or “Prince of the realm,” and if they were related to the family of the Pharaoh they had the title of Suten-rekh, or “Royal relative.”2 The daughters of the King were married to distinguished or meritorious officials, and we know that some of these attained to such an honour, notwithstanding an humble origin. Children of talent and merit, even of modest rank, were educated with the King's children, and we find even swimming-masters mentioned in an enumeration of the princes' tutors. Every Egyptian was forced to be satisfied with one lawful wife, and one queen only shared the throne during the Pharaoh's life-time and his tomb after death. A harem is, however, mentioned, where numerous women lived who were engaged in various offices about the royal pair, and which was inherited by each succeeding king. The passion for building which was predominant at this period—one of the strongest that ever takes possession of a powerful prince — strikes us everywhere in this Necropolis. It took deep root in Egypt, and was inherited by successive dynasties of Egyptian kings, and finally by many members of the family of the Ptolemies. An acute historian once observed that no more solid external symbol of a powerful government could be imagined than buildings of an important and permanent character. Moreover, the very act of building—rapidly urged forward by proportionate forces—is in itself an image or emblem of active rule, and in peaceful times is a substitute for it. The Pharaohs who piled up the Pyramids were passionately devoted to this illustrious taste, and we cannot be surprised that they should have given their architects a prominent position at court, and that among the tombs which we are now inspecting many of the finest are those of the master-architects under the Pharaohs.

Many of the graves here do not consist—like those dwellings of the dead which we shall meet with on our journey into Upper Egypt—of chambers hewn out in the rock, but of independent mausoleums which the Arabs call Mastaba. They are 1 Erpa Ha or Repa Ha is “hereditary chief.” The governors of nomes were hereditary nobles, like the King himself. 2 One of the leading titles of the period; literally, King's acquaintance.

built of hewn stones; their ground-plan is usually quadrangular, and their walls slope
GROUP OF EASTERN WOMEN.
inwards towards the top, so that the whole structure forms a truncated pyramid, rising not very high above the ground. Each Mastaba contains a principal chamber and a niche or cell, commonly walled up, called the Serdab, or “hollow space”; in this the statue of the deceased is frequently found. The “well”—i.e., the shaft by which the body was deposited — commonly lay at the western end of the building.1 The remains found in them prove that the arts of embalming were not so well understood at the early date when the Pyramids were built as at a later period. The door of the Mastaba generally opens to the east, while the entrance to the Pyramid is on the north side. On the stone door-posts, which were frequently decorated with the portrait of the deceased, a cylindrical hewn block generally rested, undoubtedly a copy of the trunk of a palm-tree such as the fellaheen use to this day to crown the door-way of their huts. Every wall on the inside of these peculiarly constructed monuments is covered with pictures such as we have described of the private life of the deceased. It was possible only for the rich and noble to have such permanent and costly sepulture, so that the pictures and the inscriptions explaining them always exhibit the owner as surrounded by manifold possessions, and in the midst of life. We seldom meet with any allusion to death and the other world; the mourners who assembled at the 1 The bodies were lowered by a shaft or well into the sepulchral chamber. When so deposited the well was filled up with rubble.
THE TWO GREAT PYRAMIDS AT THE TIME OF THE INUNDATION.
Mastaba were not supposed to lament there, but to think of their father, brother, or master as still living in Osiris; as divine, and to be honoured with sacrifices, but not bewailed. The glorified spirit1 valued the gifts that were brought to him from every village on his hereditary estate; bulls and gazelles were slain before him, and lists, engraved in tablets as a binding record, promise him on certain days of the year offerings of meat and bread, fowls and vegetables, cakes and milk, wine and essences. Prayers were addressed to him, and these children of a primitive age always preserved a cheerful memory of the man who, during his life-time, had been one of themselves; to whom they were bound by ties of love, friendship, gratitude, or servitude, and whose wealth and pleasures they had shared.

Every noble was a landowner. His wealth consisted not in money, which was at that time unknown, but in fields, meadows, papyrus-plantations on the shores of the streams, in serfs who exercised every variety of handicraft in his service, and in almost every kind of domestic animal that is known to us at the present day. Nay, some species which they had tamed, as antelopes and gazelles, have relapsed into the wild state. It is true that neither the horse nor the camel were known to them, and sheep seem to have been rare, but they sometimes occur. The possessions in herds of a noble of the time of the Pyramids were of very considerable extent. In the tomb of Khafra-ankh and his wife Herneka we read that they were owners of 835 oxen, 220 hornless cattle, 760 asses, 2,235 antelope-goats, and 740 common goats. The most enormous stock of beasts, however, belonged to a noble interred at Sakkarah, who possessed in all, including calves, 5,300 head of cattle. Swine also were often kept; fowls, and more particularly geese and doves,2 were numbered by thousands. Pictures are never wanting in the tombs which represent the tilling of the fields, from the first ploughing with the hook-shaped plough to the gathering of the harvest. Overseers, stick in hand, everywhere superintended the labourers, who wore no garment but an apron; and the lord Urkhu himself is depicted as borne forth to inspect his fields on a litter supported between two asses.3 A servant walks behind him shading him with a fan. We see the vine-dressers in full activity in the vineyards, and in the plantations we are shown the felling of the trees. It is hot, and the toilers refresh themselves with a draught from a flask; here the overseer is accompanied by his greyhound. The timber is required for constructing the Nile-boats which are used by the nobles, not only for purposes of business, but for taking their pleasure; for the upper classes delighted in catching fish and snaring birds, and in every description of sport by water. Besides, the reeds by the shore are over-crowded by the feathered tribes, the waters swarm with fish, and the hunter rarely sallies forth in vain when a crocodile or a hippopotamus is to be slain. And the man who fills an office at court, and whose serfs compose quite a little state by themselves, needs such recreation. His vassals perform every kind of handicraft—joiner's work, pottery, glass-blowing, weaving, paper-making, gold-washing, 1 This spirit, called Ga, was supposed to be attached to the statue. There was a hole in the Serdab through which the prayers and incense are supposed to have reached the statue usually walled up in it. 2 The ring-dove, called Mena, often appears in the tombs; the pigeon, called Karenpe, in Coptic Shrompi, “the bird of heaven,” also. 3 The wheel not having been invented, cars and carriages were consequently not used.

working in metals, and preparing the papyrus. The art of writing was industriously practised; the overseers were at the same time accountants; whole rows of scribes are busy in the writing-rooms. The simple gifts of nature do not satisfy the daily requirements of such a people; they bake, boil, and roast, and we find an extraordinary variety of cakes, each of which has its distinctive name. The ladies, who seem usually to have been of fair complexion—for they are represented with yellowish skins, while the men are reddish-coloured—stand on a perfect equality with their husbands, and were even then called “mistress of the house.” When sons were lacking the daughters took the inheritance, and even the crown could devolve on the daughter of a Pharaoh. The children were named first after their mother and next after their father, and the inscriptions have in many cases preserved the pet name that commemorates the amiability of the wife. Family life is full of feeling and dignity, and light-heartedness and innocent delight find constant expression. Many of the encouraging words spoken by the overseers to the labourers, or by one serf to another, contain some jest, and some of the pictures even are intentionally humourous. No epoch of Egyptian history offers a more pleasing aspect than this; and though the Pyramids have been called “tokens of the slavery of whole races of men,” and many a curse has been pronounced since the days of Herodotus on the heartless tyrants who raised them, it seems to us that these Jeremiahs have caused themselves unnecessary regret; for it was not an enfeebled race of captives who built the Pyramids, groaning under the lash as they toiled, but a youthful and vigorous nation who, during long centuries of peaceful inactivity, spent their superfluous energy in joyful labour to accomplish an almost superhuman task, under the very eyes of princes whom they reverenced as divine. All ulterior considerations were overlooked, for it was their delight in the newly found methods and means of overcoming mechanical difficulties which incited the first pyramid-builders and their successors to attempt the solution of the severest problems. Just as nature in the early days of her development produced the Ichthyosaurus, as the cyclopean walls of Greece were the precursors of the harmonious forms of her temples, as in the lives of individuals the period of wise moderation follows one of bolder enterprise—so in Egypt first arose those mightiest of all monuments of human labour, the Pyramids. Beyond a doubt, the lower orders must have suffered much oppression in the course of their erection, and yet we can hardly be mistaken in supposing that the contemporaries of Cheops who helped in completing his great work were proud of their co-operation; for every prince who undertakes a work which promises to give evidence to succeeding generations of the strength and ability of his age is secure of the approbation and support of his people. The nobles of those days did not neglect to record for the information of posterity what connection they had had with the building of their sovereign's Pyramid; nor must we forget that that sovereign was a god in the imagination of his subjects. After the completion of the monument erected in his honour, the people no doubt went home, like the Israelites after the dedication of Solomon's temple, “blessing the king, joyful, and of good courage.”

There is hardly a traveller who has not fallen into a gloomy vein in describing the Pyramids, but without reason, as I have tried to prove, though certainly it

must always be impossible for us moderns to throw ourselves into the feelings of those who raised these gigantic monuments; for to us the dignity of antiquity is superadded to their hugeness, and the smile dies on our lips as we contemplate these great piles, over whose heads ages have passed as years and days do with us. They belong to a race of giants before whom the greatest of us feels small, and before investigating their construction, and penetrating to their interior, we cannot forbear quoting a sentence from Arthur Schopenhauer: “Many objects of contemplation excite our sense of the sublime, because the space they occupy, as well as their venerable antiquity—and thus their duration in time— make us feel diminished to nothingness in their presence; and yet we revel in the delight of gazing at them. Such are high mountains, the Pyramids of Egypt, and the colossal ruins of antiquity.”

In 1787, Goethe saw at Rome a drawing of a pyramid restored ideally by the French traveller Cassas, “from certain records, data, and conjectures.” “This drawing,” he says, “is the most stupendous architectural idea I ever saw in my life, and I believe man can go no farther.”

Our knees are still trembling from our clamber up the great Pyramid; we can rest in its shadow, look up to its apex, and ask ourselves in what way, and by what means it was possible to erect so gigantic a pile. In the first place we recall the strange account given by Herodotus, that the summit was first completed, and

THE BUILDING OF THE PYRAMIDS.
the portion next the soil finished last. This has proved to be as well founded as his other assertion, of which the accuracy is forcibly impressed on every beholder, that the pyramid of Cheops was built up “in steps.”

Though the English travellers Perring and Vyse deserve the credit of having first measured the Pyramids exactly in all their dimensions, it is to the Germans Lepsius1 and Erbkam that the honour is due of having discovered, by painstaking investigations and most ingenious calculations, the method on which they were constructed. Any one who is acquainted with their great work will perfectly understand the account given by Herodotus, and be supplied with the answer to all the questions which force themselves on the mind of every thinking man who beholds the pyramids. We know now how it came to pass that one king raised

PYRAMID OF DASHOOR.
a monument to himself of such gigantic size while another was content with a much smaller one; why we can point to only one uncompleted pyramid; and how it was that Cheops was bold enough to undertake a work for which the average duration of a reign was a wholly inadequate time,2 and whose completion by a successor was not to be hoped for, since he, in his turn, would have to devote himself to building his own tomb.

As soon as a Pharaoh mounted the throne, he began the construction of his mausoleum, at first of modest dimensions, by building a truncated pyramid with steep walls. If death overtook him, his nucleus had the apex added to it at once, and the sloping sides of the pyramid were prolonged to reach the ground; but if time and means were not wanting, after this core or nucleus was completed an outer casing consisting of a series of steps was put on the truncated pyramid, and this process was repeated till at last a stage was reached when the mere addition of a layer was a gigantic undertaking. When it was necessary to finish off the pyramid the point was first completed, and then the steps were filled in from the apex downwards. The shape of the broken pyramid of Dashoor is highly instructive, for this one had its summit duly finished, but the unfilial successor neglected to complete the lower portion. Thus the pyramids were actually finished from the top downwards, but no stones that could easily fall out were used in filling in the steps, 1 Lepsius, “Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden,” 8vo, Cairo, 1843, first pointed out the mode of construction. The ground-plan was first laid out, and the place for the sepulchral chamber planned; then the passage for the sarcophagus, descending at an angle, had its mouth beyond the ground-plan of the mass of masonry. If the King's life was very long the masonry had to be carried beyond the orifice of the descending shaft or passage, as in the case of the great pyramid, necessitating a change of construction.—Gliddon, “Otia Aegyptiaca.” 2 There is reason to believe, from the Papyrus of Turin, that the life of Cheops extended or was supposed to extend to above ninety years, as pointed out by Hincks.

but blocks of this form
which lay on each other with a broad surface, and in the course of time were as intimately joined by the mere pressure of their weight as if they had been cemented with the finest mortar. It is evident that the encasing of the pyramids with smooth slabs of stone such as still remain in those of Chefren and Mycerinus must have been begun at the top.

We know now that the size of the pyramid grew in proportion to the length of the life of its builder, and that it was at any time possible to bring it to completion. The filling in of the steps would be left to the filial piety of the heir, though in the earliest times it does not even seem to have been regarded as essential, as is shown by the pyramid of Meydoom and the step-shaped pyramid of Sakkarah.1 “If in the

QUARRIES OF TOURAH.
course of ages the other determining proportions had remained equal, we might at this day count the years of each king's reign by the number of layers on his pyramid, like the annual rings in a tree.”

The neatness of the workmanship of each separate block is beyond all praise. Herodotus was able to state that they were derived from the quarries on the opposite shore of the Nile, brought across the river in boats, and then conveyed by a causeway, which was itself the result of ten years' labour, to the spot where the building was proceeding. Extensive remains of this raised way are still visible, and even if the Pyramids themselves had disappeared the stone quarries in the Mokattam range at Tourah and Masarah, to the south of Cairo, would tell us that here in former times a people had lived who, above all others, loved to build. The architects of the Pharaohs penetrated deep into the heart of the mountains, which consist of a fine-grained nummulitic limestone of the older tertiary formation, and thence brought 1 There is some difficulty about determining the number of steps: they may be five or seven. These were brick pyramids.

out the flawless blocks which they required; and it will be easily understood that the passages, vaults, and halls they thus hollowed out correspond in size with the mass of the pyramids, for the whole of the materials applied to their construction, with the exception of the granite slabs that cover them, were hewn from these
WEIGHING STONES.
quarries. Tourah was called Toroua in old Egyptian; this sounded like Troja to the ears of the Greeks, and they called it so; and as they found the captives taken in the Asiatic wars labouring in these quarries, they unhesitatingly invented the story that these were the descendants of the people of Ilion, whom Menelaus left behind on the shores of the Nile when he visited Egypt with the recovered Helen.

At the present day a great deal of stone is procured in the neighbourhood of the ancient quarries for the buildings of Cairo; and although it is true that the

LAMENTATION OF A WIDOW OF MEMPHIS AT THE COFFIN OF HER HUSBAND.
RUINS OF CHEFREN.
blocks and slabs no longer reach their destination dragged by a troop of men harnessed to the sledges, which run upon rollers, but are conveyed by horses or
FOSSIL LIMESTONE WITH SHELLS FROM MOKATTAM.
steam-engines over an iron tramway, there is still much in the scene that reminds us of ancient times, as well as in the form of the scales on which the blocks are weighed.

Among the blocks from Mokattam which are built into the pyramids, many occur that are full of countless nummulites.

A hundred thousand men, who were relieved every three months, are said to have been employed for twenty, or perhaps thirty, years in building the Pyramid of Cheops, and the dragoman of Herodotus interpreted to him the inscription which stated that for the minor articles of food for the workmen—as radishes, onions, and garlic—one thousand six hundred talents (or about £360,000) had been expended. “If this was so,” exclaimed the Halicarnassian, “how much

ENTRANCE TO THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS.
must not other essential things have cost! such as tools of iron,1 and the maintenance and clothing of the labourers.” And we share the feelings of the Greek, for we see no reason to regard the numbers that were read to him as in any way exaggerated. However, the inscription of which he speaks was certainly not on the pyramid itself, which never bore any hieroglyphs or pictures, but in one or other of the neighbouring tombs.

But our escort is urging us to investigate the interior of the mausoleum of Cheops; the passages and chambers of the other pyramids cannot as yet be traversed without much preparation and some danger; besides, the different arrangement of the interior is of small interest, excepting to the archæologist. In all there is the same disproportion between the vast size of the building and the small dimensions of the utilised space that it contains, and yet this disproportion is intelligible and seems quite rational when we realise the fact that the architect's task was to construct for a corpse a resting-place as impenetrable and as secret as possible.

A visit to the interior of a pyramid is not altogether agreeable, for the farther we penetrate the more unpleasant are the heat and the peculiar smell of the bats which live there, particularly in the now impenetrable passages and chambers. 1 Herodotus, ii., 9,126, for “the iron with which they were worked.” Fragments of iron and copper have been found in the air channels by Perring and Dixon.

The “cool cellars” of our drinking songs are unknown in Egypt; a subterranean chamber preserves the average yearly temperature of the latitude, and this at Cairo
GALLERY IN THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS.
is about 26° centigrade.1

The entrance to a pyramid is always on the north side; in the mausoleum of Cheops it is on the level of the thirteenth step. We light the candles we have brought with us and walk on; straight on and upwards at first, till we come to a large block of granite which was fixed in the roof, and which closed the passage to the resting-place of the coffin. We pass round it, for the treasure-seekers who found their ingress arrested by it were unable to destroy it, and ruined the side wall in order to get a passage. Then we proceed upwards through a low close corridor, at the end of which a horizontal passage opens into the small “Queen's” chamber. Here we find a room which, though narrow, is more lofty, so that we can stand upright and take breath. The light of the torches and tapers is reflected from the polished surface of the Mokattam limestone. The separate blocks fit so accurately that the joints are hardly to be detected. The stone panels at the bottom of the wall are perfectly preserved, and the case is the same with the singularly placed stone beams of the roof. The parallel grooves cut in the floor and on the walls were to facilitate the transport of the sarcophagus. A few steps farther, through a horizontal passage—which enlarges in the middle into a sort of antechamber closed by four stone blocks or doors—and we find ourselves in the “King's” chamber, and in front of the despoiled granite sarcophagus of Cheops. This, the largest and most important chamber in the pyramid—its heart, as we may say—does not lie exactly in the centre, nor is it distinguished by great dimensions or by rich plastic decoration. Any good-sized room in our private houses may compare with it in size, for it is less than nineteen feet high; its length measures thirty-four feet and its breadth seventeen. Nine enormous slabs of granite form the roof and rest with their ends on the side walls. The enormous mass of masonry that is piled above them must have crushed 1 About 70° Fahrenheit.

them in if the far-seeing architect had not provided against this by constructing over this chamber five others to diminish the pressure. The first of these chambers— which are culs-de-sac—was called Davison's room, after its discoverer, and the four others, of which the uppermost exhibits a triangular section, were found by Perring and Vyse, and were named by them, with utter want of taste, Wellington's, Nelson's, Lady Arbuthnot's, and Campbell's Chambers. The discovery of these hidden rooms — chambers of construction, as they are termed by architects — was of great importance from the circumstance that the name of Cheops occurs in them. The stone-workers had written it on the blocks with red paint even before they left the quarry, and the masons had built them into the wall in such a way that the inscriptions were turned upside down. This discovery certainly brought nothing new to light, but it confirmed what had long been known, for we had already learned from the Greeks the name of the king who was interred in the Great Pyramid. But so long as no inscription declared it in plain words, it was optional—and it had a certain fascination—to bring all sorts of profound speculations and mysterious calculations to bear on the wonderful erection of Cheops. Thus Jomard, and others after him, attempted with much acuteness to bring forward evidence that this structure, with its measurements and proportions, its accurate relation to the points of the compass, its opening directly in the eye, so to speak, of the Polar star,1 and so forth, had served a scientific end. The careful “orientation” of the pyramid bore witness to its astronomical purpose; from its dimensions it was concluded that it was to be regarded as a metrical monument, as the indestructible witness to the standard of measurement that had prevailed in ancient Egypt, or as an astronomical and chronological memorial.2 But all these suggestions, in spite of the acumen with which they were argued, have failed of acceptance, because, as we have seen, it was quite impossible, when a pyramid was planned, to estimate its ultimate size with any accuracy.

How many ideas have been thrown out as to the end and purpose of the pyramids! According to the ancient Arab legends, they were erected before Noah's flood in order that the treasures of science of doomed humanity might be preserved from destruction. Early Christian travellers, who did not know the small dimensions of their inner chambers, thought that they were the granaries constructed by Joseph; some regarded them as observatories and sundials, measuring the length of the day by their vast shadows; others as light-towers, beacons shining from afar to guide the wanderer in the desert; others, again, supposed that in their gloomy chambers the secret and appalling rites of initiation into the mysteries and the solemn dedication of priests were accomplished; nay, a certain Herr Kuhn,3 in 1793, strove in perfect earnest to prove that they were not the work of men's hands, but a natural growth. Others, better informed, and cognisant of the true purpose of a pyramid— namely, to receive the sarcophagus of a king—endeavoured to find an ethical reason 1 Sir J. Herschel's observations on the entrance passage in the Great Pyramid, and that the entrance faced the star, α Draconis, the old Pole-star, are given in Vyse's “Journal,” Vol. II. p. 107. 2 Culminating in the theory of Professor Piazzi Smyth, that the proportions amount to a revelation. See his work, “Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid.” 3 T. Ch. Kuhn; his work was published at Lemgo.

for the choice of the pyramidal form for a tomb. By it all the fundamental ideas of Egyptian religion and philosophy were supposed to be symbolised to the outward sense. According to them it was to be regarded as the emblem of the spiritual world in its gradations from the broadest basis to the apex, and to be compared to the Platonic graduated edifice of ideas which culminated and found its apex in the very highest and uttermost cognisable idea. It was the presentment of the four elements which, when separated, pervade all matter and re-unite into one. These elements—earth, air, fire, and water—were said to be the fundamental constituents
WOODEN COFFIN OF MEN-KA-RA.
of the world and of all things. In the primary essence or godhead — Osiris—they existed together in perfect equality, and hence unity; at the creation contention, or mutual repulsion—Typhon—rent the godhead; but love, Isis, re-united the four elements—the disjecta membra of the godhead—forming out of them, by harmonious and judicious combinations and unions, the whole visible universe and all the creatures in it. And as in the beginning the world and all things in it came into being, so the processes of destruction and re-construction are constantly repeated. The combining of the four elements by Isis and their dissolution by Typhon, the convergence and divergence of the four sides of the pyramids, were supposed to symbolise the primitive formula of all cosmical life— the combining and severing of the four elements. These vague but ingenious speculations correspond to the well-attested doctrines of the Egyptian priesthood, and a symbolical meaning was attributed at least to the apex of the pyramid, for a pointed top belonged exclusively to the mausoleums of the kings, while the bodies of private individuals were deposited in truncated pyramids. This rule was without exception, and several paintings have been found in which the basal portion of the pyramid is black, and the upper part and point are red. We may regard it as quite certain that the indestructible buildings of which we are speaking were intended to insure the preservation, not only of the bodies of the princes which were deposited in them, but of their memory, and that they therefore belong to that class of monuments of which a great thinker said—“It is evident that they were in fact intended to appeal to the latest posterity, to hold communion with them as it were, and so maintain the unity of man's conscious life. Nor is it only in the buildings of the Hindoos, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, but in those also of a later period, that we can see the yearning to speak to distant generations; and therefore it is disgraceful to destroy or disfigure them, or to degrade them to base and utilitarian ends.”

The Pyramids have not been spared by impious hands, and their interior chambers —where we still are lingering—had, at any rate at the time of the Romans, been opened by avaricious Prefects. Under the Arab dominion the rulers themselves undertook this task, by no means a light one; finding nothing but empty sarcophagi and bodies, they endeavoured to justify themselves in the eyes of their subjects for the sums they had squandered, and spread the false intelligence that they had found

exactly as much gold as the work of opening the tombs had cost. When the labourers under Mamoon (died A.D. 813), the son of Haroun el Rasheed, who is so well known to every reader of the “Arabian Nights,” had penetrated to the heart of the Pyramid of Cheops, it is said that they found a treasure, and also a marble tablet on which were these words:—“Such a King, son of such a King, in such year will open this pyramid and spend a certain sum of money in so doing. We here repay him for his undertaking; but if he persists in his enterprise, he will sacrifice much money and gain nothing.” In fact, searching the Pyramids has enriched no one,
SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER OF MEN-KA-RA.
and though we hear romantic tales of things said to have been found there, yet, on the whole, ransacking a pyramid has been generally regarded as a crime to be followed by retribution, or even by death.1

The daring and indefatigable English, who some forty years since explored the Pyramids at a great cost, found in them neither gold nor silver, but many treasures of high scientific value. Their labours were best rewarded in the pyramid third in size, which is called by the Arabs “the coloured or red pyramid,” from its casing of granite, and which far exceeds those of Cheops and Chefren in the perfection of its structure and execution. In it they found not only highly remarkable inner chambers, and a beautiful sarcophagus of brownish basalt or whinstone veined with blue, but also the lower part of the wooden mummy-shaped chest or coffin in which the king's body had lain, and on it an inscription which proves that Herodotus was well informed when he named King Mycerinus—in Egyptian, Men-ka-ra—as the builder of this third pyramid. The noble basalt sarcophagus sank off the coast of Spain with the ship which was to transport it to England; the inscription on the wooden chest, which is preserved in the British Museum, offers no difficulties to the translator. It has been thus rendered into English by Dr. S. Birch:—“Thou that art become Osiris, ruler of the North and South country,2 King Men-ka-ra, living for ever, born of Nut the goddess of heaven, and begotten of Seb the god of earth—may the wings of thy mother Nut spread over thee to shelter thee, in whose name is hidden the secret of heaven. May she grant thee to be as a god, striking to earth all who oppose thee. King of the North and South. Men-ka-ra living for ever.”

Remains were even found of this king's skeleton, and of the materials in which 1 Fragments of a stone with a Cufic inscription, probably relating to the attempt to open, have lately been found near the pyramid. 2 Or upper and lower hemisphere.

his body, embalmed with resins, had been wrapped.1 The winding-sheet consisted of wool,2 while the bandages of the mummies of a later period were usually made of linen. The burial-chamber of Men-ka-ra is finer than any other room found in the Pyramids; it consists entirely of granite, and the ceiling is formed of blocks resting against each other in the middle, and hewn into a pointed arch resembling that known as early English. Thus the room has the aspect of a vaulted chamber.

The other rooms, and several passages closed with slabs in this pyramid, show

STATUE OF CHEFREN.
that another body besides that of Men-ka-ra was interred here at a later period, and history and legend agree in saying that it was that of a woman. Queen Nitocris, of the VIth dynasty, seems to have taken possession of this mausoleum, which was built long before her time, and her fair hair and rosy complexion, which were long remembered, led to her being confounded with the famous Greek beauty, Rhodopis—i.e., the rosy-faced—who is said to have been the wife of Sappho's brother, and the favourite of the Pharaohs. At the time of Herodotus it was already currently reported that it was she who lay interred in the third pyramid; at a later date the memory of the fair Rhodopis took new aspects, and she became a sort of Loreley in Arab legends. On the western pyramid, they tell us, a fair and wanton woman sits with brilliant teeth, who drives the traveller mad that lets himself be caught in her toils. Thomas Moore has repeated this legend:—

‘Fair Rhodope, as story tells, The bright, unearthly nymph who dwells 'Mid sunless gold and jewels hid, The Lady of the Pyramid.”—The Epicurean, chap. vi.

The Bedaween have other tales of spirits that haunt the Pyramids; one wears the form of a boy, and a second that of a man, who stride round these mausoleums after sunset, burning incense.3 No Arab child ventures near them at night, and least of all near the Pyramid of Men-ka-ra. And yet all that history and legend tell of 1 These are now in the British Museum, but the condition of the remains and the anchylosed condition of one knee have cast a doubt on the subject, as it has been considered the body could not have been mummied in a symmetrical form and placed in the inner wooden coffin found with it. 2 The wraps of the bodies of the workmen found in the Tourah quarries were also of wool, like those found with the body in the third pyramid. 3 Described by the Arabic author Masoudi, and translated in Vyse's “Journal,” Vol. II. p. 327.

this king is in his favour; he is lauded as the friend of the gods, who re-opened the temples and led the people back to worship and sacrifice. He is called the most just and venerated of all kings, and he must have been a “merry monarch” too, if any germ of truth lies at the bottom of the legend which relates that, having been told that an oracle had prophesied that he should live but six years and die in the seventh, he caused the lamps to be lighted every day at sunset, and drank and rejoiced till the morning, and so gave the oracle the lie, since, by turning night into
THE SPHINX CLEARED FROM THE SAND.
day, he made twelve years of the six allotted to him.

The legends associated with Rhodopis are no less pleasing and pretty. She, who was the Loreley witch of the Arabs, was also their Cinderella, for it is said that an eagle—or, according to another authority, the wind —carried away her sandal while she was bathing, bore it to Memphis, and there dropped it into the lap of the king as he sat in judgment. He, amazed at the elegance of the sandal and the strangeness of the incident, immediately sent forth messengers to seek its owner. She was found at Naucratis and brought to the king, who made her his wife and, when she died, caused the third pyramid to be erected for her.1

Thus, as flowers grow on a grave, so sweet myths have sprung up round these solemn tombs.

We will now quit this hot, dark, and dusty inner chamber, and make our way to the second pyramid, which is easily distinguished by the polished casing-stones which to this day cover its upper portion and are in good preservation.

It was erected by Chefren—called by the Egyptians Khafra—the next but one in succession to Cheops. Its interior offers nothing remarkable; but to the southeast of it stands a stone building, in which, as it would appear, the faithful assembled to honour his manes with pious exercises. It was Mariette Pacha who brought this interesting structure to light, after it had been for a thousand years buried in 1 This legend is delightfully told in Vol. III. of William Morris's “Earthly Paradise.”

sand; and at the same time he obtained certain evidence as to the name of its founder, for in a tank which contained water, but which is now choked with sand, he discovered seven statues which all represented King Chefren, the builder of the second pyramid. The name of this sovereign may be read on most of them, and the
MODERN SPHINX-LIKE FACE.
finest and best preserved has found a well-deserved place of honour in the museum at Boolak. It is wrought in a diorite1 so hard that Mr. Drake—with whom I some years since stood admiring it—assured me that he should hesitate to try his chisel on such a material; it is nevertheless highly finished in every part, and the realistic treatment of the grave and gracious features is worthy of all praise. The beautiful 1 A hard variety of greenstone, of volcanic origin.
polish of the diorite need not surprise us when we look round at the building in which these statues were found. It consists of blocks of granite and alabaster, and the masons who hewed and polished these with the utmost care were skilled in every branch which we could regard as belonging to their calling. The arrangement of this building is very simple; but it is interesting as the only example of a temple-like edifice that has come down to us from those very early days. The rectangle everywhere predominates, the pillars have not as yet developed into columns, and on the walls there are no inscriptions to tell us the purpose to which this building was devoted. The two larger chambers form together a Τ, and the side rooms have coffer-shaped niches of granite and alabaster. Many of the huge slabs which roofed the nave—if I may be allowed the expression—still remain supported on the granite pillars. How was the cultus performed which these chambers hid from the eyes of the multitude? May we infer from the statues of the dog-headed ape1 found in the sand that the god Thoth, to whom this animal was sacred, was honoured here above all others? Were the statues of Chefren hurled into the pool by heathen rebels, or were they not overthrown till a Christian edict devoted all the images of the gods to destruction? Or is this the temple of the Sphinx spoken of in a primeval inscription?

Questions like these crowd upon the mind of the visitor; and if he raises his eyes towards the north-east, he sees in his immediate neighbourhood the gigantic form of the most mysterious of all mysterious images—the great Egyptian Sphinx, the watcher of the desert, called by the Arabs Aboo 'I hawl, “the father of terrors.” Its huge mass was covered with desert-sand again and again, in ancient times as well as in our own days; only the head, decorated with the royal coif, being left gazing fixedly eastwards.

During the present century, it is true, the Sphinx has been compelled to reveal its lion-body, and stand confessed to daylight and curiosity; and it has been ascertained that it is hewn out of the living rock, and where the stone has not lent itself to the form of the lion-body it has been supplemented with masonry. This figure, at the present day, measures nearly sixty-four feet from the crown of the head to the pavement on which the paws rest—and what a spectacle it must have offered when the servants of the Necropolis kept it free from sand, and it could be seen complete, with the stately flight of steps which led up to it!

Through many successive centuries worshippers innumerable mounted these steps to approach the altar, which stood on a finely inlaid pavement between the legs of the giant—for the Sphinx was the image of a mighty god. The Greeks heard him called Harmachis—in Egyptian, Har-em-khu—and this signified “Horus on the horizon,” or “the sun at its rising.” Harmachis is the young light which conquers the darkness; the soul triumphing over death; fertility expelling dearth; and he, the conqueror of Typhon, vanquished the foe under many forms, among them under that of a Sphinx. Harmachis, in the Necropolis, promised resurrection to the dead; Harmachis, who is most active just in the morning hours, and whose face is fully illuminated by the rising sun, brings the world to a new day after the gloom of night; 1 Or Cynocephalus, living animal sacred to the lunar deities Khonsu or Chons, and Tahuti or Thoth.

Harmachis, on the border of the fertile country, conquers the drought and keeps back the sand from engulfing the fields. Thus it comes that his image, the Sphinx, was called by the Egyptians at first Hu,1 and afterwards Belhit, both signifying “a watcher”; and by the Greeks Agathodacmon, “the good spirit.”

Each Pharaoh was regarded as a mortal incarnation of the sun-god; and therefore the kings were willing to select the form of a Sphinx as expressing allegorically the divine essence in their nature. The attribute of fiery and irresistible physical strength was represented by the body of the powerful and irascible lion; the highest intellectual power by the human head. The union of the two was happily chosen as the symbol of an omniscient and omnipotent object of worship.

The making of the Sphinx was begun under Cheops. It was finished by order of King Chefren, the builder of the second pyramid, and dedicated to Harmachis; this we learn from the large tablet covered with hieroglyphics and fixed in the breast,

HOUSE OF MARIETTE PACHA AT SAKKARAH.
which also informs us that this monument must have already needed to be freed from the sand under the kings of the XVIIIth dynasty, about B.C. 1500. King Thothmes IV., so runs the inscription, in the course of a lion and gazelle hunt in the first year of his reign, rested in this vicinity, and came to worship Harmachis— i.e., the Sphinx. He slept in the shadow of the giant, and he dreamed that the god spoke to him with his own mouth, “as a father speaks to his son,” and required of him that he should free his image from the drifts of sand. When he woke he took the divine warning to heart. In commemoration of this vision, and of the subsequent disinterment of the Sphinx, he caused this tablet to be erected, which to this day is but very little injured.

Other inscriptions, of much later date, record the resistance which it has been necessary to make to the encroachments of the sand—sometimes hardly perceptible, but sometimes, when the Khamseens blow, rising in hot storm-clouds of dust. Among 1 The Sphinx was so called on the tablet describing the objects deposited in the pyramid; it was also named Akar, and, as a hieroglyph, used for Neb—“Lord.” It seems to have been particularly honoured under the XVIIIth dynasty by the monarchs of that line, and often appears represented on monuments and scarabæi of the period. Generally it is male, but Mutnetem or Netemmut, the mother of the monarch Horus, is represented as a female Sphinx.

these inscriptions we find, in Greek, the remarkable verses by the historian Arrian; most of the others only tell of imperial visits to the Sphinx, and of works of restoration undertaken with reference to the pavement round the monument and the wall intended to ward off the sand. In later times not a hand was put out to preserve it from being overwhelmed; nay, in the last century the face of the “father of terrors' was used as a target for shooting at when the Mameluke artillery was practising—that face of which Abd-al Lateef writes, that “It bore the stamp of benignity and beauty, and was graced by an affable smile.” When this travelled Arab was asked what was the most wonderful thing he had seen, he replied,
PYRAMID OF SAKKARAH.
“The exquisite proportions of the Sphinx's head.” At the present day it has acquired a hideous negro aspect, chiefly from the loss of the nose.

Why is it that men are so ready to destroy the works of man? The hand of the destroyer has been put forth even against the Pyramids. Some sovereigns have thought they could utilise the well-hewn blocks; others have dreamed of sweeping them from the face of the earth, in fanatical fury against the works of the heathen. However, the attempt to blow them up with gunpowder, though contemplated more than once, was not carried into effect; but only in consequence of a warning that Cairo would be endangered by it.

The sand, the foe of every work of man erected here, has at the same time proved to be their friend, for nothing but what it has covered and protected has

come down to us uninjured, and this is the case with that part of the Necropolis of Memphis known as Sakkarah.

Let us turn from Ghizeh southwards; we will keep close to the border of the fertile land, leaving the fields of the dead of Zaweyet el'Aryan and the stately group of Pyramids of Abuseer on our left, and then—up by a little pool, round which the plovers are fluttering, and where wagtails alight to drink—we will climb the bare undulating hill-frontier of the desert. After a short walk on a sandy path, past boulders, choked-up tombs, whitened bones, and many a fragment of mummy cloths sticking out of the sand, we arrive in sight of the spacious verandah of a

SPHINX FROM THE SERAPEUM.
simple but hospitable-looking house. This is “Beth Mariette,” as the Arabs call it— the head-quarters of the man who by his acumen, zeal, and energy has succeeded in wresting thousands and thousands of monuments, among them some of the highest importance, from the sand-drifts of the Necropolis of Sakkarah. The keepers of
SPHINX FROM THE SERAPEUM.
this hostelry, grey-bearded and friendly Arabs, provide us with couches and filtered water, and our breakfast tastes excellent in this shady spot after our ride through the desert.

One of the old guardians willingly guides us to the monuments we designate. One strikes the eye at once—the high pyramid of steps; but many others which we know by description are not to be discerned even with his help, for the unwearying sand that Mariette Pacha strove against has triumphed once more.

We could see the pyramid of steps from the ruins of Memphis; we will now proceed to the south-east and visit it. It consists of six stories, so to speak—the bottom one, which is the highest, measuring about thirty-seven feet. If we inspect this pyramid more closely, we shall perceive that it differs from its sisters in many respects. It is not set to the four points of the compass; its base is not a square, though rectangular; it has been surrounded by a wall, and its interior may be said to be altogether peculiar. The Prussian General von Minutoli explored and described it; of its four entrances one, contrary to all custom, faces southwards.1 Two of the chambers are lined with green tiles set in stucco in a sort of mosaic, and the ceilings of the rooms are ornamented with stars.2 The chambers and passages 1 Besides Minutoli's description (Reise, 1844, p. 405) this pyramid has also been described by Segato (in his Saggi Pittorici, Firenze, 1827), who makes seven steps, which would correspond with the number of steps of the Babylonian pyramid; but in the present condition of the pyramid it is difficult to determine how many steps it may originally have had. 2 Porcelain tiles from this pyramid are in the British Museum; some had a kind of ring or pierced place at the back to pass something—as a wire or cord—through, to hold them more securely. The details of it are given in Vyse's “Journal,” Vol. III. p. 41. Two of the titles, if not for a prenomen of a king, are inserted on the door.

are completely choked with the remains of vessels in alabaster and marble, with fragments of sarcophagi and fallen pieces of the sculptured stones that covered the walls and roof. A thickly gilt skull, gilt sandals, and other interesting remains of antiquity found here by von Minutoli, with the model of a boat in which they were contained, have been carried to the mouth of the Elbe.

What one element spares another destroys, serving the ends of Time the Annihilator. Even this proud structure, on its foundation of eternal rock, is doomed to destruction. And yet it is certainly the oldest of all the artificial eminences far and near, and it has seen the lapse of more centuries than any other edifice raised by the hand of man.

The Pyramid of Kochome—i.e., of the black bull—is said to have been built by the sovereigns of the first dynasty, and one part of the Necropolis of Sakkarah undoubtedly bore the same name. If Mariette Pacha is right, in the time of the early empire, before the dominion of the Hykshos, the most sacred portions of the Apis bulls were preserved and interred in the inner chambers of this pyramid. This would explain the choice of the name Kochome—in Egyptian, Ka-Kham— “the black bull.” This is not the place to enquire minutely into the antiquity of a monument; but I may say that, though this pyramid of steps may have been built a little later than the mausoleums of Ghizeh, probabilities at any rate are in favour of its being considerably older. At every step we meet with something that we can neither recognise nor restore in our imagination.

The ancients have left us some information about the buildings on these sites.

SCARABÆUS BEETLE (Ateuchus sacer).
The Pyramids stood here, then as now. The Serapeum, as we shall presently see, has been discovered; and the name of Sakkarah, which is found under the form Sokari in the very oldest tombs, has not disappeared under the lapse of ages. But where are we to look for the sacred lake across which the mummy of the Apis was ferried in a bark? where on the western shores spread the broad meadows that were compared to the Homeric fields of Asphodel? where stood the sanctuary of the sombre Hecate, and the statue of Justice without a head? where the gates of Cocytus and Truth? where the numberless sacred and civic buildings spoken of by the Greek papyri?

Here, among these tombs, in ancient times, thousands of living souls sought the mercy of God, peace of soul, and, at the same time, earthly advantage.

We will return to Mariette Pacha's house, and direct our attention to the most important of the indefatigable Frenchman's discoveries—namely, the Serapeum or temple of the god Serapis. The most magnificent of his temples has already been described in the chapter on Alexandria.

Here, at Sakkarah, the bulls Apis were buried from the remotest period; their name in Egyptian was Hapi, and after their death Osar-Hapi—i.e., the Osiris Apis.1 They were venerated as the incarnation of the soul of Osiris in the nether world, 1 The name of Osiris prefixed to that of the Apis meant the Osirian or deceased Apis. The name of Osiris is found prefixed to that of Men-ka-ra or Mycerinus on his coffins, but not to those of deceased private persons before the XIXth dynasty, about B.C. 1300.

or, in other words, as the resuscitating principle restoring all that was dead to new life. The god who figured the wanderings of the soul until it was absorbed
TOMB OF THE APIS.
into the great universal essence was called Sakari. It was in his province that the temple of Osiris-Hapi was erected, and the Greek god Serapis arose from a modified conception of the nature of this divinity.

Thus it happened that close to the Egyptian tombs of the Apis and his temple there also rose a Greek Serapeum.

When, in the year 1856, a number of Sphinxes were discovered in the neighbourhood of Mariette Pacha's house, that learned investigator was reminded of a passage in Strabo, in which that trustworthy geographer states that in the Necropolis of Memphis a Serapeum was erected in so sandy a spot that the Sphinxes were constantly being covered with sand, and the votaries visiting the temple were, when the wind was violent, in danger from the sand-storms.

ANUBIS, THE GUARDIAN OF THE LOWER WORLD.
This keen archæologist was immediately possessed with the desire to ascertain whether, where Fernandez had found the Sphinxes, the remains of the Serapeum might not be discovered. He began to excavate there, and although he had ample supplies of labour at his command he needed all his energy to overcome the difficulties he encountered. The masses of sand had caked and hardened, and the sides of the passages so patiently excavated often fell in and choked the opening up again. At last the avenue of Sphinxes was found. He followed it up, and it was discovered that it had connected the Greek Serapeum with the Egyptian temple. He then opened out a Greek sanctuary, now again choked up, besides those tombs of the Apis which are among the chief wonders of Egypt, and which every visitor to Cairo goes to see. The temple, of which they may be said to have been the crypt, is long since fallen in, and the traveller who at the present day gazes on the vacant desert that spreads on every side cannot picture to himself how different it looked under the Ptolemaic kings and Roman Cæsars. There, under the very shadow of the stately temple, dwelt the different orders of the priests, as well as the attendants and keepers of the sacred animals. There were schools, and inns for the reception of pilgrims who came from the “uttermost parts of the earth,” a market, and booths where
merchants sold their goods; there were barracks for the troops posted here, and, finally, there were little cells attached to the sanctuary, which are worthy of mention, since they may be regarded as the precursors of Christian monasticism. Greek papyri inform us that here, long before the birth of the Saviour, ascetic penitents led a gloomy, cloistered life in the strictest self-imposed seclusion. Of their own freewill these hermits denied themselves all intercourse with their fellow-men, and every grace and pleasure, even to a smile. Their miserable cells were constructed of mere Nile mud and unburnt bricks, and clung like swallows' nests to the great temple buildings wherever they found room, even on the roof. What these recluses needed for their support was brought to them by their relations, and given to them through the one small window of their hovels.1 Here they strove
DOOR OF THE MASTABA OF TI.
for purity—i.e., inward purification —in the service of Serapis, and it is but natural that in their over-wrought frame of mind they should have been favoured with marvellous dreams, and tempted by hideous apparitions. Whoever dedicated himself to the service of Serapis in this world was received by the god as one of his elect in the next. Already in the very earliest times the monuments speak of the “Fellows,” the followers and the ministers of Osiris. There is much that is very touching in what has been handed down to us of the history of the twin-sisters Thaues and Taus, who were attached to the Serapeum as priestesses of Isis.2 The papyrus which contains their petitions tells us that they had to fetch water in cracked jars from the Nile, which is at some little distance, for the three hundred and sixty daily libations at the altar of Serapis, and their reward for this labour of the Danaids was three cakes of bread a day, with an annual bounty of wheat and kiki-oil. But these doles were so irregularly paid that, in order not to die of hunger, they were forced to ask help by these petitions.

On other occasions, however, and even in much later times, nothing was spared in this institution. When the Apis died, under Ptolemy I. Soter, not only was the whole of the immense sum devoted to his obsequies exhausted, but the priests found themselves obliged to borrow of the king fifty talents, or about £11,250. In 1 On the occasion of the visit of one of the Ptolemies, a recluse saw the monarch and presented a petition on behalf of his brother. 2 Vide “The Sisters,” a romance by G. Ebers.

MASTABA OF TI.
the time of Diodorus the keepers of the Apis spent for this purpose a hundred talents, or about £22,500.

We will visit the grave of the bull who was interred at such a cost; we have seen how carefully he was tended in the Apeum of the temple of Ptah at Memphis. There the cow too was worshipped of whom it was reported that she became the mother of the Apis by the influence of a moonbeam. When a new Apis was discovered a festival was held throughout the land, and the happy owner was rewarded with princely gifts. First of all, the priests had to examine him, to see that none of the sacred marks—eight-and-twenty in all, according to Ælian—were lacking to him. His coat must be black; on his forehead he was to have a triangular white mark, on his back the figure of a vulture,1 and on his right flank a white

CRANES.
crescent; the hairs of his tail were to be of two colours. His tongue, too, was examined, for under it there must be an excrescence shaped like a scarabæus. It need hardly be said that a variety of ceremonies preceded and attended his admission to the temple of Ra. After his death he was carefully embalmed, and his mummy carried to the tombs before which we are now standing. Of their discovery Mariette Pacha himself writes as follows:—“I confess that when, on the 12th November, 1871, I first penetrated into the sepulchre of the Apis, I was so overcome with astonishment that, though it is now five years ago, the feeling is still vivid in my mind. By some inexplicable accident one chamber of the Apis tombs, walled up in the thirtieth year of Rameses II., had escaped the general plunder of the monuments, and I was so fortunate as to find it untouched. Three thousand seven hundred years had had no effect in altering its primitive state. The finger mark of the Egyptian who set the last stone in the wall built up to cover the door, was still visible in the mortar. Bare feet had left their traces on the sand strewn in a corner of this chamber of the dead; nothing had been disturbed in this burying-place, where an embalmed ox had been resting for nearly fourteen centuries. To many travellers it will seem a terrible thing to live here alone for years in the desert; but discoveries such as the chamber of Rameses II. leave an impression compared to which all others sink into insignificance, and which I can only wish I may experience again and again.”2

Our old guide now opens a door which protects the rock passages and chambers from the inroads of the sand. The two oldest galleries of the Apis vaults3 have become wholly impenetrable; it is only the most recent and finest which is open 1 These are supposed to have been represented by the arrangement of the hair; on the bronze figures are represented a housing with a fringe, a solar-winged disc, or a scarabæus, and a vulture with expanded wings. 2 The excavations here were four years in progress. 3 The oldest sepulchres date from the reign of Amenophis III., about B.C. 1400; they had mortuary chapels above the sepulchral chambers.

to the visitor. It contains sixty-four tombs, and was excavated under Psametik I., of the XXVIth Saite dynasty, (who died B.C. 618); and it was enlarged even under the last of the Ptolemies.

We have lighted the tapers we are to carry. If a visitor of distinction comes to the catacomb it is illuminated by wax tapers set in wooden stands fixed for the

BRINGING OF THE OVERSEER FOR THE RECKONING.
purpose, or sometimes by the magnesium light which turns its darkness into day. But what there is to see is soon told. There is an antechamber, a long gallery with side recesses in which lie the coffins, and right and left near the entrance there are three connected corridors which run into the main gallery, forming altogether a plan like the hook in the ground-line of the letter P. All are hewn out of the living rock, and the length altogether may be about 1,070 feet. When Mariette Pacha opened the antechamber it looked like a museum of inscriptions, for above five hundred tablets, rounded at the top, were fastened to the walls, the votive offerings of pious pilgrims in memory of their visits to this sacred spot. No one, when erecting such a memorial, failed to indicate on the
SHIP-BUILDING.
tablet the day, month, and year of the king's reign, or when the deceased Apis, to whom his pilgrimage was addressed, was born, installed, and interred. It may easily be imagined what services these little monuments, now for the most part to be seen in the Louvre, have rendered in helping to determine the order of succession and duration of the reigns of many of the Pharaohs.

Twenty-four of the stone sarcophagi remain intact; many have been walled up with limestone into the recesses of the rock passage in which they stand; they are formed of various materials, the finest are of a dark greywacke, others of red

granite, and the least costly of limestone. The chests of the smaller sarcophagi are all of one piece, but the inscriptions have been preserved on only three of them. Even the least imaginative must feel,
PLOUGHING.
in the presence of these sarcophagi, as if transported into the Campo Santo of a world of giants. I hesitate in such a spot to descend to the bathos of mere figures; but the reader will best form a conception of the size of the coffins of these bulls when he is told that on an average, after the excavation of the interior, they weigh 130,000 lbs.

Perhaps it is the enormous difference between the idea of a coffin that we have in our mind and the coffins we actually see before us that has so powerful an effect on the beholder's mind. Added to this, there is the thrill with which we see any object of primeval antiquity, and

CATTLE TREADING OUT CORN.
which has commanded the pious reverence of countless generations. It is true that these sentiments are inefficient to overawe the avarice of man. Even the tombs of the Apis had been thoroughly rifled long before they were buried in sand; Mariette Pacha found the lids of the sarcophagi pushed aside, and on many of
HORNED CATTLE DRIVEN THROUGH THE WATER.
them a heap of stones had been flung in token of contempt for the work of the heathen.

In an older portion of the Apis catacombs, which had fallen in, Mariette Pacha

ENJOYMENTS ON THE WATER.
found a human body with a golden mask on the face, and with many costly ornaments and amulets on the breast. From inscriptions it was known that these
SALTING FISH.
were the remains of Khamûs, the eldest son of Rameses II., who was high-priest at Memphis, and who is often mentioned as a particularly pious prince. He seems to have been buried among the sacred bulls as a special distinction above others.1

The number of tombs choked by sand at Sakkarah is enormous; but I can here make mention only of the two finest of them; these are the Mastabas— as they are called—of Ti and of Ptahhotep, of which only the first-named is usually open to the traveller's inspection. Both were erected by noblemen— peers of the realm—who served under that royal family, the Vth dynasty, which

WRESTLING.
succeeded the builders of the Pyramids of Ghizeh. We go down to the entrance of the mausoleum of Ti by a path cut in the sand, and at the very 1 He died in the lifetime of his father.
BEDAWEEN CAMP.
threshold, on the pillared supports to the right and left of the entrance, we are greeted by the portrait in relief of the dignitary himself, leaning on his rod
ACROBATIC EXERCISES AND GAME OF MOORA.
of office, who, as an inscription informs us, served under three Pharaohs. He himself was not of royal blood; but, as holding the office of high-priest, and
ENJOYMENTS OF HUNTING.
being, as he boasts, the friend and chamberlain of the Regent, “ruling in the heart of his lord” as privy councillor—“lord of the secrets” as superintendant
CAPTURED ANIMALS OF THE WILDERNESS.
of all government works and of the whole establishment of the scribes of his province—he was the husband of a princess, who is several times represented by his side. She was called Nefer-hoteps, meaning “her calm is beautiful,”
and her daughters, as well as she herself, are everywhere designated as “relations of the king;”1 moreover, her husband dignifies her with the title, to which every Egyptian wife thought she had a claim, of “the mistress of the house,”
A MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT.
“the beloved of her husband,” “the palm of pleasantness to her husband.” The sarcophagus, with the coffin, stood in the middle of the open hall, which was surrounded with twelve pillars, while the thick walls sloped inwards towards the top like the sides of a pyramid. Here the survivors and dependants were wont to assemble to offer sacrifices to the dead; a corridor led into the smaller sepulchral chambers, where statues of the deceased and his wife were also found. All the walls of the Mastaba consist of a fine-grained limestone, and are covered with reliefs of extraordinary
PIGEONS.
delicacy. The outlines are sharp and clear, and although the inability of the artist to represent true perspective annoys us, the vividness with which all is rendered that is necessary for the realisation of the subject compels our frankest admiration. All that was noble in the life of a distinguished Egyptian, and all that he required of his survivors after his death for his honour and for the welfare of his soul, are more beautifully and vividly set before us in the Mastabas of Ti and Ptah-hotep than even in the tombs at Ghizeh.

I should be only too happy to wander from wall to wall and reproduce

FLOCK OF PIGEONS.
for the reader one picture after another; but in this place I can only allow myself to mention the most remarkable details.

The life of the great man was divided between his duties at court, the care of his property, and his pleasures among his family and in sport. The inscriptions mention in the barest words the relations that bound him to his royal master, while all that relates to his possessions and the joys of his life is set before us in pictures. As in Ghizeh, we here learn the extent of the herds of the deceased. Not Landseer himself could have sketched the profile of a heifer, an ass, a goose, or a crane with clearer outline than these modest artists; 1 Suten retch, literally, “royal acquaintance.”

the scenes which make us witnesses of the slaughter of the oxen are full of life, and little inscriptions everywhere help to complete the meaning of the pictorial illustration and to engage the sympathy of the beholder. In these we are told the weight of fat yielded by the slaughtered cattle; here we see the overseer's name written over his head, there the encouraging words shouted from one to another. Many trades and utensils have their names attached, so that these pictures have not a little advanced the study of the ancient Egyptian language. Above all, everything which serves as a contribution to the history of culture is of transcendent interest. The immense age of these pictures is indisputable, and yet it is hard to believe in it when we see what fixed forms all the aspects of citizen-life had already taken at the time when they were executed, and how, even at that early date, writing was in use even for the requirements of ordinary life. Lands and men were the most valued possessions of man. Hence we find secretaries reed and scroll in hand, and before them stand their lord's serfs; these were represented by the village magistrates, and above their heads we read: “What the heads of the villages brought in to the valuation.” The sticks under the arms of the magistrates would seem to indicate that the business was conducted with scant mercy, and that even in those times the fellaheen paid their hard-won taxes far from willingly.

The line of hieroglyphics between the officers and the peasants says, “The rating by the chief intendant of the estates.”

In another place the villages belonging to Ti are represented under the form of thirty-six female figures offering gifts of all sorts of country produce. The inscription above them runs thus:—“Food offering and drink offering from the villages on the family estates of the Chamberlain Ti, in Upper and Lower Egypt.” By the side of each woman is the name of the place she represents. Such extensive estates, and lying so far apart, made it incumbent on the owner to provide good and efficient means of transport. The Nile and the canals were then, as now, the natural high-roads of intercourse; hence ship-building was actively carried on, and some of the pictures show the tools the carpenter had to use; others exhibit the forms of the finished boats, of larger travelling vessels and ships of burden. Ropes and sails were used, but instead of a rudder an oar was employed, moved by a man.

At that time, as at the present, the chief income of the wealthy Egyptian was derived from fields fertilised by Nile mud, and these pictures enable us to look on as eye-witnesses at every operation of the husbandman.

We will here only give the picture of the ploughman at his labour and the cattle treading out the corn. In the first picture we see a pair of oxen yoked together by a beam across the forehead. Over them is written, “A strong pulling”— of oxen; and over the peasant guiding the plough, “Labour at the plough.” As we look at the second picture we are reminded of the passage in the Bible, “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.” This injunction is applicable to the foremost beast, above which it is written, “Trot on, beasts, trot on,” and the overseer is about to give him a blow with his stick. Other pictures

show the sowing, and the flocks of goats, the grain flung upon the damp soil, the reaping of the ears with small sickles, the binding of the sheaves and the carrying of them home on asses. Even the “leasing,” the gleaning, is mentioned; and while this recalls the Book of Ruth, there is another picture which reminds us vividly enough of Pharaoh's dream, which Joseph so sagaciously interpreted.

Seeing the picture of a hippopotamus-hunt in the tomb of Ti, we cannot but think of Behemoth, the Nile horse of the Book of Job: “His bones are as strong pieces of brass”—it is written—“he is the chief of the ways of God, was he made for him to play with? When the mountains bring him forth food and all the beasts of the field play; he rests under lotus-plants in the covers of the reed and fens.”1

In one of the pictures in this Mastaba, which has even preserved its colour in many places, we see the noble Ti hunting the hippopotamus. He is shown of twice the size of his followers, leaning on his staff in his boat, which is overtopped by a papyrus-thicket of unusual height, which is the nesting-place of numberless birds. A hippopotamus and a crocodile are fighting, but the hunter's whole attention is fixed on the enormous river-horse which is already entangled in ropes,2 while the huntsmen, whose efforts Ti is calmly directing, fling lances at it. The water swarms with scaly inhabitants, and the number in the nets, as well as that of the victims to the delightful sport of “sticking” the fish, is immense. On land we see the fish split, dried, and salted.

Nor was it only by water, but in the desert too, that the love of hunting of the nobles of that period showed itself. In the Mastaba of Ptah-hotep we find that worthy represented on a large scale, and before him a whole series of pictures representing his favourite amusements; gymnastic games, wrestling, and even the game of morra, which is still a favourite one—played with the fingers —in most countries bordering on the Mediterranean.

A great variety of beasts are ensnared by him and by his huntsmen. Here we see antelopes caught by the lasso, there well-trained greyhounds decorated with broad collars rush on the hunted gazelle; the domestic life of beasts of prey, even of the panther and jackal, is watched and depicted. A lion surprises a heifer; we meet with the hyena, the ichneumon, and the hedgehog;3 nay, in the tomb of Ti, even with a stag. Who can enumerate and name the birds caught in Ptah-hotep's net? The hunters, when they come home, bring their lord the creatures they have caught alive—antelopes, gazelles, and lions. These last are shut up in strongly barred cages, The dogs, the master's favourites, follow the servant Khnum-hotep, who leads them in a leash; and there are dogs in the house too for his amusement. An ape and a dwarf are kept for sport in the more wealthy families. The followers of Ptah-hotep feast before him while he sits on his throne supported on lions' paws, and display their skill in playing the harp and flute. The first Egyptologist to whom we owe a reproduction of this picture, the careful and meritorious Duemichen4 of Strasburg, takes it amiss in the 1 Job xl. 18—21. The English version differs. 2 The hippopotamus was harpooned. 3 The hedgehog, Erinaceus Æthiopicus (Ehrenb.). The armadillo is found only in South America. 4 Die Resultate, fol. Berlin, 1869.

ancient dignitary that he should have allowed his dogs to remain present at this concert, and even surmises that he must have cared more for the society of his hunting companions than for the piece of music that is being performed.

In truth it is difficult to preserve one's solemnity in this tomb, such a cheerful

HUTS AND HOUSEHOLD COMPANIONS OF THE FELLAHEEN.
atmosphere pervades these pictures and bas-reliefs. It is as if they expressed the wish of the deceased to be joyfully remembered by his survivors.

Here a ship's captain shouts to the slow crew, “You are like apes.” By the side of a flock of goats, which the herdsman is tempting with a basket full of fodder to follow him across the sowed field, we read the words, “This is how man loves labour.” There is a regatta led by Ti, and one boatman calls out to his competitor, “You are free with your hands”—i.e., you are too vehement. Above some running asses we see, “Man loves the swift and thrashes the lazy, so make haste.” By a reaping scene it is written, “This is reaping: do it, I say, in due season.” The ears are addressed in these words, “You are ripe,” or “Well, you are large ones!” An ox being slaughtered, one fellow warns the other, “Keep steady.” “I am doing it all right,” is the answer. In a similar scene a man lifts up the leg of the slaughtered beast and touches the lips of another with the tip of his finger, “Look at this blood,” he cries. “It is pure,” says his companion. Most charming of all are the flocks of pigeons, which were trained as carriers at an early period in Egypt, and which to this day are kept in the poorest hovels of the Fellaheen. Among the hunting scenes many are broadly farcical.

Nevertheless death is kept in mind. One painting shows us the funeral procession of a deceased noble. Wailing women open the procession, and are followed by the beasts for sacrifice, and by priests burning incense and sprinkling the earth with essences. Near the sarcophagus walks the widow, and behind we see the children and superior servants of the deceased; his innumerable train of servants, with offerings of all kinds, close the procession. Many inscriptions are addressed to the guardian of the nether-world, the guide of the soul in the next

SANDSTORM IN THE DESERT.
life, the jackal-headed god Anubis.1 Nor did they forget to indicate the kind and amount of alms to be offered to the Manes of the deceased,2 and the festivals when they were to be laid on the altar in the Mastaba.

Most of the numerous tombs of this vast Necropolis, even those which the zeal of the learned had once disinterred, now lie buried in sand. There is much that is interesting and remarkable about many of them, particularly one which was erected for a dignitary named Thunerei, in which Mariette Pacha found a long list of kings' names, which has done great service in restoring the chronology of Egyptian history.

The number of relics found in this spot within the last decade is almost

MASTABA FAR'OON.
countless; objects in stone, wood, and bronze, and other materials, besides beautifully-worked ornaments in gold set with blood-stone, turquoise, lapis-lazuli, and other stones for females, have been brought to light in this portion of the Necropolis of Memphis. Some of the most precious of these relics, and of the very highest antiquity, were found at Sakkarah, and are to be seen in the Museum of Boolak.

A thorough study of this Necropolis would require many days. The traveller who penetrates farther into the desert in order to visit the remarkable building known as the Mastaba Far'oon—and which may perhaps be supposed to be the slaughter-house where the numberless beasts were killed which were here sacrificed 1 At this early period the sepulchral decorations are addressed to Anubis, not Osiris. 2 In registers in the sepulchres containing a minute account of objects of the table, those of the later coffins have, besides lists of food, representations of objects of furniture and attire, and the numbers of each object.

—will not unfrequently meet a caravan of Bedaween from the Libyan oases who are rejoicing in their approach to the Nile after their painful journey across the waterless desert, and are resting for the last time before entering Cairo, which smiles on them in the distance.

Wandering here from tomb to tomb we have quite lost count of time. Night is spreading silently over the wide fields of the dead; only the revolting howl of the hyena breaks the stillness of the desert. The moon has risen and throws its filmy veil of silver threads over the Pyramids, the range of desert hills, and the green strip of fertile country.

CAIRO; THE ORIGIN OF THE CITY.

IN ONE of the stories of the “Thousand and One Nights” a man of Mosul praises Bagdad as the “city of peace” and the “mother of the world;” but the eldest of the men whom he addresses replies: “He who has not seen the city of Cairo has not seen the world. Her soil is gold, her women an enchantment, and the Nile a wonder.” In the following night Sheherezadeh praises the delights of the city of the Pyramids in the following rapturous words:—“What are the joys of seeing the beloved compared to the sight of that place? He who has seen it confesses that there is no greater enjoyment for the eye; and when he thinks of the night when the Nile reaches the desired height he returns the goblet full of wine to him that offers it, and lets the water return to its fountain-head (that is to say, he wants nothing more). And when thou seest the island of Roda with its shady trees, thou art transported with joyful delight, and when thou standest in Cairo by the Nile, when at sunset it is veiled in the tissue of sunbeams, thou art revived by a soft breeze that fans the shady shore.” These are rapturous phrases indeed, dipped by the imagination of the enthusiastic poet in colours as glowing as those shed by the sun as it vanishes from the Egyptian heavens. And yet, he who has ever stood on the height of the citadel of Cairo, and gazed across its forest of minarets at the Nile and the Pyramids on the western
horizon—who has visited its streets and byways, its bazaars and mosques, its open squares and gardens—who has mingled in its gay, motley, thronging stream of life, in the stir and bustle of its inhabitants—he will ever remember the days of his sojourn in Cairo as a time when it was vouchsafed to him to live in the
LANE IN THE COPT QUARTER.
land of fairy-tale and romance—aye, even though nature have denied him the heavenly gift of fancy, and though his soul may never have felt the stir of a poet's dream.

To wander through Cairo is to meet constant novelty; only to look round is a joy, and merely to see is to learn. No man ever left Cairo without profit, or

without loss; for though every man takes home with him a thousand different impressions and memories that long shine bright in his fancy, he carries in his heart a