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 governor
1 and then as king.
2 His talented
successors, Philadelphus
3 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,
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 mètres
1 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
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.
Theocritus
1 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 Praxinoa
2 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?”
2 As they speak in Doric their names
are spelled so, instead of Praxinoe, Eunoe.
EGYPTIAN WOMEN DRAWING WATER.
To which her friend replies:—
“Don't ask me, Gorgo; two good pounds
1 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 muslin
2
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
Babylon
3 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 Cypris
1 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 Ialemos
2 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.”
3Just 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
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
Alexander
2 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.)
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 Soter
1
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 Straton
2 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.
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.”
11 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 denarii
1 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 Autocrats
3 (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
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
Achilleus
1 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 Athenæus
6 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
Lucian
7 found food for his satirical tastes and powers.
1 An usurper who reigned four months,
A.D. 296.
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.
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 Servianus
1 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 Ctesibius
1 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 thya
3 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.
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.
[Back to top]
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
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.
1The 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.
1The 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 dinars
2 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.
4Amroo,
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,
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.
1All 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
camp
1 that had surrounded the tent, Fostaat, of
Amroo, and Omar
2 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
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 Pyramids
1 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.
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
kilomètre
1 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.”
[Back to top]
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 history
1 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
A PAPYRUS THICKET. (From
a Tomb at Benihassan.)
cities ere long stood on its banks, and two-and-twenty
Zat
1 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 reed
4 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 Horus
2 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
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?
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.
1Naucratis 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.
1Who 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.
22 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.
1We 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.
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 Almehs
1 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 Berberee
1
guitars are humming,
The Darabookkahs
2
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 Shekerlee
3 of
many sorts,
Bardoo sherbet
4 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 Alateeyeh
7—
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 pipes
9 out there
Mingle their scent with musk and
ambergris;
Fumes of Hasheesh inspire voluptuous
fancies—
Oh! for a sou to purchase bliss!
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.
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.
[Back to top]
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 Abaris
1— 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
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.
[Back to top]
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
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 ‘Aryan
3 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
Sakkarah
1 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
Ptah
4 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-Osiris
5—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.
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.
1Now, 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.
2This 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.
1At 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 Una
1—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 spirit
1 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
Lepsius
1 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.
1The 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
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.
1The 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.
1Thus, 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 diorite
1 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
ape
1 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.”
2Our 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 vaults
3 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.
1The 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.”
1In 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 Duemichen
4 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.
[Back to top]
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 vain longing which ever beckons him with a
tempting hand back again to
the shores of the Nile. “He who
has drunk of the waters of that stream,” says the
MASHREBEEYEH WINDOW.
Arab proverb, “longs for it for ever;” and
again,
“Ye shall not linger with impunity
under the palm.”
How can we explain the magical
charm that this
marvellous city never fails
to exercise? Certainly in its most
fascinating
spots there is nothing whatever of
what we understand by a “fine city.”
The
hill against which it leans is bare
of all vegetation, and it
is one of the
youngest of the great cities of the East.
One thing it has certainly above and
beyond
any other place that is known
to me: it is so full of variety
that a
single ride takes us through more different
elements of culture, productions of art,
and objects of nature than in any other
spot; “the three
quarters of the earth
here meet and touch.”
Ere we are rid of the dust with
which the
desert-wind has covered us
during our wanderings through the
mighty
remains of the age of the Pharaohs, we
are standing on the carefully watered footway of a street on
both sides of which are
ranged handsome houses of European
architecture. A few steps farther and we turn
into a shady
side-street where we walk between two high stone-walls. Not a window
STREET DOGS.
with shining panes allows of any friendly intercourse
between the street and the domestic interior; but
balconies
with close lattices of wood-work project
before us, behind us,
above us, on the right hand
and on the left, all along the
street, concealing everything
that lives and stirs within from
the gaze of
the passer-by or of the opposite neighbours.
Through
the interstices and openings of these
lattices—which
are worked with richly pierced patterns and
delicately
turned bars—many an Arab lady's eye peeps,
nevertheless, down on us below; for the lattice, called the
Mashrebeeyeh, admits
air to the women's rooms, and allows the
fair ones to see without being seen.
The name of these
outworks, which constitute the most lasting characteristic of
the streets of
old Cairo, comes from the
Arab word Sharab—
i.e., drink—because
the porous water-vessels called “goallah” are set in them to
cool the water they
GENERAL VIEW OF CAIRO.
contain; they are
usually exposed to the air in round hollows in the floor of the
balcony. In these thoroughly Oriental streets, where two riders can scarcely
pass
each other, it is always shady and cool, and the
Cairene is wise to prefer them to
the broad ones of the modern
quarter.
We make our way towards one of the main thoroughfares, riding past
the
high door of a mosque. Pious Moslems come out of it,
and politely make way for
some Franciscan monks, who seem to
be holding grave council close to the sanctuary
of Allah. We
now pass into a broader street. There beasts and vehicles crowd each
GENERAL VIEW OF CAIRO.
other, the men talking and shouting, while now and then we hear the
bray of an
ass, or the grunt of a camel; but the ear is never
assailed by the clatter and uproar
of an European town, for
wheels roll silently over the soft unpaved roadway. We
have
hardly made our way fairly through the bustling crowd when we find ourselves
on a vacant place with tumble-down houses over which vultures
wheel, and where
starving street-dogs are rummaging for bones
among the ruins. Huge dry stones,
among which even weeds
disdain to strike root, lie in mighty heaps on one side;
while
on the other, behind yonder wall, in the well-watered garden of some great
man, are collected the plants of every zone, revelling in
moisture, bursting with sap,
and growing with astonishing
rapidity. At the gate of the park we meet an eunuch
mounted on an Arab
horse with splendid trappings, and he casts a lowering glance
at the fair Europeans who are whirled past him, unveiled and laughing, in
their
open Vienna carriages. A runner makes way through
the crowd for the swift
horses till they come to a standstill
before a gaudy shop, in whose windows everything
is displayed
for sale that is dreamed of for feminine adornment, even in
European capitals. In front of it a poor Arab offers for sale his wretched stock
of
nondescript wares on a miserable truck. A long string
of camels now forces us
to make way. They are tied together
like boats in tow of a steam-tug; each carries
on his humped
back a bale of goods which is being conveyed to the railway, where
A LEARNED MAN ABSORBED IN THE KORAN.
the whistle of the engine mingles with the half grunt, half roar of
the patient
beasts. In the splendid garden of the Ezbekeeyeh
square we see the black nurse
of some Arab child side by side
with the French “bonne” and her fair-haired
charge; the
Italian dandy lights his cigarette from that of a Nubian merchant;
from the open window of an assembly-room, decorated with gilt
mirrors and marble
tables, ring out the latest European tunes,
performed by a chorus of ladies; we
pause to listen to the
familiar strains, and are startled to hear, in the room next
to the music-hall, the sharp clink of gold coins tossed on to a roulette table
by
the excited players.
Turn now into this side-street with its many balconies and finely
pierced haremlattices.
There, in front of a “café,” or tavern,
on the ground-floor, sit a group
of black and brown
folks listening with much complacency to the nasal recitative
of a street-singer. His more than simple strains have no charm for the
cultivated ear, and we hastily make our way through the
group. There, riding on
by a shady avenue of Lebbek-trees, we
soon find ourselves again between the
rows of houses of a
narrow, gay, and busy street. The broad Nile gleams in the
distance, and a forest of masts fills up the picture. That is the Harbour of
Boolak. Side by side with a splendidly fitted steam-ship lies
a clumsy Nubian
barge with ragged lateen-sails, in form just
like the boats we see on the
monuments of Pharaonic times
bringing the tribute of the Soudan to Egypt.
Not far from the
port stands a magnificent museum, in which the monuments and
relics of antiquity are arranged in accordance with the highest requirements
of
the science of the West.
Of all the Egyptians who daily pass this building scarcely one in a
hundred
can tell his own age, and could hardly say whether
“the Pharaoh”—under which
name he designates the whole
pre-Christian history of his country—lived three
hundred or
three thousand years ago. And yet it is among these ignorant men
that the efforts of learning also find their home. In that vast building at
Boolak
slender Egyptian fingers pull from European
steam-presses carefully printed sheets
covered with learned
Arabic texts. But we will turn our back on the “State
printing-press” and the port, and return to
Cairo proper, for in the courts of
the
University-mosque el Azhar—of which we propose to give further details
presently—we shall find more students than in any “high
school” of the West.
Make yourself acquainted with those sages
who live there in placid content,
satisfied as it were with
merely intellectual food, and then ask yourself whether
you
have ever seen a student more deeply immersed in his subject than that
old Moslem who is striving for a right understanding of a
difficult passage in
the Koran.
This wonderful city is like a mosaic picture of contrasts. Still, to
this day,
the background of the picture is of Oriental
colouring; but one Eastern figure after
another is displaced
by an European one, and those who desire to become familiar
with
Cairo as the metropolis of Oriental
life must not delay.
The reader, we may hope, will follow us now. We are fettered by no
considerations of time and space. The gates of palaces, the
doors of mosques
and schools, nay the inmost chambers of the houses are not closed to us, and
we purpose to trace the life of the Cairene—great and
small—from the cradle to
the grave. We will introduce
ourselves as spectators of his labours, and as guests
at his
feasts, and whenever a freer admission is granted to a trustworthy friend
than to ourselves I will depute him to be your guide.
My business in these pages will be to present
Cairo as it is; but in order
to do so
successfully, it will be necessary to describe how it developed.
Memphis, the ancient capital
of Egypt, with which we are already acquainted,
may be called
the mother of the mother of
Cairo. It lay
on the west bank of the Nile, while
its daughter, the younger
city, is spread over the tract between the river and the
Mokattam range, between the desert-sand and the magnificent garden-land. The
limestone eminence with the citadel serves as its backbone,
as it were, while the
PUBLIC SCHOOL IN THE HEART OF CAIRO.
Nile, whose swift
waters rush past the garden-walls and quays of its western
suburb, invites it to busy intercourse and traffic with distant shores.
The rocky hill behind the city is perfectly bare and barren.
1 Before the Lord
God—so runs the old legend—revealed
himself to Moses on
Mount Sinai, He
told
all the mountains that he purposed speaking to his
elect servant on one of them.
Immediately they all began to
strain and stretch themselves that they might
seem tall and
big; Zion alone—the mount on which Jerusalem stands—bowed
BLACK AND WHITE JOCKEYS.
and was humble. Then, to reward its
humility, the
Lord commanded that all the
other mountains should give the
plants
that grew upon them to grace and deck
it. The Mokattam parted with all its
verdure in favour of Zion, and hence its
name, which recalls
an Arabic word meaning
“to part.”
During the splendour of
Memphis only small hamlets stood opposite the
Pyramids on the eastern shore of the
Nile.
One of the most southerly was in
connection with the
stupendous quarries
which yielded the materials for the
great
buildings of the ancient city of the
Pharaohs. The Egyptians called it Toroua,
and as the
prisoners of war were employed
here as stone-hewers, and the
name
Toroua remotely suggested Troja, the story
soon was current among the Greeks—who
were
so apt at seizing or coining legends
—that here, near the
modern Tourah, the
captive Trojans had settled who had been
led hither by Menelaus on his return after
the fall of Ilion, and that he himself was
said to have rested
here with the recovered
Helen.
Another place of which we find early
mention, and
which formed the nucleus of the oldest portion of
Cairo, was called
Babylon, and it was
said that it owed its origin to the Babylonians brought into
Egypt by Cambyses.
2 We shall return to it again, but for the
moment must direct
our attention to a third and larger town
which flourished here at a very early period.
This is the
venerable City of the Sun,
Heliopolis. It
was situate a few miles to
the north-east of modern
Cairo, and it was one of the most famous
centres of
learning of all antiquity. No one would willingly
leave unvisited the spot where
1 Called in Egyptian kar-kar, and mentioned as early as the
VIth dynasty; it was the ancient arsenal.
it stood, for there
still exist there a tree, a spring, and a stone, which are all three
accounted among the chief wonders of Egypt; moreover, one of
the pleasantest things
in the world is an excursion thither,
on horseback or driving, either early in the
morning or when
the approach of evening lengthens the shadows.
As soon as we have left the houses behind us and have crossed the
city canal—Khaleeg
it is called—we see the large mass of
buildings of Abbaseeyeh with
its barracks, its military
school, and its observatory. On our right lies the
extensive
race-course, with its stands built of wood, where the races are run in the
month of January. English and Arab horses both enter the
lists, and during the
few minutes' struggle the former usually
beat their Bedawee competitors, though
these are so much the
handsomer, and far exceed the northerners in “staying”
DROMEDARY RACE.
powers. The dusky jockey can keep his seat in the saddle just as well
as the
English one, and yet the white man—small as he is, in
accordance with his
calling—looks down with proud disdain on
the wretched ill-fed lengthiness of the
black one. In no class
of the Cairene population is race-hatred so keen as among
the
drivers, grooms, and riders. The Arab loves the horse, and on his native soil
will depute the charge of a horse to no foreigner. Hence it
has not unfrequently
occurred that the English jockeys
imported by wealthy Egyptians have been
subject to the
murderous attacks of their swarthy rivals. Dromedary-races are
frequently run, and it is certainly a strange sight when the antediluvian
forms,
as we might almost say, of the “ships of the
desert” begin nimbly to move
their long stiff legs and soft
feet, and to throw them up before and behind in
swift career.
They are urged forward with shrill shrieks by their dark riders;
but with all their
energy, and the utmost exercise of the beasts' strength, they
cannot match the swiftness of the horse. No doubt they have the power of
continuing to run steadily for some miles, when the horse
that outstripped them
in the first hour has long since given
in, panting and gasping. The swiftest
dromedaries are called
“Hegeen,” and we shall have occasion in another place to
speak
of the high value set upon them, and of the incredible distances they can
cover without taking any rest.
No sooner have we passed the Abbaseeyeh than we are fanned by the
pure
GARDEN ON THE ROAD TO HELIOPOLIS.
air of the desert, along the border of
which our way
lies. The road is hot
and dusty, but we soon shall be
protected
by the shade of the Lebbektrees
on the right and left, and as
we approach one of the
residences
of the Khedive
Tewfik Pacha our
eyes are gladdened by the sight
of
well-irrigated fields, luxuriant green
gardens, and vineyards bearing abundantly.
Ask the labourer
when he
sowed the corn that now with ripe
ears awaits the harvest—ask the
peasant by the road-side when
the
noble trees were planted whose broad
crowns now wave over the road, or
that beautiful Eucalyptus
which
stands up above the hedge-row—and
the answers you will receive
will seem to you hardly
credible.
Trees which in 1869 had only lately
been planted, and still needed to be
propped, when I saw them again in
1873 had begun to spread broad leafy
crowns. The Lebbek (
Albizzia Lebbek),
which has now for many years been conspicuously
characteristic of Egypt, is said to
have been brought to the
valley of the Nile from Eastern India in the time of
Mahommed
Ali; and the botanist Schweinfurth states that propagation by offsets or
cuttings, which with most trees can only be practised on
young shoots and branches,
can be effected in the case of the
Lebbek with branches as large as a man, or even
with portions
of the trunk. Many of the gardens we have passed on the way are
more luxuriantly beautiful, and better kept than the one before which we now
halt
and spring from the saddle; but none can compete with
it in fame, for in its midst,
and now enclosed within a
railing, stands a sycamore, under which the Virgin Mary
is
said to have rested with the infant Christ during the flight into Egypt. The
Khedive Ismail, during his visit to Paris in 1867, gallantly
presented it to the
Empress Eugenie. It is no doubt of great
age, but we can only regard it as the
successor of an older
tree which was already dead when Vansleb visited Egypt in
1672. This trustworthy traveller was told by monks in
Cairo that the Virgin's tree
had died
of old age in 1656, and they showed him its remains, which were preserved
as a most precious relic. It is true that the gardeners
showed a stump as the
remains of the original tree.
Not far from the rent, broken, and riven trunk of the present
Virgin's tree,
which seems to have been planted on precisely
the same spot as the old one, and
on which travellers
innumerable have cut their names, a spring of fresh water flows
from the ground—which in these climes usually yields only a salt and bitter
fluid—
SYCAMORE OF MATAREEYEH.
and waters the garden by the help of a double water-wheel. This spring
is mentioned
in records of the highest antiquity, and when it
was said, and believed for
centuries, that the
balsam-shrubs—of which Brocardi compared the leaves to those
of marjoram—could thrive here and nowhere else, this phenomenon was ascribed
to certain miraculous effects of this spring, which had got
interwoven with the
legend of the Virgin. The infant Christ,
it was said, had been bathed in the spring,
and from that time
it had never ceased to flow with fresh water. In another place we
are told that the Virgin washed the Saviour's swaddling
clothes in it, and wherever
a drop fell from them on the soil
a balsam-tree sprang up. When their pursuers
came up with the
fugitives, the Virgin hid herself with the Infant in a hollow in
the tree, and a spider concealed her from their gaze with its web. Much that
is
heathen may, however, be traced in these legends; at
any rate, the Egyptian myths
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT.
tell us of a god who
was saved from his pursuers by hiding in a tree, and also of
balsam-shrubs that sprang from the moisture with which a celestial being
bedewed
the earth.
The Arabs call this garden and its environs, including the ruins of
Heliopolis,
which
are about half a mile distant, Ayn Shems, which, with reference to the
spring, is commonly rendered “fount of the sun,” but seems
actually to mean “eye
of the sun.”
This name was borne by an idol which had escaped destruction under
the ruins
of
Heliopolis,
and of whom it was asserted that if any one in possession of any
office ventured to gaze upon it he was shortly after divested of his dignity.
The
story goes that the Sultan Ahmed-ibn-Tuloon,
1 having heard this legend, took his
stand in front of
the image and ordered stone-masons to destroy it. Thereupon it is
said that after an illness of ten months he died; we know, in
fact, that he died
in
Syria. This idol, known as the “sun's eye,” was probably nothing else
than
an Egyptian statue which had stood, long years
before, in the vast hall of the
sanctuary of
Heliopolis.
This famous
temple of the sun
is the only Egyptian temple of which a Greek
(the geographer
Strabo) has given us an exact description, and we must, therefore,
especially regret that the words of the prophet Jeremiah have
been so completely
fulfilled: “He shall break also the images
of Beth-shemesh [the house of the Sun]
that
is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of
the Egyptians shall he
burn with fire” (Jer. xliii. 13).
In a few minutes we reach the scanty remains, and are standing before
a fine
obelisk, the oldest of all the monuments of this
description, and the only one which
still lifts its point
skywards, though it was raised in the remote period before the
incursion of the Hykshos. As the obelisk form was sacred to the sun-god, we
cannot
be surprised to learn that the City of the Sun was
full of obelisks, of which there
remained in the time of
Abd-al Lateef such a mass of fragments that he calls
them
innumerable. Most of those obelisks, which were transported by the Cæsars
to Rome, Constantinople, and
Alexandria (among these Cleopatra's needles), were
originally erected here in front of the gate of the
temple of the sun, and never
stood
singly, but always in pairs. The one we are now admiring had its twin,
which was overthrown in the year 1160 of our era—and not in
1260, as Makreezee
states. Arabs have even seen the copper
caps that covered their peaks, and the
verdigris that stained
their reddish-brown sides. The ruins of the overthrown
obelisk
probably lie deep in the soil near its still erect companion, which was
placed, more than four thousand years since, in front of the
gates of the temple
of the sun by Pharaoh Usertesen I. The
inscriptions, which are alike on the
four sides, exhibit the
grand and simple style of that period; they record the name
of
the king to whom the obelisk owed its erection, and tell us that it was set
up
at a feast initiating a period of thirty years. Its
base is deep in the ground, for
since its erection the
surrounding soil has risen by successive depositions of Nile
mud to a thickness of nearly six feet; in the inscriptions that cover it
numberless
1 Who lived from A.D. 870 to A.D. 884.
wasps have made their
nests. In the time of the Khalifs this obelisk and its brother
were known as “Pharaoh's needles.”
Heliopolis, which was called An
by the Egyptians and On by the Hebrews,
is mentioned at a very
early date. The
temple of the sun in its
midst was as
old as the worship of the day-star, with which
all the religious doctrine and cultus
of the Nile valley was
connected. Ra, under his two chief aspects—Harmachis, the
morning sun, and Tum, the evening sun—was worshipped here in a combined form,
Tum-Harmachis; and associated with him were various female
divinities, among
which Hathor, Iusas, and the oft-named
Nebt-hotep held important positions.
I should not here allude
to Osar-Sup or Osiris-Sup
1—a god frequently mentioned as
REPRESENTATION OF THE BENNU. (From a Ritual.)
connected with
Heliopolis—if it
were not that, I
believe this name to have survived in that
of
Osarsiph
2, which was given to
Moses by the Greek
narrators of the Jewish Exodus.
The
temple of the sun was said
to have been
the dwelling of the immortals so early as at
the
time of the wars of the gods. When Typhon and
Horus had wounded each other their wounds were
bound up and healed in the “great hall” of
Heliopolis. A manuscript on leather in the
Berlin
Museum informs us that King Amenemha I. and
his son Usertesen rebuilt the temple itself; and
there is no lack of Egyptian and Greek evidence
to show that the god who bestowed light on the
earth also aroused and nourished the enlightened powers of
the spirit, and that under
his protection a college of priests
flourished here whose fame outshone the other
similar
foundations at
Sais,
Memphis, and
Thebes. Herodotus celebrates the sages
of
Heliopolis as the most enlightened of all
Egypt, and though the Greeks criticised
their mystical style
and method, they admired their astronomical and other learning;
and the houses where Pythagoras, Plato, and Eudoxus had lived, while
attending
the great school of the City of the Sun, which
even in his time was deserted, were
still pointed out to
foreigners in the city; its lecture-rooms seem to have been
only with difficulty accessible to strangers.
Certain names of sages of
Heliopolis have come down to us. May not the priest
Potiphar for one have belonged to them, to whose daughter Asnath the Pharaoh
married his favourite, Joseph? We could even give many
details, if space permitted,
as to the possessions of the
priests of the sun—which under Rameses III.
had become
enormous—as to the establishment of the temple, and the sacred
trees and animals worshipped within its precincts. We will only allude to the
pale-hued
bull Mnevis;
3 to the lions with a
glistening skin which were kept here; and,
1 According to some, Osiris, as
represented before his destruction and embalmment, figured often in the
Arabian nome at
Mount Sinai, and also in the Eastern Desert. He was represented as a
mummied hawk, and the name Sup or Supti is also
applied to
Sekhet, a form of Bast.
3 Adored at Heliopolis as the incarnation of the sun-god Ra.
OBELISK OF THE TEMPLE
OF THE SUN AT THE OLD HELIOPOLIS.
above all, to the
Phœnix. Everyone knows the myth of the bird of the land of
palms, which, after being burnt, rises again from its ashes and brings them
to
Heliopolis at intervals of five hundred
years, by which symbol the consolatory
hope found expression
that all that dies, fades, or is extinguished in nature shall
revive to new life, bloom, and glory. The image of the Phœnix, says
Horapollo,
signifies the traveller returning from strange
and distant lands after a long
separation. Venus, as we call
it, the brightest and purest planet of the eastern
THE ISLAND OF RODA.
heavens, bore the name of the Phœnix; her early setting, giving
promise of her
return in the evening, seemed also to promise
to the dying mortal that it should
be vouchsafed to his
departing soul to shine in renewed glory in the dark night of
death. The Egyptians called the Phœnix “Bennu,”
1 and on many
inscriptions the
temple of the sun, or some portion of it,
is called the house of Bennu.
2 All
Egypt took part—we
are told by later authors—in pilgrimages to this temple.
The
most splendid of the Pharaohs added to their names the title of “Prince of
Heliopolis,” to the exclusion of all other
names of might; and proud conquerors,
1 According to the Ritual, or Book
of the Dead, the Bennu in Heliopolis
was the creator of visible and invisible beings.
2 Also roofed or capped home, or
else city of pyramids or obelisks.
who at
Memphis were content only to sacrifice to
the great Ptah, submitted to
many ceremonies in the
sanctuary of the sun-god, and qualified
themselves for
admission into the mysteries of the temple.
Amenemha I., the founder of the
sanctuary of the sun, entreats, after he has
begun
the great work (which was not finished till the time of his son, Usertesen),
“May it not perish by the vicissitudes of time, may that
which is made endure!”
This desire of a great king, which has
come down to us through the leathern roll now
preserved at
Berlin, has not been fulfilled; for of his magnificent structure, built for
all eternity, nothing remains but the obelisk we have seen,
and a few blocks of stone
scarcely worth mentioning. The
Persian Cambyses is unjustly accused of having
destroyed the
temple and city of the sun, for the city was minutely described in
detail long after his time, and the temple was still
flourishing; nay, many remains
of the sanctuary, that have now long since vanished, were
described even by Arab
authors.
Abd-al Lateef calls
Heliopolis
(Ayn Shems) “a small town with ruined but still
visible walls,
from which it is easy to recognise that they belonged to a temple,
since hideous and huge idols were found there of hewn stone,
thirty ells high,
and with symmetrically formed limbs.” The
gate of the city—probably the pylon
of the temple mentioned by
Strabo—was as yet undestroyed. Almost all the
figures,
pedestals, and ornaments which our informant saw were covered with
sculptured pictures and
hieroglyphic inscriptions.
If we ask what has become of the enormous quantity of hard,
well-hewn
blocks which were still seen here at a
comparatively late period by trustworthy
witnesses, the answer
is that
Cairo the Great, growing up in
the immediate
neighbourhood of the
temple of the sun, carried them off; and to find them
again we must search through the foundation-walls of her
palaces, her mosques,
and her dwelling-houses.
Heliopolis shared the fate of
Memphis; but we have now
made acquaintance with the old Phœnix, and will return to the young “bird of
the sun” that rose from its ashes.
Back again to
Cairo is our
way. The asses that carry us are not less indefatigable
than
their driver Ahmed, the very type of the Egyptian
gamin, of whom I
shall have more to tell presently.
We go over the whole city, crossing at its farthest
southern
limit the canal known as the Khaleeg, which traverses it in a perfectly
straight line from one end to the other, and is said to have
been projected by
Amroo to connect the Nile with the
Red Sea. We stand here at the spot
whence
it starts; this is
Old Cairo, the humble mother of a magnificent daughter, the
Fostât of the Arabs in the first century of Islam.
1 At the extreme south of it,
after a short walk
through streets of the most provincial character and appearance,
we come upon a modest quarter, where considerable remains of walls and a
fortification
of the time of the Romans have been
preserved. This is the Egyptian Babylon,
the fort which for
centuries contained one of the legions which kept Egypt in
subjection to the Cæsars and the Byzantine emperors. This town was bathed
on the west by the Nile, which divided opposite to it,
embracing a large island,
1 The era of the Hegira commenced
the 15th–16th July, A.D. 622.
MOKATTAM.
in shape like an
oleander-leaf.
Roda is the name of this
island, and in early times
THE TENT OF AMROO.
it was connected
with Babylon by a
bridge.
The history of
the foundation of
Cairo and of the dominion
of the Arabs
in Egypt is inseparably
connected with
these sites.
In the year
A.D. 638 a small band
of religious fanatics,
adherents of the
new religion of
Mohammed,
came into
Egypt from
Syria,
under the
leadership
of Amroo-ibnel
-Asee. At
Fâramah
he, with his
four thousand
men,
encountered the
great imperial
army
commanded by the
Greek governor
Mukaukas,
and with
the help of the
Copts—that is, of
those Christians of
Egyptian extraction that had clung to the
Monophysite confession—who had joined him,
he forced it to
retreat after a month of
determined resistance. No less a
personage
than the Bishop Benjamin of
Alexandria had encouraged the Copts to
revolt, for at
this period the vehement dogmatic hostility
of the orthodox Greeks made them an
enemy
more hated and dreaded by the
Monophysites than the
Mohammedans were.
For the orthodox church pillaged their
cloisters, closed their churches, had for a long time
impaired their estates by
unjust fines, and crippled their
freedom by imprisonment; and they looked
to the Mohammedans
merely for rescue, in the first instance, from the heretical
OLD
CAIRO.
Greek emperors,
priests, and officials, their oppressors and tormentors. After
several battles the Greeks withdrew into Babylon, where they were besieged by
Amroo, to whom the Khalif Omar had sent reinforcements.
The Arab warriors of that day were heroes, and their statesmen were
sages to
be regarded as in no respect behind the noblest
figures whose memory has been kept
green in the history of
other nations. What Decius Mus, Curtius, or Arnold von
Winkelried has acted more nobly than Zoobeyr, Avho resolved to sacrifice himself
in
order to lead his comrades to victory? He set up a
ladder close to a breach in
the wall and climbed up it sword
in hand, but unobserved. Having reached the
top he shouted to
his companions a jubilant “Allah akbar!” in which, at his
THE NILOMETER.
command, they all joined in loud acclaim. The besieged,
thinking that a strong troop of the enemy had scaled
the wall, fled—and Babylon was in the hands of the
Arabs.
The vanquished garrison withdrew to the island
of
Roda, whence the Governor, Mukaukas,
entered into
negotiations for peace with the conquerors, after
destroying
the bridge that connected the island with
the
mainland. Two Copts went as envoys to the Mussulman
camp, and Amroo detained them there a few days
in order that they might become acquainted with the
earnest and pious character of his warriors, and report
it to their comrades. The deeply religious and noble
lives of these defenders of their faith could not, in
fact,
fail of its effect on the envoys, and after a few
contests
by word and deed a treaty was concluded, by which
the
Copts pledged themselves to pay an annual poll-tax
of
two dinars, excepting only the old men, women, and
children. The conquerors, on their part, resigned all
claims on the land or property of the vanquished, and
granted a free retreat to the Greeks who would not submit to
the exaction of
a tribute. In the course of a former chapter,
describing New
Alexandria, I have
already related the honourable testimony borne by Mukaukas to
the Arab character
when the emperor reproached him bitterly
with his weakness in yielding, with a
force of 100,000 men, to
an army of 12,000. After the whole Coptic population
of
lower Egypt had submitted to him without a
single blow, Amroo turned upon
Alexandria—which was still at that time
the heart of Greek life in Egypt—in
June 640. We know already
that it was forced at last to succumb after a
valiant
resistance. Amroo wished to establish his residence in
Alexandria, and
began to construct a
palace and to assign quarters to his troops; but the
Khalif
did not approve of these measures, and rightly so; for the unquiet
mercantile port, used as it was to faction and strife, seemed
but ill adapted
to be the centre of a new and re-awakened
vitality.
Amroo, therefore, retired to Babylon again, in whose neighbourhood
his tent
and camp, Fostât, had remained pitched. For when he
was about to set out
OLD ARABIAN HOUSE.
for
Alexandria, and had commanded that his tent should be
removed, he had
been told that a pair of pigeons had built
their nest on the top of it. At this
information the general
desired that his canvas house should be left standing, “For
God forbid,” said he, “that a Moslem should refuse a shelter to any living
being
—one of God's creatures—that has put itself under
the protection of his hospitality.”
Thus it occurred that on
his return from
Alexandria his old tent
was still standing.
He took possession of it again, and
proceeded to found a new city which received
the name of
Fostât, or “the tent.” At an early date the Arabic name for Egypt—
Misr—was transferred to the new capital,
to which the present name, Kâhira or
SCALE OF THE NILOMETER.
Cairo, was not added till more than three
centuries later; to this day,
indeed, it is still called
Misr or
Masr by the inhabitants, and by
Egyptians in
general. The name of
Old Cairo was first
used when
Fostât had sunk to being merely a suburb of New
Cairo.
The building of the city progressed rapidly under the guidance
of four master-builders, and the streets and quarters which
were
assigned to the soldiers, according to their
nationalities, were distributed
among the gardens and
pleasaunces which the Arabs found
ready laid out. There stood
the fort of Babylon, whose “iron
gate” opened on the Nile, and
the bridge of boats which joined the
island of
Roda to the mainland; there rose the old
Coptic church
of the Virgin, which, indeed, had been built
before the founding of
Fostât, and in whose crypt to this day
a spot is pointed out where,
as under the tree at Matareeyeh,
the Holy Family is said to have
rested during the flight into
Egypt; there—as far as Mokattam—
lay verdant groves and
vineyards, and in their midst stood up the
“light-fort,”
1 as it was called, in which the Greek and Roman governors
were accustomed to reside when visiting this neighbourhood.
The famous Nilometer, or Mikyas, on the island of
Roda was,
it would seem, not
transferred thither from
Memphis till
after the
founding of Fostât. Makreezee, in 1417, saw the remains of an
older Nilometer, and its successor, after much improvement and restoration,
serves
to this day as the standard of the inundation which
everybody watches with
anxious expectation throughout Egypt.
The Arabs assert that it was not constructed
till fifty-six
years after the founding of Fostât.
The visitor wishing to see it and the island can no longer avail
himself of the
bridge of boats, long since destroyed. A light
boat will carry him over the narrow
arm of the river to the
large ill-kept garden of the estate of Hassan Pacha—
in which,
however, large vines, orange and lemon trees, roses, jasmines, and a
variety of ornamental shrubs thrive luxuriantly, enclosing in
their verdant bowers
a fine summer palace in the Turkish
style. The Mikyas itself is within a covered
vault or chamber,
the roof being supported on simple wooden pillars; it was
built to replace the earlier structure which was destroyed at the end of the
last
century. The quadrangular tank, in which stands the
octagon pillar, is walled all
1 The Leukon Teichos, the “White Wall” or “White Fort”: the
ancient Citadel.
THE SACRIFICE TO THE NILE.
round, and
communicates with the river by a canal; the pillar is supported by a
beam at the top, and on it are inscribed the ancient Arabic
measurements.
In the walls of the chamber there are small niches ornamented with
simple
corner pillars, and vaulted with low pointed
arches, which were in use here as
early as the beginning of
the eighth century. Among the Kufic inscriptions which
have
been preserved on them, the finest owe their existence to Mamoon, the son of
Haroun-er-Rascheed, “the friend of science,” who restored the
injured Mikyas in
A.D. 814. The restoration of the
Nilometer effected under the Khalif el-Mutawakkil is
the most
celebrated, as it was that which procured it the name of the
new Mikyas.
1In the very earliest times the Pharaohs had understood the necessity
of
measuring exactly the amount or deficiency of the
inundations of the Nile, and
Nilometers are preserved which
were erected high up the river in
Nubia
by kings
of the old empire;
2 by princes, that is
to say, who reigned before the invasion of
the Hykshos.
Herodotus tells us that the water must rise sixteen ells
3 for
the
inundation to be considered a favourable one; if it
remained below this mark the
higher fields failed in obtaining
a due supply of water, and a dearth was the result;
if it
greatly exceeded it, it broke down the dykes, damaged the villages, and had
not retired into its bed by the time for sowing the seed.
Thus the peasant, who
could expect no rain, and was threatened
neither by frosts nor storms, could
have his prospects of a
good or a bad harvest read off by the priests with
perfect
certainty from the scale of the Nilometer; and not by the servants of the
divinities only, but by the officers of the realm, who
calculated the amount of taxes
to be paid to them in
proportion to the rising of the river.
The standard was protected by the magical power of unapproachable
sanctity,
and the husbandman himself has been strictly
interdicted from the earliest times to
this very day from
casting a glance at it during the time when the river is rising;
for what sovereign could bear to disclose without reserve the decrees of
Providence as
to the most important of his rights, that of
estimating the amount of the taxes to be
imposed? In the time
of the Pharaohs it was the priesthood that declared to the
king and to the people their estimate of the inundations, and at the present
day
the sheykh, who is sworn to secrecy, is under the
control of the police of
Cairo,
and has his own Nilometer, of which the zero point is said to
be somewhat below
that of the ancient standard. The engineers
of the French expedition first detected
the fraud by means of
which the government endeavoured every year to secure
the full
amount of taxes.
When the Nile has reached a height of fifteen old Arabic ells and
sixteen
kirat (the ell, or cubit, is five hundred and
forty centimètres, about seventeen feet eight
inches, and
contains twenty-four kirat—the kirat being less than nine inches) it exceeds
its lowest level by more than eight ells, and has reached the
height requisite to
enable it to irrigate the highest fields,
reaching to that which the Arabs call Kefa.
1 The present Nilometer; the old
one had been destroyed by an earthquake.
2 As, for example, the measurements
of the height to which the Nile rose at Samneh in the reign of Amenemha
III., of
the XIIth dynasty, and the Nilometer at
Elephantine, which has disappeared with the two temples in 1822: this last
was Greek.
3 The statues of the Nile of the
time of the Romans in the first century A.D. represent the sixteen cubits as infants
playing about the river-god. (See p. 17.)
This happy event is
announced to the people who await it in breathless anxiety, and
the opening of the dykes may be proceeded with. We shall presently describe
the
festival held on this occasion from the remotest
times. The extent of the inundation
has been watched with
equal eagerness at every epoch of Egyptian history, and at
COURT OF THE MOSQUE OF AMROO.
the present time customs prevail, and we hear views expressed, which
can be traced
by direct descent to the time of the Pharaohs;
and yet during the dominion of
Christianity in Egypt, and
later again under sovereigns governing a nation wholly
converted to Islam, the old worship of the Nile, with all its splendour, its
display,
and its strange ceremonies, was extirpated with
the utmost rigour. But some
portion of every
discarded religion becomes merged in the new one that has
supplanted it as a fresh form of superstition, and thus we discover, from a
Christian
document dating from the sixth century, that the
“rising of the Nile in its time'
was no longer attributed to
Osiris, but to a certain Saint Orion; and, as the priests
of
antiquity taught that a tear from the eye of Isis led to the over-flowing of
the
Nile, we hear the Egyptians of the present day say
that “a divine tear” has fallen
into the stream and caused its
flood.
As soon as the cutting of the dykes takes place, a coarsely moulded
figure
made of Nile mud is—even to this day—flung into the
river with much rejoicing
of the people, by whom it is called
“the bride”; and it is considered as a substitute
for a fair
virgin who, it is said, used to be richly dressed as a bride and cast into
the stream to purchase its favours. When, after the founding
of Fostât, the Nile
did not rise to its proper level, Ibn-Ayas
relates that the Copts implored the
governor Amroo to allow
them to offer such a victim to the river. The general
refused,
but when the Nile remained at its low level and famine seemed to threaten
the land, Amroo made the Khalif Omar acquainted with the
state of affairs. His
messenger came back with a letter and
the order to cast it into the Nile. Amroo
obeyed, and in the
very next night the Nile reached the required level of sixteen
ells; the letter of the Commander of the Faithful contained these words:
“To the blessed Nile of Egypt. If up till this time thou hast
flowed only by thine
own will, then cease to flow; but if thy
stream was obedient to the command of
the most high God, we
beseech that God that he will grant thee thy necessary
increase.” This pretty legend is hardly credible, because the ancient
Egyptian
faith forbid human sacrifice as strictly as the
Christian religion itself. However,
in pre-Islamite times some
kind of offering was no doubt cast into the stream,
though not
a maiden; and Makreezee tells us, so circumstantially as to exclude all
doubt, that in the fourteenth century the Christians were
wont to throw a reliquary
with the finger of a saint into the
Nile to secure a good inundation. It may be
well to mention in
this place that the mystery as to the cause of the rising of the
Nile has long since been solved. It owes its origin to the rains which fall
at that
time of the year in the tropics, and to the melting of
the snows in the high mountain-ranges
of the cradle of both
the primary streams of the Nile. Its increase, at first
hardly
perceptible, begins early in June; it rises more and more rapidly from the
15th to the 20th of July, then proceeds more slowly till
towards the end of
September, when for a few weeks it remains
at much the same level, or sometimes
shows a slight decline;
in the middle of October it swells once more, reaching its
highest level—at which it can remain only a few days—and then, gradually
sinking,
it returns to its lowest ebb.
It is to the Nilometer that the island of
Roda owes its fame, and there is
little else that the visitor will find worth seeing beyond plantations, houses,
and
the modest tomb of a sheykh, unless we mention a
venerable Mandoorah-tree with
spreading branches, called by
the Arabs Hakeem-kebeer, “the great physician.”
to which they
make pilgrimages in order to be cured of fevers and other disorders.
The devotees kneel down at its root, and its boughs are
thickly hung with fragments
of cloths of every description,
the votive-offerings of the sick and thank-offerings of
THE SACRED TREE OF FATIMA.
the convalescent. Its
sanctity is so highly esteemed that the pilgrims regarded
Herr
Welsch's wish to sketch it as sacrilege, and it was only by force and cunning
that he succeeded in completing his portrait of this
vegetable physician.
A legend has been preserved which says that this tree was planted by
Fatima,
the daughter of the Prophet, but I could not trace
its origin. Siyootee, who died
in 1506, does not allude to it.
We are, however, better informed as to the period
when the
oldest mosque in all Egypt was built; to this day it preserves the name
of its founder, Amroo, and we can soon reach it, after
leaving
Roda, by traversing
the streets of Fostât with their squalid rubbish heaps.
The Mosque of Amroo is called with justice the chief mosque of
Cairo. The
conqueror of
Egypt caused it to be erected in the spot where, during the siege
of Babylon, Koteybah the merchant had pitched his booth. The
new sanctuary
was fifty cubits long and thirty wide. The
raised pulpit, where the Koran was
to be read and which Amroo
had set up, had to be removed by order of the
Khalif, because
he thought it unseemly that the listeners, being true believers,
should stand any lower than the reader. Opposite the chief entrance was
situated
the governor's house, which has long since
vanished from the face of the earth;
and very little has come
down to us even of the mosque of Amroo in its original
form,
for only thirty-three years after it was built it was pulled down by the
Governor Maslamah, newly constructed, and ornamented with a
minaret; and two
centuries later it was magnificently restored
after a fire. The traveller who at
the present day, after
wandering through the narrow mean streets and clambering
over
heaps of rubbish, comes upon the dusty grey walls of this edifice, can hardly
believe that enclosed within is one of the most venerable and
grandly planned
works of Arab architecture. When he enters the
vast court of the mosque he will at
first be startled by the
immense breadth of space enclosed by the colonnade; then he
will be filled with regret and indignation at the deplorable and reckless
carelessness
which has left this noble monument to fall
into decay; but finally, when he has
striven—irrespective of
injury and ruin—to conceive justly of this glorious building
as a whole, he will be full of sincere admiration and will yield to that thrill
of
veneration without which we cannot contemplate anything
really great and grand.
The Mosque of Amroo is called the “crown of mosques,” and in a
certain
sense it justly deserves the name, not only for
its venerable antiquity and the
grandeur of its style, but
also because in it, and in it alone, more than once in
times
of common peril the representatives of all the creeds and confessions that
worship the one and only God have met together in common
supplication to Him.
What a scene it must have presented when, in the time of Mohammed
Ali,
Moslems led by their Ulema, Christians of every
confession led by their bishops
and patriarchs, Hebrews
following their reciters or Rabbis, trod the broad court of
this sanctuary and bowed with one accord before the Most High. If this grand
devotional procession had had any but a mere earthly aim—the
increase of the
Nile—it would have been a still more
gratifying incident to relate.
A closer inspection of the arrangement of this building seems to be
required
of us; and for this reason, that it may be said
to be the finest specimen of a temple
of worship of the oldest
epoch of Arab architecture. The Mosque is not a house
MINARET OF THE MEMORIAL MOSQUE OF BARKOOK.
of prayer; it was originally only an open court
surrounded with colonnades, of which the pillars
and columns
on the side lying towards Mecca are
usually more richly
ornamented than the rest. The
minarets—slender towers
generally standing near
the doorway, but not unfrequently over
it—are never
absent. The Muezzin mounts to the top of them
to call the faithful to prayer. The court of the
temple of Mecca, which encloses the Kaabah, built
as it was in the times before the foundation of
Islam, may be regarded as a type of the simplest
form of mosque; but the natives of the land of
Mohammed were so ignorant of the arts of construction
that they usually built their dwellings
merely of clay and dried palm-branches. At the
present time
the mosque at Mecca still consists of
a court enclosed by
arcades, and in the midst of it
are the Kaabah and the famous
spring Zemzem.
1 The first minaret was no doubt a
palm-tree, which
the Muezzin climbed up to call the faithful
to
prayer; and when the religion of the Prophet
required
that places of worship should be erected,
the faithful seized upon those buildings which they
found ready to hand in the countries they had
subjugated. A concession to any better style that
might
have existed, or an adaptation to their own
needs of the
architecture of the more advanced
foreign nations, seems never
to have been thought
of. The pillars with their slender shafts
reminded
the sons of the desert of their palms, the
cupola
recalled the tent (Kubba), and they adopted both
at an early date. It is wonderful to observe how
the Greek spirit modified the primeval Egyptian
polygonal column, and adopted it as an organic
architectural element in the structure of the Doric
temple—from which it never became dissevered—
while at the same time the fine Greek sense of
beauty added
a certain nobility to the type. It
was quite otherwise, though
again in conformity
with their religion and character, that it
was
applied by the Arabs, who came sword in hand,
the conquerors of the nations. They unhesitatingly
tore the pillars from the temples and palaces they
1 At this spring, according to
Mohammedan legend, Abraham performed his ablutions when he came to worship
the
Kaabah.
found standing,
however noble and worthy of preservation they might be, to place
them, unaltered, in their own buildings, regardless alike of the order to
which they
belonged, the thickness or the form of their
shafts, and the nature of their materials.
If they seemed too
short, they raised them on a massive base; all they cared for
was to make them of equal height as supports. The Arabs learned the structure
of
the cupola from the Byzantines, and brought it, as we
shall see, to high perfection.
The successful transformation
of the round arch—which had long been known to
other
nations—into the pointed arch first occurs in their buildings. But the rich
ornamentation of flat surfaces with arabesques is quite
peculiar to them. This they
borrowed from the arts of carpet
and tissue weaving, known to them from the
earliest times, and
still we do not find it applied in their earliest buildings, for they
had not yet learnt to transfer these designs from their
looms, festal clothes, and
tent rugs to the decoration of a
stone surface.
No trace of such ornaments is to be found in the Mosque of Amroo, and
it
was not till later that it became a characteristic and
unfailing feature of the
Arabic style of architecture. We do
not even meet with the peculiarly Arabic
and very frequent stalactite ornament which is such a charming
compromise and
connecting link between the flamboyant and the
perpendicular; but we will do
full justice to its fantastic
forms when we meet with it later on.
On the other hand, in the Mosque of Amroo there is no lack of those
details
of construction and articles of furniture which
occur in all mosques, and with
which we will at once make the
reader acquainted. We can, however, more
advantageously
introduce him at another opportunity to the tombs of the founders,
the schools, the public wells, and other benevolent
foundations which are generally
connected with a mosque.
The court, in which we have already recognised the most ancient form
of
the Mohammedan plan of worship, and which is never
wanting in mosques even
of later date, is called Sahn-el-Gama.
In the midst of it, in the Mosque of Amroo,
close to a palm
and a thorn-tree, is the well Hanefeeyeh, intended for the
prescribed ablutions; this is often roofed in and richly ornamented. The court
of
the Mosque of Amroo is encircled on all four sides by
arcades closed on the outerside
by a wall without windows. A
peculiar sanctity is attributed to the side
lying towards
Mecca, which in Egypt is to the east, and it encloses the holy of
holies, known as the Liwan. While the colonnades to the north
and south of the
court have no more than three rows of
pillars, and that to the west only one row
of double
pillars—which, indeed, are all overthrown but one pair—there is a perfect
forest of columns on the eastern side. They are arranged in
six long rows all at
equal distances, and constitute a
magnificent arcade, where they throw strange lights
and shades
on the pavement covered with torn mats, and afford a picture never
to be forgotten, even by the traveller who, like myself, has
also stood in the mosque-cathedral
of Cordova—of all churches
the most crowded with pillars. Most of the
columns in the
Mosque of Amroo are of marble, and have capitals of every
imaginable form known to ancient art. Here the acanthus of the Corinthian
order
meets the eye, there the Ionic volute: and side by
side with the Byzantine cubic
capital we come upon the floral
capital of the Ptolemaic period carved by Greek
hands. Only the forms
of ancient Egyptian art are carefully excluded, as in all
Arab
buildings. If only these pillars could tell us whence they came, how much
might we learn—down to the very latest trace of the splendid,
but vanished,
temples and churches of
Memphis,
Heliopolis, and other ancient towns in the
neighbourhood of
Cairo, which were still
living cities at the time of the founding
LIWAN OR SANCTUARY OF THE MOSQUE OF AMROO.
of Fostât! Very possibly at this time a column from the temple of
Aphrodite
props one side of an archway, while the other is
supported by a pillar which once
stood by the altar of a
church to the Virgin.
Out there, where a solemn twilight reigns instead of the garish light
of day,
we see the prayer-niche—Mihrab or Kiblah—which is to
be found in every mosque.
It shows the believer in which
direction he must turn to seek Mecca. In front of
this, on
feast-days, the Koran is read, and it is often richly ornamented with mosaic
and stone carving. On its left is the Mimbar, or pulpit—a
tall erection of wood,
led up to by a straight staircase
covered with rich carving or inlaid work; over it
there is usually a
bulbous-shaped cupola supported on a sort of wooden baldachino.
To the right of the prayer-niche once stood a desk, now destroyed; but in
other
THE MIMBAR OR PULPIT IN THE MOSQUE OF KAYT BEY.
mosques the Koran is placed upon such a desk during divine worship.
Nearer
to the court, and standing between the same two
rows of pillars as the Mimbar,
there is a wooden platform
surrounded by a balustrade, and generally raised on four
feet or pillars; it
commonly stands away from the wall, but is sometimes attached
to a pillar, and from it, on Fridays, the praises of God and the Prophet are
proclaimed.
This duty is performed by the preacher's
assistants—Imam or Khateeb—
and consists in repeating the
verses of the Koran that are read in the prayer-niche
in so
loud a voice that the most distant member of the congregation may
hear and understand.
Among the pillars of the Mosque of Amroo there are three which have
a
greater attraction for the Cairenes than even the grave
of Abdallah lying at the
north-east corner of the Liwan, or
holy of holies, though he was the son of the
THE PILLARS OF ORDEAL.
founder of Fostât and of this house of worship, and
is revered here as a saint. A fine pair of twin-pillars
in the
terribly injured western portico are
a particularly favourite
resort, for it is said of them
that only true believers can
squeeze through between
the two shafts. The well-fed rich man
naturally
finds the passage through this “eye of a
needle”
more difficult than the lean and hungry wretch;
but
“even grief may grow fat,” and many a pious
Moslem has gazed with anxiety on his stout dimensions,
and has had to bear the ridicule of his
leaner neighbour—always maliciously disposed—at
finding the
passage too narrow for his bulk.
The third pillar in repute stands in the Liwan,
not
far from the prayer-niche, and bears the trace
of the
prophet's whip, or, as others say—more mindful
of the fact
that the mosque was not erected
until after the death of
Mohammed—the whip of
the Khalif Omar. When Amroo began to
build
the great court he entreated either one or the
other—for the sake of historical probability we will say the
Khalif Omar—to send
him a pillar from Mecca. The Commander of
the Faithful thereupon ordered
one to fly at once to Fostât.
But twice did the pillar defy his orders and
remain where it
was; when at his third command it made no sign of moving,
its
angered lord hit it a blow with his whip, and adjured it in the name of
God and the Prophet to obey. At once the marble cylinder
rose, shot like an
arrow through the air, and dropped down on
the site of the building. The Arabic
inscription, showing the
name of Mohammed in relief in white on the dark ground
of the
pillar, is very singular. On feeling over the letters that form the name
not the slightest relief or intaglio is perceptible to the
touch, and it is difficult to
understand how they can have got
marked upon the stone, in which they seem
to have grown by
some freak of nature. Herr Lüttke is of opinion that these
characters must have been produced by blows on the marble with a blunt
instrument,
which effected a small disintegration under the surface.
At the present time the Mosque of Amroo is but rarely filled with
devotees;
but there was a time when its now bare walls
were clothed with gorgeous
colours and splendid
gilding, when twelve hundred and ninety copies of the
Koran
lay on an equal number of desks, and when, as darkness fell, no less
than eighteen thousand lamps were lighted. The number of
pillars in this
mosque is said to have been greater than that
of the days in the year, but
at the present time only two
hundred and fifty remain standing; and what a
magnificent
spectacle must it have been when, within the illuminated enclosure
as light as day, thousands of the faithful stood arrayed as
if in order
of battle!
No one is allowed to sit down in the mosque, and there is neither
seat nor
bench to be seen, for the Mohammedan says that prayer
is a fight against the
devil, who seeks to hinder his approach
to God and the Prophet. Therefore the
true believers stand
arrayed in ranks like a regiment led forth against the enemy,
of which the individuals are likened to an army under the command of a
general,
and at their head stands the Imam or
prayer-reciter as protagonist—Promachos—
in the spiritual
strife. Each believer is supported by a pair of angels sent from
Heaven; these stand one on the right hand and one on the left of each
supplicant as soon as he enters the ranks, and remain with
him till prayer is
ended. The front rank or van of the
worshippers is called by Moslems by the
same name as the ranks
of a real army; both are termed Saff. The standing
place of
the Imam, the prayer-niche of which mention has been made, in the
theological vocabulary of the Moslems is called Mihrab, and
the word is said to
be derived from another, Harb—meaning
“war.” Prayer, after the prescribed
ablutions, is begun by
reciting the Fatihah, the first verse of the Koran—the
Paternoster of the Mohammedan—and it ends with a farewell to the guardian
angels; it must be recited with deep prostrations to the
ground. Rik'ah, their
number varying with the hour of the day.
Often, indeed, the soul of the devotee
remains untouched under
the discharge of these strictly prescribed formulas, and
yet
surely nowhere are worshippers to be met with so absorbed in their devotions
as here. In
Cairo, as
elsewhere, the most diligent frequenter of the House of
God
easily passes for the most pious of men, and so it is not always the purest
motives that urge the Moslem to the mosque; but the true
believer prays not
there alone, and more than once it has
happened that I have come upon a
traveller in the desert who,
at the hour of prayer, in the conviction that he was
alone
with his God, knelt down on his little prayer-carpet, raising his arms in
the prescribed manner with such devout fervour, such ardent
longing and ecstasy,
as though it had been vouchsafed to him
to gaze through the open portals of
Heaven itself.
To the Moslem, as to the Christian and Israelite, his God is
everywhere
present; nay, his mosques are built without any solemn ceremony of laying the
foundation-stone; they have no inherent sanctity, and their
site and walls are not
dedicated by any consecration, for
space would be too narrow to contain the
Almighty, whose
throne is Heaven and the earth His footstool. Mesgid—this
is
the original form of our word “mosque” —signifies a place to honour the Lord
in; but the Arabs usually give their places of worship a
different name—Gam'a,
“the place of assembly” —and the mosque
is, in fact, before everything a Gam'a, or
place of assembly for
the faithful, who, on the Yaum al gam'a—
i.e., the day of
assembly (their Sabbath, kept on our
Friday)—gather together in order that they
may first bind
themselves to a great and closely knit unity, and there listen to
the proclamation from the top of the Mimbar, by the mouth of
the preacher or
Khalif, of the inspiring confession that there
is no God but the omnipresent
Allah, and that Mohammed is His
prophet. Then all the assembly sink like
one man to the earth,
in acknowledgment of this declaration, as if stricken
down by
its overpowering grandeur.
We shall see many more mosques founded in the City of the Khalifs,
and
take occasion to visit them.
That which is considered the oldest after that of Amroo is the one
built by
ROW OF SUPPLICANTS.
the governor Ahmed-ibn Tuloon, and named after him. At the time of its
erection
Fostât had been founded less than two hundred and
fifty years, and yet the life
of the Egyptians had undergone a
complete transformation in all its details and
manners, and
the scene of it had been altered in every particular. Amroo himself
had promised to all the Copts who should accept Islam and pay
the poll-tax
perfectly equal rights with their conquerors, and
many went over to the faith of
Mohammed. War, pestilence,
revolt, persecution, extortion by the strong from
the weak, in
short every calamity had decimated the inhabitants of the Nile
valley under the Byzantine rule, and so made room for the Arabs. Many
tribes settled in Egypt, and soon gave up their nomad life to
establish themselves
as husbandmen in the country, and in the
cities as merchants and
artisans, or as students and artists,
thus inaugurating a new life—always linked
with the old it is
true, but characterised by peculiarities in all its relations,
The decayed language
of the Egyptians—the Coptic
1—with its insubordination to
grammar, and its numerous words adopted from the Greek, was
soon displaced by
the supple and subtle Arab tongue. It has
already been related in our account
of
Alexandria how marvellously rapid was the process of
transformation which
was wrought in Egypt by the Arabs; but
while the exterminating powers of
Islam wreaked themselves in
their utmost horror on the Greek city, the Arab
nature found
in Fostât an appropriate opening for the development of its innate
creative spirit, and for resuscitating from a heap of ruins a
vitality full of vigour,
variety, and significance, destined
to enrich the world with the fairest fruits.
This is not the place for following the vicissitudes of the history
of the
Khalifs, nor for relating how, after Omar's death and
the murder of Othman and
MORNING PRAYER OF A BEDAWEEN.
of Merwan II., the last of the Omayyades, Egypt, which was ruled by
governors,
became subject to the Abbasides; but it is
worthy of mention that scarcely two
hundred years after the
founding of Fostât it was behind no city of the East in
the
distinction and brilliancy of its scientific position. Haroun-er-Rasheed's
second
successor, his learned son Mamoon (who died
A.D. 833), visited Egypt and the city
founded by Amroo, in which, during his reign, astronomy, to
which he delighted to
devote himself, jurisprudence, in
connection with theology, natural science, grammar,
and
philosophy, were cultivated and taught in a celebrated school or academy; as
were more particularly those sciences whose Arabic names have
not been supplanted
1 A name of the later Egyptians
derived—written in Greek letters—from the Greek word Aigyptios—“Egyptian.” There
were
four dialects, the Coptic, the Memphitic spoken at Memphis, the Theban or Sahidic, and the Bashmuric, a
later dialect.
Manuscripts in the Sahidic are as old as
the third century A.D.; the Memphitic
do not appear till the tenth century A.D. The
language ceased to be spoken more than two
centuries ago, but is still used in the ritual and services of the church.
by others even in our
day—Algebra and Chemistry. It was under Mamoon that
the first
terrestrial meridian was measured, and instruments previously unknown were
used in the observatory erected by him. Also it is to the
translations made in his
time of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew
books into the Arabic tongue that we owe the
preservation of
many writings of the ancients which would otherwise have been lost.
The same prince restored the Nilometer on the island of
Roda, and decorated
it
with inscriptions which still exist. Under him Fostât enjoyed a period of
fairest
bloom; nevertheless, it was under the rule of a
viceroy of the later Abbasides—the
enterprising and talented
Ahmed-ibn-Tuloon
1—that the town first overstepped the
ALLEY OF THE OLD TIME.
limits of what we know now as
Old
Cairo. The
father of this remarkable man, a Turk by
birth,
had found admission as a prisoner of war into
the body-guard of the Khalif, which at that
time constituted a Prætorian guard that succeeded
on more than
one occasion in breaking a
sceptre and disposing of a crown.
This talented
man soon won a high position in the monarch's
palace. His manly and noble-minded son, who
had, too, a great taste for science, was appointed
to the
government of Egypt, and he not only
knew how to maintain this
by his wisdom, and
by the force of arms and gold, but he made
a
victorious incursion into
Syria, and founded an
independent
sovereignty for himself and his
family. He enlarged Fostât,
his capital—where
he had resided at first in the palace built
in the
soldiers' quarter by his predecessors—by extending
it in the direction of the present citadel, and
by building the quarter called el-Khateeyah, where he erected
for himself a splendid
castle, and afterwards the mosque which
to this day bears his name; he meanwhile
had founded several
richly endowed benevolent institutions, where every Friday
he
visited in person the sick and insane, besides causing many other useful
buildings
to be executed, among which the conduits
especially deserve mention. The mosque
is situated south-west
of the citadel (which was not built till afterwards) and halfway
between it and
Old Cairo, not far from
the spacious riding-course where the
Arab grandees trained and
exercised their splendid horses on the fortified hill
called
Kal'at el-Kebsh—“the fort of the ram.” This was invested by legends with a
peculiar sanctity; one of these relates that Abraham led his
son to the slaughter
on it, and that it then took its name in
memory of the ram which was substituted
for sacrifice by the
Lord God. Other Cairenes declare that at the end of the flood
Noah's Ark was stranded on this hill, and that a ram came out of it first of all
the
beasts; while earlier tales say that Ahmed found the
remains of the Ark on
Mount Ararat in Armenia, and that it was
built into the new mosque in the form
ARABIAN HORSE.
of a frieze, on which
the whole of the Koran was engraved. Very possibly Ahmedibn-Tuloon,
as the head of a new princely race, assumed—in Oriental
fashion—the
ARCH ORNAMENT FROM THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULOON.
name of “the ram,”
i.e., the
leader of the flock, and
the name el-Kebsh—“the ram”—may refer
to him.
This benevolent prince—who, when he felt death
near,
1 desired that the Mohammedans should pray for
him with the Koran, the Jews with the Pentateuch
and Psalms, and the Christians with the Gospels, all on
the top of Mokattam—when he had decided on building
a new mosque, scorned to strip any of the more
ancient structures in order to decorate his pious work.
When he could find no right way—so runs the legend
—of building a magnificent temple out of nothing but
new materials, the Greek architect who had constructed
the aqueducts under his orders, and who had been
thrown into prison on a false accusation, let him know
that he had conceived of the plan of a magnificent
mosque, for which no pillars should be required other
than those which would need to be placed on each
side of the prayer-niche.
The Greek architect's drawing satisfied the prince's
requirements, and thus the beautiful structure rose
which,
in spite of the many injuries it has suffered,
has hitherto
fulfilled the desire of its owner—that,
even if fire or water
should destroy Fostât, it might
remain standing.
This structure differs but little in its groundplan
from the Mosque of Amroo, and is generally
regarded as
especially typical of the earliest period of
Arab
architecture. The rectangular court is enclosed
by side-courts
on three sides, and their flat wooden
roofs are supported on
pillars, and not on columns
as in the Mosque of Amroo, and on
heavy pointed
arches, of which the spring recalls the
horse-shoe arch.
On the side facing towards Mecca, where the
prayer-niche
is placed, there are five rows, on the others
only
two. At the four angles of each square pillar are
small columns with Byzantine capitals in gypsum. Coste and,
after him, Von
Kremer consider these peculiar features as the
prototype of the cluster-pillars in
our Gothic cathedrals. We
do not even yet meet with arabesque decorations or
with
stalactite ornaments over the doorway in this noble building; but the
capitals
of the columns, the borders and spandrils of the
arches are richly ornamented
1 The revenues of Egypt were at
this time very great; according to De Guignes (Histoire des Huns) 300,000,000
pieces of gold. At the death of Tuloon, about £12,000,000 were in his
treasury, after £1,200,000 had been abstracted four
years
before by his son Abbas.
with truly Arabic and
most beautiful foliage carving, which, however, still reminds
us of its Byzantine prototype. The characters of the Kufic type, in which the
verses from the Koran are inscribed, run off into branches
and flowers, which
might be regarded as of the nature of
arabesque; they serve as a rich
string-course
ornament on the walls close under the roof. Even the latticed windows
in the upper part of the wall have borders of foliage, and
specially worthy of
notice is the upper portion of the walls,
which consist of burnt bricks and are
THE LIWAN OR SANCTUARY OF THE MOSQUE OF
IBN-TULOON.
covered with a facing of alabaster. This forms a sort of fancifully
designed pierced
battlement, which has unfortunately suffered
severe injury. In the sanctuary, on
each side of the
prayer-niche, stands a Byzantine pillar. The Mimbar is covered
with very fine work in geometrical inlaying of walnut wood and ivory, but it
was not erected in the mosque until its restoration under the
Bahritic Mamelukes.
In the midst of the court rises a domed
structure, originally intended as the
tomb of Ibn-Tuloon, but
under which the tank for the prescribed ablutions does
at
present stand.
Strong external walls enclose this splendid building on the west,
north, and
south, to keep out the hubbub of the city, but in
the course of time it has
suffered severely and undergone
cruel disfigurement. It is difficult, at the present
day, for the visitor
to form any idea of the grand effect it must have produced
at
the time of its first completion, for almost all of the arches have been
walled
up, and the arcades subdivided into cells, which
afford a refuge to beggars who
torment the visitor, and to
Cairenes past work. Badly whitewashed walls with
square
windows and doors now enclose the court in place of the open pillared
arcades. Nothing is left to remind us of the former splendour
of the building but
the frieze and its injured cornice, the
niches and rosettes between the walled-up
arches, and the
Liwan, or sanctuary, which has been spared and left open.
Close to the western outer wall of the mosque rises the quite peculiar
minaret.
The tower rests on a massive quadrangular
substructure, and rises in three
stories, each smaller than
the last; the lowest is circular in plan, the second and
third
polygonal. The small cupola has lost its summit, but we know that instead
CAPITALS OF COLUMNS FROM THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULOON.
of a crescent it was crowned with a little ship, in
which it was the custom to place food for the kites
that soar
round the mosque.
Quite peculiar, too, to this minaret is the flight
of steps going round it outside, by which the muezzins
mount
from balcony to balcony. It is said that once
Ibn-Tuloon,
sitting in council, became quite absorbed
in thought, wrapping
a strip of paper spirally round
his finger; when he roused
himself to consciousness
and met the enquiring looks of his
officials, he excused himself by explaining
that the twisted
strip of paper was the model of the staircase of the minaret
he was building. The whole edifice was completed in two years, and it seemed
to the Cairenes so extravagantly costly that they complained
at the enormous
sum disbursed for it, so that Ibn-Tuloon was
forced to declare that he had
found a treasure, to which he
owed the means of erecting his mosque. It was
said that he had
three times come upon enormous buried wealth, and, in fact,
the sums laid out by him for public purposes were immense; although at the
same time he reduced the imposts, and on a second occasion
mitigated them,
because in a dream he heard the voice of a
friend saying to him, “When a
prince sacrifices his rights for
the best interests of his people, God takes it on
Himself to
make it up to him.”
Ahmed-ibn-Tuloon is one of the noblest figures in Oriental history.
When
he died, in May
A.D. 884, in spite of the many wars he had engaged in, and his
indomitable energy in building, which had extended even to
fortifying the island
of
Roda, he left behind him an enormous treasure, which, according to our
modern
English computation, is said to have amounted to
sixty millions; he was sincerely
lamented by his innumerable
subjects in both
Syria and Egypt. The
dynasty founded
by him was to all extents and purposes
independent, although the prosperity of
the Abbasides
continued to be prayed for in the mosques of Fostât; and seventeen
sons and sixteen daughters who survived him—for he had an
extensive harem—
seemed to promise long continuance to the new
family of Regents. And yet
within twenty-two years of the
death of its founder it was extinct. The power of
the Abbaside
Khalifs dwindled to nothing at the same time. The last rulers of
Egypt who acknowledged
their supremacy, before the rising of the Fatimites, were
the
Turk Mohammed-el-Ihsheed and, last of all, his black slave Kafoor, who, after
serving his lord and his two sons, who were minors, with
conspicuous fidelity,
undertook in his own person the
government of the Nile valley—which was at that
time under a
visitation of famine, war, and pestilence—till he died, in the year 967
of our era, greatly lamented by the poets,
1 to whom
he had been a liberal patron.
He was succeeded by the grandson
of his former lord, Mohammed-el-Ihsheed: this boy
PATTERN OF THE MIMBAR IN THE MOSQUE OF
IBN-TULOON.
was only eleven years old, and
his relatives took
advantage of his
youthful inexperience to snatch
from him his rich inheritance.
At this period of its utmost
misery Egypt was
certain to fall
like a ripe fruit into the first
strong hand stretched out to grasp
it, and
this strong hand was not
long to wait for.
A few decades before, a bold
man, Obeyd-Allah — who
called
himself, whether rightly or no,
a
descendant of Alee, the prophet's
son-in-law, by his
daughter
Fatima—had founded a new Shiite
dynasty called the Fatimites,
2 in
Northern Africa.
Under the title
of a Mehdee—meaning “one who
is under the special guidance of
God”—he founded, on a
peninsula
which juts out into the bay of
Tunis, the splendid capital of
Mahadeeyah, which is now utterly destroyed, and
after many
wars he and his successors brought the greater portion of North Africa,
Sicily, and Sardinia under their dominion. Obeyd-Allah's son
Kasoon was even bold
enough to attack Egypt, and he actually
succeeded in reaching
Alexandria and
in
conquering the
Fayoom; but it was not until fifty-five years later that his great
grandson Mo'izz, encouraged by Egyptian emirs, ventured to
attempt to subjugate
the whole valley of the Nile. In February
A.D. 969,
3 he sent
his general Djawhar
with a picked army to invade the country
lying to the east. A battle was fought
at
Ghizeh, the adherents of the dynasty of Ihsheed were
routed, and the victorious
Djawhar crossed the Nile and
encamped to the north of Fostât on the spot where
modern
Cairo, which he subsequently founded, was
destined to rise.
1 Also the musicians, who were much
enriched by his favours and donations. The musical art was much prized at
the period. A considerable volume existed with the names of
the poets and their works, but all their poems have
disappeared.
2 Consisted of eleven sovereigns who
reigned one hundred and eighty-eight years.
3 Towards the end of the reign of
Kafoor.
THE CONSORT OF THE SULTAN.
AHMED.
A few months after his entry into Fostât, Djawhar gave orders to add
to the
city on the northern side by the building of a new
town. This adjoined the quarter
of el-Khateeyeh founded by
Ibn-Tuloon, and was to serve, in the first instance, as
head-quarters for Djawhar's soldiers, and as the court residence of the
Fatimite
Khalifs. The first sod was to be turned, by the
advice of the astrologers, at the
moment when the planet
Mars—known to the Arabs as el-Kahir, “the victorious”
—crossed
the meridian of Fostât. According to another legend the circuit of the
new city was marked out and surrounded by a string to which
little bells were
MINARET AND COURT OF THE MOSQUE OF IBN-TULOON.
attached, so that at a signal to be given by them the labourers might
all begin
together. But before the architect who awaited the
word of the astrologers could
sound the signal, a bird of prey
shot down on to the string, the little bells rang
out all
round, the labourers set to work, and, it is said, at the very instant at
which
the planet crossed the meridian of the new town.
This in consequence took its
name from it, Masr-el-Kahira—
i.e.,
the Victorious of Egypt.
A star of conquest had presided over the founding of the new town,
and
Djawhar lighted up in it a new luminary which guided
him to victory in the arena
of intellectual conflict; for his
first act was to found the University and mosque of
el-Azhar,
which to this day may be regarded as the source and centre of all
scientific life in the East.
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CAIRO;
UNDER THE FATIMITES AND
EYOOBIDES.
VARIOUS
have been the changes that have
passed over the city since
that period of early
development which we have traced so
far.
We now stand on the threshold of the most
splendid section of its history, and we feel
tempted to interrupt the course of events to do honour
to
the University and mosque of el-Azhar, and to record
their
achievements. It must be regarded as having
been from the time
of its foundation by Djawhar, the
general of the army under
Mo'izz, down to the present
day the source from which all the
intellectual and
religious life of
Cairo has for centuries derived its
nourishment—from whence, indeed, it still derives it
—and it
deserves to be considered as the very heart
and brain of the
City of the Khalifs. But for the
present we must pass by its
lofty gates, and postpone
visiting it till we can do so
without interrupting the course of the historical
narrative. I
will then resign the reader into the care of a guide to whom this
famous institution is familiar, and who will make him
acquainted with its
organisation and results. Here it need
only be said that Djawhar himself built
and furnished it
magnificently, and secured the salaries of the professors and the
maintenance of students by munificent endowments.
Soon after the founding of
Cairo the Khalif Mo'izz
2 transferred the royal
2
A.D. 972; his treasures and
expenditure were enormous. Makreezee, pp. 385—488.
residence to the new
city in which, only three years after, he was borne to the
grave of his forefathers, whose bodies had been conveyed to Egypt. The
country
and the capital alike owed great things to his
immediate successors. They governed
their kingdom, which
already extended to the western confines of Africa, with
solicitude and wisdom, opening out new channels for the commerce of Egypt,
even
as far as India and deep into the heart of the
African continent. The caravans
which travelled from
Tangier—which bordered on the Moorish dependencies of
Spain—and traversed the greater portion of Northern Africa
viá Kayrawan and
Tripolis, conveyed
merchandise of enormous value, which they poured into the
Khans of
Cairo, fast rising to be the
most important capital of the East; and
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN VASES.
from thence other files of camels kept up constant intercourse between
Syria and
Egypt.
Aydab and
Klysma on the
Red Sea were the ports where goods
conveyed
by sea were shipped and unshipped.
The artistic industry of the Arabs also found ample opportunity for
display
under the Fatimites, who loved to live in richly
fitted palaces, and whose ministers
and richer subjects,
imitating their princes, built magnificent dwelling-houses.
In the fifth soorah of the Koran, wine, gambling, statues, and
drawing lots
are
forbidden as an abomination to the faithful; hence neither painting nor
sculpture
could ever rise to a high eminence among the
Arabs, or even assert their dignity
as independent arts;
nevertheless, the prohibition of the Prophet was disregarded,
particularly in
Cairo under the
Fatimites, and we are told that in their time the
most
splendid tapestries were in use, on which were representations of the
sovereigns
and of celebrated men; and that in the capital
itself there were manufactories of
artistic vessels and
materials of every description. A variety of table ornaments
were produced there, and the elegant figures from
Cairo were highly esteemed,
particularly gazelles and lions, elephants and giraffes. Certain vessels of
glazed
clay, regarded as unique, bore the forms of human
figures, or of animals. Similar
vessels were not unknown to
the ancient Egyptians; but the painters who worked
HAREM OF A HOUSE IN THE TIME OF THE KHALIFS.
in the service of the
Fatimites appear to have immeasurably surpassed the artists
of
Pharaonic times, who were never able to attain to any freedom of treatment,
and to whom the laws of perspective remained unknown. For how
should an
artist of Old
Memphis or
Thebes have so
succeeded in painting dancing women
EGYPTIAN COINS.
that some should seem to float out from the wall, and others to
recede? And
Makreezee asserts that both were accomplished
under the Fatimites by Ibn-Azeez
HALBERD AND SPEAR FOR LION HUNTING, OF STEEL INLAID WITH SILVER. TIME OF THE FATIMITES.
and Koseyr during a banquet in
Cairo. We are also
told of portraits of distinguished
poets executed at
the same period, and of a picture
representing
Joseph in the well, which, by its fine
effects of
colour, excited the highest admiration. Even the
workshops of the sculptors sent out not merely
fantastic ornaments and designs of animals, but
human figures, and among them armed knights on
horseback.
At an early date the Arabs had exchanged
their
primitive modest garb for the gorgeous clothing
used by the
nations they had subjugated, and more
particularly by the
Persians. At the court of the
Khalifs at Bagdad an enormous
use was made of
embroidered dresses of the rarest materials.
The
Fatimites sought to vie with the Abbasides in this
respect, and several establishments were founded in
Cairo for the production of embroidery on
silk,
which was largely used for turbans worked with
gold, for mantles of honour with the monograms of
the names of sovereigns (tiraz), and ladies' robes
with inscriptions. The robes of honour embroidered
with the tiraz played so conspicuous a part under
the successors of Mo'izz that the “Intendant of the Tiraz”
held one of the
most distinguished posts in the court. Very
costly work was also produced
by the goldsmiths and armourers,
and the former worked not for ladies only but
for men also,
for both sexes were fond of decorating themselves with necklaces
and bracelets. We are told of ladies who so loaded themselves with
ornaments
of gold and precious stones that they could not
walk without assistance. The
men expended large
sums on the decoration of their arms; and the interior of
their houses, as well as their persons, were decked with every product of the
ARABIC SILK DAMASK OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. FROM A GARMENT OF HENRY THE SAINT (A.D. 1002—24) IN BAMBERG
GERMAN MUSEUM.
industrial arts of the period. The walls were
lined
with polished stucco in various colours,
with arabesques or
richly embroidered stuffs, or
even with tiles in pottery with
an enamel facing
of inimitable brilliancy; the floor was of
mosaic
or was covered with thick carpets. A carpet
made in the reign
1 of Mo'izz represented
the
chief cities of the world, and under the pictures
were explanatory sentences in letters of gold
and silver. This carpet is said to have cost
22,000 dinars
(about £12,000). The cabinetmakers
had preserved their early
art of inlaying
furniture, using costly dark wood inlaid
with
lighter ones, or with ivory and mother-of-pearl,
and at no period were the coverings for pillows
and cushions more richly designed or more
beautifully coloured than those of the Egyptian
damask at that
date.
2The costly stuffs of
Damietta
have already
ARABIC STUFF. PRESERVED IN THE GERMAN MUSEUM OF NUREMBERG. DARK-RED GROUND AND GREY FOLIAGE, THE OUTLINES CHANGING BLUE AND GOLD.
been spoken of; figures of various animals were
woven into these. The heavy stuff known as
Deebak brocade,
with its large patterns of flowers,
is still to be met with in
the high-mass robes of
Catholic priests. The Christian Copts
were the
best weavers both in the Delta and at Syoot
in
Upper Egypt, which
produced a particular
purplish-red furniture stuff. Even quite
simple
vessels of clay and brass showed very elegant
forms, and were decorated with rich Tawsheer
work; nor was less care bestowed on the ewers
and bowls
used for washing the hands at meals,
on the lanterns for
lighting the courts and halls,
on the plates, saucers, and
vases, the boxes, jars,
and bowls (khordâdhee) used for the
lavish burning
of essences—in which the Prophet himself
had indulged—and for containing sweetmeats,
preserved fruits, syrup, and sherbets, which the
Cairenes to
this day prepare in great and excellent
variety. The joys of
the table even inspired the poets to sing of them, and
many an
old traveller celebrates the praises of the multitude of cooks and roasters
who set up their stalls and fires at the corners of the
streets, or carried them about
on their heads. Old
Sebastian Frank
1 tells us, “There be there [in
Cairo] as many
as fifteen thousand
public kitchens, wherein every day, and all day, they cook victuals
and dainties, both roast and boiled; for the natives cook but
little in their
houses, but many cooks go round about in the
city with fire ready prepared on
a hearth, which they carry on
their heads, and they will boil or roast meat
therewith; and
if any man have need they take down the oven from their head
WIFE OF THE SHEYKH OF THE COOKS.
and give to the hungry according
to his desire for
a
reasonable sum of money.”
At the
present day cooks
are to be seen at many
street-corners, and wandering
provision-merchants in great
numbers. A writer of the
time of
Saladin
2 declares that
if he were called upon
to
enumerate and describe the
various
sweetmeats prepared
in Egypt a separate book
would require to be written.
A large pasty, of which the
preparation is minutely described
by this
author, proves
the luxury of living indulged
in by the princes and grandees
of his time. First a dough
is prepared of thirty pounds
of the finest
meal, kneaded
up with five and a half
pounds
of sesame oil; this
was to be divided into two
portions. One, rolled thin,
was laid in a large copper
pan with strong handles, prepared
for the
purpose. On
this was spread a minced stuffing of meat, and
above it thirty lambs, roast and
stuffed with a fine spiced
farcis of pounded pistachio nuts,
pepper, ginger, cinnamon,
mastic, coriander, carraway, and
nuts. Over this was poured rose-water flavoured
with nutmeg.
On and between the lambs were packed twenty fowls, an equal
number of young chickens, and fifty small birds, some stuffed with meat and
some with eggs, some roasted in grape juice or lemon juice.
This mass (may we
not write “mess”) was garnished with little
meat patties and tarts full of sugar-work.
When it had
acquired a dome-shape—and pieces of meat or toasted cheese
1 “Chronique et Tableau de la
Turquie,” 4to, 1550.
might still be
added—Attar of rose with essence of nutmeg, or of aloes wood,
was to be poured over it; it was then covered with the other half of the
dough,
care being taken that it so effectually enclosed
the contents that no steam
should find even the smallest
outlet, and the dish was put into the oven.
When the crust was
well baked, and of a delicate ruddy hue, the pasty was
withdrawn from the oven, wiped with a sponge, and again moistened with
rosewater
and nutmeg. This dish was considered
particularly suitable for being taken
on hunting and country
expeditions by the king or great personages, since it
contained a variety of viands, was easily portable, did not fall to pieces
easily,
looked handsome, tasted well, and was very slow in
cooling.
Though Persia, and at a later day Andalusia, yielded the finest Attar
of rose,
Bassorah the famous palm-flower oil, Armenia the most
costly essence of willow, and
Koofah the finest essence of
stock gilly-flower and violet, the lily oil of Egypt was
especially prized; but the choicest spices and the finest incense were brought
from
the Somali coast in the time of the Khalifs as they
had been under the Pharaohs.
The consumption of essences must
have been enormous at the highest tide of
Egyptian splendour,
for the people were actually enjoined to perfume themselves
on
Fridays, corpses were anointed with aromatic essences; sherbets and
sweetmeats
were flavoured with fine vegetable extracts,
perfumes filled the air in every well-to-do
house, and
saturated the letters and presents which were constantly being
exchanged. The ladies bathed in perfumed water, the men used scented oils for
the hair, and both made use of red, yellow, and green soap.
During great festivals
incense was burnt in all the streets,
so that even the poorest might be regaled by
the mere act of
breathing. Nor was there any lack of narcotics. The mode of
preparing opium, introduced from Syoot in
Upper
Egypt, was well known, and
the Sultan Beybars
1 promulgated several edicts prohibiting the use of Hasheesh, a
stupefying and intoxicating preparation of Indian hemp. In
spite of the Prophet's
prohibition the juice of the grape
continued to be indulged in; alcohol (as its name
indicates)
is an Arab discovery, and beer—the favourite beverage of the ancient
Egyptians—was also brewed and drunk under the Khalifs. Many a
jovial song in
praise of wine was sung by Arab poets, and in
early times many Arabs would by
no means admit that the
Prophet had forbidden its use. In an old MS. copy of
Tha'âlibi
2 it is said, “The Prophet—may God bless him and accept
him—permitted
wine, and mercifully allows us to strengthen
ourselves with it at our meals, and
to lift the veil of our
cares and sorrows.” In another place it is written, “None
forbids wine but a churl, and none allows it but a noble soul; the free-handed
and
the generous praise it, the avaricious and niggardly
find fault with it. But shun
drunkenness, it is a disgrace and
a sin.” Wine is called “the alchemy of joy, and
the
pleasantest thing the world rejoices in.” In the “Cheerer” it is said, “the
world is as one beloved, and wine is the dew of her lip.”
“Care not if time passes slowly or
hurries thee onward;
Whisper thy woes to the wine cup that
bubbles before thee.
2 Died about A.D. 1043, in the reign of the Khalif
Mostansir-Billah.
PRINCELY GARDEN IN CAIRO.
Yet, if three times thou hast emptied it
pause and consider;
Guard thou thy heart lest joy vanish and
leave only torment.
Here is the proved panacea for sadness
and sorrow;
Hearken thou then to my counsel who knows
what will serve thee,
Care not for time, but bethink thee how
often the wretched
Fain would amend all its evils—alas! but
he cannot.”
Other poets who have sung of wine praise it with gay freedom and
without
restraint. The drinker sings triumphantly as he
raises his glass—
“Drink, or e'er this life be past
Drain the goblet to the last.”
A great deal of wine must have been drunk in Egypt, if it is
correctly stated
that the wine-tax in one day amounted to more
than a thousand dinars (almost
£600). The Christian monks seem
to have kept the best cellars of the noble
juice, and the poet
Ibn Hamdees
1 gives a ravishing picture of a night he spent
in drinking with some friends in a convent in Sicily, his
native home. There
was fine muscatel there indeed, and a piece
of silver purchased “liquid gold.”
The princes and potentates in their palaces feasted off the precious
metals, and
even off plates of onyx and the other less
precious gem stones. Knife and spoon
handles of jasper and
carnelian, and vessels of rock-crystal were not very rare.
Glass, both clear and coloured, was used in a variety of forms.
The outside of the house that faced on the street was just as simple
as the
interior was splendid—particularly the “mandaree,” or
room for receiving visitors,
and the harem, or women's
apartments—for suspicion and jealousy, as well as
fear of the
greed of princes and of the envious gaze of the passer-by, prescribed
concealment of the wealth of the household, especially under
the later sovereigns.
The Arabs excelled all other nations in horticulture, and particular
care was
bestowed on the gardens, which are praised alike by
poets and prose writers.
Among the latter is Aboo Bekr
el-Herawee, the traveller who is known to the
Arabs as
Kiselak,
2 because he inscribed his name on innumerable
monuments; he
enumerates the following plants, which he had
seen all at the same season in
Egyptian gardens:—Roses of
three different colours, two sorts of jasmine, and two
of
lotus, myrtle, jonquils, chrysanthemums, white and scented violets, stock
gilly-flower,
levkoja (snow flake), iris, lemon, palms
with ripe and unripe fruit, bananas,
sycamores, vines with
sour and sweet grapes, fig and almond trees, coriander, melons,
cucumbers, and a variety of other vegetables, among which the famous
Egyptian
asparagus is mentioned in the earliest antiquity.
Another writer, speaking of the
Khalif's garden, says that it
contained—besides many other splendid plants to be
met with in
our gardens—palms of which the trunks were covered with plates
of gold, which hid pipes out of which water spouted, so that it seemed to
shoot
up from the palm-tree itself. Flowers thickly sown
were made, by training and
clipping, to form figures and
inscriptions, and in cool pavilions springs spouted
out from
the wall, and baskets were fastened up in which rare birds built their
1
A.D. 1251. A Sicilian, died in the
Island of Majorca, A.D. 1132.
nests; peacocks and
other birds of fine plumage ornamented the terraces. Many
cultivated plants have made their way, by the intervention of the Arabs, from
the East to the West, and were improved by them. The
fairyland of Oriental
tales cannot be conceived of without its
gardens. In them alone may even the
blue heavens find
permission to gaze down on the unveiled beauties of the
harem;
thus it was in the garden that love tied its forbidden bonds, while
high walls shut it in from the sight
of the
passer-by.
Even the mosques—richly as
GARDEN ON THE ROAD TO HELIOPOLIS.
they were furnished and decorated
within—were
comparatively plain on
the exterior. It was only on the
chief gateway, in the friezes, the
minarets, and the beautifully ornamented
casing of the cupolas
that
the decorative arts of architect and
sculptor could display themselves;
while, so early as at
the time of the
Fatimites, they had understood the
application of the arabesques and inscriptions,
which had long been used
as patterns for
weaving, to the
walls of the palaces and mosques.
These delightful surface decorations
served
at once to please the imagination
and satisfy artistic
feeling, and
to arouse sentiments of devotion and
a thirst for learning. Little, alas! has
remained to our day of the buildings
of that date, but there
is no lack of
descriptions of the splendour which
gradually developed itself under the
Fatimite Khalifs, and it may be asserted with perfect confidence that all
those
features—which are peculiar to Arab architecture,
and of which we shall be able
to point out fine examples of a
later period—reached their full development
under this race of
sovereigns. This is especially true of the
stalactite ornament,
as it has been called—from a
false idea that it was an imitation of those
fantastical
natural formations which occur, in many varieties, in caverns where
the water percolates through the roof. Kugler describes it as
a peculiar kind of
architectonic structure, of which the
striking effect may be attributed to its
apparent constructive
value, and also to its organic (in the ideal sense) and
fanciful character as a decoration. It occurs as a transition or interposed
ornament supporting overhanging members of the edifice: for
instance, as filling
up the internal angles where a cupola
rises above a quadrangular space; and in
various other
instances it is used in certain places as a substitute for a complete
arch and vault. It is
an artificial system of projecting parts in which small
brackets alternate with little niches with pointed arches, in such a way that
the
base of each super-imposed bracket is over the centre
of the niche below, and
often so that the upper projections
hang over like a fir-cone. The constructive rationale
of the
stalactite is an idea of support and thrust upwards, and Schmoranz,
one of the most accomplished connoisseurs in Arab art,
distinguishes three varieties,
the Arab, Persian, and
Mauresque. Each of these displays certain peculiarities,
partly resulting from the character of the materials to which they are
applied—
wood, alabaster, terra-cotta, or stone. The
uncoloured stalactites intended for mere
CONSOLE OF THE BALCONY OF THE MINARET
OF THE MOSQUE OF EZBEK.
effects of shadow are, of course,
differently
treated to the many-coloured
painted ones.
The palace built for his
sovereign by Djawhar the
Victorious
has entirely disappeared;
but
a poetical description has
been preserved of another
structure
of that period, the castle
of
the princes al-Mansoor, at
Bugia in Algiers, which was
sung of by the afore-mentioned
poet Ibn
Hamdees. The following
prose version is from the
German of Count von Schack:—
“Century on century have passed
over Greece and have given birth to no
palace so splendid
as this. O Mighty One,
we are made to understand the joys
of
Eden in these halls, with their lofty roofs
PERSO-TURKISH STALACTITE CAPITAL.
and this cool delicious court-yard. The
sight of
them prompts the believer to deeds of virtue, for gardens as fair as these may
be his home above;
and even the sinner looking round him
leaves the path of error, repenting of his former sins, to deserve the
joys of Heaven. When the slaves open the gates the very
hinges murmur a welcome to those who enter.
The lions before
the gate, which bite brazen rings, lift up their voices to say Allah is
almighty. They seem
ready to spring and tear the intruder who
enters the court without being bidden. Like woven carpets dusted
over with fine camphor are the marble pavements of the court. Pearls are
inlaid all round, and far and wide
the earth fills the air
with perfume, as if it were pure musk. When the sun sets and darkness reigns,
this
castle might serve instead of it and make the night
as clear as day.”
The poet also praises the fountain of the same palace; it was
surrounded
by lions, from whose mouths the water poured
into a basin, and as it rushed
forth from their jaws it made a
noise as loud “as though it were their roar.”
In the midst of
the basin stood a tree of metal with birds in the branches, and
threads of water that played in the sun poured from their little beaks;
moisture
dropped also from the leaves of the tree. Ibn
Hamdees devotes a poem even to
the gates and to the ceiling of
this palace. The gates were ornamented with
the precious
metals and with carving, and studded with gold nails. On the ceiling
there were pictures of
blooming gardens and hunting-scenes. The painter of these
was
highly lauded—
“'Twould seem he dipped his paint-brush
in the sun's refulgent beam
To give the scene the splendour and the
glamour of a dream.”
The most important structure of the Fatimite period now remaining in
Cairo is the mosque
which was erected by the grandson and second successor of
Mo'izz.
1 It is true it is half-ruined, and offers little
worthy of remark to the
visitor; but he who knows the story of
the life of its founder, Hakim, must
admit that this Khalif,
who came to the throne when only eleven years old, is
one of
the most remarkable figures in history—one of the most singular and, by
reason of the strange contradictions combined in his
character, one of the most
incomprehensible. To this day the
sect of the Druses living in
Syria
regard
him as an incarnation of the Most High—he himself,
in his later years, believed
himself to be God—and they
believe that he disappeared only to come again
THE MOSQUE OF EL HAKIM.
and to receive the homage of the whole world.
The
development of
Cairo owed but little
to
him, and the different classes of its inhabitants
met with the most various treatment at his
hands, according to the mood he was in. The
Jews and the
Christian Copts suffered most,
and yet at times he would grant
them the
utmost freedom, and even permit such of them
as had gone over to Islam to return to the
exercise of their old religion. The lowest classes,
among whom
in his youth he was wont to pray,
and whom he won over by his
ever open hand,
were devoted to him, while he was dreaded
by the great. In the harems of the wealthy
his very name was a word of fear, for no
woman was allowed to
leave her house, nor
were the purveyors of provisions even
permitted
to cross its threshold. Magnanimity and
meanness,
mad severity and gentle kindness, affability
and haughtiness amounting to the most frightful
and blasphemous mania, a stern and utterly
intolerant devotion to the doctrines of the Shiite
sect and
complete subjection to the religion of
his fathers—all these
conflicting elements and
moods ruled alternately in the
storm-tossed soul
of this strangely compounded man; sometimes
he would ride through the streets of
the city in pomp with a
large suite, at others alone, on an ass; for half the week
he
would sit in rooms artificially darkened, where candles and lamps took the
place of sunshine; and
once, like a second Nero, he had his palace set on fire.
At
last, in one of his nocturnal expeditions on Mokattam, he disappeared,
leaving
no trace. Probably he was murdered; but the
Druses, as I have said, to this
day look for his return to
earth. He built three places of worship, but the
mosque named
after him and praised as an admirable work was destroyed by an
earthquake. A stately structure with a ruined minaret that is but little
injured—
used in his time as an observatory—is now
supported by the north-east portion
of the city wall. It
stands between the two most conspicuous gates in
Cairo,
the Bab en-
Nasr—or “gate of victory” —and the Bab el-Footooh, which were
built
in the reign of the second sovereign from Hakim, the
magnificent but feeble
el-Mustansir, by his Wezeer Bedr
el-Gamalee. The Bab en-
Nasr is an
important
structure of the best period of Arab art, and
the solidity and accurate squaring of
the stones are justly
admired by experts. The Bab el-Footooh with its circular
forts, well constructed and well preserved, deserves equal praise.
The traveller who, in his walk round this suburb, comes towards these
gates
and the mosque of Hakim will see, on his left, a
little cemetery where
J. L. Burckhardt—the finest writer of
travels of any period—rests among the
Moslems whose country
and customs he studied and described.
It is highly significant that it is not the Khalif who is
commemorated as the
builder of these two portals, but in both
cases his Wezeer; and, in fact, after
the time of
Mustansir,
1 the Wezeers became more and more the rulers of the
fate of
Cairo, of
Egypt, and of the Fatimite race. This dynasty became extinct
after eight successors of Hakim had filled the throne, its end being as
pitiful
as its rise and early career had been splendid.
The Egyptian Khalifat met its
death-blow under the feeble
Adeed,
2 not indeed so much from the first Crusaders
—who, under the later Fatimites, made a violent and
victorious descent—as in
consequence of the avarice and
jealousy of the Wezeers, who made war on one
another when they
ought to have guarded the kingdom. Among them must be
mentioned Shawer, who, to consolidate his power, applied for help to
Noor-ed-deen,
Prince of Aleppo.
3 He thus
threw open the road into Egypt to the Kurdish
mercenaries of
the Syrian, led by Sheerkooh and his young nephew, the famous
Salah-ed-deen (Saladin), the son of Eyoob. After many vicissitudes, which
culminated
in the unprincipled Wezeer appealing to the
Crusaders themselves for aid, he was
deprived of both office
and life by the Kurds.
4 After the death of his uncle
Sheerkooh,
5 Saladin took his post, and reigned over
Egypt, though at first
only nominally and in the name of
Adeed—the last of the Fatimites, who lived
shut up in his
palace with his wives; but even before the death of this prince,
which took place shortly after, he governed as the independent Sultan, and
he
ventured boldly, and with impunity, to have prayers
said on the pulpits of
Cairo for the Abbaside Khalif, whose
faith he shared, being a Sunnite. From
him sprang a new
dynasty of sovereigns for Egypt, named the House of the
Eyoobides,
6 after Eyoob, the father of Saladin.
4 First mention of employment of
carrier-pigeons at this time.
5 Commander-in-chief of Noor-ed-deen.
6 Eight reigns lasting eighty years.
BAB EN-NASR.
Saladin's grand deeds of prowess, his chivalrous spirit, his
generosity and
good-heartedness have survived far more vividly
in our Western legends and poems
than they have among
Orientals. Walter von der Vogelweide
1 rouses us with
the appeal “Remember the gentle Sal'adeen,” and to him
“gentle”
2 conveyed
the idea of generous
magnanimity, our “true gentle-man.” Dante allows him
BAB EL-FOOTOH.
to linger alone in a circle, as the noblest of the heathen—“E solo in
parte
vid' il Saladino.”
3 Lessing and Walter
Scott have both done their best to keep
Saladin's personal
memory green in the mind of Western nations. It was he
and his
valour that lost Jerusalem to the Crusaders, and nevertheless Christian
3 “Inferno,” canto iv., 129.
CITADEL OF CAIRO.
chivalry found in him
something akin to itself, and was ready to accept the legend
that he was the son of a Christian woman, and that he allowed himself to be
dubbed Knight Templar by the captive Hugo of Tiberias, though
the Templars
were the bitterest foes of his cause. His life is
not free from mean traits, but
still he was a hero and a true
knight: the only one of his creed at that time
who could do
justice to his enemies, and at the same time a prince—as Lessing
has painted him—who was never weary of giving, and in whose treasury,
after
he had given away many millions, only about
forty-five shillings were found at his
death. His sister—the
Sittah of Lessing's play—was named Sitt' esh-Shameh, and
history says of her that at her brother's death she distributed her own
treasure
in alms, since his coffers were almost empty.
This is not the proper place for following his warlike career; but
what he
accomplished for
Cairo must not remain ummentioned, for it was Saladin who
founded and erected the citadel which to this day towers
imposingly above the
city.
2 If it had been built
with no other object than that of maintaining obedience
and
defending
Cairo, the choice of the site
could hardly be deemed happy, for it
is overtopped by other
heights lying farther to the south which again command
it. But
Saladin wished to fix his residence in the new fortress, and Makreezee
tells us that he selected the height of Mokattam—“the
pleasure-house of fresh
air,” as it was called—for his
building, because it was observed that meat, which
would keep
only twenty-four hours in the city, remained fresh two days and nights
up on the hill. After the fall of the Fatimites, and the
restoration of the Sunnite
confession, the greatest dangers
threatened Saladin from the Shiite inhabitants. At
first he
had lived in the castle of the Grand Wezeer, and had given the palace
of the Khalifs of the race of Mo'izz to his Emirs, and no
spot could be found
better suited at this time for the
coercion of the Cairenes than that which he
selected. The
eunuch Karakoosh
3 was entrusted with the construction of the
fortress, and the outer walls which were to surround the
whole city; and this
extraordinary man, who seems to have been
half a fool and half a sage, solved
the problem set before him
by destroying the small pyramids of
Ghizeh and the
third pyramid—that of Mycerinus—and
using them as stone quarries. The finely
squared blocks of the
Pharaonic period were carried across the Nile, and the work
proceeded rapidly, even while the Sultan was absent fighting in
Syria, though it was
not
completed till the reign of his nephew and second successor, Malik el Kâmil.
4The memory of Karakoosh, the architect, has remained particularly
fresh
among the Egyptians. The buffoon
5 who is
always conspicuous in every public
theatrical exhibition
6 is called by his name, and he appears, in fact, to have merited
this fate by many of his acts and dealings. A widow once
begged of him to
3 Beha-ed-den. The name Karakoosh, meaning “black bird,” was given to him as
a nickname, probably after new imposts.
5 D'Herbelot, in his account of
Karakoosh, states a work was written by Soiuthi on his actions.
6 Supposed by some to be the origin
of Karaguse, Karaguez, or Caragheus, the Chinese Punch or Polichinello,
exhibited
as a kind of ombre chinoise by a figure behind a cloth illumined by a lamp from
behind. This cynical performance of the
Karaguse often
embodies political caricatures of the day, and reflects public opinion.
Others deny that Karaguse, which means
“black snout,” is
the same as Karakoosh.
bestow on her a
winding-sheet that she might bury her husband who was just
dead. Karakoosh replied— “The alms-box is just now empty; come again next
year,
DOOR OF THE ALLEY OF SUKKARIJE.
and then, by God's help, I will give you the winding-sheet.” The
following story,
which is related of other persons too, with
several variations, is more to his credit.
A great robbery was
committed in
Cairo. Karakoosh enquired of
the man
who had been robbed whether his street was closed by a
gate, as was frequently
the case in early
times. Having been answered in the affirmative, he ordered that
the gate and the inhabitants of the street should both be brought to him;
then,
applying his ear to the gate, he said: “This gate
tells me that the man who
DOOR OF THE MAMELUKES IN THE CITADEL OF CAIRO.
stole the money has a feather in his turban.” The thief involuntarily
clutched at
his turban and was discovered.
Many other traits of Karakoosh are told which are absolutely
barbarous, but
the confidence put in him by Saladin would seem
to prove that he cannot have
been altogether devoid of fine
qualities.
The Arabs called the new fortress the “Nile Castle,” and the modern
Cairenes
call it simply 'el-Kal'ah, or “the fort.” A
winding road, very well kept, now leads
up to the citadel; but
the old steep path, shut in by walls, is also kept up, and
debouches at the gate called el-Azab, which is also called the Gate of the
Mamelukes,
because it was close to it that the frightful
tragedy was enacted of the massacre
of these haughty nobles
under Mohammed Ali, as will presently be related.
The palace in which Saladin's successors lived for centuries was
subsequently
wholly abandoned; a few halls decorated in
the Turkish style are re-opened at
the present day on
occasions of great ceremonial receptions. The finest of the
marble pillars were broken away by Seleem, after his conquest of
Cairo, in
1517, and sent
to Stamboul with the most valuable of the other decorative objects
and furniture. It would have been very difficult to form any
idea of the appearance
of an Arab castle, or of the life
within its walls, if the following account of the
reception of
the Crusaders' envoys at the palace of the Khalifs at
Cairo had not
been handed down to us.
We owe it to the historian William of Tyre.
1“As this prince's house,” he says, “has quite strange arrangements,
such as
have never been seen in our time, we will here
correctly set forth all that has
been told to us by faithful
reporters, who have been with this great prince, of his
splendour, his immeasurable wealth, and his many lordly possessions, as it will
be
not unpleasing to know of them more exactly.
“Hugo of Cesaræa and Godfrey, the Knight Templar, arriving at
Cairo accompanied by the
Soudan, went to the palace called in the language of that
country Kasare (ar-Kasr), preceded by a number of apparitors who marched in
front with much clatter, armed with swords. They were led
through narrow
passages where there was no daylight, and at
every doorway they met with
companies of armed Ethiopians, who
hastened to salute the Soudan as soon as
he appeared. Having
thus passed the first and second posts, they were shown
into a
larger space where the sun could shine, since it was open to the sky.
Here there were galleries to walk in, with marble columns
pierced and carved
with gold in relief; the pavements, too,
were of various materials, and the whole
aspect of these
arcades was really worthy of royal majesty. The elegance of the
materials and workmanship involuntarily attracted the gaze of the passer-by,
and
the eye found it hard to turn from them, nor could it
be satisfied with gazing
on them. There were basins of marble
filled with the clearest water; birds of
infinite variety and
unknown in our part of the world were heard singing, while
their strange forms and colours were equally new and presented an
extraordinary
appearance, at least in the eyes of our
countrymen, and they all had different
food appropriate to
their taste, according to their species. From thence they went
still farther on, under the guidance of the chief of the Eunuchs, and they
came
to buildings as much more beautiful than the former
as those had seemed superior
to those usually seen in other
places. Here they found an astonishing variety
of quadrupeds,
such as the fanciful hand of the painter might depict, or poetry
describe in the licence of fiction, or the imagination of a sleeper invent in
his
dreams—such, in short, as actually exist in the East
and South, while the West has
never seen the like. After
passing through many corridors and twisted passages,
1 He was Bishop of Tyre, A.D. 1100—1187, and wrote “Belli
sacri Historia, libri xxiii.”
ROOMELEH PLACE WITH THE MOSQUE OF HASAN.
where the busiest
might well have paused to gaze at all they saw, they reached the
palace itself, where they found
more numerous bodies of armed men and attendants
forming
considerable troops, which, by their splendid dress and great numbers,
attested the incomparable magnificence of the sovereign of
this place, just as the
various objects they had seen
proclaimed his wonderful splendour and wealth.
“As soon as they were within the palace the Sultan did homage, as is
the
custom, to his suzerain; he prostrated himself twice,
offering him, as it were,
a manner of worship which is paid to
none other. Finally, after prostrating
MALKAFS.
himself a third time, he divested himself
of the
sword that hung round his neck.
Then, with surprising
swiftness, the curtains
of cloth of gold, embroidered with
an infinite variety of precious stones,
were withdrawn. These, which hung in
the middle of the room,
had concealed
the throne, and the Khalif became visible,
showing his face to all beholders, seated
on a gilt throne, dressed in robes more
magnificent than those
of kings, and surrounded
by a small number of eunuchs
who were his retainers.”
1In this instance, too, written words have proved more enduring than
stone
and metal.
In the Citadel of
Cairo, to
which we will now return, a good deal remains
from the period
of its founders. But newer features of very various styles and
of every date—early, late, and brand-new—are mingled with what is old, and
greatly predominate. The fort is a fantastical and Babylonian
medley of fabulous
courts and labyrinthine corridors, of
barracks and palaces, of abruptly precipitous
walls and
hideous
oubliettes. It ought to be
contemplated as a whole, and yet
it is impossible to describe
the way in which this whole is composed, or how
the parts
which constitute it, and which have so little resemblance to each other,
are connected. Here the tallest minarets of
Cairo seem almost to touch the sky,
there the deepest well in the city has its bottom below the
level of the Nile—
on one hand rises a half-ruined and ancient
wall of blocks from the Pyramids,
on the other the shining
alabaster walls and court of a modern mosque—here
stands a
palace with splendid pillars, and there a dilapidated place of worship.
The old mosque yonder is turned into a granary, and this wing
of the palace,
formerly decorated with fabulous splendour, is
now a barrack.
After climbing a steep street, in which breath altogether fails us,
we find
ourselves suddenly on a small plateau, fanned by the
pure desert air, while the
eye can gaze unhindered far and
near. At our feet we see the busy—or lazy—
swarms of people on
the Roomeleh square, adjoining the old Karameydan,
which now
and henceforth bears the name of the founder of the vice-regal house,
1 “Histoire des Faits et gestes
dans les régions d'Outremer” (Guizot, coll. de Mémoires, Paris, 1823).
Mohammed Ali. The
splendid Mosque of Hasan, which towers above this square
or
place, was built about two hundred years
later than the citadel; but, even
at the earlier date, great
and small may have assembled here, taking part in
every sort
of amusement, and spending the month of Schawwal awaiting the
starting of the great caravan of Mecca pilgrims. The eye glances across and
SHAFT OF JOSEPH'S WELL.
away from this animated spot and the vast places of
worship that dominate it, and we see before us the huge
city
spreading far and wide to the west and north. There
are many
human forms and fluttering garments to be seen
on the flat
roofs which also support the openings of the
ventilators,
wooden structures resembling in form those
that cover the
cabin-ladder on board a river steamer.
These “malkafs” form
quite a little town on the top of
the larger one, but the eye
does not linger on them, for
it is tempted to wander in every
direction—and upwards
especially—by the minarets, which stand
up here, there,
and everywhere in hundreds of tall and slender
forms.
But our upward gaze is soon dazzled by the rays of
the
sun and the sheeny glare of the whitewashed walls;
and
the eye turns away, lower and farther towards the
west,
where the broad Nile silently floods its green and
fertile
banks, and the Pyramids rise up on the margin of
the
desert at the foot of the rocky Libyan range.
What Vesuvius is to Naples the Pyramids are to
Cairo; they are its peculiar and
characteristic token or
symbol, and if at any moment we
forget—surrounded by
evidences of European culture—that we are
parted from
our Western home by many a mile of sea and land,
the
Pyramids remind us of the fact that we are
sojourning
POT FROM JOSEPH'S WELL.
in the land of the Pharaohs. We glance
rapidly
across the Hill of Mokattam to the east,
and the Wind-mill
Hills to the south, across
the strip of desert and the heaps
of ruins;
but we let our gaze linger somewhat longer
on that strange scene—the Necropolis of
Cairo.
The different cemeteries, in
distinct groups of
tombs, lie far apart in the sandy waste;
and,
besides these, those towns of domed mausoleums,
among which the two most justly celebrated are those of the
Mamelukes, close
below us to the south, and farther away,
north-east of the citadel, the burial-place
of the Khalifs.
So long as the sun is still high in the heavens, this great picture
Jacks half
of its most bewitching charm. Grey, yellow, brown,
dazzling white, with here and
there a streak of green dimmed
by dust or by distance, are the only colours that
meet the
eye; but we will visit the citadel again, and stand by the parapet of the
south-west platform
early at sunrise, or in the evening before the sun has disappeared
behind the Libyan range, when the radiant heavens flood the
varied and suggestive
picture with an infinite wealth of
tints. Rosy clouds float like filmy veils round the
slender
minarets, a paler gold is mirrored in the Nile, the fields have a
bluish-green
bloom upon them, the horizon glows in regal
purple, and the distant hills reflect a
tender violet.
It is with difficulty that we tear ourselves from the scene, but
before night falls
we must turn back to the inner courts of
the citadel. Here two neighbouring spots
have remained
unaltered from the time of Saladin. First, an utterly neglected
mosque, in a half Byzantine style, with its dome fallen in; and, beyond it, a
very
remarkable water-work, called by the Arabs “Joseph's
well,” and said by them to
have been dug by that son of Jacob
who was governor under one of the Pharaohs;
it received its
name, however, from Saladin, whose full name was Salah-ed-Deen
Yoosuf—Yoosuf signifying Joseph. Abd-al-Lateef,
1 the contemporary of
the great
Sultan, who enjoyed the honour of his personal
acquaintance, speaks of this well,
which is accurately
described by Makreezee.
It consists of a shaft 88.30 metres deep (about 289 feet). The water
is raised
in jars by two large wheels turned by the help of
oxen, which go up and down on
a sloping plane hewn out of the
rock to about half-way up the shaft. Important as
this
structure was in early times, it has been of little value since the introduction
of
steam-pumps into
Cairo. Besides, the water has a saltish flavour, in consequence,
as Makreezee states, of a mistake made by Karakoosh,
2 who had the narrow opening
—through which at first a
small quantity of excellent water was procured—much
enlarged,
and so admitted the waters of a salt spring, that mixes with the sweet.
The great mosque which now graces the citadel, and whose tall and
too
slender minarets are visible from a great distance,
must be introduced to the
reader's knowledge with the other
works of Mohammed Ali, who founded it, and
after whom it is
called.
Saladin, before his death, had concluded a peace with the Crusaders,
and his
successors—for he left seven sons and one
daughter—inherited from him Egypt,
Syria, Arabia, and a part of Mesopotamia.
But during his lifetime he had already
divided these vast
possessions among his three eldest sons; the other members
of
the family had towns and provinces over which they ruled. His son Melik
el-Azeez
3 was succeeded by Saladin's brother,
Melik el-Adil,
4 who governed for
a short time as
guardian of his nephew, who was a minor, and then, having
deposed the boy, who was only ten years old, governed Egypt on his own
account.
He is known also by the name which he bore before
he usurped the throne, Seyf-ed-Deen
Aboo Bekr, and we find on
his coins that he—like all the other members of
his family—had
stamped, not his own name only, but that also of the feeble
Abbasside Khalifs, whose supremacy he acknowledged. The heraldic
double-headed
eagle is remarkable on one of the coins here
figured; it also occurs on ancient
buildings in
Cairo.
5 After Melik el-Adil,
evil times fell upon the Mohammedan
2 Sobriquet of the Beha-ed-deen,
Vizier of Saladin, A.D. 1174—1193.
5 It appears still earlier, having
been found on a small Babylonian hæmatite cylinder at least B.C. 500.
peoples of western
Asia and
Syria. But this is not the place
to relate how the
Eyoobide families made war on one another;
how the Crusaders attacked even Egypt;
how
Damietta fell,
1 and Melik
es-Salih—Saladin's grand-nephew—routed Louis IX.
of France at
Mansoorah,
2 and—as the reader already knows—kept him prisoner
there; or how the Mongols overthrew the ancient sovereignties
of Asia, overran China,
and rushed on in wild hordes to the
very frontiers of Europe. But I must not
omit to mention that
when Melik es-Salih, the last but one of the Eyoobide race
—the last was murdered soon after he came to the throne
3—aspired
to form a strong
body-guard such as the Abbasside Khalifs had
had, which should ruthlessly carry out
all his orders, this
project was greatly facilitated by the inroads of the Mongols.
For many individuals of the overthrown nations, particularly Turks and
Kharezmians,
must have emigrated into foreign countries
and sought service wherever
they could find it; and there can
have been no lack of Turkish prisoners of war
to be sold into
slavery, and no one better able to purchase them than the
wealthy sovereign of Egypt. A poet of that period addressed the founder of
this
COINS OF MELIK EL-ADIL (SEYF-ED-DEEN ABOO BEKR, SON OF
EYOOB). THE INSCRIPTION CALLS HIM THE “RIGHTEOUS KING.”
body-guard—this heterogeneous troop of purchased warriors—Melik
es-Salih, who in
other respects was reputed a just and
temperate prince, telling him he was
committing a folly, for
that he was inviting “the hawk's brood to settle in the
eagle's nest.” And the poet goes on:—
O glorious Saladin, I see thy son
Hurry to market to buy foreign slaves;
But soon to market they will make him
run,
Sold into slavery himself by slaves.
The poet's prophecy was fulfilled. This body-guard, under the humble
name of
“Mamelukes”—i.e.,
the slaves—became a terror, it is true, to Melik es-Salih's foes,
and even to the armies of the Crusaders; but soon grew to be
far more terrible
to him and to his house, whose last scion,
his own son, died under their daggers.
Much clatter of arms is heard throughout this period, and yet the
arts of
peace were by no means neglected, particularly at
Cairo. Study, rhetoric, and
philosophy throve in the universities and schools; singing
and poetry under the
immediate patronage of the princes and
grandees—nay, even in the streets
and
in the household circle. The authors of the time of
the Eyoobide dynasty are
distinguished not only for the
subjects of which they treated, but for the artistic
elegance
with which they wrote their manuscripts. Behâr ed-deen Zoheyr,
secretary to Melik
es-Salih, enjoyed the greatest esteem as a calligrapher, and
this beautiful penman was at the same time a poet, and a man of quite
bewitching
amiability. His poems, lately edited in a
splendid form by E. H. Palmer,
show us how high a degree of
intellectual freedom was allowed to the soaring
spirits of
that age, and under what refined and delightful conditions of life the
social intercourse of the Cairenes was carried on. The poet
celebrates not mighty
princes only and beautiful women, but
garden-feasts, water-parties on the Nile, and
OLD ARABIC ENAMELLED GLASS CUP.
jolly drinking-bouts. It was to the city of the Khalifs that Behâr
ed-deen Zoheyr
invited one of his many friends in the
following pleasant lines:—
“If you come to see me here, my friend,
Thanks and hearty welcome will await you,
If you come not—which the Lord forfend—
You are held excused; I cannot rate
you.”
The same amiable poet, in the following lines, thanks a friend for a
letter which has
given him extreme pleasure:—
“Your letter came, and I declare,
My longing it expresses quite.
Methinks my heart was standing by
Dictating to you what to write.”
Palmer's Translation.
With what subtle grace does the poet allude playfully to passages
from the
Koran to proclaim himself the prophet of truth and
love! He is admirable, too, as
a satirist. He retorts
on a would-be philosopher, who reproaches him with not
understanding his arguments, by saying “he is no Solomon, that he should
understand the language of beasts.” We learn from his
contemporary and
biographer, Ibn Khallikan—the author of
“Accounts of the Lives of Remarkable
Men” -that our poet was
born at Mecca, or at any rate near that city, and was on
such
terms of friendship with Melik es-Salih, his liege lord, as did the prince and
the
poet equal honour. It was in
Cairo that Ibn-Khallikan met him, and wrote the
following estimate of his character:—“He has great influence
over his sovereign,
who knows how to value him very highly,
and entrusts him with his secrets as he
does no one else. In
spite of this he uses his influence only in the interests
of
justice, and benefits many by his good offices and friendly services.” After
the death of his sovereign (1249) the poet led a retired
life, and rarely left his
house. Nine years later he died of
the plague, which raged fatally in
Cairo.
He
was buried in the Karafeh, the necropolis of
Cairo—with which we will shortly
make better acquaintance—close to the mausoleum of the Imam
Shafi'ee.
MAMELUKE EMIR.
[Back to top]
CAIRO;
UNDER THE MAMELUKE
SULTANS.
NO
SOONER was the race of Eyoob
extinct than Aybeg, a warrior of
that
troop of Mamelukes which were quartered
on the island of
Roda,
and who
called themselves the Bahrites (
i.e., of
the river—
bahr), seized the reins of
government.
He and his successors
constitute the race of the Bahrite
Sultans, under whose dominion much
blood
was shed in Egypt, though at
the same time many great works
were achieved.
The beginning of their rule was disgraced by frightful
massacres. The palace in the citadel was their residence,
and the very first of them was there assassinated in his
bath by one of his wives. Another wife of the murdered
man undertook to avenge him. She killed her guilty rival
and flung her body into the ditch of the citadel, where it
lay unburied for days, and every one who was suspected
of having been an accomplice in the crime shared her
miserable fate.
How many such deeds of horror these walls must
have
seen in those terrific times, and how fearful a harvest
must
Death have reaped in that field; His scythe swept over the house of the
Abbassides also. Mighty kingdoms were overturned by the
overwhelming might of
the Mongol invaders. A
swarm of them under Hoolagoo conquered Bagdad (1258)
and slew
the last Khalif of the true blood of Abbas, with his two sons and all
his nearest relatives.
When the Mameluke Beybars mounted the throne of Egypt by means of
a
murder, there were no true Khalifs left, and yet he felt
that his sovereignty could
not be regarded as firmly secured
over the numerous Shiite sectarians, as well as the
friends of
the Eyoobides and of the crushed house of Abbas in Egypt and
Syria,
unless he could invest it with
some semblance of legitimacy and religious consecration.
He
was much rejoiced, therefore, when he learned that a descendant of the
Abbassides and of the Prophet, who gave himself out to be a
son of the Khalif
Sahir, had escaped the sword of the Mongols.
He called him to
Cairo without
delay, received him there with the utmost pomp, conducted him
to the citadel, and
assigned a palace there as his residence.
The chief Kadi was required to acknowledge
his descent, and to
do homage to him as Khalif. Beybars himself swore
allegiance
to him, and in return was invested by the new “Commander of the
Faithful” with the office of Regent of all the lands then subject—or ever to
become
subject—to Islam. To carry out this farce to the
end, Beybars received at the hand
of the new Khalif the
insignia which were to distinguish him as the representative
of the Abbassides, and which consisted of a black turban richly embroidered
with
gold, a violet upper robe, a gold necklace, golden
spurs, several sabres and swords of
honour, two spears, and a
shield. The standards of the Abbassides fluttered over his
head as he mounted his white horse, which had black housings and was
decorated
with trappings of the colours of that house.
Beybars allowed the fullest liberty to this feudal lord of his own
creating;
but after the Khalif had fallen at the head of
the legion which he himself commanded,
in the struggle against
the Mongols, Beybars set another “Commander of
the Faithful”
on the throne, who was also said to be descended from Abbas, but he
kept him a helpless prisoner in the citadel. The same fate
pursued his equally
hapless successors, in whose name a series
of Mameluke Sultans governed the country
till the Ottoman
Sultan Seleem L.
1 conquered
Cairo
and Egypt, and forced the last
of these sham Khalifs to
transfer to him his titles, rights, and dignities.
2 It is from
this act and right of conquest that the Sultan ruling at
Constantinople derives his
claim to the title of “Commander of
the Faithful.” To the present day, it is true,
the learned
Sunnites still refuse to acknowledge his supremacy in spiritual matters,
and ascribe it exclusively to the Grand Shereef of Mecca.
The history of Egypt under the Mameluke Sultans is only connected
with that
of Europe by very slight threads, and the pages on
which it is written are deeply
stained with blood; but the
ghastly deeds of this race of warriors, who drove the
Crusaders out of Palestine, were almost always done with the naked sword;
while
the Greeks had at an earlier date called Egypt the
“land of poison,” and even under
the Ptolemies poison was the
favourite tool of the ambitious, and preferred to every
other
means. Nor is there any lack of fine and manly figures among the Mameluke
2 Toomãn Bey, the last of the
Mamelukes, who made an heroic resistance at Ghizeh, fled to the Delta. Seelem
exposed him
on a camel for six days, and hung him in the arcade of a gate of the mosque
of Mo'ayyad.
DOOR OF THE MORISTAN OF KALA'OON.
Sultans, many of whom
had entered the Nile valley as slaves; and it must not be
forgotten in their favour that most of them promoted the arts and sciences
with
such zeal, that all the noblest works of Arab art
which have escaped destruction
owe their origin to them. The
Moristan (as it is called) of Kala'oon, which is the
ORNAMENTAL GIRDLING OF THE MORISTAN OF KALA'OON.
most richly endowed foundation, and the Mosque of Hasan, which is the
most
beautiful of the mosques of
Cairo, were raised by the Mameluke Sultans of the
Bahrite dynasty; but most of the numberless mausoleums which
are known as the
“tombs of the Khalifs” were built by Sultans
of the family of the Circassian
Mamelukes, who also caused
many other mosques to be erected. From 1250 to
ORNAMENTAL GIRDLING OF THE MORISTAN OF KALA'OON.
1517 these princes ruled Egypt from the citadel of
Cairo as their capital and
residence.
Kala'oon, who died in 1290, was the second successor of Beybars.
He could glory in his successes over the Mongols and Crusaders, and the
historians who wrote under his son's direction lauded him
highly for his virtue
and love of justice; but the author of
the history of the Khalifs cannot forbear
bringing a charge
against him which his dealings seem to have justified—that he
held no oath or treaty sacred if his interests required him to break them.
However, the Egyptians
were far less oppressed under him than under his predecessor
Beybars. He earned the honours which a nation is ever ready to pay to
a victorious prince, and he may even have won many hearts by
his extraordinary
beauty, which brought 1,000 dinars into the
pocket of the slave-merchant who
brought him from Turkestan.
Finally, he took care, by splendid endowments, to
earn the
name of benefactor of the
poor and suffering.
The Moristan, or hospital, founded
WINDOW IN THE MAUSOLEUM OF KALA'OON.
by him, now stands in the northeastern
quarter of
the city, hard by
the bazaar of the coppersmiths—who
may be seen there at work on the
deserted
site of the vast, but
neglected and now fast perishing
structure. Only the tomb of its
founder is
preserved from destruction,
and still visited by the sick,
who expect to be cured of headache
by the
Sultan's turban-cloth,
which is treasured as a relic, or
who seek to be healed of intermittent
fever
by his caftan.
It is an effective and noble
structure of the best
period, and
in former times owned an endowment
for fifty readers of the Koran.
On Thursdays young women
generally
resort to it, and mothers with little
children. The former pray before the
splendid shrine for male offspring,
which are thought so
important in
Arab families, and which ensure to
the mother an amount of consideration,
which is usually denied her if
she is childless or only bears
daughters.
Strange things, indeed, are to be seen
by any one who succeeds in watching the devotional exercises
of the women
who come to this sacred spot. He will observe
them with astonishment throw
off all their upper garments,
cover their face with both hands, and then leap
from side to
side in front of the niche till they sink exhausted on the ground.
They often lie on the stone floor for a long time before they
recover from this
collapse and find strength enough to rise.
Many mothers bring very young children, not yet able to walk, that
their
“tongues may be loosed.” For this extraordinary
purpose the poor little
creatures are conducted to a large
polished dark stone near the right-hand
INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF KALA'OON.
window; a green lemon
is squeezed upon it, and the juice is rubbed on to the
large
stone with a smaller one. As soon as the stone, which contains iron in
some form, begins to turn red from the action of the
vegetable acid, the child
is made to suck it; of course the
babies, who like nothing but sweet things,
refuse, and scream
with all their might. This delights the mothers, for the louder
they scream the more the miracle is believed in, and the more surely will
“the
tongue be loosed.”
A mysterious influence is also attributed to the pillars of the
prayer-niche.
They are covered at the lower part with a
patina, or oxidation, which has not
a very pleasing effect, as
it is due to the lemon-juice deposited by the “loosened
tongues” of the children. These extraordinary ceremonies have never before
been
described. When my informant, the architect Herr
Schmoranz—one of the best
connoisseurs in Arab art — succeeded
once in watching them, he was
discovered by an old Eunuch, and
very probably his beautiful drawings might
ROSETTE OF A PRIMARY SCHOOL IN CAIRO.
never have adorned these pages if he had not previously
studied every part of the Mausoleum of Kala'oon, and
so made himself familiar with all its passages and exits.
Not women and mothers only pray by the Sultan's
tomb; the poor entreat for a better lot, and, in point
of
fact, few institutions have done more to alleviate sorrow
and
misery than that of Kala'oon, which included, besides
the
mausoleum, a school and a hospital of immense
extent. There
was a separate ward for each form of
disease, and each patient
had his own bed; women
were received in a wing separate from
the men; every
sufferer, whether rich or poor, was nursed free
of
charge. Connected with the hospital proper were
laboratories, dispensaries,
kitchens, baths, and a lecture
hall where the chief physician of the establishment
gave his
clinical lectures on medicine. The store-rooms for food, and the amount
consumed, were so vast that several stewards were occupied
solely in purchasing
them and in accounting for the sums of
money expended in them. The college
connected with the
institution was equally well furnished forth, and possessed a fine
library; close by was a school for children, where sixty poor
orphans found a
home, food, and clothing.
This work of Kala'oon has outlived the memory of his warlike deeds,
and
causes his name to this day to be blessed, for every
Moslem regards charity
as the greatest virtue. All that is
undertaken by the faithful must be done
solely to the glory of
God, and the stronger the power of the faith in his
breast the
greater will the number of his good works be. The loftier Christian
conception of neighbourly love, as including all humanity, is
foreign, no doubt, to
the Moslem religion, but the sons of
Islam are required to show love, pity,
generosity,
tender-heartedness, and patience to every fellow-Moslem: and of the
five indispensable exercises by which the believer is to give
proof of his faith
the giving of alms was placed second by the
Prophet, the first act of faith being
prayer. We cannot,
therefore, be surprised to see a magnificent benevolent
foundation like this
Moristan of Kala'oon established on the broadest principles of
pure humanity, and erected in the capital (at that time) of the Mohammedan
world
by a Moslem ruler, or to learn that not
Cairo only, but every great city of the
East can to the present day boast of similar institutions.
Nevertheless beggars have at no period been wanting in the city of
the
Khalifs, but these poor creatures, many of whom are
blind—some led by children,
many finding their way about with
wonderful skill and certainty, though with no
guide but a
stick—seldom give the impression of being abject and cowering victims;
on the contrary, they ask for assistance with a certain
self-respect, and we, who
understand the pious texts they call
out to the passer-by, perceive that their object
PUBLIC DRINKING FOUNTAIN.
is on the whole not so much to excite compassion as to
urge upon the rich man the duty of giving out of his abundance,
and to remind him that he—the needy one—is
justified in expecting from him who is blessed with a
superfluity “the wages of his poverty, in the name of
God.”
“I,” cries the beggar, “am the guest of God and
the Prophet,
oh! God, the free giver!” or some such
motto, and he who
bestows freely is assured that by his
gift he makes the Most
High his debtor. Many beggars
cry out, “I demand of God the
price of bread, and he who
pays the price giveth to the Lord.”
It might put our men
of fortune to shame to see how large a
portion of his
income a wealthy Cairene, even at the present
day, is wont
to set aside for benevolent purposes. Pious
endowments
(
awkaf—plural of
wakf) are numerous and
various, and
consist in moneys and invested capital, which are
managed
by proper trustees. Most of them are attached to
mosques,
and intended for the support of schools (
medreseh) and
fountains or
wells, which are always kept up in the neighbourhood
of the
mosques. These institutions—known as Sebeel—which afford
relief to the thirsty, are a great boon in a rainless region and in a town
where
the natural water is all saltish surface-water. The
benevolent custom of making
cisterns dates, no doubt, from the
time when the Arabs wandered as nomads
through the desert, but
it is equally valuable in the cities. The poor, needing to
moisten his parched gums and unable to pay the water-carrier, would have to
make
his way to the Nile, which is at some distance from
most parts of the city, if he
could not find a
drinking-fountain in almost every street. For several weeks before
the Nile rises its waters become turbid, unwholesome, and
almost undrinkable, though
at other times they are so
delicious that Champollion called them the champagne of
drinking waters, and the Arabs say that the Prophet would have wished to live
for
ever if he had once tasted them; it is at that season,
therefore, that the public
fountains are most used. Many of
them are enclosed by railings of finely-wrought
iron, gilt
bronze, or wood. A projecting roof shades the drinker, who mounts a few
steps to the window of the cistern room, where the water is
distributed, or to reach
the metal tube out of which he sucks
the refreshing liquid. Poetical inscriptions in
gilt letters record
the memory of the founders of the fountains, and their Arabic
name—“Sebeel,” or “Sebeel Allah”—signifies “the path to God,” since the good
deed
of providing for the hungry and thirsty is the surest
road, next to martyrdom, by
which the faithful may attain to
Him.
Hence even the water-carriers—who are wont to attract the attention
of
passers-by by clattering their metal drinking cups, and
whose queerly-shaped water-skins
look like the body of a goat
with four stumps of legs—call out “The way of
God, oh thirsty
ones!”
These words, no doubt, were first sung out in the desert; but pious
phrases
such as “God forgive thy sins, oh distributor of
drink!” or “God have mercy on
thy parents!” are particularly
frequent on the lips of the water-seller when in honour
of
some festival he is hired to give the fluid free of charge to all that ask it;
and
each one who receives the bowl of refreshing fluid at
his hand, while he thanks him,
adds a fervent “Ameen” (Amen)
to his pious invocation. When his water-skin is
empty he calls
down the blessing of God on the dispenser of the drink, and wishes
he may come into Paradise.
The wells in the city are of course of far less consequence than
those on the
track across the desert, and the pious spirit of
the Mohammedans has therefore
associated another foundation
with that of the Sebeel or city fountain, which very
plainly
proves how much of true and beautiful humanity is to be found in that much
contemned Islam which we often accuse of empty formalism. The
public wells are
connected with houses of several storeys in
which elementary schools are maintained
out of the endowment
money—usually for orphan boys. Thus, every builder of a
fountain may be considered as a benefactor to orphans as well, and the more
ancient
of these institutions date from a period when, so
far as I know, no institution for
orphans had ever been
thought of in Europe.
Numerous foundations of this kind were endowed under the Mameluke
Sultans,
and perhaps no sovereign who ever ruled in the
Nile Valley did more to enlarge
and beautify
Cairo than Kala'oon's youngest son,
en-Nasir. He mounted the
throne as a boy of nine years old,
was deposed once by the ambitious Ameers, and
on another
occasion, after he had done great deeds, he was compelled to resign the
government; at last, however, he re-entered the citadel, and
took the reins of the
state into his own hands. For
forty-three years, in all, he governed independently,
and was
prudent, but suspicious—industrious and capable, but licentious, and
passionately
addicted to many costly amusements. During
his second reign he beat the
Templars, drove the Christians
out of Aradus, and achieved the greatest deed of arms of
his
reign by vanquishing the Mongols in the plain of Merg as-Soffar, and
annihilating
their army of more than 100,000 men. The
citizens of
Cairo prepared a grand
festival
for the return of their triumphant Sultan after
this victory. A splendid palace was
erected to receive him,
close to the Bab en-
Nasr, with which we
are already acquainted,
and near it large basins were filled
with perfect lakes of lemonade, which Mamelukes
served out to
the returning army to drink. Any one who had a house in one of
the streets through which the procession of victors must pass could let it for a
few
hours for a hundred gold pieces to some of the curious
who were attracted to
Cairo.
When, not long after, many buildings in the city were
destroyed by an earthquake.
COURT IN THE MORISTAN OF KALA'OON.
and thousands of human
beings were buried in the ruins, it was thought that this
was
a visitation sent by God to punish the arrogance and extravagance of the
triumphant nation.
FOUNTAIN AND SCHOOL.
Some of them, and particularly the Christians, were ere long visited
in another
way. Some time before, and particularly under
Hakim,
1 they had suffered much
oppression
and been forced to submit to humiliating edicts. Nasir showed him-himself
more tolerant, until an envoy from the Sultan of Morocco met
a Christian
riding on horseback, who was haughtily pushing
aside all those of lower rank who
came near him. The
Moor, it is said, enraged by this haughtiness in an unbeliever
represented the matter to the Sultan, and persuaded him to renew the strict
edict,
by which the Christians were compelled to wear blue
turbans and the Jews yellow
STREET IN CAIRO.
ones, that they might be immediately distinguished from the Moslems.
Christian and
Jewish women were to wear a distinguishing mark
on the breast, the men were
strictly prohibited riding on
horseback, and even on asses were allowed only to sit
sideways. The ringing of bells on feast-days was to be discontinued, and
Christians
were forbidden to employ Moslems, either as
slaves or in any hard labour. Their
appointment to public
office, in the magistracy or otherwise, was also prohibited
A BLIND BEGGAR.
These decrees fomented the hatred of the lower orders of Moslems, who
began
to maltreat the unbelievers and to plunder the
churches and synagogues, till the
threats of Christian princes
put an end to these melancholy outbreaks. During his
third and
longest possession of the throne Nasir undertook the beautifying of
Cairo,
with an
expenditure that was almost extravagant. He is said to have given 8,000
dirhem (about £4,500) a day for building purposes, although
he had not to pay for
the forced labour of the lower classes
and the slaves of the Ameers, but only to feed
AMONG THE OLD HOUSES.
them while they dug and built for
him. Syrian
architects assisted his
Egyptian artificers. A new canal,
constructed by his orders, converted
wide
wastes of desert into gardenland,
and as he had splendid
palaces
built for himself, his wives, and his
children, the Ameers too vied with
each
other in erecting and decorating
castles and suburban
residences,
which soon surrounded the city on
all sides. More than thirty mosques
many
bath-houses, mausoleums, and
cloisters are said to have sprung
into
existence at this time, and the
governors of provinces were so
ready to follow his example
that
the Viceroy of Damascus, for instance,
had many old houses pulled
down in his
capital to build finer
ones in their place, and to widen
the streets.
Nasir was also a great lover
of horses, and kept a
number of
experts among the Bedaween, whose
business it was to look out for
particularly fine ones. He
deemed
no price too high for a really noble steed, and he
is said once to have paid
1,000,000 dirhem (about £560,000)
for a single horse of exceptional beauty, and the
large sums
of gold that flowed to Sons of the Desert through his hands gradually
estranged them from the simple customs and manners of their
fathers. He himself
would take part in horse-races, and do
everything in his power to secure the
victory for his own
horses.
This chivalrous Sultan—in spite of a lame foot and small stature—was
also
devoted to the chase, and particularly to falconry
for birds, a sport that is particularly
successful in Egypt,
where birds abound, and which, at that time, was a
favourite
pastime with all the Arab grandees. He would pay any price for a fine
and well-trained falcon, and his masters of the horse and
hunt enjoyed his particular
favour. He was,
moreover, a good manager of his land; he had the making of new
canals much at heart, and devoted himself quite passionately to the breeding
of
sheep and of geese. He was a fostering friend to the
learned men of his time, and
ON THE OLD CANAL AT CAIRO.
raised the historian Abool-Fedâ—who, it is true, boasted of being
descended from
the elder brother of the great Saladin—to the
rank of Sultan of Hamah, giving him
all the privileges and
marks of honour that he himself enjoyed. He forgave the
son of
the sage Kazweenee many misdeeds for his father's sake. This is not the place
to enlarge on the weaknesses of a prince who at times devoted
himself to the
highest and gravest aims, and yet frequently
gave himself up, body and soul, to the
most trifling
pursuits. He would always be surrounded by the handsomest male
and female slaves of all countries, and after a spell of hard labour would
commit
wild excesses at magnificent feasts.
When, after a painful death,
1 his eyes were closed,
but few nobles followed his
corpse to the tomb, and it is said
that only one lantern and one wax taper were
carried before
the bier of the splendour-loving Sultan, who had been distinguished by
many admirable qualities. He was laid in the tomb of his
father Kala'oon.
HORSE RACE.
After his death, the Ameers disposed of the throne, though they had
frequently
declared that they would remain true to the
house of Kala'oon, even if no descendant
were left of it but
one blind daughter. They kept the Khalifs during their lifetime
shut up as their mere tools in the citadel, and compelled them to give a
certain religious sanction to their proceedings. Nasir,
indeed, had made use of the
Abasside prince of his time,
carrying him forth to battle as a sort of standard or
ensign,
to impose upon his enemies. Several grandsons of Kala'oon held the
sovereignty under the Ameers, but none of these Sultans of a
day could maintain
himself on the throne, which in six years
changed its owner six times, till a son of
Nasir, only eleven
years of age, and known as Sultan Hasan,
assumed the sovereignty.
Of all those “fainéant” princes we
need only name Scha'aban, an older
son of Nasir, for we
have some particularly splendid specimens of Arab calligraphic
and ornamental art executed in his reign. Four years after his accession,
Hasan
was forced with tears to restore to the nobles the
authority they had lent him, but
he was again entrusted with
it shortly after. In the twenty-fifth year of his age
he again
aroused the dissatisfaction of the Ameers because he preferred Egyptian
and Arab officials to the chiefs of the Mamelukes, and while
he was flying from his
HAWKING OF THE HERON.
enemies he was taken prisoner by the powerful and bold High-Marshal
Yelboghas,
dragged into his house, and there murdered.
From the time when he ascended the
throne till his death was
but fourteen years, and this short reign was remarkable
for
one fearful visitation which fell upon
Cairo, and for the completion of one
splendid work,
which to this day is regarded—and with justice—as the most magnificent
ornament of
Cairo.
Hasan himself retired to Siryakoos while the most fearful
outbreak of plague that has ever visited Egypt raged from November, 1348,
until
January, 1349, slaying thousands daily. This awful
epidemic, called the Black Death,
seems to have come to Egypt
from China by Tartary, Mesopotamia, and
Syria, and
to have been transmitted from
Constantinople to Italy, Spain, France, and Germany.
INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF THE SULTAN HASAN.
Not men alone, but
every living thing—nay, even plants—were
attacked by the
poison of this deadly disease. Plague-spots
broke out on most of the domestic
animals, and even on hares;
the surface of the Nile was crowded with dead fish, the
dates
on the palms were full of worms, and uneatable. In the short space of two
ORNAMENT OF THE HEAD-PIECE OF A DOOR OF THE MOSQUE OF
SCHABAN.
months 900,000 men are said to have died in Fostât and
Cairo, and we are told
that several estates changed owners seven and even eight times from the
sudden
death of the possessors.
The reader of Makreezee's account of the course of this pestilence
will be
FRIEZE IN THE MOSQUE OF THE SULTAN HASAN.
reminded only too vividly of the terrible visitation which decimated
Pharaoh's
subjects just before the Exodus of the Jews.
The same avenging angel, which then slew the first-born of all the
land,
passed again from house to house on the Nile shore;
and this incident in Egyptian
history seems better adapted
than any other to illustrate to the reader Alma
Tadema's striking
picture of an Egyptian mother bewailing her son under the ninth
plague of Egypt.
Every class fell victims to this pestilence; there were no tillers in
the fields,
no servants in the houses, no water-carriers for
the thirsty, no artisans to produce
clothing and necessaries,
and it is difficult to comprehend where, within a short time
of this visitation, Sultan Hasan could find the means and the hands to build
that
sacred edifice which is justly regarded as the most
magnificent and perfect production
of Arab architecture. He is
said, it is true, often to have found himself embarrassed,
REMAINS OF CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE TIME OF THE MAMELUKE
SULTANS IN A MODERN FOUNTAIN.
for the building of this mosque took three whole years, and it cost
twenty thousand
drachms of silver daily.
1 When
Hasan was advised to abandon the completion of a
work which
swallowed up such vast sums he was not to be dissuaded, but replied that
he would give no man the right to say that a sovereign of
Egypt had lacked means to
build a house of God. After it was
completed, he is said to have commanded that
the architect
should have his hand cut off, to prevent his ever designing another
building of equal beauty in any other place. This structure
differs in arrangement
too from all the other ancient mosques
that I am acquainted with, and it cannot be
denied that the
master who was entrusted with carrying out the work did not keep
himself entirely free from European, and more particularly from Italian
influence,
1 About 15,000 francs, or £600,
according to Makreezee.
THE DEATH OF THE FIRSTBORN.
though none of those
features are absent which we have learned to regard as
characteristic of a Moslem place of worship. Thus, even in the mosque of
Hasan,
the Hosh el-Gama forms the nucleus of the edifice;
but it is smaller than in the
oldest mosques we have seen, and
instead of the colonnades which, in those, surround
the main
court, we here find a very lofty hall with an arcade of pointed horse-shoe
arches on each of the four sides of the court. This main
court and its four wings,
the principal part of the mosque,
constitute a Greek cross. It is impossible to tread
this grand
space, where no roof intercepts the light of day, without being deeply
impressed. All that surrounds us is majestic, solemn, and
harmonious; and, if we
turn our attention to the details of
the ornamental work in the sanctuary and in
the mausoleum
itself, we shall feel our utmost artistic requirements satisfied by the
ORNAMENT FROM A LARGE PORCH OF THE
MOSQUE OF THE SULTAN HASAN.
infinite play and variety of lines, and the beautiful and
flowing forms of the recurring designs, and long to know
the meaning of the words and texts from the Koran that
are tastefully introduced into the Arabesques—a decoration
full of significance, and in many places conveying
lessons of warning while gracing the design. The rich
ornamentation of the wall-surfaces at first seems
arbitrary
and puzzling, but we soon perceive that the
curves are
not entangled in a mere fantastic maze, but combine
in
regular order with the inspiring texts that appeal to
the
heart and soul of the believer. The Moslem is
forbidden to
use any image to beautify his sanctuary, so he
ornaments it
by the bold and skilful application of lines, and
by mottoes
addressed to the beholder. Every portion of this
costly
structure is neglected and injured, and yet we feel
our spirit
elevated as we lift our eyes to the enormous arches
which
enclose the court of the mosque, like four gigantic
barbicans,
and support the walls, crowned with a majestic
cornice and ornaments of simple
lily-form.
In the midst of the court, which is paved with slabs of coloured
marble, there
is a large fountain, and, near it, a small one.
The first is for the ablutions of the
Egyptians, and has a
cupola fancifully shaped like a globe, and coloured blue, crowned
by a crescent, and surrounded by a broad belt of inscription
in gold letters. The
second and smaller fountain was formerly
used by the Turks only. At the south-east
corner of the court
a pointed archway, with a span of more than sixty-seven feet,
forms the entrance to the vaulted holy of holies. Here none of the accessories
are
wanting which we have already met with in the Leewan
of the Mosque of Amroo.
The
mimbar or pulpit is supported on stone pillars, and Sultan Hasan
himself—who
during the periods of his deposition had
devoted himself to theological studies—would
sometimes mount
its steps to address the people, who had to remain in the larger
space outside the sanctuary. Numerous lamps hang low down, suspended from
the top of the vault, to light up the sacred chamber for
evening prayer. In
the farthest background of this holy of
holies are the prayer-niche, and the entrance
into the
mausoleum of the builder of the mosque, known as the Maksoorah, This
CARPET MERCHANT IN THE KHAN EL-KHALEEL.
tomb has a
particularly impressive effect; for the quadrangular room, in the midst of
which is the sepulchre, is crowned by a cupola which reaches
to the height of 180 feet,
and the transition from its
circumference to the quadrangular structure on which it
rests
is effected in a really classical way by the introduction of brackets wrought
in
a honeycomb and stalactite design. The lower part of
the walls of this chamber
is inlaid with coloured marbles, and
the upper part has a frieze with texts from the
Koran in large
letters. But even here nothing is done for its preservation, and yet
NICHE FOR PRAYER.
the tomb of Hasan is a favourite
resort of the
Cairenes, who do not
know that the body of its founder
was never recovered, and, therefore,
cannot
be resting there. They love
to assemble to discuss public
news
of all kinds in this commodious
space; but many of them visit the
tomb of the Sultan to be
cured of
certain complaints. Catarrh and
similar disorders disappear when
the tongue is moistened by
the
reddish fluid which is obtained by
wetting the porphyry threshold-stone
with water and then
rubbing
it with a certain miraculous pebble,
which is carefully preserved. The
two
pillars to the right and left
of the niche in the farther
wall
are also considered to have healing
powers. He who licks one of them
can be cured of jaundice, and
women
who suck the juice of a lemon they
have rubbed upon them will be
blessed with offspring.
Surely the architect who designed
and built the
great entrance-niche
on the northern side of this mosque never
dreamed of these small souls sunk in
the crassest
superstition. It is led up to by steps, and rises above them to a height of
sixty-five feet; the top of it is an apse, interrupted in its
spring and supported on
stalactite work. The walls are lined
with rich arabesques, and a portion of the cornice—with
its
honeycomb design—which runs round the whole of the outer wall of the
mosque, crowns the façade, in the midst of which we find this
entrance-niche—a portal
worthy of any temple. The transition
of the large bulbous cupola into the square base
is effected
by an intermediate polygon. The larger of the two minarets belonging to
this mosque has no equal in
Cairo as regards its height, which is about 280 feet.
The thickness of the enormously strong walls is worthy of
remark, and the building
produces even from outside an
impression of complete and perfect seclusion from the
PORCH OF THE MOSQUE OF THE SULTAN HASAN
pillars built into its
angles. Unfortunately one of the minarets must have had a
less
firm foundation than the rest of the edifice, for it fell in soon after the
structure
was finished, and buried in its fall the
fountain-school which Hasan had established
near his mosque,
and in which three hundred orphans were brought up at his
ORNAMENT FROM THE GREAT PORCH OF THE MOSQUE OF THE
SULTAN HASAN.
expense. These unfortunate children were killed at the same time by
the enormous
blocks falling from such a height.
We have lingered long over the description of this building, because
it is, on
the whole, the finest and most beautiful of all the
funeral mosques that have
ORNAMENT FROM THE GREAT PORCH OF THE
MOSQUE OF THE SULTAN HASAN.
cupolas. Many such, it is true, stand in various parts
of the city—by far the greater number in the east of
Cairo,
where there are large groups of
them standing together,
and known as the tombs of the Khalifs
and Mamelukes.
It is no longer possible to determine what
princes are buried
in these last, which lie to the south of
the citadel; but
well-preserved inscriptions tell us that the
so-called “tombs
of the Khalifs” have no right to that name,
since most of
them were built in the time of the Mameluke
princes, who
succeeded the Bahrite rulers—of whom Hasan (died
1361)
was one—and who were known as the Burgite or
Circassian
Sultans. Barkook, Farag, Burs-bey, Inal,
Kayt-Bey, el-Ashraf,
and Kansoowah el-Ghooree—whose mausoleums
with
cupolas are celebrated as the finest of the so-called
Khalifs'
tombs—were members of this family of rulers.
From 1382 to 1517 the fate of Egypt was in the hands
of these unbridled men, many of whom had first come into
Egypt as slaves. They had already received the name of Burgites in the time
of
Kala'oon, who gave the tower of the citadel as a
residence to the Circassians of his
body-guard—and the word
burg
signifies a fort or tower of defence; he also gave
them
a particular uniform.
The first of them who succeeded in seizing the sceptre was Barkook,
who had
been sold into Egypt as a slave, and who, when he had
overthrown the Bahrite
Mamelukes, kept
possession of the throne for seventeen years. Self-willed, subtle,
and brave, at the same time suspicious and cruel, he
recklessly pursued whatever
object he had in view; and yet, in
spite of the blood he shed and the tortures he
inflicted, he
was to the end of his life a patron of science and art. The great
historian Ibn Khaldoon lived in his reign, and was his
friend; though he could not
persuade the Sultan to take
energetic steps against the growing power of the
Osmanlee,
whom he, with prophetic insight, looked upon as a more dangerous foe
than even the Mongols, led at that time by the all-conquering
Timoor. Barkook's
memory is still kept fresh in
Cairo by his beautiful mosque-tomb, where,
by the side
TOMB, WITH MOSQUE, OF BARKOOK.
of his own mausoleum, and another erected for his harem, he also
established a
fountain with its school, chambers for the
students and their teachers, and for the
officers of the
sanctuary. The mausoleum is crowned by two fine cupolas, one over
the men's graves and the other over the women's, and it has
two minarets; close to
it is the monument of Sultan Farag, the
son and successor of Barkook. The
great conqueror Timoor died
before Farag, and his death relieved Egypt of the
most
pressing danger that, at that time, threatened her independence.
It would weary the reader if I were to relate in detail the
innumerable bloody
struggles for the throne, the revolts and
deeds of violence of which
Cairo was the
scene
under the Circassian Mamelukes. These overbearing
and usurping foreigners could
have no idea of true patriotism
or of the sacrifice of their own interests to the common
good.
Each in his turn plundered the “provision-land of the earth,” or the “mother
of well-being,” as Arab writers delight in calling Egypt.
Their rapacity was insatiable,
and although it is
true that magnificent edifices were built under their auspices, this
was only because they were filled with the desire to impress
on their contemporaries
and on posterity a due idea of the
power and wealth they had at their command.
ORNAMENT FROM THE MOSQUE OF
BARKOOK.
One of the most splendid mosques
in
Cairo is that of Farag's second
successor, whose name was Sheykh el-Mo'ayyad,
and who came into Egypt
as a slave at twelve years old.
This
was erected on the site of what had
been a prison, into which he had been
cast by his enemies; at
that time he
made a vow to convert that dungeon
into a mosque if ever he attained the
ORNAMENT FROM THE MOSQUE OF
BARKOOK.
throne. When he became Sultan, he
splendidly
redeemed his word, for he
expended the enormous sum of 400,000
dinars (about £225,000) on the edifice called
by his name, and
containing the mausoleums of himself and his family—although,
as may be easily seen, and as historians tell us, he had the pillars used in it
brought
away from ancient dwelling-houses,
FOUNTAIN AT THE TOMB AND MOSQUE OF BARKOOK.
palaces, and mosques. This mosque,
which has been
lately restored, is,
perhaps, the most splendid of all
those in
Cairo; thirty
polishers and
a hundred workmen were employed
on it for years; but it no doubt
displays a certain
overloaded style.
The desire to adapt and subordinate
the perfect beauty of noble forms of
detail
to the harmonious proportions
of a grand architectonic
unity
had given way to a wish to dazzle
the beholder by splendour of colouring,
costliness of
material, and a
superabundance of decorative design.
The court, with its well, is surrounded,
as
in other mosques, with
colonnades. Among the pillars
which support the arches we find
several of
the Corinthian order, which owe their origin to Greek or Roman artists,
and which were removed, as has been said, from very ancient
buildings. The
sanctuary is particularly splendid, with a
coffered ceiling inlaid, painted, and gilt;
but the effect is
not produced by noble forms, but by material and display; and
though in many parts of this mosque the eye is charmed by lovely details, it
is
soon disenchanted again by others which are both
inartistic in conception and
careless in execution.
NECROPOLIS AT THE FOOT OF THE CITADEL.
Sheykh Mo'ayyad had won splendid victories over the Syrian
generals
1 by the
military genius of his
son,
2 and many of his contemporaries praise him as a fine
orator, poet, and musician; but the unprejudiced judgment of
posterity can only hold
him in horror as a hypocrite in
religion, cruel, and insatiably avaricious.
Highly-gifted Mohammedan travellers have praised his mosque as a
“collection
NICHE FOR PRAYER IN THE MOSQUE OF THE SULTAN
MO'AYYAD.
of architectural beauties,” and have declared with rapture that the
strength of the
pillars in it proves that the king who built
it was the “prince of the sovereigns of
his time.” Sculptors,
too, assert that, “compared with this, the throne of Belkes
[the Mohammedan name for the Queen of Sheba] was but a trifle, and the
far-famed
palace of the ancient Persian kings scarcely
worth speaking of,” But only three
years after the death of
Mo'ayyad
3 it was discovered that one of the minarets—there
2 Ibrahim, who died at an early
age.
were three—leaned
considerably to one side. A council of architects was convened,
and pronounced their opinion that, as the falling stones were causing many
deaths,
it must shortly be pulled down. The door of the
mosque was closed for thirty days,
and the architect, Mohammed
el-Burgee, had to put up with the satirical verses of
the
poets of
Cairo for a much longer period.
It is true that an excuse for the
mishap was found, for many
people asserted that the damage was done by the
“envious eye”
of people looking on at the unfinished work—that “evil eye” against
DETAILS OF THE PRINCIPAL DOOR OF THE MOSQUE OF
MO'AYYAD.
which the Egyptians have protected themselves, by amulets and spells,
from the time
of the Pharaohs to the present day.
The superstition of the Cairenes is especially attracted to this
mosque and to
the neighbouring Bab el-Zuweyleh. The latter,
particularly, is a favourite haunt of
the Kutb, that
miraculous being whose chief resort is the roof of the Kaaba at
Mecca, and who often shows himself to the true believer, in the humble guise
of a
man. At this particular spot he cures the toothache, and
those who are suffering
from it drive a nail into the door of
the gate, or pull out a tooth and crush it in
the roadway
beneath.
Mo'ayyad was succeeded by his son, who, however, died in three
months, leaving
his eldest son, a boy
of ten, upon the throne; but his preceptor, Burs Bey, who had
previously been a slave, soon contested it, and succeeded in taking possession
of it.
The mausoleum of this usurper also stands among the
tombs of the Khalifs.
1 He
died a natural
death, after a reign of sixteen years. He carried Janus, King of
Cyprus, prisoner to
Cairo,
2 that island being at the time the head-quarters of the
pirates who infested the Mediterranean and interfered with its commerce; he
had
kept the Mongols from invading Egypt, though at the
cost, it is true, of a not very
honourable peace, and had
earned the title of Protector of Mecca. He had acquired
the
possession of the harbour of Jedda at the same time as that of the Holy City,
to which it belonged, and the commerce of these two towns had
not long before been
much increased; for the ships voyaging
from India and Persia, and which had formerly
brought their
freights to Aden, avoided calling at that port in consequence of the
oppressions exercised by the princes of Yemen after the year
1422; but when the
navigator Ibraheem, of Calcutta, had met
with a good reception at Jedda—at first
with one ship only,
but subsequently with a little fleet of fourteen large and heavily-laden
merchant-men—trading-ships began to frequent that port in
much greater
numbers than before. By the year 1426 not less
than forty merchant-ships from
India and Persia were anchored
in the harbour of Jedda, and had to pay a duty of
70,000
dinars (about £40,000). And how much more important must the tribute
money have been which the pilgrims had to pay, who united to
their pious purpose
the usual business in small trade!
The great fair of Jedda, the scene of rendezvous where
representatives of
every nation acknowledging Islam annually
assembled, was at that time second to
none in importance.
Under the Mameluke princes the
Red Sea
was the great highroad
by which the whole of the commerce
between India and Europe must pass.
The “infidel” King of
Ceylon sent ambassadors to Sultan Kala'oon to conclude
with
him a treaty of commerce, and in the time of Kala'oon's grandson envoys
came even from China to
Cairo; their huge junks had long been the medium of
commerce across the Indian Ocean. The ancient caravan route from the
Red Sea to the shores of
the Nile was trodden by long files of heavily-laden camels, and at
the ports of Keft—and subsequently at Koos—the vessels
waiting to load and unload
were almost innumerable. Thirty-six
thousand boats, it is said, navigated the
Nile, and the
Florentine Frescobaldi asserts that in his time (1384) there were more
vessels in the harbour of
Cairo than at Genoa, Venice, or Ancona. Under the
Mamelukes it fell to
Alexandria's share
to supply the requirements of Western Europe
in the matter of
Eastern merchandise. Representatives of every commercial nation
and city were to be found there, and it has been said with justice that, at
that time,
the position held by any nation in relation to the
general commerce of the world
might be accurately estimated by
its footing in that emporium. The Venetians
would seem to have
outstripped all other dealers, though the Genoese concluded special
agreements with Sultan Kala'oon, and with his son
Khaleel,
3 who built the Khan
el-Khaleel,
which became the centre and head-quarters of business in
Cairo. The
2 After paying a large ransom and
agreeing to an annual tribute he returned as a vassal to Cyprus.
3 Who ascended the throne A.D. 1292.
Black Sea may be said
to have been their special domain, and they, assisted by
the
Venetians, carried on the trade of importing Greek and Circassian slaves. The
Nile valley, which is so poor in forests and mines, had also
to be supplied from the
North with ship-timber and iron; for
without a due supply of these indispensable
ABYSSINIAN FEMALE SLAVE.
materials, Egypt was unable to construct a single ship of all her
fleet. This fleet
had often inflicted the greatest damage on
those of western countries; a large
portion of the gold and
silver coined in Europe flowed into the hands of the infidels
of the East, the trade in slaves—among whom there were only too many
Christians,
both men and women—could not, of course, be
countenanced by the Church, and so
it came to pass that the
Pope repeatedly prohibited all trade between the maritime
nations of Europe and
the seaports of Egypt, and threatened the refractory with all
kinds of temporal and eternal punishment. But the Christian merchants were
more tempted by the certainty of earthly profit than
terrified by the threats
of the Church, and they exchanged
money and merchandise with the unbelievers
with all the more
unconcern that the enormous profit they easily made enabled
them to spend the more freely in purchasing pardons and dispensations.
The lion's share in these enormous transactions flowed into the
coffers of the
Egyptian Sultans, for we learn from a table of
prices-current, drawn up by a companion
of Vasco de Gama, that
Indian spices were five times as dear in
Cairo as in
Calcutta, and that this was in consequence
of the high duty that had to be paid on
them in Egypt, to
supply the Mameluke Sultans with a large proportion of the
treasure which even the least lavish of them freely spent, as we have seen.
Bursbey,
and his predecessors and successors were
accounted the wealthiest princes in
the world; and, in truth,
the sums disbursed in their reigns for every kind of
luxury
were beyond all measure great. The purchase of new Mamelukes and pages,
of fine horses and other beasts, cost millions yearly. We
have already seen what
enormous sums were swallowed up by the
architectural ambition of these sovereigns;
but their greatest
outlay was in keeping up their court, of which the splendour
involved lavish expenses; their harems were crowded with wives and eunuchs,
with
Circassian, Greek, Abyssinian, and other female
slaves—some of whom cost a perfect
fortune—with singers and
dancing women. Even the lower servants were clothed in
silk,
and wore gold ornaments. Their wives and favourite slaves must have pearls
and precious stones, not only for their personal decoration,
but for their household
vessels and small wares, and for the
litters in which they were borne to the country-houses
of
their masters with an escort of eunuchs and Mamelukes.
The East is the land of gifts, and probably not a day passed in which
a considerable
value in gold, slaves, horses, jewels, and
robes of honour was not dispensed
to his subjects by the hand
of the sovereign. Beyond a doubt, the most fertile
arable land
in the world yielded great returns, and the quickly-emptied coffers
could be re-filled again and again by exorbitant taxation of
the citizens and peasantry,
by the sale of places, by
confiscations and penalties inflicted on all “unbelievers” in
Mohammed; but all these sources of wealth would prove insufficient against
the
frightful and extravagant consumption if commerce had
not again and again filled
the treasury to the brim.
This influx of gold was seriously diminished by Burs-bey, for he
prohibited
all trade in spices to private individuals,
assumed the monopoly of all Indian merchandise,
and sold it by
his officials for such insanely high sums that the Frank
dealers would only purchase what was absolutely necessary, and the Venetians
sent
a fleet to
Alexandria and threatened to cease all dealings with the countries
under
his rule. This reduced him to less sweeping demands,
but he adhered to the
monopoly in pepper and sugar; and in
Egypt itself pepper was not to be purchased
excepting from his
officials; nay, he took away from the
merchants the stock they
had in reserve, and gave them so
small a compensation that they suffered severely.
He laid
claim to the right of dealing in many other articles, and the discontent of
his subjects led to revolts, and to reprisals on the part of
the Venetians and of the
Princes of Castile and
Aragon, who captured several of the Egyptian vessels. The
mischief entailed on his country by his insatiable avarice was enormous. His
greed
went so far that—if we may believe his contemporary
Makreezee, who stamps his
character with infamy—during his
reign Egypt and
Syria were depopulated
and
impoverished.
In the short space of thirty years after the death of this prince
eight Circassian
sultans succeeded each other, and under their
rule Constantinople was allowed to fall
into the hands of the
Turks, who gave it the name of Istamboul or Stamboul.
After
the deposition of Timoorboga, the last of these princes, Kayt Bey, a Mameluke
whom Burs-bey had purchased for fifty dinars, succeeded in
possessing himself of the
COUNTRY RESIDENCE, AND WATER WHEEL, AT CAIRO.
throne, and governed for twenty-nine years. This
parvenu had in his youth
been
distinguished as a brave lance-thrower, and as instructor of the fencers, who
used then—as they do to this day—to exhibit their prowess at
the setting forth of
a caravan of pilgrims. He proved his
mettle several times as sultan, and showed
himself a skilful
statesman, and indefatigably active and adroit in the business of
government. He was at the same time violent, and his love of
money amounted to
the meanest covetousness. Under him a
successful resistance was offered to the
Turks, under Mohammed
and Bayazeed, and the general who distinguished himself
most
in the struggle was Ezbek, after whom the largest and finest square in
Cairo is called
Ezbekeeyeh. This eminent man had also been brought into
Cairo as a slave,
but had been capable
of raising himself to high dignities and great possessions. A
part of what is now the Ezbekeeyeh Square was acquired by him as a place
where
he could break in his camels. At an earlier period
it had been the site of handsome
houses and blooming gardens,
which, when he took possession of it, lay in
SPOUSE OF THE SULTAN ON HER WAY TO THE COUNTRY
RESIDENCE.
deserted ruins. Ezbek
began by restoring the canal, the neglect of which had
brought
this quarter of the city to ruin; he then caused the land to be cleared of
ruins and rubbish, and fine buildings to be erected on one
side of it. Soon after
other wealthy men followed his example,
and at last it became the fashion to have
AN ARCHITECTURAL DETAIL FROM THE SCHOOL OF THE MOSQUE OF EZBEK.
a house in the Ezbekeeyeh. The
beautiful mosque
which bears his
name is a worthy monument of the
remarkable man in whose honour
it was
built, and its rich and tasteful
decoration is highly praised
by
the admirers of Arab art. Even
the
school attached to it is a very
remarkable structure. The
Ezbekeeyeh
Square has survived many
vicissitudes, and now it is known
throughout the world as the
brilliant
and splendid centre of Frank society
in
Cairo. The visitor
at the present
day sees a handsome public
garden in the midst, and passes by
a well-kept road leading to
the
capital hotels, fine public buildings
and private houses which surround
it on every side, and
which are full
of all the luxuries of European
capitals; and he will find it difficult to realise
that so
late as in the year 1827 the trustworthy
Prokesch von Osten
spoke of it as being for half
the year under water, and for
the other half
tilled as a field. Most of the buildings on
this
celebrated site were destroyed or dilapidated;
those that remained were for the most part of
Moorish style, and “bore traces of their ancient
splendour.” At this day it would be difficult to
find even one
stone of the Mameluke period.
We shall take occasion presently
to show the
reader what Ismail Pacha made of this spot.
Kayt Bey died at the ripe age of eighty-five,
1 having been compelled in his last hours to
abdicate in favour of his son, aged fourteen, and he was buried in the
beautiful
mosque-tomb which, according to custom, he had
caused to be erected while he
still “walked in the land of the
living,” and which, again, is one of the “tombs
of the
Khalifs.” The visitor to this splendid building, on leaving the city passes
1 He abdicated A.D. 1496.
INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF EZBEK.
by another fine
structure known as the Okella (a corruption of
Wakkâleh) of Kayt
MINARET OF THE MOSQUE OF KAYT BEY.
Bey, which was also built by that Sultan.
Such
Okellas or Khans existed in great numbers
in
Cairo, as in most of the cities of the
East.
They served, and still serve, as hostelries for
the
merchants, as well for the accommodation and
safe keeping of their wares, and consist of a
court surrounded by buildings, of which the lower
storey
forms a vaulted warehouse, while the upper
rooms are used as
living or store rooms. Most
of these Okellas—Lane says there
must be
above two hundred in
Cairo—are named after
their founders, who built
them for the benefit
of the public, as protectors of commerce
and
benefactors to the merchant class. The entrance
is through a gateway, which is closed at night,
and is often finely decorated with ornaments on
the key-stone. This is the case in the gateway
of the Okella of Kayt Bey, and it is unfortunate
that it should have been so much injured,
for he had eminent architects and sculptors at
his command.
This is abundantly proved, in
the first place, by the
mosque-tomb we have
mentioned, which every one who has seen
it
must remember with admiring wonder, and
which Coste, one of the most distinguished
connoisseurs of
Arab art in Egypt, declared to
be the most beautiful building
of the kind in
Cairo. How beautiful is the cupola,
covered
with a net-work of ribbon ornament that covers
it like a stone lace-work! How elegant are the
form and decorations of the minaret, how characteristic
the entrance! Up to this we are led by
an
ante-chamber surrounded by walls crowned
with little
pinnacles, and which seems to have
been used in the time of
the Sultan—as similar
chambers were in other mosques — for
ceremonious
receptions of distinguished guests, or
for solemn audiences and judgments. In the
niche of the doorway there is, on each side, a
stone seat,
over which carpets were spread on
such occasions, and on which
personages of rank
were seated. In the background stood the
throne for the Sultan, led up to by steps.
Those who wished to approach him had to pass
through a double row
of Mamelukes in brilliant array
of arms.
The architectural arrangement of this mosque resembles
in most respects that of Sultan Hasan's, but the
roof of the central court was quite peculiar, with a
lantern
of pierced wood, which admitted the air and the
softened
light of day. The grand proportions of the inner
room
have a particularly harmonious effect, and make
this
place a singularly soothing and pleasant spot, which
we
are ready to visit a second and third time and to
indulge
ourselves in gazing at the noble forms of the
arches and
ORNAMENTS OF THE MOSQUE AND TOMB OF
KAYT BEY.
vaulting, the finish of the
carving, and the
fanciful
grace of the flat surface
ornament, which even here
excludes every kind of high
or round relief. It is rare
to find a
worshipper kneeling
on the broken marble
pavement, and if by chance
a Cairene has found his
way here it is to worship
certain blocks of
granite
encased in an ugly cover;
of
these the grey one shows
the impression of both the
Prophet's feet, and the red
one the mark of
one only. Kayt Bey himself brought
these with him from Mecca;
he loved to travel and to
undertake long hunting expeditions,
and besides his
pilgrimage to Mecca, he afterwards visited
Hebron and
Jerusalem. We are told that on his return from
Arabia
and
Cairo he
was received with great pomp. At
Matareeyeh, the Atabeg
Ezbek—the builder of the
Ezbekeeyeh square—gave him a grand
banquet, and when
he entered his capital he found the streets
adorned with
silken hangings, and richly decorated. Singers,
male
and female, joined the procession, singing songs
of
triumph, and when he reached the citadel he was
received
there by the very same Ameers who, nine years
later, forced him, as an old man, to abdicate in favour
of his son.
Under both the series of Mameluke Sultans the
crown
of Egypt was either clutched by bold usurpers
or given by the
ambitious nobles to children under age,
ARAB SWORD OF CEREMONY.
INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE AND TOMB OF KAYT BEY.
but descended from a
former sovereign. It always devolved on the phantom-Khalifs
of
the Abbaside family to authorise and proclaim the new sovereign.
Kayt Bey's son Mohammed was born in his father's seventy-second year,
and
his mother was a Circassian slave. In a reign of only
three years he made himself
infamous by his cruelty and his
unbridled licentiousness. The few instances of his
personal
courage and of his generous liberality sink into the shade by the side of his
numberless shameless deeds. Whoever he might meet in his
nightly prowls
through the city was beaten, mutilated, or
beheaded. For whole nights he would
float on the Nile with
singers of both sexes; with his boon companions and black
THE SULTAN'S FAVOURITE SONGSTRESS.
slaves he would force his way into private houses, and carry off the
fairest women
from their owners; and, in order that he might
have light enough for his nocturnal
expeditions, the
shopkeepers were obliged to light up their shops with lanterns.
On one of these excursions he was attacked by a troop of Ameers and
Mamelukes,
who had conspired against him; they killed him,
and left his body lying in
the street, but it was subsequently
interred by his uncle and successor.
Once more within six years the throne of Egypt changed its owner four
times
till at length Khansooweh el Ghooree—formerly a
slave of Kayt Bey's—succeeded
in occupying it for fifteen
years.
1 This old man—he was sixty years old when he
1
A.D. 1501—1516; he died of apoplexy,
or was killed in the battle of Dabik, north of Aleppo, and his head
carried as a trophy to the victorious Selim I.
took possession of the
throne—was descended from a royal house, and many
noble
qualities may be attributed to him; there are, too, in
Cairo, many splendid
monuments of his
time. It is true he had to oppress the people with new and
scarcely endurable taxes in order to maintain his repute as a builder in “the
PORTAL OF THE MOSQUE EL GHOOREEYEH.
grand style.” Besides many other sanctuaries, he was the founder of
the beautiful
mosque named after him, in the street El
Ghooreeyeh, and of the fountain and
school opposite to it. He
had many new cisterns and caravanserais constructed
on the
pilgrims' road to Mecca; he built round the citadel of
Cairo, and at its
foot he laid out a
beautiful garden, with trees and flowers that he had introduced
from
Syria.
His dress and weapons were always most choice and valuable, his
horse's
harness was as elegant as it was costly, and he
always fed off gold plate.
The sons of Nasir had heaped treasures on Aufak, the most beautiful
and
famous singer of her time. This remarkable woman was
the mistress of these three
Sultans in succession; and the
pearls and jewels with which the royal brothers
decked her
turban are said to have been worth 100,000 dirhem—about £2,800.
Khansooweh el Ghooree was equally open-handed to singers, male and female,
and not
to singers only, but to musicians and poets also.
Tale-tellers were always allowed
free access to him. What
period, indeed, and what country, could be better fitted to
prompt their imagination to new creations than these, where the fate and history
of
great and small alike changed from day to day with the
unexpected rapidity and
variety of a kaleidoscope? The prince
of yesterday, to-day was lying in the dust; and a
boy whom men
had known as a slave, to-morrow might be a ruling potentate, disposing
of inexhaustible treasures. A lucky speculation in trade, or
a service rendered
ORNAMENT OF THE MIMBAR OF THE MOSQUE
OF EL GHOOREEYEH.
to the Sultan, might raise the poor to wealth; or a
well-to-do citizen might turn to a beggar in a twinkling,
if
this were the pleasure of some great man. The
marvels of
India, of the palaces of Persia, nay,
even
of distant Cathay, were familiar—and not from
books
alone, since every day sailors and travellers,
merchants
and slaves, brought fresh stories of these
remote countries
to the capital of the Mameluke Sultans.
All that greed or luxury could dream—of
earthly
possessions, of sensual delights, of splendour
and favour—was
within the reach of a happy few in
almost superabundance, and
he who would outvie these
actualities, in tale or song, could
but borrow from the
region of romance. And the oppressed and
wretched people—crushed, taxed, and
denuded—were always
thirsting for these marvellous tales, which lifted them
from
their dull and squalid surroundings into the realms of light that were opened
to
their gaze by the story-teller. Why should not good-hap
and riches fall in some
lucky hour into the lap of the poorest
of the poor among them, as it had to the
fortunate boy
Aladdin? Pictures answering to the romantic forms of which these old
legends spoke were vivid in the fancy of every Cairene, and
the lively imagination
and visionary spirit of the Oriental
constantly re-moulded them in new forms, each
more weird or
more splendid than the last. The reign of Khansooweh el Ghooree was
the very flowering-time of Oriental romance, and there can be
no doubt that the
stories of the “Thousand and one Nights,”
most of which had long been known by
oral transmission,
assumed a concrete form at this time or a very few years earlier.
The wandering Arab had ere this beguiled his hours of repose with
these tales;
then they helped the townsman to forget the
pinching cares of life, or served to relieve
the tedium of
luxurious monotony in the seclusion of the harem. The narrator was
allowed to give his imagination the freest play, but the
predicaments he originated
he was expected to get over easily
and pleasantly, and the play of his poetic fancy
had to serve
as a framework for deep thoughts, though suggested by pleasing images,
EASTERN STORY-TELLER.
DARB-EL-AHMAR.
like the arabesques
that cover the groundwork in the national architecture. The
poetry of the Moslems has, therefore, been very happily compared to their
productions
in the constructive arts.
Indeed, both the Eastern legend and the arabesque ornament are the
unreal
A YOUNG POPULAR HERO OF TO-DAY.
offspring of fancy; and yet both must command our admiration, like
everything that
has reached absolute maturity and perfection
within the limits of the beautiful and of
its own conditions.
The Arab faith admits no image, no symbol; mysticism is foreign
to it, and its bald theism strictly corresponds to the naked walls of the
places of
worship erected in the first century of Islam.
Perfectly bare of ornament, they produce
the same effect as a
rocky landscape destitute of vegetation; but at an early stage
an attempt was made to animate the stone, to “make it plastic,” and the
effort
succeeded without infringing the injunctions of the
faith, by the introduction of those
legends in arabesque,
those poems in colour with which the walls are covered, and
of
which a gifted traveller has said that they “looked like petrified spray.” They
are,
in fact, a poem of lines, palms, stars, flowers, and
suggestive forms, and the beholder's
MAUSOLEUM OF KANSOOWEH EL GHOOREE.
fancy yields irresistibly to their charm. Not so, however, his
understanding; for he cannot
but miss—in almost every
building—that well-considered co-ordination of the structure
and organic relation of parts which distinguish the loftier spirit of Western
architecture,
as well as the due proportioning of the
strength of the supports to the superincumbent
weight, a
satisfactory treatment of the cornice, and, above all, structural solidity.
11 According to the architect, M. Jules
Bourgoin, author of “Les Arts Arabes” (Paris, 1873), some interesting
peculiarities in the mosques show the influence of European
art, bas-reliefs of portions of the Mosque of Hasan having edifices
with belfries and towers of pure Gothic style.
AN ARAB OF RANK
The Mosque of Kansooweh el Ghooree is the last we need study as
belonging
to this period of the decadence of Arab-Egyptian
Architecture. That it has a certain
superficial splendour
cannot be denied, but the details betray an unmistakable degeneracy
in style. El Ghooree's Mausoleum stands among the tombs of
the Khalifs—
a cubical structure with an extravagantly high
cupola; however, he cannot have been
buried here, since he was
killed in
Syria, in the year 1516, in
battle against the
Osmanlee, and his head was carried to their
Sultan Seleem, who, in the following
year, put an end for ever
to the independence of Egypt.
Even the Indian trade of the Arabs, to which, as we have seen, the
sovereigns
of Egypt had for centuries owed much of their
wealth, met its death-blow under
Kansooweh el Ghooree; for in
1497 Vasco de Gama sailed round the Cape of Good
Hope. At
Melinde, on the east coast of Africa, he met with an Arab pilot, who
conducted him to the Malabar coast and into seas previously
unknown to European
seamen, though for several centuries
Moslems had carried on there a well-regulated
trade, even with
China and Japan, which had borne them golden fruits. El Ghooree
did not fail to understand the danger which threatened his people's interests
from
the Portuguese, and, encouraged by the Venetians, he
dispatched a fine fleet to the
Indian Seas under the command
of the Kurd Ameer Huseyn. In the first encounter
with the
Europeans El Ghooree's admiral won a victory, though dearly bought; but
in the year 1509 the great captain Francisco de Almeida
succeeded in avenging the
death of his son Lourenço, who had
been killed in a glorious and heroic struggle
against the
Egyptians. He annihilated the Egyptian fleet under Huseyn, near Diu,
and this victory made the Portuguese masters of the Indies,
and destroyed for
ever the Arab trade with Eastern countries.
The new rulers of Egypt, the Osmanlee,
made an attempt, it is
true, somewhat later, to repossess themselves of Diu; but
this
entirely failed, and to this day the Turkish flag has never again waved
triumphantly in Indian ports. All that was grand and
pregnant, all that was
beautiful and suggestive in Egypt,
deteriorated, or was swept away by the Ottoman
conquest. This
fatal catastrophe occurred a few months after the death of Kansooweh
el Ghooree, who had neglected opposing the Turks while it was
yet time. He was
succeeded by his former slave, Tuman Bey, to
whom the Cairenes gave the surname
of Melik el Ashraf,
i.e.,
most honoured king: and in the midst of misfortune he
did
credit to the title by his heroic conduct. On the 17th October, 1516, he
mounted the throne, and by the 20th January of the following
year his predecessor's
conquerors were within a few miles of
Cairo. A battle was fought at
Heliopolis,
near the
Pilgrim's Lake (Birket el Hagg); one division of the Osmanlee force
seized upon the Egyptian camp, a second surrounded the
Mokattam and fell on
Tuman Bey's army in flank. This Sultan
had fought like one of the heroes of
the glorious days of
Islam, and he had already succeeded in penetrating with
two
Ameers and a picked troop of Mamelukes to the very heart of the Turkish
camp, where he had taken possession of the Sultan Seleem's
tent and had slain the
generals he found there, when news was
brought to him that his army was in full
flight from the field
of battle. Even the open and masked trenches in which the
Egyptians had posted their artillery had fallen into the hands of the Turks,
through
the treason, as it proved, of two Albanian
Mamelukes, who had betrayed to a Turkish
pacha—a countryman of
theirs—the Egyptian Sultan's plan of battle, and had
pointed
out to him the trenches hidden by wattled reeds, and the position of the
cannon. When the Osmanlee had succeeded in circumventing the
Egyptian army
it was indispensable to turn the field-pieces
round; but they were old-fashioned iron
mortars mounted on
transoms, loaded with metal, and without wheels, so that this
movement could not, in fact, be effected; while the Turks had light and
movable
cannon at their command. Kurt Bey, one of the
bravest of Tuman's Ameers, was
therefore in the right when,
having been taken prisoner by the victors, he was
asked by
Seleem what had become of his former valour—“That,” he replied, “had
suffered no detriment, and it was only to their cannon that
the Turks owed the
victory, for with them the weakest woman
might vanquish the strongest man;
they were a Frankish device,
of which no Moslem ought to make use in fighting
against men
who believed in God and the Prophet.”
The Egyptian Sultan fled to Tourah while the Turks took possession of
Cairo and its
Citadel. Slaughter and rapine were indulged in with impunity by Seleem's
soldiery, drunk with victory, till by a bold surprise and
attack Tuman Bey once
more made himself master of the city. He
kept it but a short time; he was forced
again to surrender it
to the enemy, and then obliged once more to make an
attempt to
save the independence of Egypt by a pitched battle. For a whole day
he fought at
Ghizeh
with a contempt of death worthy to be commemorated; next
day,
however, he was deserted by his flying troops, and, being betrayed by
Bedaween,
he was seized and dragged a captive to Seleem.
After being kept a prisoner for
seventeen days, he was hanged
at the Gate ez-Zuweyleh to an iron hook which is
still shown
there.
1This was the end of the Mameluke rule and the beginning of Turkish
supremacy
in Egypt.
Muta Wakkil, the last of the pseudo-Khalifs of the Abbaside race,
escaped
with his life when he had solemnly made over all
his dignities and rights to the
Ottoman princes. He is said to
have left two sons, but they died unknown and
ignored. The
Abbasides died out slowly and silently like tinder feebly smouldering
out: the dynasty of the Mameluke Sultans ended like the wild
flare of a torch
that is suddenly extinguished by a stormy
gust.
1 The 13th of February, A.D. 1517.
[Back to top]
CAIRO
IN ITS DECADENCE; AND ITS TOMBS.
DERVISHES AND OTHER STRANGE DEVOTEES.
AND so henceforward Egypt was a province
of the
Ottoman Empire;
governors sent from Constantinople
resided in the city of
Cairo, and a
Turkish general occupied its citadel.
Both these officials were to be assisted and
supported by a state-council composed of
officers, learned
men, and distinguished
Mamelukes; and in order to prevent
any
governor of the Nile valley from winning
the suffrages of the inhabitants, each was
nominated for one year only—a time so
short that the occupant
of the office was
forced to devote himself with breathless
haste to the performance of the only task
to which any one of them applied himself
with any zeal, that,
namely, of enriching
himself before the expiration of his
tenure.
Then the recalled ruler returned to Constantinople
with the booty he had secured,
and thither also were conveyed
all the revenues which the state officials were
unable to divert into
their own pockets.
1 But the most abundant source of
wealth
could not but be dried up by this shameless rapine.
Under the Mameluke princes
commerce had brought gold in
abundance into Egypt, and the reckless
parvenu princes had made haste to return the gold
they had extorted into the hands from
which they had snatched
it; but under the Turkish rule the wealth they wrung
from
Egypt was altogether lost to the country, and fell into the hands of the
oppressor and foreigner. Dearth and misery fell upon the
wealth-creating Nile,
BEFORE THE WALLS OF MASR-EL-KAHIRA.
and the condition of the country was not improved when its government
passed
out of the hands of the Turkish Governors—whose
Sultans grew weaker and
weaker—into those of the twenty-four
captains (or beys) of the troops and their
Mamelukes, who
ruled arbitrarily in the provinces, and allowed the pacha from
Constantinople no privilege whatever but that of receiving their annual tribute.
These new tyrants chose a leader from among themselves—the Sheykh el
Beled,
1 The new Government consisted of
(1) The Pacha, who received the orders of the Sultan and promulgated them.
(2)
Six Military Corps, the chiefs of which formed the
divan of the Pacha, whom they controlled and watched, and could denounce.
if necessary, to Constantinople. (3) Twelve Mameluke
Beys, chosen annually, but re-eligible, charged with the twelve
divisions of Egypt. This form of government resembled the
eikosarchy, or Government of Twenty. subsequently reduced to
twelve, the dodekarchy, under the Assyrians, B.C. 620.
or “Lord of the
Land”—and, as there were always several beys who laid
claim to
this dignity, endless bloody quarrels arose, of which the scene was usually
laid in the streets of
Cairo. At last, towards the middle of the last century,
Alee Bey, a man of character and talent, became the Sheykh el Beled, and
succeeded
in acquiring the dominion over Egypt. He
diminished the troops of
Janissaries, increased the number of
his Mamelukes, and ventured, when he had
secured the support
of the people, to send the governing pacha back to Constantinople.
He laughed to scorn the sentence of death declared against
him by
the Porte, and, in 1771, caused himself to be
proclaimed Sultan of Egypt by the
THE RUINED MOSQUE OF IBN-TULOON.
Shereef of Mecca. He would have made himself master of
Syria had he not
been
betrayed by the basest treachery into the hands of his enemies, and then
killed. After his death, the three Beys Ismail, Murad, and
Ibraheem fought for
supremacy; but, although the Porte
favoured the last of these three, the two others
presently
succeeded in taking possession of the Nile valley and of its capital, and
subsequently earned a great name by defending Egypt against
the French under
Buonaparte.
Cairo owes no added splendour to this period. Her old glory under
the Khalifs has paled; a home had been found by the Nile for
a high and
characteristic form of culture, but all that was
fairest and noblest in it has fallen into
decline and ruin;
and it is on the Turks, and on the misrule of their governors that
the chief blame must be laid. They dug the grave, so to
speak, of its ancient
splendour, and, as we recall their
deeds, we cannot forbear asking—How is it
that even now, when
so much is being done for the improvement of the Khedive's
residence, so much of
Cairo lies in ruins; that even the
noblest buildings of the
time of the Khalifs are hastening to
utter destruction; while, outside the walls,
ruins lie piled
on ruins, and at her very gates—amid the wreck of noble monuments
on one hand, and gay pleasure-houses on the other—the
vultures and wild
dogs gorge themselves on the loathsome
carrion of dead beasts?
In the first instance, no doubt, we must ascribe this decadence to
political
causes, for before the invasion of Egypt by the
French, and ere the Government of
Mohammed Ali brought about
better times for the country, the rulers, as we have
seen, had
been for three centuries incessantly striving to make money out of it,
and never either to preserve what was old or to create
anything new. But this
will not account for the decay of these
monuments in later and better times; and
Ignaz Goldziher, the
man of all others most competent on all Oriental questions
at
the present day, with whom I have gravely discussed this matter, shows
convincingly
in an essay (not yet published, but which he
has placed at my disposal)
that it is the very character of
the Egyptian people, their total lack of the
spirit of
historical continuity, which is mainly instrumental in the destruction of
the noblest secular and religious buildings, seconded by the
careless constructive
architecture of the builders of the time
of the Khalifs.
He endeavours in the first place to clear the Cairenes from the
accusation
of a lack of religious fervour, to which many
writers have ascribed their neglect
of some of their noblest
places of worship. He was as much surprised as I was
at the
number of ruined mosques which we meet with at every step, and which,
nevertheless, served for the offices of a religion which is
still living and flourishing
under their walls; a religion
which constitutes and contains the alpha and omega,
the
source, sum, and essence of all the spiritual vitality of which Moslem Egypt
is capable. Wherever the eye turns, it sees the annihilation
of abandoned mosques,
medresehs, and tombs of saints—buildings
famous in the history which records
their origin and
splendour—while their very ruins testify to their former magnificence
and beauty. But all this destruction cannot be laid to the
charge of
religious indifference as attributed to the Moslems
of Egypt, for the breast of the
Mohammedan certainly never
swells with greater pride than under the consciousness
of the
abundant well of religious feeling and theological science which flows in
Cairo; and in this respect
Cairo, the capital and heart of
Mohammedanism in
its decadence, may boldly hold her own
against any city of the East, ancient or
modern. The Cairene
is religious; he is a Moslem, and a pious Moslem,
and
thoroughly devoted to Islam; but Mohammed himself declared, “Islam is
not a monkish system,” and the very word Islam signifies
“devotion to God,”
and conveys no idea of ascetic
mortification. For once that an Egyptian Moslem
thinks of the
“apparatus of terror” of the Koran, or shudders at its grim and
elaborate delineations of the pains of hell, he triumphs a hundred times in
his
hopes of Paradise with its endless delights. Gloomy
views are foreign to his
nature, which strives in everything
to see the brightest side. His religion allows
him many
worldly pleasures, and he enjoys them with greedy sensuality and
fickle taste. An old Arab writer, comparing the physical and spiritual
characteristics
of the Cairenes, described them with
justice as being as changeable as the
weather-cock, and
licentious to the utmost degree; so that it is difficult for a Christian,
who sees their worldly mode of life, their facility of
temper—verging on frivolity,
ARAB FAMILY AMONG THE RUINS.
their views of life, and their
clinging to the
world, to believe
in the religious feeling
which nevertheless is never lost
unless by the most reprobate.
Their rapid changes of
mood—a peculiarity which
they
share with other nations in
whose
veins the blood is much
mixed—and their inconstancy,
which they have inherited from
their nomad
ancestry, must be
considered in the second place
as contributing to explain the
carelessness
with which the
Cairenes originally set to work
in the erection of their ancient
buildings, and with which
the
abandon them to decay. Works
of such
strength as to be calculated
to endure to all eternity,
like those of the Pharaohs, they
never even
thought of. All
that they built bore the stamp
of evanescence and change;
it would seem as though they
had never quite forgotten the
tent of their
forefathers—a
dwelling quickly set up and as
quickly removed. Very rarely,
even in the
time of the Khalifs,
was there such care exercised
in the choice of the materials
or the
construction of the
buildings as in the works of
the ancient Egyptians. The
love of luxury
and splendour,
the airy fancy and frivolous
vivacity of the Egyptian middle-ages
have taken tangible
form
in numberless ill-founded edifices covered over with
the richest play of lines
and splendour of colour. “They are
marvels in their own way, these Moslem tombs
and mosques of
Cairo,” wrote a French essayist;
“their plan, as it lies upon
paper, is projected
with an astonishing genius for art, and when they stood completed
they were for a few score of years as bewitching as a painted
and rouged
beauty can be; but at the present time they are no
more than squalid ruins—heaps
of beams, rafters, and lumps of
plaster which betray at once the instability
and superficial
character of the builders.” This judgment is too severe, but it
cannot be denied that the only well-preserved buildings of the Arabs are
those of
which the original foundations were not laid in the
service of Islam, or else in
which the influence of foreign
art is to be traced. They were Byzantines who built
the Hagia
Sophia in Constantinople; the chief mosque in Damascus grew out of
the church of St. John; the pillars in the mosque of Amroo
were stolen from
heathen and Christian temples; the sanctuary
of Ibn-Tuloon was built by a
Greek; and Italian influence is
unmistakable in that of Hasan. One of those
portions of this
structure which were truly Arabic fell in, as we have seen, soon
after it was built, and the melancholy fate of part of the mosque of
Mo'ayyad,
shortly after its erection, has also been told.
More spirited descriptions of buildings, fresh in all the splendour
and charm
of recent completion, than those given by the Arabic
historians and poets are
nowhere to be found; but, strange to
say, the Moslem, though enjoined by his
religion to fix his
inward eye on all that is lofty and sublime, has no feeling for
the monuments of a former age, and includes them all under the one
denomination
of “Kufree,” that is to say “heathenish.”
They arouse in him neither sympathy
nor admiration; nay, he is so absolutely indifferent to
them that he does not even
despise them. In the historical
literature of the Arabs that refers to Egypt—
particularly in
the classical works of Makreezee and Abd-al Lateef—the Pyramids,
the
Sphinx, and other monuments are
mentioned and described; but these authors
are read only by a
few, and any interest in the monuments of Egyptian antiquity
finds no place among the feelings of the pious Mohammedan populace. It may be
confidently declared that there are not in all
Cairo a thousand Moslems who, in
the whole course of their lives, ever took a single
donkey-ride to
Ghizeh to see the
Pyramids and
Sphinx;
and we shall have to speak of great and beautiful monuments
in
Upper Egypt which have been carried
away piecemeal and burnt in lime-kilns,
or built into the
foundations of manufactories and palaces.
1 An intelligent
traveller, a Mohammedan of Damascus—one of the “illuminated”
Theosophists
of his time — about 170 years ago made a
pilgrimage to Mecca through
Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia,
spent some weeks in
Cairo, and left not a
grave of
a walee (or saint), inside or outside the city,
unvisited and undescribed; but of
the Pyramids, and of the
impression they left on his really susceptible apprehension,
we find no word. Even the Mohammedan landowner who makes a voyage
down the Nile in his dahabeeyeh (Nile-boat) to inspect his
estates will rarely or
never be at the trouble to take a ride
into the country to contemplate those
“pillars of eternity”
which are the goal of so many inquiring pilgrims from the
West; and if by chance some ruins of antiquity catch his eye, he vouchsafes
no
more than a passing glance at these wondrous objects,
and calls the fleeting impression
he receives from them a mere
“fantasy.”
1 Gliddon: “Appeal on Destruction of
Monuments,” London, 1841.
TOMBS OF THE KHALIFS.
The Oriental is not conservative: he is utilitarian in the strictest
sense of
the word; hence antiquity, even when it bears the
stamp of grandeur, does not
appeal to his sympathies unless it
is of some obvious utility. The artistic merits
or historical
associations of a monument in no way justify its existence in his eyes.
The first condition he requires is that it should be
applicable to some purpose; in
short—and this tells and
explains the whole matter—he is devoid of the historic spirit
which begets all our pleasure in preserving the relics of the past, and which is
the
source of all
sound culture in the present.
Certainly there is no lack of
good historians
among the Arabs, and even the
philosophy of history has been worthily
treated of in their
literature; but the
faculty and the endeavour which the
European
regards as lying at the root of all
deeper and higher culture—the effort to
apprehend the present as the child of the
past, and to discern
its features through
every phase of its development—this
endeavour
and this spirit are foreign to the
Oriental, and he therefore feels no pang
when the monuments of the past are destroyed
and their very
memory is recklessly
erased from the great book of life. He
loves “stories” indeed; they amuse his
fancy and excite his interest, which is
indefatigably
receptive of facts—whether
real or invented is all one to him;
but
“history” as we conceive of it, and cultivate
it in order to elevate our minds and
train
our energies, is unknown to the
Oriental as a means of
education. In former times el-Fahree
was the only historian
who insisted on that the young should
be introduced to the
study of history; he wrote the history
of the Khalifs, having
lived during the period of their
extinction by the Mongols;
and his works, which were
and are still unknown to the
Orientals themselves, have lately been rescued
from oblivion
by the industry of German research.
1 Recently, however,
the
reformers of education in modern Egypt have bestirred
themselves to cultivate
historical literature and to make
students acquainted with history. These
praiseworthy efforts
cannot fail of exercising a beneficial effect on the mental and
general progress of future generations; but that now living is unfortunately
devoid,
as we have seen, of any such impulse of reverence
as would result in the
preservation of ancient buildings.
These children of the present—to whom the
future is in the
hands of God and independent of their volition, and to whom
1 Translated by W. Ahlwerdt, Gotha,
1860.
the past is a thing
unknown—do not actually labour to destroy what exists,
but
they feel no call to preserve it, and the decay of those ancient sanctuaries
causes them no regret. That which has no practical utility
deserves, as it seems
to them, to perish; and it would appear
as though that conservative spirit
which was natural to the
ancient Egyptians, and their passionate adhesion to the
status quo, had been entirely lost to their
posterity by the admixture of foreign
blood. They prefer to
build something new that offers fresh food for the eye, and
they abandon the decrepit to its fate. Unfortunately, ever since the conquest
of
Egypt by the Turks all that they have built is devoid,
not only of solidity, but of
that fine feeling for art which
we everywhere meet with among the most ruinous
remains of the
architecture of the Khalifs. And it is even a subject for rejoicing
that in these times of decadence the renewal of the old
buildings has been neglected,
since the only attempt that has
been made in that direction has turned out most
lamentably.
The mosques of
Cairo were usually built
of alternate courses of red
FRAGMENTS OF A COLUMN.
and of yellowish-white stone,
a favourite method
even in
western architecture and particularly
in Tuscany. As the
red colour was somewhat faded,
on the occasion of the opening
of the
Suez Canal all the
old
mosques were painted in
honour of the Khedive's guests
with a colour which is certainly
anything
rather than
pale. The task of restoring
the
stately old mosques and
minarets was handed over to
the house-painter, and his unskilled
hand
has daubed the
walls with vulgar ruddle and
glaring yellow; and now their jack-pudding pattern of stripes disgraces the
noble
monuments, whose builders took the utmost care in
the application of their colours
that they should be soft and
subdued. The structures of the Turkish period are
ungraceful
in form, overloaded with massive ornament, and painted with tasteless
gaudiness; but they will not long vex the cultivated eye,
for, above everything, they
are built, not for permanence, but
for the passing hour—which makes what use it
can of them; and
posterity, which was never once thought of by those who built
them, will revenge itself by forgetting them.
The caprice and laxity which are displayed by Orientals in their
works of art
are reflected in their political history.
Dynasties and reigning sovereigns change
with surprising
rapidity, and where in the annals of modern Oriental history shall
we find long lines of kings like those of antiquity or of
Europe?
Time, which hurls its mighty avalanche down upon all things and
buries them
in its inexorable advance—dahher, “revolving
time,” or, as the Arabs also call
it, “the passing of
the nights”—time destroys all things. This melancholy truth
is
nowhere truer, nowhere more forcibly felt, than in the East—
“Know, oh soul, that all that is not Allah
must pass away.” Thus runs a verse which was declaimed by the heathen
Arab Lebeed, and which
earned him the honour of admission into
the ranks of the poets of Islam,
1 to which
HAMIDA, A CAIRENE MAIDEN.
in his last years he became a convert. The writers of history even, in
the artificial
and laboured prefaces to their works, enlarge
not on the Eternal, which is mirrored
in the fates of nations,
but only on the Transitory, which strikes them as they
contemplate all earthly things.
The mythological instincts of the people prompt them, as we often
have seen,
to connect miracles and legends with sacred
buildings and relics, and these usually
1 Lived in the time of Mohammed.
survive as long as the
objects of their reverence. If the relics are lost, or the
buildings fall into decay, the legend vanishes from the memory of the people,
acquires new meanings, and is at last completely lost, for
myths and legends demand
local circumstance and fostering.
Many legends, therefore, have disappeared with
the ancient
buildings; still not a few have been preserved, but they are for the
most part so monstrous and unmeaning that the repetition of
them can only be
endurable to those who believe in them. One
of the least foolish that I am acquainted
with may find a
place here. Lane—who was so well acquainted with
Cairene
life—relates it, and connects it with the Gate of Ez Zuweyleh or el
Muta-welee,
of which I have spoken, and which is believed
to work miracles and is regarded
as a haunt of the mysterious
chief of all the Walees or saints.
A certain pious shopkeeper felt an ardent longing to be enrolled in
this
venerable company, and to that end he went to a man
who was universally esteemed
as holy, to beg him to procure
him an interview with the Kutb. After all sorts of
tests this
was promised him, and he was commanded to go to the above-mentioned
gate and to address himself to the first person he might see
coming out of the neighbouring
mosque of el Mo'ayyad. The
merchant obeyed, and he was, in fact, met
by the Kutb in the
form of a dignified old man, who granted his prayer and
ordered him to take the district south-west of the Zuweyleh Gate under his
protection,
with the street called Darb el Ahmar.
Immediately the merchant felt that
he had become a Walee, and
perceived that he had insight into things hidden from
other
mortals. When he reached the district entrusted to him he saw a man
selling cooked beans out of
a large pot to the passers-by; the newly-made saint
took a
stone, struck the pot over with it, and submitted without a murmur to a
severe thrashing for the deed. When the bean-seller's rage
was somewhat moderated
and he set to work to gather up the
shards of his broken pot, he found a
poisonous snake among the
pieces; then he perceived with repentance that he had
beaten a
Walee who had interfered to prevent his selling food that would have
poisoned his customers. The next day the poor saint limped
round his district with
swollen limbs, and, without thinking
of the blows he had received a few hours
before, he flung over
a large jar of milk which was offered for sale at a stall. Again
he was severely beaten by the owner, but the passers-by held the milk-seller
back,
remembering what had happened the day before. When
they searched among the
fragments of the milk-jar they found a
dead dog at the bottom. On the third day
the Walee dragged
himself again to the Darb el Ahmar, but painfully, for he was
sorely beaten. Here he met a servant carrying a tray on his head, with
delicacies
and fruit intended for a feast in a
country-house. The saint immediately put his
stick between the
man's feet, so that he fell down and all the contents of the
saucers were spilt in the street. The servant flew on him in a fury, and gave
him as severe a taste of the stick as he himself expected to
get from his master for
his clumsiness. Meanwhile the dogs
fell upon the cates that lay in the roadway, and
within a few
minutes of the first mouthfuls they lay dead. This proved to the
bystanders that the food that had been spilt was poisoned, and they earnestly
implored
the saint's forgiveness. The pious man rubbed his
severely beaten shoulders,
said to himself that it was not
worth while to see things that were hidden from other
TOMB OF A SHEYKH ON THE ISLAND OF RODA.
mortals, and prayed to
God and the Kutb to remove from him the burden of sanctity
and
to restore him to his former ignorance and humble condition. Heaven granted
his
prayer, and, as a shopkeeper, he escaped the beatings
he had received as a Walee.
1It is related of the saint commonly known as “Iron Stone,”who is said
to
have been the Mameluke of Sultan Kayt Bey, that his
master sent him to a venerable
sheykh to offer him a rich gift
in gold. The Walee at first refused the offering,
but
presently accepted it, pressed the coin between his hands, in which it
instantly
TOMB OF IBRAHEEM AGA.
turned to blood, and said, “See my son, this is your
gold.” The Mameluke was staggered; he remained
with the Walee
as his disciple, founded an order of
Dervishes, and is to this
day reverenced as a saint
at
Cairo; more than one legend is connected with
his
tomb
Particular powers are ascribed to various relics,
but they are also attributed to certain buildings, as,
for
instance, to a certain mosque which is still called
“Gam'a
el-benat,” i.e., the mosque of the
daughters.
This, it is believed, has the gift of assisting
girls
who have remained unmarried to get a husband.
Every Friday the true believers assemble in this
mosque, as in all the others, to pray and hear
sermons. If a maiden, who, in spite of the efforts
of her relatives, has not succeeded in being chosen
as the mistress of any harem, desires to obtain a
husband, tradition prescribes the following mode of
procedure: She must go on a Friday to mid-day
prayer—the most solemn service in the whole week—
in the
Mosque of the Daughters. When the believers
prostrate
themselves for the first time at the cry of
the Imam, “Allah
akbar” (Allah is great), and while their foreheads touch the
reed mats on the floor of the mosque, she must walk once up and down the
space dividing two ranks of worshippers; then, beyond a
doubt, within a year it
shall be her lot to know the joys of
married life by the side of a good husband.
Most of the pious legends are associated with the tombs of saints
which, like
the saints themselves, are called Walees. A great
many of these may be regarded
as centres of the religious life
of the Cairenes, and yet the older ones are no better
kept up
than the other structures of the time of the Khalifs. Such walee-tombs
are either found in mosques, which are named after the saints
interred in them,
or they are independent structures roofed
with a cupola within whose narrow walls
the coffin of the
saint, covered with a carpet, serves as the shrine before which the
devotees put up their prayers. These Kubbeh are usually
erected on the spot where
the holy man, whose remains they
cover, is supposed to have had his anchorite's
cell or Zawiyah
(literally, his
corner), and such buildings
occur at every step
1 There is a long account of the
Kutb in Lane's “Modern Egyptians,”
12mo. (1871), i. 290.
throughout the East;
for great is the number of men whose tombs have become
the
scene of pious devotions or the centre of a crowd of superstitious and
miraculous
legends. A devout Moslem will never pass by
such a memorial without putting up
an inward prayer and a
supplication
A DERVISH, IN ECSTATIC EXCITEMENT. PIERCING HIS
CHEEK.
that he may be received into the
order of the
Walees. What such
a saint may be, and what idea we
may form of Mohammedan sanctity,
has been
set before the reader in
the account of the mawlid or
birthday-festival
of the holy Ahmed
Seyyid el-Bedawee of Tantah.
Often at night, on the way
home from some distant
excursion,
ere reaching
Cairo a monotonous
chant may be heard, hardly to
be
called a song—a recitative in Arabic,
broken from time to time by a
shrill scream, wrung as it
were
from the labouring breast of some
passionately excited worshipper in
his pious ecstasy. A
reverent feeling
steals over the traveller, and
his blood runs chill as he catches
sight of
the figures of the Dervishes,
shrouded in the shades of
night,
who at this late hour are gathered
round the tomb of a Walee, performing
their strange
evolutions and
their Zikr, or mystical recitations,
under the open heavens. I propose
to take
my readers to witness such
a Zikr when I make them the
spectators of the festivals of the
Cairenes; but the visitor to the
capital can at any time
assist at
these very extraordinary religious
practices if he visits a Tekkeh or
Dervish monastery at
certain hours.
These buildings commonly occupy the site of the
former dwelling-place of a Walee
who was in some way connected
with the order to which the cloister belongs.
Every Thursday, as it grows dusk, a troop of Dervishes, in their grey
sugarloaf
hats of sheepskin, proceed, lamp in hand,
through the Abdeen street of
Cairo,
and then, to the left, through the squalid lanes of the Greek
quarter. They are on
their way to a tomb-mosque, rarely
visited by foreigners, where they pass the whole
night by the grave of
the saint in Zikr. Many even of the non-initiated take part
in
the pious exercises of this brotherhood, which is much run after by the
people.
The lower class, nay, even many of the better educated and cultivated Cairenes go
VAULTED CELLAR IN AN OLD STREET.
to the tombs of the Walees, in the first instance no doubt on account
of the
miraculous powers ascribed to them, and which are
chiefly exercised in healing, for
which reason they naturally
are chiefly attractive to the sick and crippled. Under
a
sycamore near
Cairo there stood a Kubbeh
which, even in the last century, is said
to have possessed the
miraculous power of curing animals; for if some of the dust
taken from inside it were laid on the sick or injured limb of any beast a
cure
was instantly
effected. The tombs of other saints are frequented because their aid
is hoped for in circumstances of outward difficulty, and
others again to obtain the
blessing of offspring. At Za'ka, a
frontier-town between Egypt and
Syria,
not far
MAMELUKE TOMB.
from el-Areesh, there is the grave of a Bedawee saint and sheykh named
Zuweyyid,
of which the gate is never closed, because it is
believed that treasures preserved in
it can never be stolen by
any thief, and that those who seek refuge in it escape
their
pursuers. Nor is it only the tombs of miracle-working saints that enjoy such
fame and reverence, but also those of such men as have been
intimately connected
THE KARAFEH OUTSIDE CAIRO.
with the rise and
growth of Islam, particularly those of the Companions of the
Prophet,
i.e., those men who had known the
Prophet himself. Among these are
reckoned those warriors who
came into Egypt with the great leader Amroo, and
every tomb
which the people persuade themselves has been erected to one of these
shares the same honours as the resting-places of the Walees.
It is true that the tomb of the same “Companion” is venerated in four
or
five different places, and yet we never find any
attempt made to clear up the contradictions
that arise from
this, for the tenacity with which the people cling to
such
traditions is very great. Most of those which survive in Egypt are connected
with the hapless family of the Khalif Alee. They owe their
origin to the family
of the Fatimites, who, as we have shown,
traced their pedigree back to Fatima, the
wife of Alee and
Mohammed's favourite daughter, and who made the pious city of
Cairo, in which they resided, the centre
of a Shi'ite dominion. Even at the present
day, when
Cairo is justly regarded as the focus of
Sunnite learning, these traditions
are firmly believed. Thus
the great festival of Ashoora, which was originally
Judaic and
begins on the tenth day of the first Mohammedan month Moharrem, is
solemnly observed as a great fast and day of repentance by
those Cairenes who
cherish the memory of Alee, and with
mourning ceremonials that are scouted by the
Sunnites, because
it is the anniversary of the fall of the dynasty of Alee and of the
martyrdom of Hasan and Huseyn, the two sons of Alee. The
scene of these performances,
which in part are perfectly
theatrical, is usually the mosque of
el Hasaneyn, where the
head of the martyr Huseyn is said to be buried. This Huseyn
is
a saint highly esteemed by the Cairenes, and, their most unpleasant
peculiarity
being their perpetual habit of swearing, no
oath is oftener in their lips than—“By
the life of our master
Huseyn” (Wahayat seed-na Huseyn).
The most abundant food for the tomb-worship of the Cairenes is
offered them
at the Karafeh, the most vast cemetery in all the
East; and there, if anywhere,
we may find the traces of those
beliefs of the Egypt of the Pharaohs which have
survived among
the Moslems of the Nile valley. I have already hinted that such
remains exist, when speaking of the festival of Ahmed-el-Bedawee at Tantah
and of the
rising of the Nile. In
Cairo we are particularly reminded of ancient forms of
thought
by the fact—unique among the modern cities of the
East—that behind the abodes of
the living there lies spread a
city of the dead; a place of rest full of graves and
mausoleums innumerable. We saw, when
considering the Necropolis of
Memphis,
that in the time of the Pharaohs the cities of the dead were
placed to the west of
the towns, and that this situation was
intimately connected with their religion and
mythology; and it
may have happened quite accidentally that the Necropolis of
Mohammedan
Cairo extends as a long array
of groups of tombs outside the Eastern
limits of the city and
across the ledge of the Mokattam. There, to the right and
left
of the citadel, stand those magnificent cupolaed buildings which, with their
builders, I have already introduced to the reader, and at the
feet of the mausoleums
of the great lie immeasurable rows of
graves with simple head-stones or whitewashed
Kubbeh. A
cemetery is called a “karafeh” in the Arabic dialect spoken in
Egypt; but this name originally belonged only to those particular acres of the
dead
that surround these tombs of the Khalifs and
Mamelukes. This Karafeh, for
centuries the
burying-place of the Moslem inhabitants of
Cairo, is also one of the
most popular resorts of the
pious, whether native or foreign, who visit
Cairo in
order to seek out the graves of the
saints and there to put up a fervent prayer.
The populace of
Cairo frequently make a pilgrimage to
the Karafeh on a Friday,
starting before sunrise, and
regularly on certain holy days, particularly that of
el Eed.
Men, women, and children are then to be seen crowding the streets that
SARCOPHAGUS OF IBRAHEEM PACHA.
lead to the cemetery; and the city of the dead, usually so deserted
and silent, is
filled with gay and active life. Palm-branches
are laid on the graves; dates, bread,
and alms are dispensed
to the poor, and the spirits of the favourite saints are
appealed to in long-winded supplication. Are these devotees Moslems—believers
in
the one and only God—or are they not a people who
worship their ancestors? In
truth we can hardly blame the
Wehabites
1—those destroyers of the temples in Upper
Arabia and India—when they turn their fanaticism against the
tombs of the Walees,
1 Name of a sect called also the
Wahhabees, from Abd-el-Wahhab, their founder. This sect arose in the end of
the
eighteenth century in Arabia, and with
iconoclastic zeal endeavoured to destroy the tombs of the Walees. Had the
Wahhabees
succeeded Mohammedanism would have taken a
new departure, but they were conquered by Mehemet Ali in 1812 and
deprived
of Mecca and Medina.
PART OF THE HOUSE OF THE SHEYKH SADAT.
pulling them down and
devastating them because they conduce to obscure the
grand
Monotheistic idea.
In the Karafeh beyond a doubt the all-comprehending Allah has far
less
honour done him than the pious dead interred there.
Members of every sect may
find here the resting-places of the
most revered leaders of the ritual they observe.
Here a
mausoleum covers a sarcophagus with the mortal remains of the Imam
Shafe'ee,
1 the founder of the science of the
rationale of canonical law and the highly
revered originator
of the ritual named after him, which was the predominant one
until the Turkish conquest. A perfect garland of beautiful legends has been
woven
round the history and person of this remarkable man
by the mythological spirit of
the Egyptians. Many miracles are
related of his Kubbeh, of which the door, as the
Cairenes
believe, never opens but to a true believer and never to the reprobate in
whose heart there lurks a doubt; and this miraculous
peculiarity of the door which
leads to the sepulchre of the
pious sage is said to have unmasked many a hypocrite.
A large
part of the Necropolis bears the name of Shafe'ee, and here stands
the mosque-tomb of the vice-regal family called the Hosh el
Basha, which is visited
principally by foreigners. In this
stands the beautiful sarcophagus of the great
general Ibrahim
Pacha, father of the ex-Khedive, and there the Koran is read
early and late.
Very special miraculous powers are attributed to the tomb of the
famous
Imam Leyth ibn Sa'd,
2 known as “the father
of miracles”; the miraculous powers
he exercised during his
life having remained with him after death. Once upon a
time—so
saith the legend—one of his votaries, being in great straits, came to the
kubbeh of this saint, and prayed fervently for release from
his need. After he had
squatted a long time, sunk in
meditation and grief before the holy spot, he fell
asleep, and
the Imam appeared to him in a dream and said, “Be easy, pious man!
when thou shalt wake, take that thou shalt find in my grave.”
The poor man
opened his eyes, and before him sat a bird, who
recited the Koran without hesitation
in all the seven modes.
The man took the bird, and showed it in the city,
where the
learned creature excited so much attention that the governor desired to
possess it, and paid so high a sum for it that the man was
able to pay his debts
and to live free of care for the
remainder of his days. But the Governor did not
long rejoice
in his acquisition, for the Imam appeared to him at night in a dream,
and said, “Know that my soul is shut up in a cage in your
house.” Next
morning, when the governor went to see his
feathered and learned captive, it had
disappeared, for the
Imam had assumed the form of a bird to relieve the pious
devotee in his need. I must also mention the tombs of the Sadat al-Bekreeyeh,
i.e., those principals of the Egyptian
orders of Dervishes who descend in a direct
line from the
Khalif Aboo Bekr. This dignity continues to this day to enjoy the
highest consideration, and the holder takes a distinguished
position at many popular
and religious festivals. The tombs of
the Sadat al-'Alaweeyeh,
i.e., of the former
heads of the orders
derived from Alee, are also to be seen in this city of the
dead. The present holder of this high office, which, however, is rarely
exercised,
1 Died at Fostat A.D. 819.
is a rich landowner of
most gracious manners, who is willing to show, to such
foreigners as have a sufficient introduction, his beautiful and venerable
family
residence—which is, perhaps, the most
characteristic dwelling come down from old
times in all
Cairo—his choice library full of literary
treasures, and the most affable
kindness withal. He has even
conducted many a learned European with the
utmost amiability
to visit the tombs of his predecessors, where there is to be seen
his extremely interesting pedigree, which goes back,
ostensibly, to the time of the
Moslem invasion of Egypt.
Yonder tomb, where all pause with such deep devotion and reverence,
is that
of the sheykh Omar ibn el-Fareed,
1 the poet
of the “Wine-songs,” the great hymns
of mystical divine love
among the Mohammedans. The poem is throughout allegorical,
to
be sure, and does not celebrate the material juice of the grape or its
effects, but the divine afflatus and ecstasy of the Soofee
who has drunk of the
sweet and intoxicating spirit of God's
love, and, abandoning his own identity, has
become one with
his celestial beloved one. By the sepulchre of Sheykh Omar
verses are often recited from his poems which work up the bystanders to the
highest
pitch of transport, and it is often the scene of
those Zikr
2 so frequently mentioned,
and to
which reference will again be made in a future chapter.
We have lingered long among ruins and tombs, and have given a due
meed
of attention to
old
Cairo. We will now turn to the young and flourishing capital,
its residents of to-day, and the princely house that has
succeeded in arresting the
country in its drift towards ruin,
and—with the help of foreign pilots—in guiding
its course into
a safer and better channel.
1 Died A.D. 1235. Ibn Khallikan II., 338.
2 Religious invocations accompanied by
whirling and other gestures.
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