IF a plebiscite were taken among travellers in general as
to the dozen most interesting and striking cities of the
globe, it is probable that Cairo would be included in the
list. It is inferior in world-wide interest, of course, to
Jerusalem or Rome, or even Athens, but it would probably
take a higher rank than many historic capitals. No doubt
Cairo, compared with the great capitals of Europe, is modern,
or, at any rate, mediæval, and, indeed, historically
of little importance; but it cannot be denied that to the
average traveller Cairo is not easily dissociated from
Egypt, — the cradle of the oldest civilisation and culture in
the world. The proximity of the Pyramids and the Sphinx
have no doubt something to do with this vague and erroneous
view, and with the fictitious antiquity ignorantly
attributed to the City of the Caliphs. The most elementary
history, handbook or guide-book will, of course, correct
this general impression; but it is not, perhaps, an exaggeration,
to say that some casual visitors to Egypt begin their
sightseeing with a vague, if unformulated, impression that
Cairo was once the capital of the Pharaohs, and the Pyramids
its cemetery.

The historic and artistic interest of Cairo is, in short,
purely mediæval and Saracenic; and, perhaps, no Eastern
city, except Damascus, in the beaten track of tourist travel,

embodies so many of the typical characteristics of an
Oriental city.

Mehemet Ali and Ismail may be considered by the artist
and antiquarian to have done their best to vulgarise, that
is, Europeanise, the City of the Mamelukes; but the rebuilding
and enlarging under Mehemet, and the hausmannising
tendencies of Ismail, have done little more than touch the
surface. The native quarter of Cairo still remains a magnificent
field of study for the intelligent visitor, especially
if he ignores the hackneyed and limited programme of the
guides and interpreters; and the artist who knows his
Cairo will find the Moslem city full of the richest material
for his sketch-book. “Every step,” observes Mr. Stanley
Lane-Poole, “tells a story of the famous past. The stout
remnant of a fortified wall, a dilapidated mosque, a carved
door, a Kufic text,—each has its history, which carries us
back to the days when Saladin went forth from the gates
of Cairo to meet Richard in the plain of Acre, or when
Beybars rode at the head of his Mamelukes in the charge
which trampled upon the Crusaders of Saint Louis. A
cloistered court recalls the ungodly memory of the prophet
of the Druses; a spacious quadrangle, closely filled by
picturesque, albeit scowling, groups of students, reminds
us of the conquering Caliphs of ‘Aly's heretical line, who,
disdaining the mere dominion of Roman ‘Africa,’ carried
their triumphant arms into Egypt and Syria, Sicily and
Sardinia, whilst their fleets disputed the command of the
Mediterranean with the galleys of Moorish Spain.”

Cairo is full of these picturesque associations connected
with the magnificent age of the Mameluke Sultans, but
most visitors know little about them. Probably this is
mainly attributable to the fact that most of the books on
Egypt rather ignore its capital; and the age of the Saracens
is a period as much overlooked by modern historians
as that of the Ptolemies.

There are, of course, the standard guide-books, — a
most skilful condensation of a mass of erudition, — but the
compilers find the Upper Nile, with its antiquities, of such
surpassing interest, that little room can be found for Cairo
itself. Besides, guide-books are read of necessity, and not
for pleasure or continuously; and in the wealth of dry
detail it is difficult sometimes to “see the wood for the
trees.”

There is, however, another aspect besides the sentimental
or devotional one, which should not be disregarded; and
in the chapter dealing with the regeneration of Egypt
under British influence, I have attempted to show how
modern Egypt strikes the political observer and the man
of practical affairs.

Egypt, with its wealth of antiquities and artistic relics,
is, no doubt, of the highest importance to the tourist and
sight-seer. Regarded, however, as a community or modern
state, the Egypt of to-day holds a very low rank among
semicivilised countries. There is a certain amount of
reason in the complaint of some modern historians that
Western minds seem to lose all sense of proportion and
historic perspective when describing this Land of Paradox,
which is, after all, but a tenth-rate territory, with an
acreage less than that of Belgium, and a population hardly
more numerous than that of Ireland. These indisputable
facts will, perhaps, come as a surprise to the tourist, who
takes several weeks to sail along the thousand miles of its
mighty river,'—its one and only highway, — from Cairo to
the Soudan frontier. One is apt to forget that, above the
Delta, Egypt simply means a narrow fringe of desert
stretching for a few miles on each side of the Nile. This,
no doubt, is true; and visitors are perhaps too apt to “see
the country looming in a mist of mirage,” and are unable
to resist the weird charm of this unique land.

At the same time, one cannot deny the enormous international

importance of Egypt in spite of its small acreage
and population. This importance, no doubt, is to some
extent fictitious, and is due partly to its peculiar geographical
position, which makes it the great highway between the
Eastern and Western hemispheres, and partly to its climate,
which has converted it into the great winter residence and
playground of civilised nations. Besides, magnitude is
not, of course, an absolutely reliable test of a country's
greatness. Little states, as we all know, have filled a
most important part in the world's history,—Athens
Sparta, Venice, Florence, Genoa, for instance. Then, the
Holy Land itself is about the size of Wales, and the area
of Attica was no wider than that of Cornwall.

In preparing this book, I have consulted many of the
standard English and French works which have been recently
published; and I am especially indebted to the valuable
information to be found in the works of Professor
Flinders Petrie, Professor Mahaffy, the late Miss A. B.
Edwards, Sir Alfred Milner, and Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole.
For the preliminary chapter on Alexandria and the Nile
Delta, I have utilised portions of an article on Alexandria
which I contributed to “The Picturesque Mediterranean,”
published by Cassell & Co., Ltd., London, and my grateful
acknowledgments are due to this firm for permission to
reproduce these portions.

THE history of the City of Cairo, as distinct from that
of Egypt, is simple and easily mastered, being confined
within reasonable limits. It does not go back further
than mediæval times. Unlike the history of Egypt, which
is concerned mainly with the rise and fall of alien states,
Cairo, whether Arabic or Turkish, is a wholly Mohammedan
creation. It is, indeed, more Mohammedan in some
respects than any city in the world, just as Rome is more
Roman than any other city. Constantinople, of course, is
a decidedly hybrid city in comparison, and its very name
recalls an alien civilisation; while its chief temple, Justinian's
great church of St. Sophia, is a Christian building,
dedicated to a Christian saint, although the Turks naturally
try to disguise its heretical origin by calling it Agia
Sophia (Holy Wisdom).

The history of Cairo, then, falls naturally into two
periods: that of Arab rule when it was virtually the seat
of the Caliphate; and the period of Turkish dominion,
from its capture by the Ottoman Turks in 1517 down to
the present time. In short, we need consider it under two
aspects merely, — first as the capital of the Caliphs, and
next as the chief city of a Turkish pachalic.

The history of Egypt, on the other hand, is that of the
oldest civilised country in the world, — though as a community
it is perhaps one of the newest. It is hardly an
exaggeration to say that all literature, ancient and modern,

from the works of Homer and Aristotle down to the masterpieces
of Dante and Shakespeare, is indirectly due to
the ancient Egyptian civilisation. Philologists of the highest
authority are agreed that the Phœnician origin of the
alphabet cannot be substantiated. Even Tacitus seems to
have suspected that this nation had won a spurious renown
as the inventors of letters, — tanquam repererint quœ acceperant.
The Egyptian cursive characters to be found in
the Prissé papyrus of the eleventh dynasty —- “the oldest
book in the world” — are pronounced by the best philological
scholars to be the prototype of the letters afterwards
copied by the Greeks from the Phœnicians, and
thence transmitted to the Latins.

Though Egypt, as the cradle of the alphabet, may be
considered the foster-mother of all literature, yet it must
be allowed that the one thing needful to history, namely,
literary material in documentary form, is wanting in the
case of Egypt. We have nothing but the fossilised history
of the monuments. Only the baldest annals (pace Brugsch
Bey) can be compiled from stone inscriptions. Then, as
Mr. David Hogarth, in his “Wanderings of a Scholar in
the Levant,” pertinently observes, contemporary documents
carved on stone, whether in Greece or in the Nile Valley,
have often been accepted far too literally. The enthusiasm
of archæologists has inclined them to regard insufficiently
the fact that to lie monumentally to posterity is a
failing to which the Pharaohs, prompted by their colossal
vanity, were particularly subject.

From the Hyksos invasion down to the conquest of the
country by the Ottomans, — a period of nearly five thousand
years, — Egyptian history is simply that of foreign
conquests, and is inseparably bound up with that of alien
nations, its conquerors, — Semitic (Hyksos kings), Ethiopian,
Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Saracen, and Turkish.
A cardinal fact in the history of this remarkable

country is its perpetual subjection to foreign influences.
Yet, in spite of this, the Egyptians have, during these
thousands of years of foreign dominion, preserved their
national characteristics, and the same unvarying physical
types. This racial continuity, in spite of all these adverse
circumstances and interminable succession of alien immigrations,
which might be supposed to modify materially the
uniformity of the Egyptian type, is one of the greatest
puzzles in ethnography.
What is known as the prehistoric period of Egypt can
be dismissed in a paragraph. This history is based, of
course, on mythical legend, and is purely conjectural. It
is supposed that the country was divided into a number of
small, independent states, each with its own tutelary chief;
or, according to some writers, these sovereigns were deities
and kings in one, and they have been termed god-kings.
To emphasise the distinction, Menes and the kings of the
first dynasty are designated as the first earthly kings of
Egypt.

As to the origin of the Egyptians, scholars are divided
into two schools; for though there are innumerable
theories, if we eliminate the more fanciful ones it
will be found that all historians of note have adopted one
or other of the two following theories. Those who adopt
the Biblical narrative have come to the conclusion that the
ancestors of the Egyptians came originally from Asia, and
that, in short, the tide of civilisation flowed up the Nile.
Philologists, too, who have discovered many points of
resemblance in the roots of the ancient Egyptian and
Semitic languages, have adopted this theory. Ethnographists
and anthropologists, however, hold an opposite view,
and consider that a study of the customs of the ancient
Egyptians, and an examination of their implements and
utensils, which are very similar to those of the tribes
living on the banks of the Niger and Zambesi, rather

point to an Ethiopian or South African origin; and that
civilisation began in the Upper Nile Valley and spread
northwards and downwards. It is probable, however, that
each of these historical schools may be partly right; and
possibly the true explanation is that, whether an Asiatic
or African origin be granted, the immigrants found an
aboriginal race settled on the banks of the Nile, whose
racial characteristics and distinctive physical types were
probably as little modified by these alien invaders as they
have been by their Mohammedan conquerors in the seventeenth
century.

Most modern historians, then, fortified by the opinion of
ethnographical authorities, after the scientific examination
of the ancient monumental sculptures and drawings, are
satisfied that the ancient Egyptians differed in all essential
racial characteristics from the African negroes, and
belonged to a branch of the great Caucasian family.

It would be futile to attempt here anything but the
barest summary of the chief facts of Egyptian history. A
very slight thread of narrative may, however, connect the
most important historical landmarks under which the leading
facts of Egyptian history may be grouped. Without
attempting, then, anything of the nature of a scientific
chronological précis, a practical and rough-and-ready
division, ignoring, of course, the dynasties and Ancient,
Middle, and New Empires, and other conventional divisions
of historians, would be something as follows: —

1. The age of the Pharaohs, which would include the
first twenty-six dynasties, down to the first Persian invasion
under Cambyses.

2. The Empire of the Ptolemies, which includes the
prosperous reigns of the dynasty founded by Alexander the
Great.

3. The Saracenic era, during which Egypt became once
more a centre of arts and sciences, in spite of the internecine

feuds of the rival Caliphs. This period closes with
the conquest by the Ottoman Turks.

4. The Political Renaissance of Egypt under Mehemet
Ali.

5. Modern Egypt, when the country of the Pharaohs
entered upon its latest phase, after the fall of the Khedive
Ismail, as a kind of protegé of the Great Powers, under
the stewardship, first of Great Britain and France, and
finally of Great Britain alone.

The division of Egyptian history into Ancient, Middle,
and New Empires is as artificial and arbitrary as the popular
divisions into dynasties. The Ancient Empire begins
with Menes, the first really historical king of Egypt.
Little is known of this monarch's achievements, but he at
any rate affords us a sure starting-place for our survey of
the early monarchy.

The sources from which we derive our knowledge of
these primeval kings are from the monumental inscriptions,
lists (more or less imperfect or undecipherable) in
the Turin papyrus, and the history of the Ptolemaic priest,
Manetho. Mena, or Menes, is supposed to have been descended
from a line of local chiefs at This, near Abydos,
the traditional burying-place of Osiris. Coming south, he
made Memphis the capital of his new united kingdom.
This was the chief centre of the worship of the god Ptah,
creator of gods and men; and it was here that the cult of
the Apis bull (the Serapis of the Greeks) was first instituted.
The kings of the first three dynasties, with the
exception of Menes, have left few records, though certain
inscriptions on the cliffs at Sinai have been attributed to
one of the kings of the third dynasty, and the Pyramid of
Medum, in the opinion of Doctor Petrie, was built by
Seneferu. These three dynasties cover the period B. C.
4400 to 3766, according to Brugsch. But Egyptian
chronology is one of the most disputed departments of

Egyptology, and the dates given are, of course, only approximate.

With the fourth dynasty we come to the familiar names
of the great pyramid-builders, Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinos.
It is not till the age of the Theban Pharaohs
that we find sovereigns who have left such lasting records
of a highly developed civilisation. Cheops and Chephren,
in the Egyptian traditions, probably coloured a good deal
by the biassed accounts of Herodotus and other Greek historians,
have been held up to the execration of posterity
as heartless tyrants and profligate despisers of the gods.
Mycerinos's memory is, however, revered by Herodotus as
a just and merciful king. “To him his father's deeds
were displeasing, and he both opened the temples and gave
liberty to the people, who were ground down to the last
extremity of evil, to return to their own business and sacrifices;
also he gave decision of their causes juster than
those of all the other kings.” The actual bones of this
king can be seen in the British Museum, so that this panegyric
has a peculiar interest for English people.

To the fifth dynasty, known as the Elephantine from
the place of origin, belongs Unas, whose pyramid-tomb was
discovered by Professor Maspero in 1881. The sovereigns
of the sixth dynasty distinguished themselves by various
foreign conquests. To this family belongs the famous
Queen Nitokris, the original of the fabled Rhodopis of the
Greeks.

It is permissible to skip a period of some six hundred
years, during which four dynasties reigned, whose history
is almost entirely lost. So far as we can judge, it was a
period of struggle between weak titular sovereigns and
powerful feudal chiefs who left the kings a merely nominal
sovereignty, having apparently acquired the control of the
civil and military authority.

Egypt during this period was invaded by Libyan and

Ethiopian tribes. With the eleventh dynasty, founded by
powerful princes from Thebes, begins the Middle Empire,
with Thebes as its capital. It will be noticed that the
seat of government is often shifted during the thirty
dynasties which comprise Egyptian history from Menes to
Nectanebo I.

Under the Ancient Empire, Memphis, as we have seen,
was the seat of government, and may be regarded as the
first historic capital of Egypt. This, near Abydos, no
doubt can boast of an earlier history; but this was merely
the cradle of the first Egyptian kings, of whom we have
no records more authentic than those semi-mythical traditions
which centre round the prehistoric god-kings, and it
cannot, of course, be considered as a seat of government.
The political centre was shifted, under different kings, for
dynastic, strategic, or political motives, to various places in
Egypt, from the Upper Nile Valley to the Delta.

As the power of the kings increased, the capital was
fixed at Abydos, Elephantine, and other southern cities.
Under the Middle Empire, the period of Egypt's greatest
splendour, the great city of Thebes was the capital. Then,
during a period of internal disturbance or foreign invasions,
it was transferred again to the north, to Memphis,
Tel-El-Amarna, and other cities of Lower Egypt. From
the thirteenth to the seventeenth dynasties, Egyptian history
is intricate and difficult to follow. The Shepherd
Kings had conquered Lower Egypt, and held sway in the
Delta, while the old Theban royal race still maintained
the chief authority in Upper Egypt. So, during these
five dynasties, there were two capitals, Tanis (Zoan) and
Thebes. During the later Asiatic wars the political centre
was shifted towards the Asiatic frontier, and Rameses the
Great and his successors held their court principally in
the northern city of Tanis. Under the New Empire,—
the period of decadence and foreign oppression, — the

centre was continually transferred, and it was shifted with
each political change, — now to Thebes, now to Memphis,
and finally to Bubastis and Sais.

The twelfth dynasty is an important period in Egyptian
history. The reigns of Usertsen I. and III. and
Amen-Em-Het III. are renowned for the famous permanent
engineering achievements which did more, perhaps,
for the prosperity of the country than many of the architectural
enterprises and foreign conquests of the eighteenth
and nineteenth dynasties. Amen-Em-Het III.
conferred the greatest benefit on Egypt by his vast engineering
works for regulating the inundations of the Nile.
His most famous work, by which Egypt has benefited even
down to the present day, was the construction of the great
artificial lake, called by the Greeks Moeris, now called
by the Arabs El-Fayyum. This monarch also gave later
sovereigns the idea of a Nilometer, as on the cliffs at
Semni he made regular measurements of the rise in the
Nile inundation.

We now enter a dark period of about five hundred years,
when Egypt passed under the foreign domination — incidentally
referred to above, from which she freed herself only
after a long and severe struggle.

The thirteenth dynasty appears at first to have carried
on the government with the success inherited from its
predecessors; but there are indications that the reigns of
its later kings were disturbed by internal troubles, and it
is probable that actual revolution transferred power to the
fourteenth dynasty, whose seat was Sais in the Delta.
The new dynasty probably never succeeded in making its
sway paramount; and Lower Egypt, in particular, seems to
have been torn by civil wars, and to have fallen an easy
prey to the invader. Forced on by a wave of migration of
the peoples of Western Asia, in connection, perhaps, with
the conquests of the Elamites, or set in motion by some

internal cause, the nomad tribes of Syria made a sudden
irruption into the northeastern border of Egypt, and, conquering
the country as they advanced, apparently without
difficulty, finally established themselves in power at Memphis.
Their course of conquest was undoubtedly made
smooth for them by the large foreign element in the population
of the Lower country, where, on this account, they
may have been welcomed as a kindred people, or at least
not opposed as a foreign enemy. The dynasties which the
newcomers founded we know as those of the Hyksos, or
Shepherd Kings, — a title, however, which is nowhere given
to them in genuine Egyptian texts. It has been conjectured
that the name Hyksos (which first occurs in the
fragment of Manetho) is derived from “Hek-Shasu,” King
of the Shasu, an Egyptian name for the thieving nomad
race.

After the rough work of conquest had been accomplished,
the Hyksos gradually conformed to Egyptian
customs, adopted Egyptian forms of worship, and governed
the country just as it had been governed by the
native kings. The fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties are
Hyksos dynasties, probably at first holding sway over
Lower Egypt alone, but gradually bringing the Upper
country into subjection, or at least under tribute. The
period of the seventeenth dynasty, whether we are to
call it Hyksos or native Theban, or to count it as being
occupied by kings of both races, was a period of revolt.
The Theban under-king, Sekenen Ra, refused tribute, and
the war of liberation began, which, after a struggle of
nearly a century, was brought to a happy conclusion by
the final expulsion of the Hyksos by Aahmes, or Amasis I.,
the founder of the eighteenth dynasty.

The period of the foreign domination has a particular
interest on account of its connection with Bible history.
It appears from chronological calculations, which are fairly

conclusive, that it was towards the end of the Hyksos rule
that the Patriarch Joseph was sold into Egypt. A king
named Nubti (B. c. 1750) is supposed to have occupied
the throne at the time; and the famous Hyksos king, Apepa
II., is said to have been the Pharaoh who raised Joseph to
high rank, and welcomed the Patriarch Jacob and his
family into Egypt.1

Aahmes I. (Amasis), the conqueror of the Hyksos usurpers,
was the son of Ka-mes, the last of the royal race of
Thebes of the seventeenth dynasty; and his mother was
Queen Aah-hetep, whose jewels in the National Museum at
Cairo are only exceeded in beauty and interest by those of
the Princess Hathor. This monarch is the first of the eighteenth
dynasty, in which the history of Egypt enters upon
a new phase, and what may be called the “Expansion of
Egypt” begins. Hitherto the Egyptian sovereigns had been
satisfied with waging war only with their immediate neighbours.
Now begins an active foreign policy, and we note
an expansion of the national spirit. An Egyptian Empire
was founded, which, by the end of the reign of Thotmes
I., extended from the Euphrates in the north to Berber in
the Soudan. This policy of foreign conquest was, no doubt,
forced upon Aahmes and his successors by circumstances.
It was essential to find employment for their large armies,
whose energies had been hitherto confined to overthrowing
the Hyksos dynasty. But this foreign policy, which brought
Egypt into collision with the great Asiatic empires, eventually
proved a source of danger, when Egypt was no longer
ruled by the warrior-kings of the eighteenth, nineteenth,
and twentieth dynasties.

Thotmes II. and his sister, the famous Hatasu (Hatshepset),
whose achievements are more fully referred to in the
chapter on Thebes, followed up the Asiatic victories of
Thotmes I. with successful expeditions into Arabia. It

was, however, reserved for her son Thotmes III. to bring
the neighbouring nations into complete subjection; and
Egypt, under this famous monarch, perhaps the greatest
prototype of Alexander the Great in history, reached the
period of its greatest material prosperity.

It was his proud boast that he planted the frontiers of
Egypt where he pleased; and this was, indeed, no hyperbolical
figure. “Southwards, as far, apparently, as the
great Equatorial Lakes, which have been rediscovered in
our time; northwards to the Islands of the Ægean and
the upper waters of the Euphrates; over Syria and Sinai,
Mesopotamia and Arabia in the East; over Libya an
the North African coast as far as Cherchell in Algeria on
the West, he carried fire and sword, and the terrors of the
Egyptian name.”1

Queen Hatasu was one of the most famous royal builders
of Egypt. “Numerous and stately as were the obelisks
erected in Egypt from the period of the twelfth dynasty
down to the time of Roman rule,” remarks Miss Edwards,
“those set up by Hatasu in advance of the fourth pylon of
the Great Temple of Karnak are the loftiest, the most admirably
engraved, and the best proportioned. One has fallen;
the other stands alone, one hundred and nine feet high in
the shaft, cut from a single flawless block of red granite.”

Thotmes III. was famed as much for his achievements
of peace as for his foreign conquests, and some of the
finest monuments at Thebes and Luxor testify to his
merits as an architect. In fact, his cartouche occurs more
frequently even than that of Rameses II. on antiquities of
every kind, from temples and tombs down to scarabs. The
fame of Thotmes's successors, Amen-hetep II., and Amenhetep
III., though vigorous and warlike kings, has been
eclipsed by that of their great ancestor, though their campaigns
in Syria and Nubia were equally successful.

The reign of Amen-hetep IV. is noteworthy for an important
religious reform or revolution. This king, probably
influenced by his mother, a princess of Semitic origin,
“endeavoured to substitute a sort of Asiatic monotheism,
under the form of the worship of the solar disk, for the
official worship of Egypt. The cult and the very name of
Amen were proscribed, the name being erased from the
monuments wherever it occurred, and the king changed
his own name from Amen-hetep to Khun-Aten, the ‘Glory
of the Solar Disk.’ In the struggle which ensued between
the Pharaohs and the powerful hierarchy of Thebes, Khun-Aten
found himself obliged to leave the capital of his
fathers, and build a new one farther north called Khut-Aten
the site of which is now occupied by the villages of
Tel-El-Amarna and Haggi Qandil. Here he surrounded
himself with the adherents of the new creed, most of
whom seem to have been Canaanites or other natives of
Asia, and erected in it a temple to the solar disk as well
as a palace for himself, adorned with paintings, gold,
bronze, and inlaid work in precious stones.”1

The worship of Amen was, however, too firmly established
to be permanently overthrown, and the great god
was paramount among the Egyptian gods. Consequently
the new cult took no hold upon the people. After Amenhetep's
death the new worship died out, and the god Amen
was restored as the national deity by Amen-hetep IV.
(Horus). In fact, the very stones and decorations of the
Temple of the Solar Disk were used in embellishing the
temple of the victorious Amen at Karnak.

With the nineteenth dynasty (B. C. 1400-1200), the
age of the earlier Pharaohs, — for in popular estimation
the generic names of Rameses and Pharaoh are convertible
terms, though etymologists would, of course, draw a
distinction, — we enter upon the most popular period of

ancient Egyptian history,— popular, that is, in the sense
of familiar. Rameses I. is the least important sovereign
of the Pharaonic monarchs, and is known chiefly for the
war he waged with the traditional enemies of the Theban
monarchs, the Khita of Northern Syria. His victories
were, however, but moderate, and the campaign was continued
with greater success by his son, Seti I. This sovereign
successfully undertook the task of subjugating the
Phœnicians and the Libyans. He cut, too, the first canal
between the Red Sea and the Nile. It is true that this
honour has been claimed for Queen Hatasu, but the authority
is doubtful, being mainly based on the sculptures
in which this Queen's famous expedition to the Land of
Punt is pictorially described, some of these paintings apparently
indicating that there was some kind of waterway
between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea.

Rameses I. was succeeded by the famous Rameses II.,
the Sesostris of the Greeks, and known to us as the Pharaoh
of the Oppression. Rameses II. is, no doubt, the one
dominant personality in the whole field of Egyptian history.
His name is more widely known than that of any
other Egyptian monarch. Many reasons for this universal
posthumous fame can be assigned.
No doubt his unusually
long reign, seven years longer than the present reign of
Queen Victoria (1897), has something to do with this.
Then, too, the prominence given to this monarch's reign by
Herodotus and other Greek historians, and the wealth of
traditionary lore which has centred round the legendary
Sesostris, and his intimate associations with the Old Testament
history, have contributed not a little to exalt the
fame of Rameses above that of all other monarchs.

It must not, however, be forgotten that his renown is
to a considerable extent factitious. For instance, owing to
his overweening vanity (in which, however, he did not
differ from most other sovereigns of Egypt) in usurping

the architectural monuments of his predecessors by carving
upon them his own cartouche, he got credit for these
magnificent works, as well as for those which were undeniably
his own, of which the most famous are the
Ramesseum, at Thebes, and the rock-hewn Temple of
Abru-Simbel, in Nubia.

Then Rameses's greatest achievement in arms, the famous
campaign against the Khita, which is commemorated
at such inordinate length on the mural sculptures of so
many temples, has been naturally somewhat magnified by
Pentaur, the poet laureate of the Theban court. In a
poem virtually written to order, it is necessary, of course,
to discount a certain leaning towards fulsome hyperbole
in this stone-graven epic. It is absurd to accept as an
historical fact the extravagant statement which makes
Rameses rout, single-handed, the whole Khita host.

Without wishing to deny the title of Great to this
monarch, we need not follow the example of the Greek
historians and accept without reserve achievements which
would be more suited to the mythical god-kings of the
prehistoric period.

In the reign of Rameses the Great's successor, Mer-en-Ptah
II. (Seti III.), took place, according to most modern
historians, the Exodus of the Israelites. Some chronologists
have, however, given a later date to this national
emigration. “With the expiration of the nineteenth
dynasty,” writes Dr. Wallis-Budge, “the so-called Middle
Empire of Egypt came to an end, and we stand upon the
threshold of the New Empire, a chequered period of occasional
triumphs, of internal troubles, and of defeats and
subjection to a foreign yoke.”

The period from the twentieth to the end of the twenty-fifth
dynasty can be rapidly summed up. Rameses III.,
the founder of the twentieth dynasty, was the only strong
sovereign of the half-dozen who bore this dynastic name,

and was the last of the warrior-kings of Egypt. After his
death, the country enters upon a period of degeneration and
decadence, which lasted for over five hundred years. The
later kings of this dynasty fell gradually under the dominion
of the priests, which was finally consummated by the
usurpation of a race of priest-kings from Tanis, who formed
the twenty-first dynasty. The Trojan war was probably
waged about this time. The rule of the high-priest of
Amen was eventually overthrown by the Libyan prince,
Shashank (Shishak of the Old Testament), who founded
the twenty-second dynasty and made Bubastes the seat
of government.

Egypt was now entering upon the stage of disruption,
and the authority of one sovereign was virtually replaced
by that of a host of petty kings, and the two following
dynasties (twenty-third and twenty-fourth) are made up
of a list of the more powerful of these sovereigns, who
had gained a nominal supremacy. During these troublous
times of internecine strife, Egypt was being harassed by
two powerful neighbours, Assyria and Ethiopia. The latter
country, which, during the nineteenth and twentieth
dynasties, had been a mere province of the empire of the
Pharaohs, was now independent, and from about 715 B. C.
they got the better of their former masters and founded
what is known as the twenty-fifth dynasty. This dynasty
was, however, short-lived, and in 672 B. C. the Assyrians
under Esarhaddon invaded Egypt, captured Thebes and
Memphis, and, occupying the whole Delta, became masters
of the country.

The history of Egypt at this period is difficult to follow,
but it appears that one of the more powerful of the native
princes— Psammetichus, King of Sais, who was nominally a
viceroy of Assyria in Egypt — took advantage of the disruption
of the Assyrian Empire caused by the revolt of Babylonia,
to rebel against his suzerain and expel the Assyrian

army of occupation. Then, by a judicious marriage with
a Theban princess, the heiress of the older dynasties, Psammetichus
was able to win over Upper Egypt as well as the
Delta, and to found what is known as the twenty-sixth
dynasty. A transitory period of tranquillity now begins,
and a sort of revival of the arts and sciences takes place,
— one of the many periods of renaissance which Egypt
has known, — which proved that many centuries of civil
war and foreign oppression had not entirely crushed the
artistic spirit which had been bequeathed to the Egyptians
by their ancestors. Necho, the son of Psammetichus,
next reigned. He seems to have paid as much attention
to the domestic welfare and the material prosperity of his
country as to foreign conquest, and among his achievements
was an attempt to cut a canal between the Nile and
the Red Sea. His efforts in encouraging the development
of trade did a good deal towards reviving the commercial
spirit of the people. It was in Necho's reign, too, that
certain Phœnician mariners in this sovereign's service
made a voyage round Africa, — an enterprise which took
nearly three years to accomplish. This is the first complete
circumnavigation of the African continent recorded
in history.

For the next one hundred years Egyptian history is
merged in that of Syria, Babylonia, and Persia. The historical
sequence of events is rendered more difficult to
follow by the fact that, after the victory of Cambyses in
527 B. C., till the subjugation of the Persians by Alexander
the Great at the battle of the Issus in 332 B. C.,
— one of the most “decisive battles of the world,” —
Egypt was practically a satrapy of the Persian Empire
though historians reckon three short-lived Pharaonic
dynasties during this period, called the twenty-eighth,
twenty-ninth, and thirtieth, which synchronised with the
twenty-seventh, or Persian dynasty. This is accounted for

by the fact that whenever a native prince got possession of
the Delta, or of a considerable portion of Egypt, he became
nominally sovereign of Egypt, though it was to all intents
and purposes a province of Persia.

The twenty-seventh dynasty was, in short, a period of
Persian despotism, tempered by revolts more or less successful
on the part of the native viceroys or satraps appointed
by Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and other Persian
monarchs. For instance, for a few years, under Amyrteus
(twentieth-eighth dynasty), Mendes (twenty-ninth dynasty),
and the last native sovereign, Nectanebo II. (thirtieth dynasty),
Egypt was almost independent of Persia. In B. C.
332, when the Persian power had succumbed to the Macedonians
under Alexander the Great, this anomalous period
of Egyptian quasi-independence came to an end. On the
death of this monarch, Egypt fell to the share of his general,
Ptolemy, who founded the important dynasty of the
Ptolemies, and was hailed as the Saviour (Soter) of the
country.

This concludes a necessarily brief summary of the age
of the Pharaohs. In order to confine in a few pages a
sketch of the history of a period covering over four thousand
years and comprising thirty different dynasties, one
can do little more than give a bare list of names of the
principal sovereigns and of their more important wars. In
fact, like all ancient history, the history of the pre-Ptolemaic
period is in a great degree a history of empires and
dynasties, foreign wars and internal revolutions, and is in a
much less degree the history of the political and social progress
of the people. For, as Professor Freeman truly observes,
it is to the history of the Western world in Europe
and America that we must naturally look for the highest
development of art, literature, and political freedom.

“None of Alexander's achievements was more facile,
and yet none more striking, than his Egyptian campaign.
His advent must have been awaited with all the agitations
of fear and hope by the natives of all classes; for the Persian
sway had been cruel and bloody, and if it did not lay
extravagant burdens upon the poor, it certainly gave the
higher classes an abundance of sentimental grievances, for
it had violated the national feelings, and especially the
national religion, with wanton brutality. The treatment
of the revolted province by Ochus was not less violent and
ruthless than had been the original conquest by Cambyses,
which Herodotus tells us with graphic simplicity. No
conquerors seem to have been more uncongenial to the
Egyptians than the Persians. But all invaders of Egypt,
even the Ptolemies, were confronted by a like hopelessness
of gaining the sympathies of their subjects. If it was comparatively
easy to make them slaves, they were perpetually
revolting slaves. This was due, not to the impatience of
the average native, but rather to the hold which the
national religion had gained upon his life. This religion

was administered by an ambitious, organised, haughty
priesthood, whose records and traditions told them of the
vast wealth and power they had once possessed, — a condition
of things long passed away, and never likely to return,
but still filling the imaginations of the priests, and urging
them to set their people against every foreign ruler. The
only chance of success for an invader lay in conciliating
this vast and stubborn corporation. Every chief who
headed a revolt against the Persians had made this the
centre of his policy; the support of the priests must be
gained by restoring them to their old supremacy, — a
supremacy which they doubtless exaggerated in their uncriticised
records of the past.

“The nobles or military caste, who had been compelled to
submit to the generalship of mercenary leaders, Greek or
Carian, were also disposed to welcome Alexander. The
priestly caste, who had not forgotten the brutal outrages
to the gods by Cambyses, were also induced to hail with
satisfaction the conqueror of their hereditary enemies, the
Persians. Alexander was careful to display the same conciliatory
policy to the priests of Heliopolis and Memphis
which he had adopted at Jerusalem. These circumstances
partly explained the attitude of the Egyptians in hailing
Alexander as their deliverer rather than their conqueror.”

In order to understand the comparatively peaceful accession
of the Ptolemaic dynasty, we must bear in mind the
cardinal principle which governed Alexander's occupation
of Egypt, and his administration of the conquered province.

“Alexander had asserted the dignity and credibility of
the Egyptian religion, and his determination to support it
and receive support from it. He had refused to alter the
local administrations, and even appointed some native
officials to superintend it. On the other hand, he had
placed the control of the garrison and the central authority
in the hands of the Macedonians and Greeks, and had

founded a new capital, which could not but be a Hellenistic
city, and a rallying point for all the Greek traders throughout
the country. The port of Canopus was formally
closed, and its business transferred to the new city.”

On Alexander's death, in 323 B. C., after a very short
illness, Ptolemy, one of his lieutenants, took over the
regency of Egypt, and in 305 B. C. he was strong enough
to declare himself king, and to assume the title of Soter
(Saviour).

The history of the sixteen Ptolemies who form the
Ptolemaic dynasty is made up of the reigns of a few
powerful monarchs who held the throne sufficiently long
to insure a stable government, and of a large number of
short-lived and weak sovereigns, most of whom suffered a
violent death. In short, the large proportion of those who
died by violence is as noticeable as in the remarkable list
of the prehistoric kings of Ireland. The Ptolemaic dynasty
made a propitious commencement with the first three
Ptolemies, who were able and powerful monarchs. During
this period the prestige of Egypt among foreign nations
was very high.

In 283 B. C. Ptolemy Soter died, in the eighty-fifth year
of his age, leaving a record of prosperity which few men
in the world have surpassed. Equally efficient whether as
servant or as master, he made up for the absence of genius
in war or diplomacy by his persistent good sense, the moderation
of his demands, and the courtesy of his manners
to friend and foe alike. While the old crown of Macedon
was still the unsettled prize for which rival kings staked
their fortunes, he and his fellow-in-arms, Seleukos, founded
dynasties which resisted the disintegrations of the Hellenistic
world for centuries.

Perhaps of all Ptolemy's achievements, whether foreign
or domestic, his famous museum and library deserves to
rank the highest. Very little is known about this remarkable

seat of learning, and Strabo's description is painfully
meagre. This great institution was rather a university
than a museum, and was certainly the greatest glory of
Ptolemaic Alexandria. The idea of making his capital,
not merely a great commercial centre, but a centre of
arts, sciences, and literature, seems to have gradually
matured in the mind of Ptolemy Soter. The college or
university, or whatever we call the museum, was under
the most direct patronage of the king, and was, in fact,
a part of the royal palace. It included, in addition to
lecture-halls, class-rooms, dining-hall, etc., courts, cloisters,
and gardens, and was under the rule of a principal nominated
by the king, who also performed the offices of a kind
of high-priest. This Alexandrian foundation was apparently
as much a teaching and residential university as the
famous European universities of Paris, Padua, or Oxford.
In fact, it served equally with the renowned academies of
Athens as a model for modern universities.

“It is indeed strange that so famous an institution
should not have left us some account of its foundation, its
constitution, and its early fortunes. No other school of
such moment among the Greeks is so obscure to us now;
and yet it was founded in broad daylight of history by a
famous king, in one of the most frequented cities of the
world. The whole modern literature on the subject is
a literature of conjecture. If it were possible to examine
the site, which now lies twenty feet deep under the
modern city, many questions which we ask in vain might
be answered. The real outcome of the great school is fortunately
preserved. In literary criticism, in exact science,
in geography, and kindred studies, the museum made advances
in knowledge which were among the most important
in the progress of human civilisation. If the produce
in poetry and philosophy was poor, we must attribute such
failure to the decadence of that century, in comparison

with the classical days of Ionia and Athens. But in preserving
the great masters of the golden age the library,
which was part of the same foundation, did more than we
can estimate.”

On the death of his father, Ptolemy Soter, Philadelphus,
in accordance with the traditional policy of that age, puts
to death his stepbrother, Argeus, his most formidable rival.
According to the historians of that period, Philadelphus is
said to have complained in after-life that one of the hardships
in a despot's life was the necessity of putting people
to death who had done no harm, merely for the sake of
expediency!

Having now cleared the way to the throne, Philadelphus
makes arrangements for his coronation. We borrow
the following vivid picture of these magnificent ceremonies
of Philadelphus from the pages of “Greek Life and
Thought:”

“The first thing that strikes us is the ostentation of the
whole affair, and how prominently costly materials were
displayed. A greater part of the royal treasure at all
courts in those days consisted not of coin, but of precious
gold and silver vessels, and it seems as if these were
carried in the procession by regiments of richly dressed
people. And although so much plate was in the streets,
there was a great sideboard in the banqueting-hall covered
with vessels of gold, studded with gems. People had not,
indeed, sunk so low in artistic feeling as to carry pots full
of gold and silver coin, which was done in the triumph of
Paulus Æmilius at Rome, but still a great part of the
display was essentially the ostentation of wealth. How
different must have been a Panathenaic festival in the
days of Pericles! I note further that sculpture and
painting of the best kind (the paintings of the Sicyonian
artists are specially named) were used for the mere purpose
of decoration. Then, in describing the appearance of

the great chamber specially built for the banquet, Callixenus
tells us that on the pilasters round the wall were a
hundred marble reliefs by the first artists, in the space
between them were paintings, and about them precious
hangings with embroideries, representing mystical subjects,
or portraits of kings. We feel ourselves in a sort of glorified
Holborn Restaurant, where the resources of art are
lavished on the walls of an eating-room. In addition to
scarlet and purple, gold and silver, and skins of various
wild beasts upon the walls, the pillars of the room represented
palm-trees, and Bacchic thyrsi alternated, a design
which distinctly points to Egyptian rather than Greek
taste.

“Among other wonders, the Royal Zoölogical Gardens
seemed to have been put under requisition, and we have
a list of the various strange animals which joined in the
parade. This is very interesting as showing us what can
be done in the way of transporting wild beasts, and how
far that traffic had reached. There were twenty-four huge
lions, — the epithet points, no doubt, to the African, or
maned lions, — twenty-six snow-white Indian oxen, eight
Æthiopic oxen, fourteen leopards, sixteen panthers, four
lynxes, three young panthers, a great white bear, a came-leopard,
and an Æthiopic rhinoceros. The tiger and the
hippopotamus seem to have missed the opportunity of
showing themselves, for they were not mentioned.

“But the great Bacchic show was only one of a large
number of mummeries, or allegories, which pervaded the
streets; for example, Alexander, attended by Nike and
Athene, the first Ptolemy escorted and crowned by the
Greek cities of Asia Minor, and with Corinth standing
beside him. Both gods and kings were there in statues
of gold and ivory, and for the most part escorted by living
attendants, — a curious incongruity all through the show.

“The procession lasted a whole day, being opened by

a figure of the Morning Star and closed by Hesperus.
Eighty thousand troops, cavalry and infantry, in splendid
uniforms, marched past. The whole cost of the feast was
over half a million of our money. But the mere gold
crowns, offered by friendly towns and people, to the first
Ptolemy and his queen, had amounted to that sum.”

The literary materials we possess for the reign of this
Ptolemy are deplorably meagre, the few extant documents
being, for the most part, fulsome panegyrics of Greek
chroniclers, or bare records of isolated facts, which are not
of great historical value. The most interesting event in
this reign is the coronation ceremony, which was conceived
and carried out on a scale of unparalleled splendour and
magnificence. Contemporary writers seem to have been as
much dazzled by these fêtes as the Alexandrian populace.
Possibly there was some deep political motive behind these
magnificent spectacles, which amused the people and induced
them to forget the atrocious domestic murders with
which Philadelphus inaugurated his reign.

“We have from Phylarchus a curious passage which
asserts that, though the most august of all the sovereigns
of the world, and highly educated, if ever there was one,
he was so deceived and corrupted by unreasonable luxury
as to expect he could live forever, and say that he alone
had discovered immortality; and yet, being tortured many
days by gout, when at last he got better and saw from his
windows the natives on the river bank making their breakfast
of common fare, and lying stretched anyhow on the
sand, he sighed: ‘Alas that I was not born one of
them!’”

Philadelphus is perhaps best known for his work in connection
with the Alexandrian Museum, which had been
founded by his father. He is generally allowed to have
the credit of ordering the Greek translation of the Old
Testament, known as the Septuagint; but his actual responsibility

for this is still a matter of controversy with
ecclesiastical historians. It is not, however, disputed that
Philadelphus commissioned Manetho to write his famous
History of Egypt. Of Ptolemy's architectural achievements,
the most important is the Pharos at Alexandria.
This famous tower, from which the French and other
Latin nations derive their name for lighthouse (Phare),
once ranked among the seven wonders of the world. It
was made of white marble, and was several stories high,
and inside ran a circular causeway on a gentle incline,
which could be ascended by chariots. It is not known
how long this lighthouse remained erect, but it was supposed
to have been destroyed by an earthquake in 1203
A. D.

A clever epigram of Posidippus, on a second century
papyrus found a few years ago, is worth quoting:

It is said that on a very calm day it is possible to discern
the ruins beneath the sea off the head of the promontory.

In this reign a great impetus was given to the building
of temples and other commemorative structures. In addition
to the world-renowned Temple of Isis, a gem of Ptolemaic
architecture, Ptolemy built several temples on the
Delta, — notably one at Naukratis, and one of great size on
the site of the ancient Sebennytus. He also built an important
port on the Red Sea, named after his daughter
Berenice, which is thus described in an article in the Proceedings
of the Royal Geographical Society, 1887:

An engineering work of the highest importance, and one
which, as we shall see later, in the chapter on Modern Egypt,
proved of permanent value in the development of the agricultural
resources of the country, was the draining of Lake
Moeris, and the reclamation and irrigation of a vast tract
of country now known as Fayyum.

In a sketch of this important reign, some mention
should be made of Ptolemy's famous consort, his second
wife, Arsinoe. This, to add to the difficulties of ancient
chroniclers and modern historians, was also the name of
Philadelphus's first wife; but the fame of the latter is
altogether eclipsed by that of the former. Even in the
age of Berenices and Cleopatras, and other great princesses,
Arsinoe stands out prominently. Though most
Egyptian queens were in a manner deified, none, with
the exception of the last Cleopatra, exercised greater
political influence. She took her place beside the king,
not only on coins, but among those statues at the entrance
of the Odeum at Athens, where the series of the Egyptian
kings was set up. She was the only queen among them.
At Olympia, where there were three statues of the king,
she had her place. Pausanias also saw , at Helicon, a
statue of her in bronze, riding upon an ostrich. It is

very likely that this statue, or a replica, was present to
the mind of Callimachus, when he spoke, in the “Coma
Berenices,” of the winged horse, brother of the Æthiopian
Memnon, who is the messenger of Queen Arsinoe. Arsinoe
died some three or four years before her royal husband,
and Pliny tells us that the disconsolate king, after
her death, lent an ear to the wild scheme of an architect
to build her a temple with a lodestone roof, which might
sustain in mid-air an iron statuette of the deified lady, who
was identified with Isis (especially at Philae) and with
Aphrodite. She had an Arsinoeion over her tomb at Alexandria,
another apparently in the Fayyum, and probably
many elsewhere. Her temple on the promontory between
Alexandria and the Canopic mouth, dedicated to her by
Kallikrates, where she was known as Aphrodite Zephyritis,
is mentioned by Strabo, and celebrated in many epigrams.
He also mentions two towns in Ætolia and Crete, two
in Cilicia, two in Cyprus, one in Cyrene, besides those in
Egypt, called after her. She seems only to have wanted
a Plutarch and a Roman lover to make her into another
Cleopatra.

Of all the Ptolemies, Euergetes I. is the only great conqueror,
and his reign should be the most interesting to the
student were it not for the scantiness of material. Very
little is known of this shadowy and enigmatic sovereign,
and of the actual part he took in the great campaigns
against the Seleucides and Cilicia — one exceeded in importance
only by the chief ones of Alexander — nothing
is told us by the Greek chroniclers. The events of the
great campaign known as the Third Syrian War have, indeed,
only within recent years been known to modern
historians through the accounts in the famous Petrie papyrus.
Other important evidence for the history of this
Ptolemy is the famous stone inscription known as the
Decree of Canopus, recovered by Lepsius, in 1865, from

the sands of Tanis. It was passed by the Synod of Priests
in the ninth year of this reign. It is hoped that similar
decrees may be found at Philae, for in 1895 the Egyptian
government intrusted the researches here to Colonel
Lyons, R. E.

The difficulty of unravelling the intricate labyrinthine
maze of Egyptian history during the three hundred years
of Ptolemaic rule is intensified, owing to the bewildering
recurrence of certain royal names. It is difficult to differentiate
the innumerable princesses bearing the names of
Berenice, Arsinoe, or Cleopatra, and, indeed, some of the
Greek historians have mixed these names up in a most
bewildering fashion. Another difficulty which confronts
the student of this period is the custom of the sovereigns
marrying their sisters. Then again, many of the kings
and queens reign conjointly. For instance we have Philometer
(Ptolemy VIII.) and Euergetes II. (Ptolemy IX.)
together on the throne of Egypt.

In a sketch of the age of the Ptolemies, a notice of
the first three sovereigns must necessarily occupy a space
which seems somewhat disproportionate for a period which
fills barely a hundred years, — about one-third of the whole
dynasty. But considering the importance of these reigns,
this prominence does not, I think, show a want of appreciation
of historic proportion, which has, of course, little
to do with chronological proportion.

“Tried by a comparative standard,” writes Mr. David
Hogarth, “the only monarchs of the Nile Valley that
approach to absolute greatness are Ptolemy Philadelphus
I., Saladin, certain of the Mamelukes, and Mehemet Ali;
for these held as their own what the vainglorious raiders
of the twelfth and nineteenth dynasties but touched and
left, and I know no prettier irony than that, among all
those inscriptions of Pharaohs who ‘smite the Asiatics’
on temple walls and temple pylons, there should occur no

record of the prowess of the one king of Egypt who really
smote Asiatics hip and thigh, — Alexander, son of Philip.”

With the reign of Ptolemy IV. (Philopater), a tyrannical
and self-indulgent king, begins the decline of the
Egyptian kingdom under a series of dynastic monarchs.
Philopater continued the traditional foreign policy of his
ancestors; and though successful in his campaign against
Syria, now ruled by Antiochus the Great, Egypt derived
but little benefit, as the war was terminated by a peace
in which the terms were distinctly unfavourable to Egypt,
and were due to the weakness and incapacity of Philopater.

The early events of the reign are thus summarised by
Polybius:

The decisive battle of Raphia, which terminated the
Fourth Syrian War, is described with great circumstantial
detail by Polybius. We can only find room for the following
graphic specimen from this despatch of the most
famous Greek prototype of modern war correspondents:

Such was the result of the battle of Raphia between
King Ptolemy and Antiochus for the possession of Coele-Syria.

Though as a warrior and statesman the fourth Ptolemy
shows a decided inferiority to his father, he seems to have
been deserving of some praise as a patron of literature, and
showed his admiration of Homer by building a magnificent
temple in his honour. Then, as a builder, he emulated
Rameses or Thotmes, and remains of his work are to be
seen at Edfu and Philae, as well as at Thebes, where he
raised that exquisite shrine known as Deir-el-Medinet, of
which some account is given in a later chapter, on Thebes
and its temples.

We may profitably skip the short and unimportant
reigns of several Ptolemies to the ninth Ptolemy, called
usually Euergetes II. Antiochus IV. of Syria had conquered
a great part of Lower Egypt and attempted to
restore Philometer, a son of Ptolemy V. The Alexandrians,
however, who, as Professor Mahaffy points out,
“voiced” the will of Egypt more completely than Paris
does of France at the present day, supported the claims
of Euergetes. All through this reign, or rather joint

reigns, of Euergetes and Philometer, we find the Roman
Senate acting as arbiter, and both sovereigns went to
Rome to prosecute their claims in person. A curious
side-light is thrown on these intrigues by Plutarch, who
mentions that Euergetes offered the chance of becoming
Queen of Egypt to Cornelia, the high-souled mother of the
Gracchi. No doubt “a Cornelia on the throne at Alexandria
would have been a real novelty among the Cleopatras.
But the great Roman lady probably held him
in such esteem as an English noblewoman now would hold
an Indian rajah proposing marriage.”

In 146 B. C., Philometer led an army to help his
son-in-law, Alexander, recover Syria from Demetrius, and
died from wounds received in battle. There is a striking
contrast between the characters of the two brother-kings,
who for nearly a quarter of a century jointly controlled
the destinies of Egypt. Philometer (Ptolemy VII.) was
one of the most able of the later sovereigns of the house
of Ptolemy. A good and apparently unbiassed sketch of
his life is given in the following passage from Polybius:

Space fails us for a sketch of the reigns of the four
Ptolemies who succeed Philopater. Under Epiphanes
(Ptolemy V.), the domestic affairs of Egypt fell into a
state of deplorable confusion; “one rebellion succeeded
another, and anarchy prevailed everywhere.” In order to
maintain his authority, Epiphanes was fain to ask the
protection of the Roman Senate. From this time down
to the conquest of Egypt by Octavius, the country of the
Pharaohs was, to all intents and purposes, a Roman province
under a viceroy, who was allowed the titular rank of
king.

On the death of Ptolemy VI., in 181 B. C., a period of
alternate despotism, anarchy, and joint-sovereignty begins,
which is difficult to follow. In B. C. 146, Euergetes II.
(Ptolemy IX.) besieges Alexandria and occupies the
throne, though he is nominally merely the regent of the
kingdom, and guardian of the infant sovereign, Ptolemy,
surnamed Neos. Euergetes, however, when he had got
the Alexandrians on his side, did not scruple to put the
infant king to death, and occupy himself the blood-stained
throne of Egypt. After having reigned some fifteen years
at Alexandria, Euergetes has to flee to Cyprus, having
alienated his subjects through his cruelties and debauchery.
Some years later he appears to have returned from
exile and regained possession of his throne.

It is difficult to unravel the confused and conflicting
statements of the great historians as regards the later
events of his throne, but the date of his death, 117 B. C.,
is not disputed.

With his death the history of Ptolemaic Egypt, so far as
it is worth recording, may be brought to a close. “There
is nothing of public interest to follow till we come to the

last scene,” to the reign of the notorious Cleopatra VI., the
Cleopatra of Shakespeare.

This famous, or rather infamous, queen, daughter of
Auletes (Ptolemy XIII.), who came so near to revolutionise
the history of the Roman Empire, was born about
69 B. C.

Auletes, who died 51 B. C., has earned the bad eminence
of being the most worthless, incapable, and cruel
of all the Ptolemies. If we take Cicero's estimate as
correct, he was pliant and persuasive when in need, making
boundless promises of money to men of influence at
Rome, but tyrannical and ruthless when in power, taking
little account of human life when it thwarted his interests,
or even balked his pleasures. With the priests, however,
he seems to have been on friendly terms.

With the succession of Cleopatra we enter upon one of
the most familiar epochs of Egyptian, or rather Roman,
history, and the intrigues of the Egyptian queen with
Caesar, and subsequently with Antony, are familiar to every
one. The real cause of the war which broke out between
Rome and Egypt in 31 A. D. seems a little obscure. In
fact, the conduct of Antony in celebrating a grand Roman
triumph at Alexandria, after a doubtful victory (34 B. C.)
over the Parthians, seems to have alienated and disgusted
the Roman Senate. But it was the formal distribution of
provinces which gave most offence at Rome, and proved
the chief casus belli put forward by Octavius. This was
naturally regarded as a theatrical piece of insolence and
contempt of his country: “For, assembling the people in
the exercise-ground, and causing two golden thrones to be
placed on a platform of silver, the one for him and the
other for Cleopatra, and at their feet lower thrones for
their children, he proclaimed Cleopatra Queen of Egypt,
Cyprus, Libya, and Coele-Syria, and with her, conjointly,
Caesarion, the reputed son of the former Caesar. His own

sons by Cleopatra were to have the style of ‘king of
kings;’ to Alexander he gave Armenia and Media with
Parthia, so soon as it should be overcome; to Ptolemy,
Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Alexander was brought out
before the people in Median costume, with the tiara and
upright peak; and Ptolemy, in boots and mantle and Macedonian
cap done about with the diadem, — for this was the
habit of the successors of Alexander, as the other was of
the Medes and Armenians. And as soon as they had
saluted their parents, the one was received by a guard of
Macedonians, the other by one of the Armenians. Cleopatra
was then, as at other times when she appeared in
public, dressed in the habits of the goddess Isis, and
gave audience to the people under the name of the new
Isis.”

The usual view of historians is that Cleopatra's flight to
Egypt, after the disastrous battle of Actium, was prompted
by cowardice; but in view of the strong character of this
queen, it is more likely that she came to the conclusion
early in the fight that Antony's cause was lost, and that
her naval contingent would only swell the spoils of Octavius.
She probably knew, too, that her life would be forfeited
if she were taken prisoner with her fleet. But there
was still a chance, if Antony were killed or taken prisoner,
that she might negotiate with the conqueror as
Queen of Egypt with her fleet and treasure intact. Besides,
as Professor Mahaffy points out, who could tell what effect
her personal charms, although now somewhat mature,
might have upon Octavius? She had already subjugated
two far greater Romans,— Caesar and Antony,— why not a
third? For the closing scenes of Cleopatra's life we can go
to Shakespeare, whose history here is less at fault than is
the case in his English historical plays, as the whole narrative
is scrupulously reproduced from Plutarch. The last
scene of the tragedy is vividly pictured by Dion:

When modern people wonder at the daring of the last of
the Cleopatras, who has been embalmed in the prose of
Plutarch and the verse of Shakespeare, they seldom know
or reflect that she was the last of a long series of princesses,
probably beautiful and accomplished, certainly daring
and unscrupulous, living every day of their lives in
the passion of love, hate, jealousy, and ambition, wielding
dominion over men or dying in the attempt. But, alas!
except in the dull, lifeless effigies on coins, we have no
portraits of these terrible persons, no anecdotes of their
tamer moments, no means of distinguishing one Cleopatra
from the rest, amid the catalogue of parricides, incests,
exiles, and bereavements.

The battle of Actium made Octavius master of the
Mediterranean, and Egypt of course became a mere province
of Rome, until it fell an easy prey to the rising
Mohammedan power some six centuries later. The history
of Egypt under Arab rule will form the subject of
the next chapter.

THE period of some 650 years, from the fall of the
Ptolemaic Empire (B. C. 30) down to the Mohammedan
conquest in 638 A. D., need not detain us long. This
age is an uneventful one for Egypt, now reduced to the
position of a mere province of the Roman Empire, and
then — on the disruption of the Empire and its partition in
395 A. D., when the two sons of the Emperor Theodosius,
Arcadius and Honorius, ruled respectively over the Eastern
and Western Empires — a portion of what may be conviently
called the Byzantine Empire.

In the early part of the seventh century the great Semitic
race of the Saracens begins to play a most important part
in the world's history, and with little difficulty the army of
the Caliph Omar under Amru wrests the province of Egypt
from Rome.

We now enter upon a picturesque period of Egyptian
history, though it is of more importance to lovers of the
arts than to historians. It lasts for nearly nine hundred
years, till the conquest of Egypt by the Ottoman Turks in
1517. The chief historical landmarks of this long epoch
of Mohammedan rule are Ahmed Ibn-Tulun, El-Muizz,
Saladin, and En-Nasr Mohammed.

Amru, fully alive to the suitability of the site of the
Roman stronghold of Babylon, builds here his new capital,
called Fostat (Old Cairo ). This is some two miles south
of modern Cairo. The latter city is often erroneously
attributed to Saladin. This enlightened monarch no doubt

improved the new capital considerably, and fortified it; but
the modern city dates from 969 A. D., when El-Muizz, the
first of the Fatimite dynasty (Tunis), transferred the seat
of the government, and we might also say of the Caliphate,
from Kerouan (the “Holy City”) to a site about two miles
from Fostat. To this new city, Gohar, the Caliph's general,
gave the proud title of Masr-El-Kahira (the Victorious),
a name which was corrupted by Europeans into Cairo,
though the natives still call it Masr. Gohar's design was,
however, at first limited to a fortress and palace for his
master, and for some time the new site was only the royal
residence of the Caliph El-Muizz. Here lived the harem,
the court, and the garrison, and in this enormous enceinte
lived, so say the Arab chroniclers, over twelve thousand
souls. It was not till the reign of the great Saladin that
the walls of the palace were extended to include a city,
which even then, in the twelfth century, occupied as large
a site as intra-mural Cairo of to-day; that is, about three
miles long, and a mile to a mile and a half wide.

“Most of these changes,” remarks Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole,
“can be traced in the present city. A small part of
Fostat remains under the name of Masr-El-Atika (old
Cairo), separated from the capital by the great mounds of
rubbish which indicate vanished suburbs. Of Kahira the
whole growth can readily be traced. The second wall still
stands on the north side, though the magnificent Norman-looking
gateway of the Bab-En-Nasr, or ‘Gate of Victory,’
with its mighty square towers and fine vaulting within, and
the Bab-El-Futuh, or ‘Gate of Conquests,’ flanked with
massive round towers, are not quite on their original sites.
The cornice and frieze, adorned with fine Kufic inscriptions,
which run along the face of the gateway and the faces and
inner sides of the two towers half-way from the ground, no
less than its solid and clean-cut masonry, distinguish the
‘Gate of Victory’ among Saracenic monuments.

”The second wall is still visible at the eastern boundary of
the city, and its other sides may be traced by the names of
demolished gates, as the Water Gate (Bab-El-Bar), the Bab-El-Luk,
and the Bab-El-Khalak; while the Bab Zuweyla,
still standing in the heart of the city, is one of the most
striking buildings in Cairo, though its walls and inscriptions
are daubed over with plaster, and its towers are lowered
to make room for the minarets of the adjoining
Mosque of El-Muayyad. The second wall, thus mapped
out, must have run from near the present bridge over the
Ismailiya Canal, along the western side of the Ezbekiya
(where the wall was standing in 1842), to near the Abdin
Palace, where it turned up to the Bab Zuweyla, and was
prolonged to the eastern wall.

“Since it was built, the Nile has considerably changed its
course, and now runs much farther to the westward. Saladin's
wall was a restoration of this in part, but his addition
(begun in 1170) round the citadel is in partial preservation,
like the fortress itself, though the continuation round the
site of Katai on the south is demolished. The names of
the gates, however, show that the limits of the present city
on the south are nearly what they were in Saladin's day,
and this wall must have run from the Citadel to near the
Mosque of Ibn Tulun, enclosed it, and turned north to meet
the old wall near Bab-El-Luk.

“The limits of the modern additions are only too plain,
but street improvements of the reigning dynasty happily do
not extend to the old Fatima Quarter, and indeed scarcely
affect Saladin's city, except in the prolongation and widening
of the Mooski, the opening of the broad Boulevard
Mehemet Ali up to the Citadel, and the laying out of the
Rumayla Quarter and the Kara-Meydan in the usual European
style. With these exceptions, the modern additions
extend only from the Ezbekiya Quarter to the river, and
consists of a number of parallel boulevards and rondes

---

45

places, where ugly Western uniformity is partly redeemed
by some cool, verandahed villas, and the grateful shade of
trees.”

In short, the three creators of modern Cairo are Saladin,
Mehemet Ali, and Ismail. Saladin built it, Mehemet
Ali enlarged it, and Ismail embellished and modernised
it.

Under the Saracens Egypt was governed by no less than
a hundred and forty-four rulers, some of whom were
merely governors or viziers under the Damascus and Bagdad
Caliphs respectively, while the more powerful of these
dynasties, as we shall see later, claimed the title of Caliphs,
and were virtually independent kings of Egypt.

These dynasties of Mohammedan rule, amounting to no
less than ten, cover a period of history comparatively featureless
and unimportant. Egypt under the Caliphs seems
to have no external history to speak of, except during the
reign of Saladin, and some of the Mameluke Sultans, such
as El-Ashraf, who captured Acre, and Bursbey, who reconquered
Cyprus. The only important dynasties are those of
the Omayyades, Abbassides, Fatimites (Tunis), Ayyubides
(Kurdish), and the two slave dynasties of the Mamelukes,
— the Baharide and the Circassian. The most picturesque
and interesting are the two latter.

This is a period which Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole has made
his own, and for a graphic picture of the Mameluke days we
must go to this author's “Arabian Society in the Middle
Ages,” “The Art of the Saracens,” and other works dealing
with mediaeval Egypt. An appreciable part of the history
of this period is to be read in the Cairo mosques, for
most of these magnificent shrines of Islam were built by
the Mameluke sovereigns.

In order to understand, however, the course of events in
Egypt from the fourth to the fifteenth century, it is necessary
to bear in mind the involved question of the Caliphate

and its succession. The first four Caliphs, Abu-Bekr, Omar,
Othman, and Ali, were either kinsmen or principal adherents
of the Prophet. Then we have the rule of the Omayyades,
which lasted for nearly a hundred years. When the last
of the race, Marwan II., was killed in battle, a descendant of
Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed, founded the important
dynasty of Abbassides, and the seat of the Caliphate is
transferred from Damascus to Bagdad. In the tenth century
the power of the Caliphate of Bagdad declined, and its
claim to the temporal and spiritual sovereignty of Islam
was only acknowledged in theory by the Egyptian Caliphate.
In fact the Caliphs of Bagdad gradually fell
under the control of their viziers or governors in Egypt,
just as the Merovingian sovereigns had become subject to
the “Mayors of the Palace.” In the twelfth century we
see the Fatimite dynasty of Tunis, who claimed descent
from Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, in possession of
the Egyptian Caliphate, and members of this family succeeded
in maintaining their rule for over a century, till in
1169 they were overthrown by the victorious Saladin, who
founded the Ayyubides (Kurdish) dynasty.

This great sovereign does not at first claim the title of
Caliph, but brings back Egypt nominally under the spiritual
control of the Caliph of Bagdad. Saladin deservedly
ranks as one of the greatest, and incontestably the most
enlightened, of all the sovereigns of Egypt from Pharaonic
days downwards, and under his rule Egypt is transformed
from a small kingdom into a powerful empire. In fact,
this period is closely bound up with the most important
events in European history, and every one is familiar with
Saladin's magnificent campaigns in Palestine, his conquest
of Jerusalem, and the treaty with the English king,
Richard I., and these are only a small part of his exploits.
Saladin, too, combined in a marked degree the genius for
war with the love of the beautiful, says Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole;

and the walls of Cairo and the noble Citadel bear
witness to his encouragement of architecture.

“Saladin's empire needed a strong hand to keep it
united, and the number of relatives who demanded their
share of his wide provinces rendered the survival of the
Ayyuby dominion precarious. Saladin's brother controlled
the centrifugal tendencies of his kindred for a while, and
his son, El-Kamil, gloriously defeated Jean de Brienne on
the spot where the commemorative city of El-Mansura
(the Victorious) was afterwards erected by the conqueror.
After his death in 1237, however, the forces which made
for disintegration became too strong to be resisted; various
petty dynasties of the Ayyuby family were temporarily
established in the chief provinces, only to make way
shortly for the Tartars, and in Egypt and in Syria notably
for the Mamelukes, who in 1250 succeeded to the glories
of Saladin.”

The strict meaning of Mameluke is “owned,” and the
Egyptian Mamelukes were originally white slaves. They
were first employed by the Sultan Es-Salih in the middle
of the thirteenth century as mercenaries, and in many
respects they resembled the Janissaries of the later Turks,
a body first raised for a similar purpose by the Ottoman
Sultans, about a century later. The Mamelukes soon obtained
the control of the army and became an important
factor in the body politic of Egypt, and in a few years
gained the chief authority, by 1250 A. D. becoming sufficiently
powerful to seize the throne.

The Sultans of this Mameluke dynasty offer remarkable
contrasts. Slaves in origin, and warriors by trade as well
as by inclination, bloodthirsty and ferocious, this dynasty of
adventurers had an appreciation of art which would have
done credit, as Mr. Lane-Poole aptly remarks, to the most
civilised rulers that ever sat on a constitutional throne.
“It is one of the most singular facts in Eastern history,

that, wherever these rude Tartars penetrated, there they
inspired a great and vivid enthusiasm for art. It was the
Tartar Ibn-Tulun who built the first example of the true
Saracenic mosque at Cairo; it was the line of Mameluke
Sultans, all Turkish or Circassian slaves, who filled Cairo
with the most beautiful and abundant monuments that any
city can show. The arts were in Egypt long before the
Tartars became her rulers, but they stirred them into new
life, and made the Saracenic work of Egypt the centre
and headpiece of Mohammedan art.

“Why this should be, — why the singularly tyrannical,
bloodthirsty, and unstable rule of the Mamelukes should
have fostered so remarkable a development of art, — remains,
as we have said, a mystery; but the fact is indisputable
that the period of Frankish and Circassian tyranny
in Egypt and Syria was the age of efflorescence of the
purest Saracenic art in all its branches.

“Wherever the Saracens carried their conquering arms,
a new and characteristic style of art is seen to arise. In
the mosques and private houses of Cairo, of Damascus,
of Kairowan, of Cordova and Seville, throughout Egypt,
Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, North Africa, and Spain, and
in Sicily and the Balearic Isles, we trace their influence
in the thoroughly individual and characteristic style of
architecture and ornament which is variously known
as ‘Arabian,’ ‘Mohammedan,’ ‘Moorish,’ and ‘Saracenic.’
The last term is the best, because the most comprehensive.
‘Arabian’ seems to imply that the art owed its origin to
Arabia and the Arabs, whereas it was only when the Arabs
left Arabia and ceased to be purely Arabian, that the style
of art miscalled Arab made its appearance. ‘Mohammedan’
indicates that the art was the work and invention of
Muslims, which can hardly be maintained in the face of the
fact that the first great monument of Saracenic architecture
in Egypt was designed by a Christian, and that much

of the finest work was produced by Copts and Greeks.
‘Moorish’ limits the art to the Mohammedan rulers of
Spain, where indeed a singularly magnificent development
of the style took place; but this was neither the earliest
nor the most typical form. ‘Saracenic’ art includes all
the work of the countries under Saracen rule, and, moreover,
carries with it the perfectly accurate impression that
the chief development of the art was at the time when the
Saracens were a fighting power, and the name was a household
word among the crusading nations of the West.”

The famous collection in the National Museum of
Arabic Art, which is described in a subsequent chapter,
affords abundant proofs of the extraordinary development
in the decorative arts attained by Egypt under the Mamelukes.

By some historians Melik-es-Salih is reckoned as the
founder of the Mameluke dynasty. It is true that it was
during his reign that the Mamelukes, whose influence and
power had been steadily increasing after the death of
Saladin, first became a factor of the greatest importance
in the government of the country; but Melik was himself
one of the Ayyubide Kurds, and was, in fact, a grandnephew
of Saladin. On Melik's death and the accession of
a weak and incapable sovereign, the Mamelukes, headed
by El-Muizz-Ebek, seized the throne. Ebek, who had
strengthened his position by marrying Melik's widow, was
in fact the founder of the Mameluke dynasty.

The genesis of this dynasty of adventurers is well described
by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole:

The great Sultan Bebars is a typical representative of
the rulers of this military oligarchy which controlled the
destinies of Egypt for over three centuries. In many respects
Bebars resembled Saladin, and his romantic career
has much in common with that of the founder of the
present dynasty, Mehemet Ali. His wonderful force of
character and diplomatic talents no doubt contributed to
his strikingly successful career as much as his personal
courage and capacity for governing men, qualities in which
few of the Mameluke Sultans were deficient. These qualities,
too, enabled this one-eyed slave not only to gain the
throne, but to keep it for nearly twenty years, — an unusually
long reign for a Mameluke, which averages five or six
years only, — and to found an empire that endured for
nearly three hundred years.

Bebars's reign is a fair sample of the history of this
epoch, and in Marco Polo we glean many interesting details
of this picturesque personality. Bebars was a native of
Kipchak, a district between the Caspian Sea and the Ural
Mountains. Of magnificent physique, he had one serious
defect, from the slave-trader's point of view, — a cataract
in one eye. On this account he only sold for £20. He

eventually passed into the possession of the Sultan Es-Salih.
In the war against the saintly Louis of France and
his Crusaders, Bebars distinguished himself so markedly
that he was given high command in the Mameluke army.
Taking advantage of the dissensions and rivalry of the
Mameluke generals, and the incapacity of the Sultan
Ed-Mudhaffer, he seizes the throne with little difficulty,
having won over the army to his side.

Thus begins that singular succession of Mameluke Sultans
which lasted, in spite of special tendencies to dissolution,
for two hundred and seventy-five years.

“The external history of these years is monotonous. Wars to
repel the invasions of the Tartars, or to drive the Christians from
the Holy Land, struggles between rival claimants to the throne,
embassies to and from foreign powers, including France and Venice,
the Khan of Persia and the King of Abyssinia, constitute the staple
of foreign affairs. To enumerate the events of each reign, or even
the names of the fifty Mamelukes who sat on the throne at Cairo,
would be wearisome and unprofitable to the reader. But it is different
with the internal affairs of the Mameluke period. In this flowering
time of Saracenic art, a real interest belongs to the life and
social condition of the people who made and encouraged the finest
productions of the Oriental artist. History can show few more
startling contrasts than that offered by the spectacle of a band of
disorderly soldiers, to all appearance barbarians, prone to shed
blood, merciless to their enemies, tyrannous to their subjects, yet delighting
in the delicate refinements which art could afford them in
their home life, lavish in their endowment of pious foundations,
magnificent in their mosques and palaces, and fastidious in the
smallest details of dress and furniture. Allowing all that must be
allowed for the passion of the barbarian for display, we are still far
from an explanation how the Tartars chanced to be the noblest promoters
of art, of literature, and of public works, that Egypt had
known since the days of the Ptolemies.”

To resume our sketch of the most picturesque figure
among all the Mameluke sovereigns:

In Marco Polo will be found an interesting example
of the business hours of this famous Sultan. He arrived
before Tyre one night; a tent was immediately pitched by
torchlight; the secretaries, seven in number, were summoned
with the commander-in-chief; and the adjutant-general
(Anûr Alam), with the military secretaries, were
instructed to draw up orders. For hours they ceased not
to write letters and diplomas, to which the Sultan affixed
his seal; this very night they indited in his presence fifty-six
diplomas for high nobles, each with its proper introduction
of praise to God. One of these letters has been
preserved; it is a very characteristic epistle, and displays
a grim and sarcastic appreciation of humour. It appears
that Boemond, Prince of Antioch, was not present at the
assault of that city by Bebars, and the Sultan kindly conveyed
the information of the disaster in a personal despatch.
He begins by ironically complimenting Boemond on his
change of title, from prince to count, in consequence of
the fall of his capital, and then goes on to describe the
siege and capture of Antioch, sparing his correspondent no
detail of the horrors that ensued. The letter winds up by
an ironical felicitation on Boemond's absence: “This letter
holds happy tidings for thee; it tells thee that God watches
over thee, inasmuch as in these latter days thou wast not
in Antioch! As not a man hath escaped to tell thee the
tale, we tell it thee; as no soul could apprise thee that

thou art safe, while all the rest have perished, we apprise
thee!” It would seem that, not unnaturally, the unfortunate
Prince of Antioch was highly incensed with the
Sultan's sarcastic attentions.

The most ample details of the outward life of the Mamelukes
may be gathered in the chronicles of the Arab historian,
El-Makrizy; but if we seek to know something of
the domestic life of the period, we must go elsewhere. We
occasionally find, indeed, in this historian an account of
the revels of the court on great festivals, and he tells us
how, during some festivities in Bebars's reign, there was a
concert every night in the Citadel, where a torch was
gently waved to and fro to keep the time.

“But to understand the home life of the Mamelukes, we must
turn to the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ where, whatever the
origin and scene of the stories, the manners and customs are drawn
from the society which the narrators saw about them in Cairo in
the day of the Mamelukes. From the doings of the characters in
that immortal story-book, we may form a nearly accurate idea how
the Mamelukes amused themselves; and the various articles of
luxury that have come down to us — the goblets, incense-burners,
bowls, and dishes of fine inlaid silver or gold — go to confirm the
fidelity of the picture. The wonderful thing about this old Mohammedan
society is that it was what it was in spite of Islam. With
all their prayers and fasts and irritating ritual, the Moslems of the
Middle Ages contrived to amuse themselves. Even in their religion
they found opportunities for enjoyment. They made the most
of the festivals of the faith, and put on their best clothes; they
made up parties to visit the tombs, indeed, but to visit them right
merrily on the backs of their asses; they let their servants go out
and amuse themselves, too, in the gaily illuminated streets, hung
with silks and satins, and filled with dancers, jugglers, and revellers,
fantastic figures, the Oriental Punch, and the Chinese Shadows; or
they went to witness the thrilling and horrifying performances of
the dervishes.”

Contemporaneous with the accession of the first Mameluke
dynasty is the commencement of the great Ottoman
Empire. The Ottoman Turks were so called from their

first leader, Othman, who, towards the end of the thirteenth
century, seemed likely to swallow up not only the
Asiatic provinces of the Byzantine Empire, but all Christendom.
The Turks were not, like the Saracens, a Semitic
race, nor were they of Aryan descent, but of Mongolian
or Tartar origin. Though the Turks and Arabs are often
loosely described, as if they were of the same nationality,
they have, in fact, nothing in common except their religion.
In 1453 the capital of the Empire, Constantinople, was
taken by Mohammed the Conqueror, after a siege which
lasted several years. In 1517 the Ottoman Sultan Selim,
known as the “Inflexible,” who had already added Syria
to the Ottoman Empire, conquered Egypt.

From the Ottoman conquest in 1517 till the French
occupation in the last years of the last century, and the
subjugation of the country to the famous adventurer
Mehemet Ali, a sketch of whose reign is given later, the
history of Egypt is entirely without interest.

ABARE outline of the principal events of Egyptian
history, from the end of Mehemet Ali's reign in 1848,
to the suppression of Arabi's rebellion in 1882, will suffice
to preserve the thread of the narrative in the sketch of
Egyptian history which has been attempted in the previous
chapters.

Mehemet's successor, Abbas, seems to indicate what
biologists call a “throw-back” to the type of Oriental despot,
of which some of the Mameluke sovereigns are examples.
All that can be said for him is that he maintained
the strictest authority over the army and his officials, and
that the public security in Egypt was never greater than
during his reign. He was followed by his uncle, Said, who
had the same leaning towards Western civilisation as his
father, Mehemet, and was, in many respects, an enlightened
prince. To him is due, more than to any other sovereign,
the great scheme of the maritime canal.

Many important public engineering schemes were carried
on during this reign, including the partial restoration
of the Barrage, the railway from Cairo to Alexandria, the
building of the National Museum (since removed to Ghizeh).
In spite of the crippled state of the finances, Said Pacha
abolished monopolies and equalised the incidence of taxation,
and inaugurated numerous other beneficial fiscal
reforms. Unfortunately his reign was short, and in 1863
he was succeeded by Ismail, grandson of Mehemet Ali.

Ismail, in spite of his passion for European institutions
and his exalted aims for the national development of Egypt,
which he attempted to raise to the position of a European
Power, was little more than a magnificent failure as a nineteenth
century sovereign. Though he did much for the
material progress of the country, and spent enormous sums
in what, in the case of Egypt, can in an ironical sense
only be termed “reproductive public works,” such as roads,
bridges, canals, railways, etc., he may be said to have done
more harm to his country than any sovereign since the
age of the Ptolemies. His prodigality, which will be referred
to later, was proverbial, and the fact that the public
debt on his accession was three millions, and by the end
of his reign had increased to nearly thirty-fold, speaks
volumes for the unfitness of Ismail to continue as the
sovereign of a country in the last throes of financial embarrassment,
and on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Ismail's mistake lay, not in the aim he set before him, but in
his manner of trying to attain it. No one can doubt that he was
right, as the great founder of his dynasty, Mehemet Ali, was right,
in striving to bring Egypt into line with European civilisation. …
Ismail failed for lack of patience and judgment. He tried to rush
his transformation scene. He wanted, by a stroke of the pen, to
turn the most conservative people on earth into a living embodiment
of all the virtues of a progressive and enlightened civilisation.
He had no patience for the slow conversion of a nation almost as
stolid and immovable as their own Pyramids. Their whole system
was to be changed in an instant by a coup de théâtre, with trapdoors,
stage-thunder, and a shower of fireworks. It was not so to
be done, as Ismail has by this time realised in his meditative seclusion
at Stambul.1

In 1876, the European bondholders, fearing national
bankruptcy and repudiation of the innumerable loans, induced

their respective governments to interfere; and the
revenue and expenditure were placed under the control of
commissioners appointed by the Great Powers. Ismail,
having placed insuperable difficulties in the way of the
Financial Commission, the Porte, at the instigation of the
Powers, dethroned Ismail, and placed his eldest son, Tewfik,
on the throne.

Tewfik was virtually the protégé of the Powers, and this
naturally lessened his prestige considerably in the eyes of
his subjects. Egypt was, in fact, practically a big estate,
with the Great Powers as landlord, and Tewfik as tenant.

The army, from the first, seemed to have got out of
hand, and in 1881 the military leaders, combining with
the heads of the so-called National movement, whose chief
ostensible object was the freeing of Egypt from European
influence and control, the disaffection of the people culminated
in open rebellion under Arabi, the minister of war.
In July, the English fleet went to the assistance of the
Khedive by bombarding Alexandria, and in less than two
months an English expeditionary force, under Sir Garuch
(now Lord) Wolseley, stamped out the rebellion by a
crushing defeat of Arabi's troops at Tel-el-Kebir. This
practically marks the end of Egypt as an independent
kingdom (except for the nominal allegiance due to the
Porte), and from that date to the present the history of
Egypt is the history of the development of the country
under English influence.

At the very outset, Great Britain, in dealing with
Egyptian reforms, had to contend with the serious external
obstacles due to the peculiar position of the country
through its dependence on the Porte, and to the international
tutelage as regards finances to which she was subject.
Obviously, with insufficient material the morale of government
would be lessened. Under Ismail the suzerainty of
Turkey was limited, to all intents and purposes, to the

right to exact an annual tribute of some £700,000. But
the accession of Tewfik was the Sultan's opportunity, and
the new firman included one very serious restriction on the
borrowing power of the vassal state. The sanction of
the Porte was necessary, equally with that of the Powers,
before Egypt could negotiate any fresh loan.

With this important exception, most of the powers and
privileges of sovereignty could be exercised by the Khedive.
Egypt was, indeed, far more hampered by the Great
Powers, as guardians of the caisse (treasury), than by
the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Another obstacle
was the privileges granted to foreigners which are known
as the Capitulations, of which the most important were
the exemption from the jurisdiction of the local courts
of justice, and immunity from taxation. These privileges,
too, from the time of Mehemet Ali, had been notoriously
abused by the large and powerful foreign colonies in Egypt.

This immunity from the local courts had, during the reign
of Ismail, been particularly abused by the army of concessionaires
who exploited Egypt at that period. Thousands
of preposterous claims used to be brought against the Government
by these adventurers, in the consular courts, — the
only jurisdiction to which foreigners were subject, — who
were naturally predisposed in favour of the claimant.

“Indeed, Egypt, in the sixties and seventies, was the happy hunting-ground
of financiers and promoters of the shadiest description.
An industrial or commercial enterprise might or might not be profitable
to the persons undertaking it; but the man who was lucky
enough to have a case against the Government could regard his
fortune as assured. The same ruler, who could with impunity
perpetrate acts of gross perfidy and injustice towards his native
subjects, was himself mercilessly tricked and plundered by the foreign
vampires that found such a congenial home upon Egyptian
soil.

“… If the personality of Ismail was an essential factor in the ruin
of his country, it needed a whole series of unfortunate conditions to

render that personality as it actually became. It needed a nation
of submissive slaves, not only bereft of any vestige of liberal institutions,
but devoid of the slightest spark of the spirit of liberty. It
needed a bureaucracy which it would have been hard to equal for
its combination of cowardice and corruption. It needed the whole
gang of swindlers — mostly European — by whom Ismail was surrounded,
and to whom, with his phenomenal incapacity to make a
good bargain, — strange characteristic in a man so radically dishonest,
— he fell an easy prey.

“A concession, nominally asked for to forward some useful enterprise
or business, was actually sought simply in order to find an
excuse for throwing it up, and then claiming compensation from the
Government. When the Mixed Tribunals (international courts
established to decide civil actions) were established, there were
£40,000,000 of outstanding claims made by foreigners against the
Government. The extravagant nature of these claims may be estimated
by the fact that in one claim, where 30,000,000 francs had been
demanded, the Mixed Courts awarded the plaintiff £1,000. Ismail
himself was fully alive to the sharp practice of these European
adventurers and concession-hunters, — convertible terms for the most
part, — and with a genial cynicism used to rally these European concessionaires
on their extortionate practices. During the interview
with a famous concessionaire, Ismail told one of his suite to close the
window, ‘for if this gentleman catches cold it will cost me £10,000.’

“But in Egypt European influence was far too strong to permit
of this solution of the financial difficulty, and the Powers embodied
a kind of composition with Egypt's creditors by what is known as
the Law of Liquidation, by which the country was freed from the
threatened insolvency. The interest on the debt was immensely
reduced, and Egypt was able once more to meet her liabilities, ‘but
tied hand and foot, unable to move, almost unable to breathe, without
the consent of Europe.’”

The weak points in the position of Egypt are admirably
summed up by Sir Alfred Milner:

But the Egyptian Government was too much under the
thumb of the Great Powers to adopt such an ultima ratio.
Native creditors might, and indeed were, defrauded with
impunity; but European influence was too powerful to permit
of such a policy in the case of foreign bondholders.

To return to the condition of Egypt after the collapse of
the National Party and the fall of Arabi Pacha.

With the crushing of Arabi's rebellion, England's work
in Egypt had only begun, no doubt much to the surprise
and disgust of the English Government, which had interfered
with no other object than to “restore order.” But
the quick march of events, and the fearfully rapid spread of
popular and religious excitement, were too much even for
the most pronounced supporters of a laissez faire attitude,
and a policy of simple temporary intervention was necessarily
converted by the course of events into one of more
or less permanent occupation.

“Here was a country, the very centre of the world, the great highway
of nations, — a country which, during the last half-century, had
been becoming ever more and more an appanage of Europe, — in
which thousands of European lives and millions of European capital
were at stake, and in which, of all European nations, Great Britain
was, by virtue of its enormous direct trade and still more enormous
transit trade, the most deeply interested. And this country, which
the common efforts and sacrifices of all the Powers had just dragged
from the verge of bankruptcy, was now threatened, not with bankruptcy
merely, but with a reign of blank barbarianism.”

The European Concert seemed as little able as Turkey,
Egypt's nominal protector, to cope with this pressing emergency;

and France, the partner of England, shirked her
duties in a somewhat pusillanimous fashion. Consequently
Great Britain was morally bound to “bell the cat.” The
difficulty of “restoring order,” or, as it was officially worded,
“restoring the authority of the Khedive,” was enormously
increased by the fact that not only had the whole machinery
of government been upset by the revolutionaries who called
themselves the National Party, but the whole fabric of government
had rested on a rotten base. It had no moral or
material force at its back, and the personal prestige of the
Khedive Tewfik had been seriously impaired.

Two courses were open to the British Government.
(1) They could have contented themselves with restoring
order externally, and left the responsibilities for its maintenance
to Turkish troops. Such a policy would not,
however, be tolerated in a country which, “with its large
number of European residents and swarms of foreign tourists,
lives, so to speak, constantly under the eye of civilised
mankind.” In short, such a barbarous policy seemed out
of the question. (2) If the welfare of Egypt was to be
studied, and the country to be put in the way of governing
itself according to the methods of civilised states, then the
only course was to be prepared for an occupation of the
country till the whole machinery of government could be
reconstructed, and peace and justice secured to the Egyptians,
and native administrators educated in the methods
of orderly and honest government. This was the task which
England entered upon; and it is this kind of veiled protectorate
which she is still exercising.

This “veiled protectorate” was of course in the nature of
a compromise; but for many reasons annexation, or even
an absolute protectorate, was undesirable. The creation of
this disguised protectorate was notified to the Great Powers,
January 3, 1883, in the memorable despatch, quoted
below, of Lord Granville.

“Although, for the present,” says that document, “a British force
remains in Egypt for the preservation of public tranquillity, her
Majesty's Government are desirous of withdrawing it as soon as
the state of the country and the organisation of proper means for
the maintenance of the Khedive's authority will admit of it. In the
meantime, the position in which her Majesty's Government are
placed towards his Highness imposes upon them the duty of giving
advice with the object of securing that the order of things to be
established shall be of a satisfactory character, and possess the elements
of stability and progress.”

This constitutes one of the famous “pledges of withdrawal”
with which England is twitted in season and out
of season by the French press. In fact, in a leading French
journal published at Alexandria, these pledges are daily
printed in a prominent position on the front page.

In connection with this memorable “Note” may be
quoted the important despatch — a corollary of the first
— sent by Lord Salisbury to the English envoy to the
Porte in 1887:

These documents are such important landmarks in England's
Egyptian policy, that no excuse need be offered for
quoting them at some length.

It is proverbially easy to be wise after the event; but
there is little doubt that an uncompromising protectorate,
albeit merely temporary, would have been the most satisfactory
course.

“It is certain that if we had grasped the Egyptian nettle boldly,
if we had proclaimed from the first our intention of exercising, even
for a time, that authority which, as a matter of fact, we do exercise,
we could have made the situation not only much more endurable
for the Egyptians, but much easier for ourselves. Had we seen our
way to declaring even a temporary protectorate, we might have
suspended the Capitulations, if we could not have got rid of them
altogether, as France has done in Tunis. Had we been willing to
guarantee the debt, or a portion of the debt, not only could the
interest have been at once reduced, and the financial burdens of
the country enormously lightened, but Europe would no doubt have
agreed to free the Egyptian Government from the network of restrictions
which had been imposed upon it for the protection of the
bondholders. In order to have Great Britain as surety for their
bond, the creditors would have abandoned with alacrity all their
minor safeguards.”

And now we will consider the more important reforms
and improvements carried out by England during this
virtual protectorate of the country. They may conveniently
be divided according to the great State departments,

— the army, finance, public works, and justice.
But in order to understand the significance and value of
her great reforms in the internal government of Egypt,
it is necessary to have a clear comprehension of the peculiar
difficulties — a maze of obstacles both external and
internal — which England had to contend against; and,
therefore, in the preceding pages we have attempted to
indicate the peculiar nature of these difficulties.

The delicate diplomatic relations between the Egyptian
and English Governments constitute one of the gravest
difficulties of England's position as the virtual protector
and guardian of Egypt; and the presence of an English
army of occupation in an autonomous province of a
friendly Power,— for that is the nominal relation of Egypt
to Turkey, — is not the least of these difficulties.

The British troops have, of course, no sort of status in
the country. They are not the soldiers of the Khedive, nor
foreign soldiers invited by the Khedive. They are not the
soldiers of the protecting Power, since there is in theory
no protecting Power. In theory their presence is an accident,
and their character that of simple visitors. At the
present moment they are no longer, from the military point
of view, of vital importance, for their numbers have been
repeatedly reduced; and for several years past they have
not exceeded, and do not now exceed, three thousand
men.1 It is true that their presence relieves a certain
portion of the Egyptian army from duties it would otherwise
have to perform, and that if the British troops were
altogether withdrawn, the number of Egyptian soldiers
might have to be somewhat increased. But its value as
part of the defensive forces of the country does not, of
course, constitute the real importance and meaning of the
British army of occupation. It is as the outward and

visible sign of the predominance of British influence, of
the special interest taken by Great Britain in the affairs
of Egypt, that this army is such an important element
in the present situation. Its moral effect is out of all
proportion to its actual strength.

Hitherto, not only had the native soldiers been badly
led in battle, but they were constantly defrauded of their
pay, and treated with harshness and cruelty by their officers.
Now, under the new régime, they are properly fed
and clothed, and, though discipline is strict, they are
treated as sentient beings by the new English officers.
Moreover, they are properly looked after when ill: under
the old régime a military hospital did not exist. Perhaps
the conduct of the English officers, when cholera was
raging in 1896, did more han anything else to gain the
confidence and respect of the new army. The twenty or

thirty “accursed” Christians nursed these men day and
night, and never shrank from doing the most menial offices
for them.

The British officers, as Mr. Moberly Bell aptly remarks,
are also an educational force of immense value: six thousand
natives taught obedience and discipline, and encouraged
to take a pride in themselves and their work,
are a solid gain to Egypt. The result is, that, on one
occasion when six soldiers were required for the Soudan,
— formerly regarded by the fellahs as a place of exile
for life, — the whole battalion volunteered.

While a native army was all very well, it required to
be “stiffened” by English troops. Besides, it was obvious
that without the moral support afforded by the presence
of an English army of occupation it would be hopeless to
carry out any lasting projects of reform.

Those responsible for the reform in the army had, of
course, within wide limits, a free hand. Very different
was the case of those responsible for placing on a sound
basis the Egyptian finances. From the outset they were
met by the fact that the representatives of the Powers on
the Commission of the caisse regarded the Egyptian financial
administration as the mere bailiff of the bondholders,
and were inclined to starve the public services for their
benefit. The cardinal principle of Egyptian finance involved,
in fact, a perpetual struggle between the caisse and
the Government. The interest on the debt being the first
charge on the caisse, all the revenue is paid first to the
treasury, but the Government can draw upon any surplus
up to the limit of the “authorised” annual expenditure.

So fettered was Egypt by the Powers in financial matters,
that nothing in the nature of a variable budget
was allowed. A certain fixed sum (about six millions) is
allowed her annually for all the expenses of government.
If, however, there still remains a surplus in the caisse

after the interest on the debt and the authorised expenditure
have been met, half goes to the reduction of the debt,
and half to the Government. In the event of there being
no surplus, and an extra sum is yet required by the Government
for a public work of undoubted utility, it must
raise double that sum from the taxpayers, because of the
stringent rules which insist on half of all the revenue
(after interest and authorised expenditure are paid) being
devoted to the reduction of the debt.

This, in a nutshell, was the condition of Egypt's financial
position when England entered upon the task of bringing
the revenue and the expenditure into a state of stable
equilibrium. The results have exceeded the most sanguine
expectations. The chief features of the new fiscal policy
are a more equitable distribution of the taxes, the suppression
of the corvée (the forced labour of the peasants for
the dredging and repair of the canals, the most grievous
of all the burdens of the people), greater outlay on reproductive
works, and less expenditure on “non-effective”
objects. All this has been accomplished without any
increase in the annual expenditure; and the increase in the
revenue, which has been remarkably uniform and steady
since 1886 to the present year, has been concurrent with
lightened taxation. This has been possible, owing to the
careful economy in the administration and improved methods
of collection. Under Ismail an enormous proportion
of the taxes, actually wrung from the overburdened fellaheen,
never reached the treasury at all, but was absorbed
by the officials and the farmers of the taxes.

“Two great factors have combined to bring about the financial
recuperation of Egypt, — the prevention of waste on the part of the
administration, and the development of the productive powers of the
country. As far as the prevention of waste is concerned, the first
essential was a proper system of accounts. Accounts are the foundation
of finance. You may have good accounts and a bad financial
administration, but you cannot have good finance with bad accounts.

There was nothing more fatal in the financial chaos of the days of
Ismail than the manner in which the private property of the Khedive
was jumbled up with the property of the State. This mischievous
confusion was put an end to when Ismail's vast estates were
surrendered to his creditors, and a regular civil list substituted for
the multifarious revenues which at one time flowed into the coffers
of the sovereign of Egypt.”

The creation of a solvent Egypt has, indeed, been mainly
the work of Sir Edgar Vincent and his successors in the
office of financial adviser to the Khedive. This reëstablishment
of solvency is directly traceable to increased production.

The material wealth of Egypt is far from being exhausted;
and if proper measures are taken to economise her potential
productiveness, there is no reason why, in less than a
generation, she should not attain “a degree of prosperity
as undreamt of now, as her present position of solvency
was undreamt of only ten years ago.”

It is all a question of water. The cultivable area might
be enormously extended if the water supply, which for
many months of the year is practically unlimited, could be
properly utilised on a large scale by means of canals and
reservoirs.

From the time of the Caliphs downwards, this truth
seems to have been recognised by the more enlightened
Egyptian sovereigns and statesmen. It was the Caliph
Omar who gave the following advice to his viceroy: “Beware
of money-lenders, and devote one-third of thy income
to making canals.” Had Ismail taken this counsel of perfection
to heart, the regeneration of Egypt need not have
been left to Great Britain and the other Great Powers.

Except in abnormal cases, the Egyptian cultivator can
afford to pay his taxes if he receives a proper supply of
water for his crops. From time immemorial, Egyptian law
has recognised the intimate connection between land tax

and water supply. The land which in any given year
gets no water, is for that year legally exempt from all
taxation whatever. As soon as it gets water its liability
is established. But it is evident that the mere fact of
receiving some water, though it may set up the liability
of the cultivator to pay, does not necessarily insure his capacity
to do so. In order to insure that, he must get his
water in proper quantities and at the proper times. But
this is just what, in thousands of instances, he could
not get, as long as the irrigation system remained in that
state of unutterable neglect and confusion into which it
had fallen in the period preceding the British occupation.

Of the long catalogue of beneficent measures by which
the tax-paying power of the Egyptian people has been increased,
the greatest and most essential is the reform of
the irrigation system.

It would not be easy to exaggerate the enormous importance
of irrigation in Egypt. An adequate and sound system
of irrigation implies, in fact, not only its commercial
and agricultural prosperity, but its very existence as a
civilised and solvent State.

In many respects, as we have shown, Egypt is a
unique country, but only Government officials are able to
realise fully the deep significance of Herodotus's epigram,
which attempts to sum up the one great feature of this
“Land of Paradox” in the pregnant aphorism, “Egypt is
the gift of the Nile.”

To understand even the very A B C of the Egyptian
system of agriculture, two great facts must be borne in
mind. The first is that the country is watered, not by
rain, but by the river. In Upper Egypt rain practically
never falls. Even in Lower Egypt it is a negligible quantity.
The second great fact is that the river is not only
the irrigator, but the fertiliser of the soil. The fine, reddish-brown
mud, which the Blue Nile washes down from

the volcanic plateaus of Abyssinia, mixed with organic matter
from the swamp region of the White Nile, does more
than manure can do for the annual renovation of the land.

Having grasped these essential facts, we are able to
understand the reason of there being two systems of agriculture
in Egypt. In Upper Egypt the natural inundation is
not supplemented by a subsidiary system of irrigation canals
(except the flood canals) and reservoirs, and the methods
are absolutely the same as those sculptured on the walls
of Pharaonic temples. After the spring harvest, the land
lay idle till the next inundation. This primeval system
answered, no doubt, for cereals, but not for cotton and sugar,
two of the most profitable of the earth's products for which
the Egyptian climate is admirably suited. But perennial
irrigation is reserved for these crops, and they must be watered,
not drowned.

The important distinction between the two kinds of irrigation
must always be borne in mind. In the Upper Nile
Valley, the aim of the cultivator is to cover as much land
as possible with the Nile water and its deposit of fertilising
mud. In the more scientific farming of the Delta, the
efforts of the cultivator were mainly confined to controlling
the Nile inundation, — to keep it away during high flood,
and to retain as much as possible of the water during the
period of low Nile. To Mehemet Ali is due the credit of
inventing this system of perennial irrigation and encouraging
the cultivation of those more valuable crops, cotton and
sugar, in the Delta, which has given Egypt a high position
in the markets of the world for these commodities. But
Mehemet Ali's scientific methods were too advanced for
the times, and depended for success upon the continuous
personal supervision of his French engineers. This was
not given; and local prejudices being against these “new-fangled
notions,” Mehemet's admirable conception was a
failure.

Of the specific works of reform in this department, the
Barrage was one of the most important. This great dam,
however, forms the subject of a separate chapter.

Irrigation on the Delta has now been put on a proper
footing. There is a complete network of main and subsidiary
canals designed on scientific principles, with the Barrage
as the starting-point.

Great importance has also been given, as will be seen
from the following extract from Lord Cromer's last report
(February, 1897), to the important work of drainage:

Very different in character have been the irrigation operations
in Upper Egypt, where reservoirs take the place of
canals. The chief work here has been the reclamation of
the Sharaki districts. This is the term given to lands
which, owing to their receiving no water, are relieved of all
taxation. Obviously, few public works could be more
directly and more immediately remunerative to the State
than this. For instance, in the year of low Nile, £300,000
of taxes had to be abandoned.1

What is imperatively required in the Upper Nile Valley
is not a great dam like the Barrage, but a large reservoir
for retaining the superfluous flood-water for distribution
during the summer. This need is admitted on all hands,
but the burning question of Egyptian irrigation was for
many years narrowed to the comparative merits of the proposed
sites. As, however, Assouan has now been definitely
selected by the Government for the site of this reservoir, it
is unnecessary to discuss the rival projects for a storage
reservoir at Wady Halfa, Kalabsheh, or Wady Rayan in
the Fayyum. It goes without saying, that, with an increased
supply of water, the amount of crops could be enormously
increased in the Delta and Upper Egypt. But while in
Lower Egypt the increase would be in additional reclaimed
land, in Upper Egypt, where the cultivated area cannot be
extended, increased cultivation simply means summer as
well as winter crops.

Experts estimate that a reservoir capable of storing about
two thousand millions cubic metres a year, and providing
one hundred thousand acres with summer irrigation, would
add between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000 annually to the
produce of the country; and as Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff's
estimate of the cost is not more than £2,600,000, the
profit on this capital would obviously be enormous.

The English engineers, mostly trained in the Indian

Public Works Department, did not fall into the error of
attempting to carry out the various undertakings connected
with irrigation from the headquarters at Cairo. Personal
supervision was the key-note of the policy of the new
department. The country was divided into five circles of
irrigation (three in the Delta, and two in Upper Egypt),
of which four were intrusted to the newcomers from
India. This plan of localising the engineering talent,
which it had been found desirable to import into the country,
proved a complete success.

“Viewed as a whole, there can be no question that the Irrigation
Department is, of all the branches of the Egyptian service managed
by British chiefs, the one upon which, from first to last, it has been
possible to look with the most unmixed pride. With men of this
calibre stationed in every quarter of the country, seeing with their
own eyes, and intrusted with a wide discretion to act to the best of
their judgment, the work of improvement marched as rapidly as the
limited amount of money at the disposal of the Irrigation Service
would permit. While a great deal was left to the initiative of the
individual inspectors, and the methods of each of them presented
considerable diversity, there was still a general harmony of purpose
running through their work.”

Nothing, perhaps, illustrates more forcibly the confidence
the natives have in the engineers than an incident quoted
by Sir Alfred Milnes in his invaluable study of modern
Egypt. He had asked a native statesman, who was bitterly
opposed to the English occupation, what Egypt would
do without the engineers. The reply was to the effect
that the sooner England retired the better, but that the
engineers would certainly not be allowed to go.

The engineer in the remote country district is, indeed,
not only an indispensable official, but may be regarded as
a useful educational and civilising force. “The people
recognise in him the great benefactor of their district, and,
with a childlike simplicity, they turn to him for help and
counsel even in concerns the least related to his actual
functions.”

The following amusing anecdote illustrates this attitude
of the fellaheen towards these officials.

In one year of exceptionally low Nile, a certain district
was threatened with a total failure of the crops, owing to
the canal being too low to irrigate the fields. A cry of
despair arose from the whole populace, who, as usual, implored
the aid of one of the English inspectors of irrigation
who happened to be on the spot. This official promptly
determined to throw a temporary dam across the canal.
The idea was a bold one. The time was short. The canal
was large, and, though lower than usual, it was still carrying
a great body of water at a considerable velocity. Of
course no preparations had been made for a work the
necessity for which had never been contemplated. Labour,
at any rate, was forthcoming in any quantity, for the people,
who saw starvation staring them in the face, needed
no compulsion to join gladly in any enterprise which
afforded them even the remotest chance of relief. So the
inspector hastily got together the best material within
reach. He brought his bed on to the canal bank, and
did not leave the scene of operations, night or day, till
the work was finished. And the plan succeeded. To
the surprise of all, the dam was somehow or other made
strong enough to resist the current. The water was raised
to the required level, and the land was effectually flooded.
The joy and the gratitude of the people knew no bounds.
It was decided to offer thanksgivings in the mosque of the
chief town of the district, and the event was considered of
such general importance that even that exalted functionary
the Minister of Public Works, himself made a special point
of attending the ceremony.

In the Department of Justice and Police—using the word
“justice” in its narrow but conventional sense as meaning
all that appertains to courts of law — less progress has been
made towards reform than in other State departments.

And yet there is no doubt that in the whole administrative
field of Egypt, in no department is the cardinal principle
which underlies all British intervention, — viz., not merely
governing, but teaching the Egyptians how to govern themselves,
— more necessary to be kept in view. One reason
for the slow development of law and justice is, that this is
a branch of government which has been less under the
influence of the English. In fact, we were late in the field.
No effective interference took place till about 1889, when
Sir John Scott was appointed with the title of Judicial
Adviser to the Khedive, who virtually undertook the functions
of minister, though there was a native statesman bearing
that title.

There is not one judicial system in Egypt, but four.
There is the old Koranic system, worked by the Mehkennehs,
or courts of the religious law, which are now mainly
confined to dealing with the personal status of Mohammedans.
There is the system of the mixed courts, which
deals with civil actions between foreigners of different
nationalities, or between foreigners and natives, and, in a
small degree, with the criminal offences of foreigners.
There is the system, or no system, of the consular courts,
which deals with the great body of foreign crime. Finally,
there is the system of the new native courts, which deals
with civil actions between natives, or crimes committed by
them. Of all these, it is only the native courts which the
English have taken in hand, and that not till within the
last few years.

The native courts are, in one sense, though ranking only
as courts of first instance, the most important of all as
affecting the greatest number of people; but the English
were, at first, chary of doing more than giving advice.
The original personnel of the native court was very unsatisfactory,
and jobbing and nepotism was rife. Mr. Scott
entered upon the delicate work of reform in a judicious

and moderate spirit. He wisely contented himself with
modifying the judicial system without radically altering
the procedure and machinery of the law.

By a series of important changes of detail Sir John has
modified the judicial system which he found existing, and
rendered it vastly more suitable to the conditions of the
country; but he has never attempted to revolutionise it.
No doubt, if he had the work to do de novo, he would
prefer something more like the Indian system, which
experience has proved to be so well suited to the wants
of a backward country, where most of the litigants are
poor, and most of the cases simple. He recognised, however,
that the Egyptian codes and procedure, such as he
found them, were the only ones which the native judicial
body knew how to work, or to which the people were
accustomed. He therefore wisely decided not radically
to alter the actual administration of justice, but simply to
improve it in the points where it was most imperfect.

It is curious that, at first, the chief fault in the administration
of justice by these lower courts was the dilatoriness
of the proceedings. Now, according to the last report
of the Judicial Adviser to the Khedive, the chief defect of
these courts was the hasty manner in which the actions were
tried, and the old charge that “Justice long delayed is no
justice,” certainly cannot now be brought against the native
tribunals. The natural result of this tendency to haste
on the part of the judges, who must, however, be given
full credit for the zeal in which they set their faces against
arrears of cases, is to give an unnecessary amount of work
to the courts of appeal. Good authorities are, however, of
opinion that, taken collectively, the native tribunals give
every sign of working admirably, with a judicious leaven of
European judges.

In the organisation of the police mistakes have avowedly
been made by the English officers responsible for the

reconstruction, owing mainly to a lack of continuity in
the policy of reconstruction and reorganisation. The first
chief, Gen. Valentine Baker, who was sent out to command
the police soon after the English occupation, though
an admirable cavalry officer, was totally unfitted for the
office of inspector-general of police. Besides, he started
on a wrong tack. “His whole management of the police
was influenced, from the first, by the conviction that
they would sooner or later be converted into a military
reserve.”

After General Baker's death, Mr. Clifford Lloyd tried
his hand at the work of police organisation. Under this
energetic reformer, the police were made an independent
body, and free from the control of the mudirs (governors
of provinces). This proved a short-sighted policy, and
lessened the prestige of these provincial authorities, on
whom the whole internal administration of their respective
provinces depended. Ultimately, through the efforts
of Nubas Pacha, a compromise was arrived at, which is
still in force.

The police of each province, as matters are now arranged,
are under the authority of the mudir; but, on the
other hand, his orders must be given to them through
their own local officers. He has no power of interference
with the discipline and organisation of the force, nor can
he make use of it except for the legitimate purposes of
maintaining order and repressing crime. If he has cause
of complaint against the conduct of the police, his remedy
lies in an appeal to the ministry of the interior, which,
through the inspector-general at headquarters, deals with
the case. This is as it should be; but, of course, the
success of the system, depends on a spirit of give and
take on both sides, and on friendly relations between the
mudirs and the chiefs of the police.

In the Department of the Interior important reforms

in the maintenance of public security, in addition to the
police force, have been effected since the establishment
of a responsible English official, who bears the title of
Adviser on Internal Affairs. Mr. J. L. Gorst, appointed
in 1894, was the first to occupy this important post; and
he is still the virtual head of the Department of the
Interior, though a native statesman is the titular chief.
The principal work has been the reorganisation of the village
watchmen (ghaffirs), who serve as a supplementary
police force in the country districts. This unwieldy body
was much reduced in numbers, but put into a state of
efficiency, and placed under the control of the respective
omdahs, or village sheiks.

These omdahs were answerable to the mamurs, or governors
of districts, and the latter were under the control
of the mudirs, who, in turn, were responsible to the Minister
of the Interior. Thus a regular series of authorities
was effected in the machinery of government, by which the
central authority in Cairo was in touch with the fellahs in
the remotest district of the Upper Nile Valley.

The above is an epitome of the development and results
of the more important reforms in the administration of
Egypt under British influence; but without wearying my
readers with a catalogue of reforms suggesting a diluted
Blue Book, it will be well to note briefly a few more improvements
in other branches of the public services.

In the matter of sanitation and sanitary reform, the
attention of the Egyptian Government has only of late
years — prompted, doubtless, by the serious epidemics of
cholera in 1883 and 1896 — been directed to the pressing
need of reform in matters affecting the public health; and
till recently the Department of Public Health remained
one of the least satisfactory in the public service. This
is largely due, no doubt, to the paucity of the funds available
for sanitary reform on a large scale. The department

was, in short, for many years after its establishment in
1885, shelved and starved. This is virtually admitted by
Lord Cromer in his report for 1897:

A great deal must be allowed for the ingrained horribly
unsanitary habits of the natives. Though personally
clean and not averse to the use of water, — in fact,
their religion enjoins frequent and regular ablution, — the
huts of the fellaheen are indescribably filthy. The canals,
which in the remote districts are the only source of water,
are subject to every kind of pollution. Near most villages
there are birkas, or stagnant ponds, which are as malarious
as they are malodorous. Even in the principal cities
there is absolutely no system of drainage. In the case of
Cairo, as will be shown later, this reproach will, however,
soon be removed. In short, the observant traveller only
wonders that the awful cholera epidemic of last year is not
repeated annually. Then, besides, there are special difficulties
in addition to the ignorance and apathy and unsanitary
customs of the people, which the sanitary reformer has
to confront. These are the religious prejudices of the Moslems.
The mosques are the principal offenders against
the laws of health, and the latrines attached to every one
of these buildings are often centres of infection. Injudicious
interference might easily excite a fanatical opposition,
which would stand seriously in the way of all
sanitary reform. However, the judicious handling of this
sanitary work by Rogers Pacha resulted in placing, in one
year (1896), over one hundred and fifty mosques in a
proper sanitary condition.

In connection with this subject some reference should
be made to the cholera epidemic of last year, already
referred to. The following extracts from Rogers Pacha's
Report are instructive:

The scheme for a thorough system of drainage for Cairo
shows that the revival of interest in sanitation is beginning
to take a practical form.

“This is a tremendous undertaking, estimated to cost at least
£500,000. The necessity has long been recognised, but it has been
put off from year to year, owing to want of money, — not so much
absolute want of money, as want of power to apply money that actually
existed to the desired object, owing to the usual and ten-times
explained necessity of obtaining the consent of the Powers, or, more
properly, the consent of France, for none of the others made any
difficulty. France was finally appeased last year by the appointment
of an International Commission to examine the various competing
schemes. This Commission, composed of an Englishman,
a Frenchman, and a German, sat last winter, and ended by proposing
a scheme of its own, for which preliminary investigations are at

present being made. So in two or three years we may hope to see
Cairo drained, in which case that city, or at any rate the European
quarter of it, will very likely be one of the healthiest places of
residence in the world.”

It may reasonably be expected that this important sanitary
reform will have some effect in reducing the deplorable
high death-rate of Cairo, — forty-six per one thousand,
which is actually double that of many European capitals;
the average death-rate of Paris being twenty-three,
and London nineteen, per one thousand. It must, however,
be remembered that this abnormally heavy bill of
mortality is to some extent factitious. For Cairo is regarded
by the Egyptians in the light of a sacred city, and
they are accustomed to crowd into it from the villages of
the Delta, when they feel their end approaching, simply
to die in Cairo.

Till the last few years, the educational system seemed
little affected by the spirit of reform which was influencing
Egypt and its national institutions. No department has
borne richer fruit of late. But though there has lately
been a remarkable increase in the number of schools and
scholars, only a small minority of the latter belong to the
Mohammedan religion.

Previous to 1884, the few Government schools were also
boycotted by parents of the dominant faith, the religious
influence of the Ulemas, who controlled the El-Azhar
University and the innumerable schools attached to the
mosques, being too strong to be combated. The famous
El-Azhar University — “a petrified university, which rests
like a blight upon the religious and intellectual life of
the country” — has moulded all the religious training in
Egypt.

The better class of the Mohammedans are now, however,
beginning to tolerate the Government foundations; and
there are now nearly eight thousand scholars in the primary

schools, while there are about fifteen hundred in the
secondary schools and the eight higher professional schools
or technical colleges (Law, Military, Medicine, Engineering,
Agriculture, etc.).

Hitherto, the educational vote has made a poor show in
the Egyptian budget, and some critics maintain that education
is the “Cinderella” among the Egyptian departments
of state. This, no doubt, will be rectified in future
budgets. It must of course be remembered that —

To come to a higher form of public education, — the art
of government, — it cannot be said that much progress has
been made in developing representative institutions in the
machinery of government. It is true that there is a Legislative
Council, but its powers are inconsiderable, being
mainly confined to proposing amendments to proposed laws
affecting the administration. As the Council cannot initiate
legislation, and as the Ministry need not accept the amendments,
the Legislative Councils are not of great importance
in the body politic.

Then there is the General Assembly, — which is simply
the Council, enlarged by a popular element. This has one
important function, for no new taxes can be imposed without
its consent. As, however, this assembly only meets
once every two years, it cannot play a very considerable
part in Egyptian politics.

The time, in fact, has not yet come for applying the principle
of representative government, in any great degree, to
the national affairs of Egypt. It would be sounder policy
to begin by introducing it into the management of local
business, and even then tentatively and with caution.

The only local representative institution having administrative
powers, which at present exists, is the municipality
of Alexandria. That city, by virtue of its large European
population, has probably more of the elements requisite for
the success of local self-government than any other town
in Egypt. On the other hand, the mixture of Europeans
and natives in this municipality gives rise to certain special
difficulties.

The attitude of England in this policy of Egyptian intervention,
since the Arabi revolt, is simple and comprehensive.
It was natural that the British Government should suppose
that their task, when France, in 1882, threw all responsibility
for Egypt on their hands, was a simple one; namely,
to crush a military rising. Only actual experience taught
England that the rebellion was a very small matter, and
that the real difficulty lay in the utter rottenness of the
whole fabric of government. Naturally, then, the pledges
England made, being based on a total misapprehension,
were impossible of fulfilment. But to the spirit of these
pledges England has been faithful. It is indisputable that
England has derived no pecuniary or other benefit from
her occupation of Egypt. As a matter of fact, among the
foreign employees in the Egyptian civil service there are
nearly twice as many of French or Italian nationality as of
English. In 1895, for instance, there were 348 Italians,
326 French, and 174 English in the Khedive's service.

No nation is able to say that any legitimate right or
privilege which it once possessed in Egypt has been infringed
by any action of England. Such right or privilege
remains absolutely untouched, even where it would be

just and reasonable that it should be modified. And, on the
other hand, what European people, having any interests in
Egypt, has not benefited by the fact that that country has
been preserved from disorder and restored to prosperity?
That this is the true view of the character of British policy
is shown by the willing acquiescence, if not the unspoken
approval, of the majority of civilised nations.

As for the attitude of the French Government, it is natural
enough that France should feel some resentment at
England holding the position in Egypt, among all European
nations, that she herself once held, and foolishly resigned
when, in 1882, she shirked at the last moment, and left
England to “face the music” alone. Then in 1887, at the
time of the Constantinople Conference, it was France who
put obstacles in the way of the withdrawal of England. In
short, logically, France is mainly answerable for the British
continued occupation in Egypt. But yet it must be allowed
that France has many reasons for being hurt and disappointed,
considering the enormous value of her services to
Egypt in the past.

“It was France who supported Egypt in her struggle for independence
from Turkey, when all the other Powers were against her,
and when by this opposition they prevented that independence from
becoming complete; it was to France that Mehemet Ali turned for
aid in his attempt to civilise Egypt, as he understood the meaning
of civilisation. For something like half a century, French lawyers,
French engineers, French men of learning, were engaged in doing
their best—often under most discouraging circumstances—to deluge
Egypt with the fruits of European culture.

“In short, Frenchmen may claim to have been the pioneers of
European influence. Whatever Egypt borrowed from Europe,
whether in the material or intellectual sphere, came to her first
through French channels. Her upper classes, if educated at all,
were educated by Frenchmen in French ideas. French even became
an official language, side by side with Arabic. To this day, the
English in the Egyptian service write official letters to one another
in halting French.”

Then there is the Canal. This stupendous work is of
course purely French in conception and execution, and was
(see a later chapter) undertaken in face of the continued
and bitter hostility of England. There is, then, some
excuse for France making all the capital she can out of the
unfortunate engagements, or “pledges,” of England, published
and reiterated urbi et orbi, in 1883 and 1887.

It is necessary, however, to look at the other side of the
question. France has, no doubt, been of great service to
this erstwhile “distressful country;” but her services are
counterbalanced by her tendency to exploit and make
money out of Egypt, which seems to have been a cardinal
principle of her Egyptian policy, from the death of Mehemet
Ali to 1882.

“In the days prior to the establishment of the Mixed Tribunals, —
which France resisted with all her might, — French adventurers
exploited Egypt in the most merciless fashion, and they frequently
enjoyed the support of French diplomacy in their nefarious game.
No Great Power has clung with such tenacity as France to all the
advantages, however indefensible and galling, bestowed on its subjects
by the Capitulations. She has shown no consideration for the
weakness of Egypt. She has never hesitated to use her immense
superiority of power to push the interests of French traders, French
contractors, and French financiers. In the years immediately preceding
the Arabist revolution, when England and France were
acting in concert in the Egyptian affairs, it was France who was for
getting the last pound of flesh out of the Egyptian debtor. It was
England who was in favour of showing some consideration for the
people of Egypt, and not of treating the question purely as one of
pounds, shillings, and pence.”

The withdrawal of England on the understanding that
France should never occupy the country — if such a pledge
could be enforced, for circumstances might easily arise in
which France would be wrong to keep this pledge — has
been suggested as one way out of the Egyptian difficulty.
A settlement of this vexed international question by means

of such a self-denying ordinance on the part of France and
England is not likely to be advantageous, or even anything
but a temporary shelving of the difficulty.

“Can any man,” says an old resident, who has held high office in
the Egyptian civil service, and had peculiar opportunities for observing
and judging impartially the results of English influence in
Egypt, “knowing the social and political condition of the country,
maintain with confidence that if Egypt were left to herself to-morrow
favouritism and corruption would not once more raise their heads;
that justice would not once more be venal; that the administration
would not once more gradually fall back into disorder; and that, as
a consequence of such disorder, financial equilibrium would not again
be jeopardised? And then should we not have the old story: the
embarrassment of the treasury, causing the impoverishment of the
people, — such impoverishment leading to discontent and agitation;
that agitation directed not only against the Government, but, under
the inspiration of mischief-making fanatics, against all progressive
elements of society, — another Arabi, another revolution? And if, in
prospect of a fresh cataclysm threatening every European interest,
after all diplomatic means had been exhausted France were to
declare that she could stand it no longer; if she were to take the
line which we took in 1882, — what moral right should we have to
say her nay? Could we fight or restrain her from interfering?”

The withdrawal, however, of Great Britain, if it is not to
end in disaster, can only be a gradual process. An intangible
influence made up of many elements, like that of England
in Egypt, cannot be withdrawn any more than it can
be created at a certain hour or by a certain act.

One of the most absurd suggestions for the cutting of
this Gordian knot is neutralisation. In the case of small
but well-governed and highly civilised States, such as Belgium
and Switzerland, neutralisation and a strict principle
of non-intervention by the Great Powers is all very well;
it would, however, be difficult to conceive anything more
unlike than the internal condition of those well-governed
countries and that of Egypt. A neutral policy on the part
of the Powers would scarcely be likely to insure the internal

good government and the peace of Egypt. It would
be simply evading the main object of all foreign interference,
whether by the six Powers, or England and France
jointly, or by England alone. However, Great Britain is
hardly likely to adopt so weak and cowardly a policy,
which would “simply mean that, from unwillingness to
allow any one of their number to do the work in which all
are interested, the Powers should determine that that work
must be left undone.” Such, indeed, stripped of all diplomatic
highfalutin, is the meaning of the specious word
“neutralisation” applied to Egypt. Besides, how would
the various foreign interests, which undoubtedly exist in
Egypt, be safeguarded if Egypt was neutralised?

Another suggestion by political theorists is that Egypt's
natural guardian the Porte, as its suzerain, should be the
protector of Egypt, which should be neutral as regards all
other European powers. Turkey, in short, would be the
policeman of Egypt, and be responsible for order and firm
internal government. There is something almost ludicrous
in this proposal. “The idea of intrusting Turkey with the
maintenance of reforms the chief aim of which has been
to differentiate Egypt from Turkish administration, is like
substituting the wolf for the sheep-dog as the guardian of
the flock.”

Then there are many who advocate what they are pleased
to call “internationalisation.” This is going backwards
with a vengeance. In other words, Egypt would be “put
into commission,” and fettered by the Great Powers in her
administrative and internal policy, as she is already in her
financial measures. For Egypt has indeed suffered already
from a certain amount of internationalism. It is the bondholders
who have the power of the purse, and the raison
d'être of the sanction of the Powers in measures affecting
the finances is the fact that they represent the creditors
of Egypt. Then, too, the veto of the Powers which already

exists on the legislative authority of the Egyptian Government,
might be supposed to give sufficient European influence.
When the political chaos of the last years of
Ismail, when Egypt was tied hand and foot by Europe, —
each country having a right to a finger in the pie, and each
disdaining responsibility, — gave way to the dual control,
it was a great step in advance, and results have shown that
the single control has benefited Egypt still more. It
might naturally be supposed, then, by all unbiassed and
disinterested observers,—by all, in short, who are not confirmed
Anglophobists, — that the retention of the guardianship
by England, so long as any foreign intervention is
necessary, is the one sensible solution of the Egyptian
question.1

THE traveller, reaching the Land of the Pharaohs by
the direct sea-route viâ Alexandria, must be prepared
for a certain sense of disappointment when the bleak and
barren shores of the Nile Delta are first sighted. The
monotonous ridges of desolate sand-hills, varied by equally
unattractive lagoons, are a melancholy contrast to the beautiful
scenery of the North African littoral farther west,
which delighted his eyes a few days before, as the vessel
skirted the Algerian and Tunisian coasts. If the expectant
traveller is so disillusioned by his first glimpse of
Egypt from the sea, still keener is his disappointment
when the ship enters the harbour. But for an occasional
palm-tree or minaret standing out among the mass of shops
and warehouses to give a faint suggestion of Oriental atmosphere,
this bustling and painfully modern-looking city
might be mistaken for some flourishing French seaport,
say a Marseilles or a Havre, plumped down on the Egyptian
plain. It is difficult to realise that this is the city
of Alexander the Great, and the metropolis of Egypt under
the Ptolemies.

Alexandria, though a much modernised and hybrid sort
of city, is not without interest. It has, no doubt, been
rather neglected by writers of Egyptian travel, and, consequently,
ignored by tourists, who do not as a rule strike

out a line for themselves. It has been regarded too much
as the most convenient landing-place for Cairo, and visitors
usually devote but a few hours for a hasty inspection of its
curiosities before rushing off by express-train to the City
of the Caliphs.

It would, of course, be absurd to compare Alexandria,
essentially the commercial capital of Egypt, in point of
artistic or historic interest with Cairo; though, as a matter
of fact, the capital is a modern city in comparison with the
Alexandria of Alexander, while Alexandria itself is but of
mushroom growth contrasted with Heliopolis, Thebes,
Memphis, or other dead cities of the Nile Valley of which
traces still remain. It has often been remarked that the
Ptolemaic capital has bequeathed nothing but its ruins and
its name to the Alexandria of to-day. Even these ruins
are deplorably scanty, and many of the sites are purely
conjectural. Few vestiges remain of the architectural
splendours of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Where are now the
four thousand palaces of which the conquering general
Amru boasted to his master, the Caliph Omar? What now
remains of the magnificent Temple of Serapis towering
over the city on its platform of one hundred steps? But
though there are scarcely any traces of the glories of
ancient Alexandria, the traditions of the golden age of
the Egyptian Renaissance cannot be altogether forgotten
by the classical student; and to the thoughtful traveller
imbued with the genius loci, this city of memories is not
without a certain charm. Here Saint Mark preached the
gospel and suffered martyrdom, and here Athanasius in
warlike controversy did battle with the Arian heresies.
Here, in this centre of Greek culture, were for many centuries
collected the greatest intellects of the age. Here
Cleopatra, vainqueur des vainqueurs du monde, held Antony
a willing captive while Octavius was preparing his
legions to crush him. Here Amru conquered, and here

Abercrombie fell. Even those whose tastes do not incline
them to historical or theological researches are familiar,
thanks to Kingsley's immortal romance, with the story of
the noble-minded Hypatia and the crafty and unscrupulous
Cyril, and can give rein to their imagination by verifying
the site of the museum where she lectured, and of the
Caesareum where she fell a victim to the atrocious zeal of
Peter the Reader and his rabble of fanatical monks.

Just as Alexandria has been ignored by the Egyptian
tourist, so has it been persistently neglected by antiquaries
and Egyptologists, and no systematic excavation on the
sites of ancient buildings has been undertaken. It is true
that of recent years some attempt has been made by the
Egyptian Exploration Fund to discover some of the architectural
spoils of the Ptolemaic dynasty buried beneath the
accumulation of rubbish of centuries; but the splendid
opportunity for the excavation and exploration of the
conjectural sites of the Serapeum, Caesareum, and other
famous monuments, afforded in 1882, when a great portion
of the city lay in ruins after the bombardment, was allowed
to pass by this learned society. In 1895 Mr.
Hogarth carried out a series of experimental borings, but
the results were not encouraging, as water was found under
the twenty to thirty feet of the deposit of rubbish, and
only a few poor specimens of Roman and Byzantine architecture
rewarded the trouble of the explorer. Mr. Hogarth
explains the remarkable disappearance of the many palaces
and temples, which studded the city during the age of the
Ptolemies, by the subsidence of the soil and the encroachment
of the sea. Some authorities, among them Professor
Mahaffy, do not, however, consider that any definite conclusions
should be drawn from this partial and superficial
probing of the soil. Very possibly Mr. Hogarth was unfortunate
in tapping the low-lying parts of the city, and it
would be advisable that future excavations should be carried

on in the elevated ground near Pompey's Pillar, which
most antiquaries agree in regarding as the site of the Serapeum.
But in a crowded city like Alexandria all scientific
excavation is particularly costly, owing to the difficulty of
disposing of the excavated soil.

The peculiar shape of the city, built partly on the Pharos
island and peninsula, and partly on the mainland, is due,
according to the ancient chroniclers, to a patriotic whim of
the founder, who planned the city in the form of a chlamys,
the short cloak or tunic worn by the Macedonian soldiers.
The modern city, though it has pushed its boundaries a
good way to the east and west, still preserves this curious
outline, albeit, to a non-classical mind, it rather suggests a
starfish. Various legends are extant to account for the
choice of this particular spot for a Mediterranean port.
According to the popular version, a venerable seer appeared
to the Great Conqueror in a dream, and recited
those verses in the Odyssey1 describing the one sheltered
haven on the Egyptian coast. Acting on this supernatural
hint, Alexander decided to build his city on this part of
the coast, where the Pharos isle acted as a natural breakwater,
and where a small Greek fishing-settlement called
Rhacotis was already established. It is, however, hardly
necessary to fall back on a mythical legend to account for
the selection of this site. The two great aims of Alexander
were the creation of a centre for trade and the development
of commerce, and the fusion of the Greek and
Roman nations. To attain these objects it was necessary
to build a seaport near the mouths of the Nile, — the great
highway of Egypt. A site west of the Nile mouths was
probably chosen because of the eastward set of the tide,
as the alluvial soil brought down by the Nile would soon
choke a harbour excavated east of the river, as had already

happened at Pelusium. It is this alluvial wash which has
also rendered the harbours of Rosetta and Damietta almost
useless for vessels of any draught, and at Port Said the
accumulation of sand necessitates continuous dredging in
order to keep clear the entrance of the Suez Canal.

A well-known writer on Egypt has truly observed that
there are three Egypts to interest the traveller, — the Egypt
of the Pharaohs and the Bible, the Egypt of the Caliphates
and the “Arabian Nights,” and the Egypt of European
commerce and enterprise. To which he might have added,
the Egypt of the Ptolemies and the Roman Empire. It is
to this last stage of civilisation that the fine harbour of
Alexandria bears witness. Not only is it of interest to the
engineer and the man of science, but it is also of great
historic importance. It serves as a link between ancient
and modern civilisation. The port is Alexander's best
monument, — “si quaeris monumentum, circumspice.” But
for this, Alexandria might now be a little fishing-port
of no more importance than the little Greek fishing-village
Rhacotis, whose ruins lie buried beneath its spacious quays.
The harbour was originally formed by the construction of
a vast mole (Heptastadion) joining the island of Pharos to
the mainland; and this stupendous feat of engineering,
planned and carried out by Alexander, has been supplemented
by the magnificent breakwater constructed by English
engineers in 1872, at a cost of over two-and-a-half
millions sterling. After Marseilles, Malta, and Spezia, it
is perhaps the finest port in the Mediterranean, both on
account of its natural advantages as a haven, and by reason
of the vast engineering works mentioned above.

The western harbour (formerly called Eunostos, “good
home-sailing”), of which we are speaking,—for the eastern,
or so-called New Harbour, is choked by sand and only
used by small native craft,— has, however, one serious
drawback in a dangerous bar at the entrance, which

should, of course, have been partially blown up before the
breakwater and the other engineering operations were
undertaken. Owing to this obstruction, large vessels
seldom attempted, till recently, to cross the bar in rough
weather, and never at night. In the course of the last few
years, however, a wide and deep channel has been cut
through this reef, and now the entrance to the harbour is
practicable at all hours of the day and night. In fact,
during 1896 over four hundred vessels entered Alexandria
harbour in the night-time. These improvements have
naturally tended to make Alexandria more resorted to than
formerly by travellers as the port of entry for Cairo, instead
of Port Said or Ismailia.

During the period of Turkish misrule — when Egypt
under the Mamelukes, though nominally a vilayet of the
Ottoman Empire, was practically under the dominion of
the Beys — the trade of Alexandria had declined considerably,
and Rosetta had taken away most of its commerce.
When Mehemet Ali, the founder of the present dynasty,
rose to power, his clear intellect at once comprehended the
importance of this ancient emporium and the wisdom of
Alexander's choice of a site for the port which was destined
to become the commercial centre of three continents.

Mehemet Ali is the creator of modern Alexandria. He
deepened the harbour, which had been allowed to be
choked by the accumulation of sand, lined it with spacious
quays, built the massive forts which protect the coast, and
restored the city to its old commercial importance by
putting it into communication with the Nile through the
medium of the Mahmoudiyeh Canal. This vast undertaking
was only carried out with great loss of life. It was
excavated by the forced labour of 250,000 peasants, of
whom some twenty thousand died from the heat and
the severe toil. The whole canal was completed in one
year (1819) and cost £ 300,000.

The great thoroughfare of Alexandria — a fine street
running in a straight line from the western gate of the
city to the Place Mehemet Ali — is within a few minutes'
walk of the quay. A sudden turn, and the strange mingling
of Eastern and Western life bursts upon the spectator's
astonished gaze. This living diorama, formed by the brilliant
and ever-shifting crowd, is in its way unique.

The Place Mehemet Ali, usually called for the sake of
brevity the Grand Square, is close at hand. This is the
centre of the European quarter, and round it are collected
the banks, consular offices, hotels, and principal shops.
This square, the focus of the life of modern Alexandria,
is appropriately named after the founder of the present
dynasty, and the creator of the Egypt of to-day.

To this great ruler, who at one time bid fair to become
the founder not only of an independent kingdom, but of
a great Oriental empire, Alexandria owes much of its
prosperity and commercial importance. The career of
Mehemet Ali is interesting and romantic. There is a
certain similarity between his history and that of Napoleon
I., and the coincidence seems heightened when we remember
that they were both born in the same year. Each,
rising from an obscure position, started as an adventurer
on foreign soil, and each rose to political eminence by force
of arms. Unlike Napoleon, however, in one important
point, Mehemet Ali founded a dynasty which still remains
in power, in spite of the weakness and incapacity of his
successors. To Western minds, perhaps, his chief claim to
hold a high rank in the world's history lies in his efforts
to introduce European institutions and methods of civilisation,
and to establish a system of government opposed to
Mohammedan instincts. He created an army and navy
which were partly based on European models, stimulated
agriculture and trade, and organised an administrative
and fiscal system which did much towards putting the
[illeg.]

erous, not to say unchristian, to wound people's religious
prejudices, however superstitious they may appear to us.
In some other countries of North Africa, notably in the
interior of Morocco or Tripoli, promiscuous photography
might be attended with disagreeable results, if not a
certain amount of danger. A tourist would find a kodak
camera, even with all the latest improvements, a somewhat
inefficient weapon against a mob of fanatical Arabs.

For the best view of the city and the surrounding country
we must climb the slopes of Mount Caffarelli (now generally
called Fort Napoleon) to the fort which crowns the
summit, or make our way to the fortress Kom-el-Deek on
the elevated ground near the Rosetta Gate. Alexandria,
spread out like a map, lies at our feet. At this height the
commonplace aspect of a bustling and thriving seaport,
which seems, on a closer acquaintance, to be Europeanised
and modernised out of the least resemblance to an Oriental
city, is changed to a prospect of some beauty. At Alexandria,
even more than at most cities of the East, distance
lends enchantment to the view. From these heights the
squalid back streets of the native quarter, and the
modern hausmannised main thoroughfares, look like dark
threads woven into the web of the city, relieved by the
white mosques, with their swelling domes curving inward
like fan-palms towards the crescents, flashing in the rays of
the sun, and their tall, graceful minarets piercing the smokeless
and cloudless atmosphere. The subdued roar of the
busy streets and quays is occasionally varied by the melodious
cry of the muezzin. Then, looking northward, one
sees the clear blue of the Mediterranean, till it is lost in the
hazy horizon. To the west and south the placid waters of
the Mareotis Lake, in reality a shallow and insalubrious
lagoon, but to all appearance a smiling lake, which, with
its waters fringed by the low-lying sand-dunes, reminds the
spectator of the peculiar beauties of the Norfolk Broads.

Beyond Lake Mareotis lies the luxuriant plain of the
Delta. The view of this plain may not be what is called
picturesque, but to the artist the scenery has its special
charm. It is no doubt flat and monotonous, but there is no
monotony of colour in this richly cultivated plain, once the
granary of the Roman Empire. Simplicity is, in short, the
predominant “note” in the scenery of Lower Egypt, but,
as Mr. H. D. Traill has well observed, here the artist finds
“the broadest effects produced by the slenderest means.”
In the description of this North African Holland innumerable
pens have been worn out in comparison and simile.
To some this huge market-garden, with its network of canals
and ditches, simply invites a homely comparison with a
chess-board. Others, with a gift for fanciful metaphor,
will liken the landscape to a green robe or carpet shot with
silver threads, or to a seven-ribbed fan, the ribs being, of
course, the seven mouths of the Nile. One may, however,
differ as to the most appropriate metaphors, but all must
agree that there are unique elements of beauty in the Delta
landscape. Seen, as most tourists do see it, in winter or
spring, the green fields of waving corn and barley, the meadows
of watermelons and cucumbers, the fields of pea and
purple lupin one mass of colours, interspersed with the
palm-groves and white minarets which mark the site of the
almost invisible mud-villages, and intersected thickly with
countless canals and trenches that in the distance look like
silver threads, and suggest Brobdignagian filigree work or
the delicate tracery of King Frost on our window-panes,
the view is impressive, and not without beauty.

In the summer and early autumn, especially during
August and September, when the Nile is at its height, the
view is still more striking, though hardly so beautiful.
Then it is that this Protean country offers its most impressive
aspect. The Delta becomes an inland archipelago
studded with green islands, each island crowned with a

white-mosqued village, or conspicuous with a cluster of
palms. The Nile and its swollen tributaries are covered
with huge-sailed dahabiyehs, which give life and variety
to the watery expanse.

Alexandria can boast of few “lions,” as the word is usually
understood, but of these by far the most interesting is the
column known by the name of Pompey's Pillar. Every one
has heard of this famous monolith, which is as closely associated in people's minds with Alexandria as the Coliseum
is with Rome, the Alhambra with Granada, or the Kremlin
with Moscow. It has, of course, no more to do with
the Pompey of history (to whom it is attributed by the
unlettered tourist) than has Cleopatra's Needle with that
famous queen, the “Serpent of old Nile” or Joseph's Well
at Cairo with the Hebrew patriarch. It owes its name to
the fact that a certain prefect named after Caesar's great
rival erected on the summit of an existing column — in the
opinion of Professor Mahaffy one erected by Ptolemy II. in
memory of his favorite wife, Arsinoe — a statue in honour
of the horse of the Roman emperor Diocletian. There is
a familiar legend which has been invented to account for
the special reason of its erection, which guide-book compilers
are very fond of. According to the story, this historic
animal, through an opportune stumble, stayed the persecution
of the Alexandrian Christians, as the tyrannical emperor
had sworn to continue the massacre till the blood of
the victims reached his horse's knees. Antiquarians and
Egyptologists are, however, given to scoffing at the tradition
as a plausible myth.

In the opinion of many learned authorities, the shaft of
this column was once a portion of the Serapeum, that famous
building which was both a temple of the heathen god
Serapis and a vast treasure-house of ancient civilisation.
In order to account for its omission in the descriptions of
Alexandria given by Pliny and Strabo, who had mentioned

the two obelisks of Cleopatra, it has been suggested that the
column had fallen, and that the Prefect Pompey had merely
reërected it in honour of Diocletian, and replaced the statue
of Serapis with one of the emperor, — or of his horse, according
to some chroniclers. This statue, if it ever existed,
has now disappeared. As the column stands, however, it
is a singularly striking and beautiful monument, owing to
its great height, simplicity of form, and elegant proportions.
It reminds the spectator a little of Nelson's column in
Trafalgar Square; and perhaps the absence of a statue is
not altogether to be regretted, considering the height of the
column, as it might suggest to the irrepressible tourists,
who scoff at Nelson's statue as the “Mast-headed Admiral,”
some similar witticism at the expense of Diocletian.

With the exception of this monolith, which, “a solitary
column, mourns above its prostrate brethren,” only a few
fragmentary and scattered ruins of fallen columns mark the
site of the world-renowned Serapeum. Nothing else remains
of the famous library, the magnificent portico with its hundred
steps, the vast halls, and the four hundred marble
columns of that great building, designed to perpetuate the
glories of the Ptolemies. This library, which was the
forerunner of the great libraries of modern times, must not
be confounded with the equally famous one which was
attached to the Museum, whose exact site is still a bone of
contention among antiquarians. The latter was destroyed
by accident when Julius Caesar set fire to the Alexandrian
fleet. The Serapeum collection survived for six
hundred years, till its wanton destruction through the
fanaticism of the Caliph Omar. The Arab conqueror is
said to have justified this barbarism with a fallacious epigram,
which was as unanswerable, however logically faulty,
as the famous one familiar to students of English history
under the name of Archbishop Morton's Fork. “If these
writings,” declared the uncompromising conqueror, “agree

[illeg.]

with the Book of God, they are useless, and need not be
preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought
to be destroyed.” Nothing could prevail against this flagrant
example of a petitio principii, and for six months the
three hundred thousand parchments supplied fuel for the
four thousand baths of Alexandria.

Hard by Pompey's Pillar is a dreary waste, dotted with
curiously carved structures. This is the Mohammedan
cemetery. As in most Oriental towns, the cemetery is at
the west end of the town, as the Mohammedans consider
that the quarter of the horizon in which the sun sets is the
most suitable spot for their burying-places. In this melancholy
city of the dead are buried also many of the ruins of
the Serapeum, and scattered about among the tombs are
fragments of columns and broken pedestals. On some of
the tombs a green turban is roughly painted, strangely out
of harmony with the severe stone-carving. This signifies
that the tomb holds the remains of a descendant of the
Prophet, or of a devout Moslem who had himself, and not
vicariously as is so often done, made the pilgrimage to the
sacred city of Mecca. Some of the headstones are elaborately
carved, but most are quite plain, with the exception
of a verse of the Koran cut in the stone. The observant
tourist will notice on many of the tombs a curious little
round hole cut in the stone at the head, which seems to be
intended to form a passage to the interior of the vault,
though the aperture is generally filled up with earth. It is
said that this passage was made to enable the Angel Israfel,
at the Resurrection, to draw out the occupant by the hair
of his head; and the custom which obtains among the lower-class
Moslems of shaving the head, with the exception of a
round tuft of hair in the middle — a fashion which suggests
an incipient pigtail or an inverted tonsure — is as much due
to this superstition as to sanitary considerations.

Of far greater interest than this comparatively modern

cemetery are the cave cemeteries of El-Meks. These catacombs
are some four miles from the city. The route along
the extended low ridge of sand-hills is singularly unpicturesque;
but the windmills (built by Napoleon I. to grind
corn for his troops when he occupied the country) which
fringe the shore give a homely aspect to the country, and
serve at any rate to break the monotony of this dreary and
desolate region. We soon reach Said Pacha's unfinished
palace of El-Meks, which owes its origin to the mania for
building which helped to make the reign of that weak-minded
ruler so costly to his overtaxed subjects. One
glimpse at the bastard style of architecture is sufficient
to remove any feeling of disappointment on being told that
the building is not open to the public.

The catacombs, which spread a considerable distance
along the seashore, and of which the so-called Baths of
Cleopatra are a part, are very extensive, and tourists are
usually satisfied with exploring a part. There are no
mummies, but the niches can be clearly seen. The plan
of the catacombs is curiously like the wards of a key.

There are few “sights” in Alexandria of much interest
besides those already mentioned. In fact, Alexandria is
interesting more as a city of sites than sights. It is true
that the names of some of the mosques — such as that of the
One Thousand and One Columns, built on the spot where
Saint Mark suffered martyrdom, and the Mosque of Saint
Athanasius — are calculated to arouse the curiosity of the
tourist; but the interest is in the name alone. The
Mosque of Many Columns is turned into a quarantine station,
and the Mosque of Saint Athanasius has no connection
with the great Father except that it stands on the site of a
church in which he probably preached.

Then there is the Coptic Convent of Saint Mark, which,
according to the inmates, contains the body of the great
evangelist, — an assertion which would scarcely deceive

the most ignorant and most credulous tourist that ever
intrusted himself to the fostering care of Messrs. Cook, as
it is well known that Saint Mark's body was removed to
Venice in the ninth century. The mosque with the ornate
exterior and lofty minaret, in which the remains of Said
Pacha are buried, called Mosque Nebbi Daniel, is the only
one besides those already mentioned which would be worth
visiting. This is interesting to Egyptologists as being the
reputed site of the tomb of Alexander the Great. As,
however, no Christians are admitted to this khedivial
mausoleum, no antiquarian researches or excavations can
be undertaken in order to verify this traditional site. The
stone sarcophagus in the British Museum, which was
thought to have been that of Alexander, is now known
to be erroneously attributed to this monarch. It was
made for an earlier king of the thirtieth dynasty, B. C.
378–358.

THE coast between Rosetta and Port Said is, like the
rest of the Egyptian littoral, flat and monotonous.
The only break in the dreary vista is afforded by the
picturesque-looking town of Damietta, which, with its
lofty houses, looking in the distance like marble palaces,
has a striking appearance seen from the sea. The town,
though containing some spacious bazaars and several large
and well-proportioned mosques, has little to attract the
visitor, and there are no antiquities or buildings of any
historic interest. The traveller full of the traditions of
the Crusades, who expects to find some traces of Saladin
and the Saracens, will be doomed to disappointment.
Damietta is comparatively modern, the old Byzantine city
having been destroyed by the Arabs early in the thirteenth
century, and rebuilt — at a safer distance from invasion
by sea — a few miles inland, under the name of Mensheeyah.
One of the gateways of the modern town, the
Mensheeyah Gate, serves as a reminder of its former name.
Though the trade of Damietta has, in common with most
of the Delta seaports, declined since the construction of
the Mahmoudiyeh Canal, it is still a town of some commercial
importance, and consular representatives of several
European powers are stationed here. To sportsmen Damietta
offers special advantages, as it makes capital headquarters
for the wild-fowl shooting on Menzaleh Lake,
which teems with aquatic birds of all kinds. Myriads of

wild duck may be seen feeding here, and “big game,” —
if the expression can be applied to birds, — in the shape of
herons, pelicans, storks, flamingoes, etc., is plentiful. In
the marshes which abut on the lake specimens of the papyrus
are to be found, this neighbourhood being one of the
few habitats of this rare plant.

Soon after rounding the projecting ridge of low sand-hills,
which fringe the estuary of the Damietta branch of
the Nile, the noble proportions of the loftiest lighthouse
in the Mediterranean come into view. It is fitted with
one of the most powerful electric lights in the world, its
penetrating rays being visible on a clear night at a distance
of over twenty-five miles. Shortly afterwards the
forest of masts, apparently springing out of the desert,
informs the passenger of the near vicinity of Port Said.
There is, of course, nothing to see at Port Said from a
tourist's standpoint. The town is little more than a large
coaling station, and is of very recent growth. It owes its
existence solely to the Suez Canal, and to the fact that the
water at that part of the coast is deeper than at Pelusium,
where the isthmus is narrowest.

The town is built partly on artificial foundations on the
strip of low sand banks which form a natural sea-wall,
protecting Lake Menzaleh from the Mediterranean. In
the autumn, at high Nile, it is surrounded on all sides by
water. An imaginative writer once called Port Said the
Venice of Africa, — not a very happy description, as the
essentially modern appearance of this coaling station
strikes the most unobservant visitor. The comparison
might for its inappositeness rank with the proverbial one
between Macedon and Monmouth. Both Venice and Port
Said are landlocked, and that is the only feature they have
in common.

The sandy plains in the vicinity of the town are, however,
full of interest to the historian and archaeologist.

Here may be found ruins and remains of antiquity which
recall a period of civilisation reaching back more centuries
than Port Said (built in 1859) does in years. The ruins
of Pelusium (the Sin of the Old Testament), the key of
northeastern Egypt in the Pharaonic period, are only
eighteen miles distant, and along the shore may still be
traced a few vestiges of the great highway — the oldest
road in the world of which remains exist — constructed by
Rameses the Great in 1350 B. C., when he undertook his
expedition for the conquest of Syria.

To come to more recent history, it was on these shores
that Cambyses defeated the Egyptians; and here, some five
centuries later, Pompey the Great was treacherously murdered
when he fled to Egypt after the battle of Pharsalia.

To the southwest of Port Said, near the little fishing-village
of Sais, on the southern shore of Lake Monzaleh,
are the magnificent ruins of Tanis (the Zoan of the Old
Testament). These seldom-visited remains are only
second to those of Thebes and Memphis in historical
and archaeological interest. The ruins were uncovered at
great cost of labour by the late Mariette Bey, and in the
Great Temple were unearthed some of the most notable
monuments of the Pharaonic age, including over a dozen
gigantic fallen obelisks. This vast building, restored and
enlarged by Rameses II., dates back over five thousand
years. As Thebes declined, Tanis rose in importance, and
under the kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty it became the
chief seat of government. Mr. John Macgregor (Rob
Roy), who was one of the first of modern travellers to call
attention to these grand ruins, declares that of all the
celebrated remains he has seen, none impressed him
“so deeply with the sense of fallen and deserted magnificence”
as the ruined temple of Tanis.

The Suez Canal is admittedly one of the greatest undertakings
of modern times, and has perhaps effected a greater

transformation in the world's commerce, during the twenty
years that have elapsed since its completion, than has been
effected in the same period by the agency of steam.

It was emphatically the work of one man, and of one,
too, who was devoid of the slightest technical training in
the engineering profession. Monsieur de Lesseps cannot, of
course, claim any originality in the conception of this great
undertaking, for the idea of opening up communication
between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by means of a
maritime canal is almost as old as Egypt itself, and many
attempts were made by the rulers of Egypt, from Sesostris
downwards, to span the isthmus with “a bridge of water.”
Most of these projects proved abortive, though there was
some kind of water communication between the two seas in
the time of the Ptolemies, and it was by this canal that
Cleopatra attempted to escape after the battle of Actium.
When Napoleon the Great occupied Egypt, he went so far
as to appoint a commission of engineers to examine into a
projected scheme for a maritime canal; but owing to the
ignorance of the commissioners, who reported that there
was a difference of thirty feet in the levels of the two seas,
— though there is really scarcely more than six inches,—
which would necessitate vast locks and involve an enormous
outlay of money, the plan was given up.

The Suez Canal is, in short, the work of one great man,
and its existence is due to the undoubted courage and indomitable
energy, to the intensity of conviction and to the
magnetic personality, of M. de Lesseps, which influenced
every one with whom he came in contact, from the viceroy
down to the humblest fellah. This great project was carried
out, too, not by a professional engineer, but by a mere
consular clerk, and was executed in spite of the most determined
opposition of politicians and capitalists, and in the
teeth of the mockery and ridicule of practical engineers,
who affected to sneer at the scheme as the chimerical dream

of a vainglorious Frenchman. The canal, regarded from a
purely picturesque standpoint, does not present such striking
features as other great monuments of engineering skill,
— the Forth Bridge, the Mont Cenis Tunnel, the Brooklyn
Bridge, or the railway which scales the highest peaks of the
Rocky Mountains. This “huge ditch,” as it has been contemptuously
called, has not, indeed, “been carried over
high mountains, nor cut through rock-bound tunnels, nor
have its waters been confined by Titanic masses of masonry.”
In fact, technically speaking, the name “canal,” as applied
to this channel, is a misnomer. It has nothing in common
with other canals, — no locks, gates, reservoirs, nor pumping
engines. It is really an artificial strait, — a prolongation
of an arm of the sea. We can freely concede this; yet
to those of imaginative temperament there are elements of
romance about this colossal enterprise. It is the creation
of a nineteenth-century wizard, who, with his enchanter's
wand — the spade — has transformed the shape of the
globe, and summoned the sea to flow uninterruptedly from
the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Then, too, the
most matter-of-fact traveller who traverses it can scarcely
fail to be impressed with the peculiar genius loci. Every
mile of the canal passes through a region enriched by the
memories of events which had their birth in the remotest
ages of antiquity. Across this plain Abraham wandered
from distant Ur of the Chaldees, some four thousand years
ago. Beyond the placid waters of Lake Menzaleh lie the
ruins of Zoan, where Moses performed his miracles. On
the right lies the Plain of Pelusium, across which the hosts
of Persian, Greek, and Roman conquerors successively swept
to take possession of the riches of Egypt. In passing
through the canal at night,— the electric light serving as a
“pillar of fire” to the steamer, as it swiftly but silently
ploughs its course through the desert,— the strange impressivesness
of the scene is intensified. “The Suez Canal

links together, in striking contrast, the great Past and the
greater Present, pointing to a future which we are as little
able to divine as were the Pharaohs or Ptolemies of old to
forecast the wonders of the nineteenth century.”

The history of the enterprise from 1855, when the concession
was granted by Said Pacha, to the inauguration of
the canal in November, 1869, reads like a romance. The
main difficulties were political, for the physical obstacles
were not serious, considering the magnitude of the task.
Indeed, the very simplicity of the undertaking from an
engineering point of view — for the cutting of the Isthmus
of Suez was merely a question of time, money, and a sufficiency
of native labour in the crudest form — no doubt
contributed not a little to wreck M. de Lesseps's subsequent
enterprise, as it led him to underestimate the serious nature
of his task in the western hemisphere, in which the physical
obstacles were almost insuperable in comparison. Then,
in the case of Panama, there were no predecessors from
whose mistakes M. de Lesseps might profit, as was the case
in Egypt, where previous projectors were seriously handicapped
through accepting Napoleon's engineers' erroneous
calculation of the Red Sea being thirty feet higher than
the Mediterranean as a hydrographical axiom. Then, too,
there seemed to be a kind of tradition among them that
no canal could be a success which did not depend upon the
Nile for its water supply. It was the political aspect of
the canal which gave rise to so much opposition; and the
political significance of the exclusive control, by a French
company, of the great highway to India and the Australasian
colonies was appreciated at its full value by Great Britain.

In short, the Suez Canal project was regarded by diplomatists
as an international question involving serious issues,
and it was certainly a powerful factor in European politics.
The neutrality of the canal in times of war was felt to be a
matter of great importance; for, as it was destined to be

the great gate between the eastern and western hemispheres,
it was essential that it should be kept open. In
fact, to look ahead a few years, one reason for the intervention
of the English, in helping to crush the military
revolution in 1882, was the necessity of maintaining a free
waterway in the canal, which was menaced by Arabi's
troops. Lesseps's chief difficulty lay in the determined
opposition of Lord Palmerston, whose influence with the
Porte at this time was considerable. The British Government
succeeded in getting the imperial firman sanctioning
the concession of the Viceroy withheld for a considerable
time, by suggesting that it would tend to increase the independence
of Egypt. Lord Palmerston's commercial objections
to the canal certainly showed a striking lack of
appreciation of the economical conditions of the world's
commerce. His argument was based on the ill-founded
assumption that England would lose her supremacy as a
great carrying nation if this new maritime route were
thrown open to the world. Yet by reducing the voyage
to India almost one-half England would, of course, benefit
more than any other nation. The absurdity of Palmerstion's
contention is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact
that, in 1895, seventy per cent, of the tonnage of ships
which passed through the canal carried the English flag

There was, however, some sound reason in Lord Palmerston's
objection to the canal, as a statesman. In the original
concession of Said Pacha, the territory stretching for
several miles on either side of the canal, and extending its
whole length, was granted to the Canal Company. Consequently,
the British Government contended that in time of
war France's control of the isthmus would be a menace to
England. But Lord Palmerston might have made his sanction
and approval contingent on the amendment of this
dangerous clause, instead of irritating a friendly Power
by uncompromising opposition.

Had England joined the other Powers in furthering M. de
Lesseps's scheme, and not placed itself out of court by its
persistent hostility, in all probability the actual neutrality
of the canal would not have been delayed till 1887.

M. de Lesseps, whose faith in the project was not shaken
by the hostility of the English Government and the apathy
of the Porte, started operations in 1859, himself cutting
the first sod in the narrow strip of sand between Lake
Menzaleh and the Mediterranean, on April 25.

Till 1864, progress was steady but slow, as the actual excavation
was done by manual labour, over twenty-five thousand
fellahs being supplied by the corveáe for this work. In
this year, difficulties arose which threatened to wreck the
enterprise. The new Khedive, Ismail, was alarmed at the
continual drain on his subjects by the concession of his
predecessor, which compelled him to supply so large a number
of workmen to the Canal Company, and threatened to stop
the supply of native labourers. The dispute was submitted to
the Emperor Napoleon III., as arbitrator, who decided that
the Egyptian Government should pay an indemnity of one
and one-half million pounds for the withdrawal of the native
labourers. This misfortune proved, however, a blessing in
disguise. The Company was compelled to use machinery
for excavating and dredging, which proved far more efficacious
and, eventually, more economical than native labour,
and enabled the contractors to complete the undertaking
within a few months of the stipulated time.

By November, 1869, all was ready for the inauguration
ceremonies, which were carried out by the Khedive on a
scale of unparalleled magnificence. At these festivities
all the Powers of Europe were officially represented: France
and Austria by the Empress Eugenie and the Emperor
Francis Joseph, respectively, and other countries by members
of the royal family or special envoys. Even England
forgot her old political jealousy, and was adequately represented.

But then, it must be remembered that the crux
of the objection of the English Government had been removed
in 1864, when Ismail bought back from the Canal
Company the territorial rights over the lands abutting on
the canal, for £3,360,000.

In order to impress his royal guests, whom Ismail had
personally invited in a tour which he made round the European
courts the year before, the Khedive, who seemed to
have a perfect genius for spending, seized the opportunity
of renovating and haussmannising Cairo, and attempted
to turn this unique Oriental city into a feeble copy of a
third-rate European capital. Parks and public gardens were
planted, palaces restored, and boulevards built, and gas was
laid in the chief streets. Among the entertainments provided
for visitors were concerts and theatrical performances,
for which the chief stars of Paris and Vienna were engaged.
Even a new opera was “commanded” for the occasion, Verdi
composing the Egyptian opera “Aida” to entertain the
Khedive's guests. It has been computed that the expenses
attendant on the inauguration of the Suez Canal cost the
Khedive, or rather Egypt, fully four millions; and, no doubt,
this lavish expenditure materially contributed to bring
about Ismail's financial collapse and virtual bankruptcy
a few years later.

Honours of all kinds were subsequently showered upon
M. de Lesseps, who was eulogised by the press of Europe
as a benefactor to mankind, ennobled by his grateful
sovereign, and made the recipient of decorations and
orders from most of the sovereigns of Europe. Finally,
to crown all, a place was found for the national hero
among the “Immortal Forty.” Nor was England behindhand
in making up for its former neglect, and Comte de
Lesseps was created a K. C. S. I., and presented with the
freedom of the City of London.

CAIRO itself cannot be unreservedly recommended as
a health-resort pure and simple. The Egyptian climate
is undeniably admirably suited for a winter residence,
and in most respects it is superior to that of any health-resort
in the south of France, — the world's great winter
sanatorium. But the city of Cairo possesses too many
factitious drawbacks, which militate against its use as a
climatic health-station. Now that other health-resorts,
such as Luxor, Assouan, Helouan, etc., are getting better
known and developed, medical men are beginning to realise
that, hygienically speaking, Cairo is not Egypt. Its enormous
population and limited area, for one thing, does not
commend it to medical men as a winter residence for their
patients. An overcrowded city of nearly half a million
inhabitants, with its unsatisfactory hygienic conditions and
appallingly primitive and unsanitary system of drainage, —
if system it can be called, — the annual summer visitation
of cholera, etc., seems, indeed, the last place to which the
health-seeker, as distinct from the mere tourist or pleasure-seeker,
should be sent. It is true that the sanitation of the
Continental, Shepheards, Ghezireh Palace, and other fashionable
hotels is beyond reproach, but the visitor is not likely
to spend all his time in the hotel. Besides, the innumerable
urban amusements and social gaieties and dissipations

of this fashionable winter-city offer too many temptations
to the invalid to neglect his health.

Twenty or thirty years ago, no doubt, the invalid had no
choice: a winter in Egypt necessarily meant spending that
season in Cairo. But now, thanks mainly to the enterprise
of the great tourist-agents, Luxor, Assouan, and the Nile
have been rendered available for serious invalids. The
above remarks apply, of course, to the genuine invalid, as
distinct from the large class of valetudinarians or quasi-invalids.
For this class of visitors, and especially overworked
persons and those suffering from worry and “nerves,”
who require mainly change of scene and rest, Cairo, with
its innumerable resources and varied interests, is an ideal
wintering-place. The above-mentioned objections to Cairo
in the case of real invalids apply, however, to those contemplating
spending the whole winter in the city, and not
merely a few weeks. In many cases a whole winter on
the Nile would be found monotonous, so the best disposal
of time would be to spend the early winter months at
Luxor or on a Nile voyage, and postpone the return to
Cairo till the beginning of February. November, December,
and January are the least suitable months for Cairo,
owing to the risk of malaria from the moisture arising
from the subsiding inundation of the Nile. Then, when
Cairo gets too hot, Ramleh, near Alexandria, will be found
an excellent intermediate health-resort for a few weeks
before leaving Egypt.

Helouan-les-Bains, within half an hour of Cairo by train,
or Mena House, at the foot of the Pyramids, would, however,
be a better residence than Cairo itself. Helouan
is, in fact, the oldest health-resort in the world. There
are about a dozen sulphur springs similar to those of Aix-les-
-Bains, but rather stronger. Those who have undergone
a course at Aix can continue their “cure” here
during the winter and spring, when the Aix establishment

is closed. The atmosphere is remarkably pure and salubrious,
and the electrical tonic influence of the desert
climate is felt here to a striking degree. There are good
hotels here, two resident doctors, and several pensions.
The Administration have shown themselves thoroughly
alive to the requirements of modern tourists by providing
lawn-Tennis courts, laying down golf links, etc. The chief
drawback is that, at present, the English and American
guests are rather swamped by the Teutonic element, the
baths belonging to a German directorate.

Another resort, which is strongly recommended by Dr.
F. M. Sandwith, Dr. Hermann Weber, and other eminent
climatologists, is Mena House, at the Pyramids. Its advantages
are thus summed up by Dr. Sandwith:

Whole volumes have been written by meteorologists and
medical experts on the climatology of Egypt, but its chief
characteristics can be summed up in a few words: a remarkably
pure and salubrious atmosphere, almost continuous
sunshine, rainlessness (the rainfall of the Upper Nile Valley

is practically nil), genial warmth (which, owing to
its lack of moisture, is not oppressive), and highly tonic
qualities; but, to counterbalance these good points, great
lack of equability. The great difference between day and
night temperature is, no doubt, a very serious drawback.
This lack of uniformity is, of course, inevitable in all countries
where a high temperature and immunity from rain
are combined. In short, it is a meteorological axiom that
equability cannot exist with a very dry atmosphere and a
high temperature. Equability implies, of course, a certain
amount of humidity. An ideal climate would combine the
equability and softness of Madeira, the warmth and dryness
of Upper Egypt, and the chemically pure atmosphere of
Biskra in Algeria.

The following summary of the climatic conditions of
Cairo, by Dr. F. M. Sandwith, prepared for my work on
the health resorts of South Europe and North Africa
(3d ed., 1896), may be conveniently inserted here:

	Temperature, Fahr.
	Maximum in Shade.	Minimum in Bedroom.	Rain.	Khamseen Wind.
November	deg. 75	deg.
December	69	60	4 days	…
January	67.4	59.8	Showers 4 days	…
February	68.3	59.7	Showers 2 days	2 days
March	76	63.2	Drops 1 day	3 days
April	84.5	67.6	Drops 2 days	7.5 days
May	91.7	72		5.5 days

The mere fact, that, for one absolutely cloudless winter
day in the British Islands — even in the sunniest region
of the South Coast—there are ten or a dozen in Upper
Egypt, means more, however, to the non-scientific reader
than whole columns of meteorological readings and climatic

statistics. In short, the Upper Nile boasts of the
most wonderful and salubrious climate of any known winter
resort in the world available to phthisical patients.
There is, of course, no ideal climate on the surface of the
globe,—no hygienic Utopia where “the consumptive can
draw in healing influence with every breath;” but the
climate of Upper Egypt is the nearest approach, within ten
days of London, to Tennyson's legendary land of Avilion,

Though the weather is popularly supposed to be the
Englishman's staple topic of conversation, the ignorance
of the veriest a, b, c of meteorology found among ordinarily
well-informed and observant travellers is extraordinary.
In Egyptian books of travel and magazine articles one occasionally
finds the very quality in which the climate of Egypt
is so deficient — equability of temperature — singled out,
along with its undeniable dryness, for special praise.

Messrs. Hermann Weber, Burden Saunderson, F. M.
Sandwith, and other physicians who have devoted considerable
attention to the hygienic and climatological aspects
of Egypt are agreed that Egypt is particularly suitable for
most forms of lung disease, for incipient pulmonary consumption,
chronic bronchitis, asthma, anaemia, chronic
rheumatism, and, speaking generally, convalescents from
acute diseases. But patients suffering from advanced heart
disease, or, in short, very advanced disease of any organ,
or from fever, should not be sent to Egypt. Persons subject
to obstinate insomnia will also find the climate unsuitable.

With regard to the best way of reaching Egypt, though
most travellers arrive by way of Port Said or Ismailia, this
route is less preferable than via Alexandria for those who
are wintering abroad for their health. The Egyptian tourist

traffic is of slight importance compared with that of
India and Australia, in the eyes of the directors of the great
liners; and passengers who have rashly decided to disembark
for Cairo at Ismailia often find themselves landed at
this half-way house in the middle of the night, with no
means of reaching the capital till the next day. What is
merely a passing inconvenience to the robust traveller might
naturally be a serious matter for the invalid. The light
railway which now runs from Port Said to Ismailia can, no
doubt, be made use of if the steamer arrives early in the
day at Port Said; but the service is slow and infrequent.
Though dignified by the name of railway, it is little more
than a miniature steam tramway with a gauge of no more
than two feet six inches. What is wanted is a railway
from Port Said to Damietta, only forty miles west, whence
there is direct railway communication to Cairo and Alexandria.
There are no physical difficulties in the construction
of this much-needed railway. The real difficulty is
the jealous opposition of Alexandria. Then, too, the
Egyptian Government is not inclined to regard the scheme
favourably, as the increased harbour dues would fall into
the coffers of the Suez Canal Company, and not into the
Government treasury. The fact remains, that, as an ordinary
commercial harbour, Port Said is of trifling importance.
It is mainly an international port and coaling station.
Though Alexandria should be the port of arrival for delicate
persons, unfortunately the great passenger steamship
companies, such as the Peninsular and Oriental, Orient,
and North German Lloyd, make Port Said and not Alexandria,
their port of call in their through services. Since
1895, however, an Egyptian service via Constantinople and
Alexandria has been established by the Sleeping Car Company,
in connection with the weekly Orient express. By
this service, Alexandria can be reached from London, via
Ostend, in five and a half days, with only one change between

Ostend and Alexandria. But this route is only for
those to whom expense is no object, costing, with extras,
about thirty pounds. Health seekers of moderate means
would have to be content with the services of the Messageries
Maritimes, the Austrian Lloyd, or the Italian Navigation
Company, sailing from Marseilles, Trieste, and Genoa,
respectively.

IN some respects, so far as concerns the permanent residents
as distinct from the mere hivernants, — to use a
convenient gallicism to describe those dwellers in Northern
climes who winter in the South, for which we have no exact
equivalent, — Cairo society resembles that of Simla, Naini
Tal, and other fashionable haunts of Indian society, so
large is the infusion of the official and military element.
For society here has a decidedly official tone, and introductions
are advisable if English or American visitors wish
to take part in the social life of the place, with its innumerable
gaieties and entertainments of all kinds, — from
moonlight donkey-rides to the Pyramids, to bicycle gymkhanas
at Ghezireh, and fancy-dress balls at Shepheard's
and the Continental. In Cairo, however, the visitors at
the principal hotels form a society of their own.

The hotel element, too, in Cairo is a factor of greater
importance in the social life of the foreign community
(for the obvious fact that the Anglo-American winter colony
are foreigners is too often ignored) than at Cannes, Monte
Carlo, Beaulieu, Pau, Algiers, Florence, and other fashionable
winter resorts, partly because the class of visitors who
at these stations would be inclined to live haughtily aloof
from the cosmopolitan crowd who throng the hotels in
isolated villas, at Cairo frequent the fashionable hotels.
Villas, indeed, at Cairo are so scarce as to be practically
unobtainable, as the only available ones are, as a rule,

occupied by the families of the corps diplomatique, English
officers stationed at Cairo, high government officials, etc.
In Egypt, indeed, the aristocratic dahabiyah may almost
be said to take the place of the villa.

In a sketch, then, of fashionable Cairo in the nineties,
more prominence must be given to the hotels than would
be necessary in most foreign watering-places. The most
fashionable are, undoubtedly, the Continental, Shepheard's,
and Ghezireh Palace, whose visitors' lists almost suggest a
page out of the “Almanac de Gotha.” Yet, as regards the
clientèle, each has a distinct character of its own; and if I
may attempt a somewhat invidious task, I should be inclined
to say that the Continental is more peculiarly
exclusive and aristocratic, while Shepheard's is smarter,
and the note of modernity here is more insistent. As for
the Ghezireh Palace Hotel, it is of too recent date to have
acquired any distinct social characteristics. The salient
features of these establishments may, perhaps, be better
understood by comparison with London hotels. The Continental,
then, may be compared with the Alexandra or the
Albemarle, Shepheard's with the Savoy, and the Ghezireh
Palace with the Cecil.

The leading hotels of Cairo can certainly compare
favourably with the best hotels of the most fashionable
Riviera watering-places. Leaving the United States out
of the question, it is, perhaps, hardly going too far to
say that no extra-European city of the same size offers
such a wide choice of high-class and well-appointed hotels,
so well adapted to meet the demands of English travellers,
as the City of the Caliphs.

The historical Shepheard's has a world-wide reputation.
It must, however, be remembered that not a stone remains
of the old Shepheard's, with its world-renowned balcony,
its garden containing the tree under which General Kleber
was assassinated, its lofty rooms, and terraces. The new

Shepheard's, completely rebuilt in 1891, lacks these historical
adjuncts; but the high reputation for comfort remains,
and certainly, in point of luxury and refinements of
civilisation, in the form of electric lights, lifts, telephones,
etc., there can be no comparison. No doubt there was a
touch of Oriental romance, and a suggestion of the “Thousand
and One Nights” in the time-honoured practice which
formerly obtained at Shepheard's, of summoning the dusky
attendants by clapping the hands; but to the matter-of-fact
latter-day traveller the prosaic, but reliable, electric bell is
an infinitely preferable means of communication.

Shepheard's is par excellence the American hotel, while
the Continental is more exclusively English. The latter,
too, partakes more of the character of a high-class residential
hotel, its numerous elegantly appointed suites of private
apartments (some twenty sets) being one of its leading
features.

Shepheard's clientèle is distinctly cosmopolitan. Cairo
being the starting-point for the Desert, the Nile, and Palestine,
and not far off the highroad to India and Australia,
and also being one of those cities which no self-respecting
globe-trotter can afford to omit in his round, it is much
visited by passing travellers. Those purposing to spend
the whole season in Cairo would be more likely to go to
the Continental. Perhaps the great objection to Shepheard's
lies in its situation. It is undoubtedly very central
and easy of access, but, fronting the main road, it is unpleasantly
noisy and dusty. In the old days there were no
doubt compensations in the moving panorama of Oriental
life which this crowded thoroughfare presented, — a kaleidosocopic
procession of Bedouin Arabs from the Desert,
camels, tattooed negroes, Turks, jewelled pachas ambling
past on richly caparisoned mules, mysterious veiled figures,
and other fascinating aspects of Eastern life, with a very
slight admixture of the vulgarising (artistically speaking)

European element. Now, instead of these picturesque,
motley crowds, the modern lounger on the famous terraces
looks down upon a yelling crowd of donkey boys, guides,
porters, interpreters, dragomans, itinerant dealers in sham
antiques, and all the noisy rabble that live on the travelling
Briton.

The Continental Hotel is comparatively new, while the
New Hotel is one of the oldest hotels in Cairo; but this
instance of erratic hotel nomenclature is not confined to
Egypt. The Continental is most sumptuously decorated,
and the appointments are, perhaps, as luxurious as those
of the leading hotels at the fashionable watering-places on
the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. Special mention
should be made of the excellence of its sanitary arrangements.
It is situated in a quiet part of the fashionable
Ezbekiya quarter, near the English church, and it is a
little out of the way compared with Shepheard's and the
New Hotel; but it must be confessed that this comparative
remoteness of its locality is regarded as an additional recommendation
by many of its patrons.

The Ghezireh Palace, the newest of the Cairo hotels, formerly
known as “Ismail's Folly,” was one of the palaces
of the late Khedive Ismail, whose mania for building palaces
was as pronounced as that of the unfortunate King of
Bavaria. It was bought by a syndicate from the creditors
of the late ex-Khedive, and is now one of the International
Palace Hotels — a commercial enterprise which is a worthy
rival of the Gordon Hotels ring — belonging to the
International Sleeping Car Co. It rivals the Continental
or Shepheard's in the costliness of its decoration and the
luxury of its appointments. From a medical point of view,
its strong points are its delightfully rural and at the same
time readily accessible situation, and its sheltered position,
which effectually protects visitors from the occasional
Khamseen winds, — rare, no doubt, but still to be reckoned

with during the Cairo season. The chief drawback to this
ambitious establishment is the presence of mosquitoes in
the beginning of the season, owing to the proximity of the
Nile. This tends to make the commencement of the season
at this hotel somewhat later than at the intra-mural
hotels. As regards its visitors, the Ghezireh Palace is
rather more cosmopolitan in character than the Continental,
or even Shepheard's.

Certainly there is room for an extra-mural hotel at
Cairo, with its swarms of invalids increasing year by year,
who invade Egypt for the winter; and it should appeal not
only to this numerically important class, but also to sportsmen,
owing to its vicinity to the race-course and the Sporting
Club grounds.

So much, then, for the three leading Cairo hotels. We
now come to another first-class hotel. The New Hotel
was the favourite caravanserai of the ex-Khedive Ismail,
and it occupies by far the best situation of any in Cairo,
facing the Grand Opera House. It has had vicissitudes,
but has recovered and stood the test of time; and not being
so popular as Shepheard's and the Continental, which are
often overcrowded in the height of the season, it might be
preferred by invalids and those in need of rest and quietness.
Its numerous sets of upper rooms, each furnished
with an alcoved balcony, might also recommend it to this
class of visitors.

Mena House, at the foot of the Pyramids, is a large and
expensive establishment, which has found favour with our
compatriots. No doubt those with the artistic sense highly
developed will enlarge on the enormity of building a huge
modern hotel in the midst of such incongruous surroundings,
in the close vicinity of the immortal Pyramids and
the mystic Sphinx; but it must be admitted, if I may be
allowed to act as advocatus diaboli, that if the Pyramids
had to be vulgarised, they could not have been vulgarised

better (or less) by the English capitalist who is responsible
for the undertaking. The origin of Mena House (called
from Menes, the quasi-mythical earliest king of Egypt) is
curious. Some seven years ago an Englishman in delicate
health came to Egypt. He built a tiny house under the
shadow of the Pyramids. Finding the air beneficial, he
began to erect a small sanatorium, hoping that invalids
like himself might resort there, and gain a longer lease of
life. But before the plan was matured he died. Then Mr.
Locke-King bought the property, and determined to start
a hotel. The undertaking grew under his hands, and now
Mena House may be considered to rank as one of the leading
hotels in Egypt. Mr. Locke-King, however, no longer
owns the Mena House, having transferred his interest
therein to an English syndicate. It is well spoken of, and
the rooms are furnished in good taste. It is well appointed,
and is furnished with a large swimming-bath, English billiard-table,
library, etc. Golf links are also duly advertised
among its numerous attractions for visitors, though
considering the general lay of the desert surrounding the
Pyramids, “sporting bunkers” must be too plentiful even
for the most determined devotee of the “royal and ancient
game,” and the laying out of anything approaching to a
putting-green must have presented almost insuperable difficulties.
There is a resident chaplain and physician.

The Hotel d'Angleterre is a favourite resort of English
and Americans. It is a particularly comfortable and well-managed
house, and is under the same proprietorship as the
Continental. It has recently been rebuilt, and is furnished
with all modern conveniences, — lift, electric light, etc.;
in fact, it is a second Continental on a more modest scale,
and may be regarded as a succursale or dependance of the
parent establishment.

The Hotel Royal may be said to have some claims on
the gratitude of Englishmen. During Arabi's rebellion, all

the hotel keepers, save the landlord of the Royal, decamped.
Thus, after the victorious campaign, the English officers
would have fared badly had not the doors of the Royal
been open to them. This hotel has a good reputation for
its cuisine and moderate charges. There remains the well-known
old established Hotel du Nil, handicapped a little,
however, by its situation close to the malodorous street
known as the Muski. This hotel, well-known to scholars,
literary men, and Egyptologists, boasts of a famous garden,
one of the most beautiful and striking in Cairo. In
the opinion of many of its guests, this lovely pleasure-ground,
which shuts off all noises from the crowded streets,
quite compensates for its proximity to the native quarter.

So much for Cairo as a great hotel centre.

The City of Victory is, no doubt, a many-sided city, and
might be described under many aspects did space permit.
It is a famous historical city, an official capital and seat of
government, an important garrison town, and a great Oriental
metropolis, — in population the second city in the
Turkish Empire. But by most visitors it is regarded
merely as a fashionable health and pleasure resort, and it
is with Cairo in its social aspect that we are in this chapter
mainly concerned.

Its vogue as an aristocratic winter residence for Europeans
may be said to date from the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869, when Cairo was boomed, to use a modern
phrase, by the Khedive Ismail for all it was worth. This
prodigal ruler spent literally millions in his effort to make
known to Europeans the attractions and potentialities of
his semi-Oriental capital. Yet compare Cairo of to-day
as a fashionable tourist-centre with Cairo of a quarter
of a century ago. Then the unfinished European
quarter had the appearance of a hastily run-up suburb. It
was thought a wonderful achievement to light the Ezbekiya
quarter with gas. Now many of the streets, and all

the large hotels, are lit with electricity, and electric tramcars
run through the main thoroughfares. It is even
proposed to drain the picturesque but highly insalubrious
and malodorous Khalig Canal, which runs through the
heart of the city from Old Cairo to Abbasieh, and lay an
electric tramway along its bed. No doubt æsthetic
tourists will rave at this utilitarian and vandalistic transformation,
but the more thoughtful will not regret that
what is virtually an open sewer should be converted into a
broad highway calculated to benefit the teeming Cairene
population. The Egyptians, it may be remarked, take
very kindly to the new method of locomotion, — so much
so that in the electric trams already running, Europeans
are quite crowded out by natives.

Visitors to Cairo may be roughly divided into three
classes, — sightseers and tourists; winter residents and society
people generally, akin to the fashionable crowds who
gravitate annually to Cannes, Monte Carlo, Mentone, and
other Riviera towns; and invalids, — the latter class, however,
less numerous in Cairo itself than formerly. To
these may be added a leaven of artists, literary people,
Egyptologists, students, etc.

The first class is numerically of most importance; but
tourists, as a rule, have little time, and probably less inclination,
for taking part in the social life of the Anglo-American
colony, and are not ambitious of being thought to be
“in the movement.” The winter residents, along with the
official community, — English officers attached to the army
of occupation and the Egyptian army, government officials
and their families, etc., — form the Anglo-American colony.
Cairo is indeed emphatically a society place, and,
of late years especially, as an aristocratic winter-resort it
ranks with Cannes or Monte Carlo. Perhaps the tone of
society more nearly resembles Nice or Monte Carlo than
the ultra-aristocratic and exclusive Cannes, smartness being

the prevalent note of its winter residents. From January
to April there is one unceasing round of balls, dinner parties,
picnics, gymkhanas, and other social functions.

Intelligent sightseeing or the study of Egyptian antiquities
is, no doubt, apt to be undertaken in a decidedly
perfunctory manner by the winter residents. The Necropolis
of Memphis, for instance, is regarded mainly as a
convenient site for a picnic, and the Pyramids or Heliopolis
as a goal for a bicycling or riding excursion. Bicycling is
now a particularly popular amusement in the City of the
Caliphs; and the sight of an American or English girl
bicycling down the Mooski, preceded by a running footman
(syce) to clear the way, may perhaps provoke a smile from
her compatriots at the startling incongruity. This is only
one instance, however, of the strange contrasts between
the latest development of European civilisation and fashionable
culture and the old-world Orientalism so constantly
seen in Cairo of to-day.

After all, in the Cairo season “distractions” and social
dissipations of all kinds, not to speak of the ordinary urban
amusements in the form of concerts, theatres, and promenades,
follow so unceasingly that there is some excuse for
the neglect of the regulation sights and antiquities. When
it is the case of a bicycle gymkhana, a polo match at the
Turf Club ground, or a lawn-Tennis tournament at the
Ghezireh Palace, or a visit to a gloomy old temple, it is
perhaps only natural with young people that the ancient
monuments should go to the wall.

The official balls and receptions at the Khedivial Palace
or the British Agency are functions which demand more
than an incidental notice. The British Agent gives at
least a couple of large balls during the season, and the
same hospitality is offered by the Khedive. In addition to
these official entertainments, several important semiofficial
dances are given by the British officers quartered

at Cairo. The invitations to the Khedive's ball are invariably
sent to the foreign visitors through their Ministers
or Consuls; and as everybody in Cairo seems to regard a
ticket almost as a right, there is occasionally a certain
amount of friction between the accredited representatives
of the different Powers and the Khedive's officers.

It cannot be said that the present Khedive, or the officers
of his household entrusted with the delicate task of
issuing the invitations, always manifest the possession of
savoir faire or a nice sense of diplomacy. According to a
well-authenticated story, the Khedive once returned the
United States Consul-General's list of visitors to whom he
proposed invitations to be sent, with an observation to the
effect that only those of noble birth were eligible. The Consul
promptly replied that every American citizen considered
himself a king in his own right. This brought the autocratic
Khedive to his bearings, and not only was the list
passed, but it is said that invitations were sent besides to
all the guests at Shepheard's Hotel en bloc.

The season in the fashionable world is a short one, extending
from January to April. The flight of the European
visitors in this month is soon followed by the exodus
of the official colony, and other permanent residents, to
Ramleh and other summer refuges. The Khedive and his
court leave for Alexandria usually about the beginning of
May, and this departure of the titular sovereign marks
formally the close of the Cairo season.

A VISIT to the bazaars is one of the most instructive
and entertaining, as well as the pleasantest, forms of
killing time which Cairo offers to visitors. But the great
charm of this excursion is lost, if it is simply regarded as
one of the items in the day's programme of sightseeing.
The only way to appreciate the native bazaars, and to get
some insight into Cairo street-life, is to form no fixed
plan for the disposal of time, and to make no itinerary, and
certainly to dispense with a guide or dragoman. It is, however,
decidedly advisable, before starting, to get some idea
of the confusing topography of the bazaar quarter from a
good map. The boundaries of the bazaar region can, however,
easily be mastered; and there need be no fear of losing
one's way, even in the apparently inextricable labyrinthine
maze of narrow lanes and alleys which make up the native
quarter, for it is intersected by two main thoroughfares,
and has fairly well-marked boundaries. One of these, generally
known as the Suk-en-Nahhassin, from its principal
bazaar, is called by different names, according to the bazaar
which abuts on it. It is one of the narrowest and oldest,
but most important, of the Cairo streets, and extends north
and south from the El-Hakim Mosque, near the Bab-en-Nasr,
to the Boulevard Mehemet Ali, the modern highway
which runs direct from the Ezbekiya Square to the Citadel.
The other main street is the Rue Neuve, a continuation of
the Mooski, and usually called by the name of the latter.

The Mooski was the old Frankish quarter before Ismailia
built the modern European district, radiating from the
Ezbekiya Square. Some of the bazaars cluster round
large covered market-places called khans, of which the
Khan Khalil and Khan Ghamaliyeh are the most important.
As I have said, the best way of exploring the bazaars is to
have no prearranged plan or programme. Hurried tourists,
however, who might naturally consider this a counsel of perfection,
will find that the most satisfactory and expeditious
method of doing the bazaars is to make the Suk-en-Nahhassin
street a kind of movable base, and proceed northward
or southward from its intersection with the Mooski.

The bazaars are considered by some travellers to be less
Oriental in aspect, and to have less of the Eastern atmosphere
and local colour about them than those of Damascus;
and Bædeker considers them inferior even to those of Constantinople.

As in all Oriental cities, each bazaar is confined, as a
rule, to the sale of one class of goods, or products of a certain
district. There are, for instance, the bazaars of the
Soudan, Tunis, Red Sea Littoral, Morocco, etc.

The Khan Khalil was built in 1292, by the famous
Mameluke Sultan, El-Ashraf, the conqueror of Acre. It is
on the site of the Tombs of the Caliphs. This is the chief
emporium for carpets, rugs, and embroidered stuffs. Open-air
auctions take place on the mornings of Monday and
Thursday, which are very amusing to watch, — the dellalin
(appraisers), the prototypes of the porters of modern sales
by auction, carrying among the crowd the articles put up,
and crying out the bids as they are made. In one part of
the khan is a place reserved for dealers in brass and copper
goods.

Crossing the street Suk-en-Nahhassin, we come to the
Suk-es-Saigh (gold and silversmiths' bazaar), a much-frequented
resort of tourists. The workmanship and quality

of the trinkets have greatly deteriorated of late. In fact,
Old Cairo residents among the foreign colony declare that
many of the jewels have a Palais Royal or Birmingham
origin.

Continuing northwards, and turning to the right, we
reach the Gamaliyeh (camel-drivers') quarter. Here are
the shops of the Red Sea traders. Very inferior goods are
usually only obtainable here, the chief commodities being incense,
perfumes, spices, mother-of-pearl, and attar of roses.
The latter is so much diluted that it is almost worthless, a
small flask being sold for a franc or so, which would cost
at least a pound if pure. The northern continuation of
the street forms the coppersmiths' bazaar; and here are also
booths for the sale of pipes, cigar-holders, amber, narghilehs,
chibouques, and other articles for smokers. Retracing
our steps to the starting-point, and crossing the Rue Neuve,
— as absurdly named as New College at Oxford, for it is
one of the oldest streets, — we reach the once flourishing
Suk-es-Sudan, which, though mentioned in the guide-books,
no longer exists, since the Soudan has been practically
closed to traders. In this quarter are also the booksellers'
bazaar, of little interest, and the Suk-el-Attarin (spices,
perfumes, etc.), one of the most characteristic bazaars.

Unfortunately, the articles in the bazaars mostly visited
by strangers are often either inferior imported goods from
Europe, — jewelry from Birmingham, carpets from Brussels,
haiks and silk goods from Nîmes or Lyons, cotton
stuffs from Manchester, etc., — or cheap and showy bric-à-brac
and sham curios, manufactured to meet the factitious
demand of tourists. In fact, many of the shops bear a
striking resemblance to the Oriental stalls at international
exhibitions. Genuine Oriental goods can, however, be
bought at the picturesque Suk-el-Fahhamin, behind El-Ghuri
Mosque, a favourite haunt of artists and others
appreciative of local colour. Here are to be found rugs,

bernouses, Fez caps, saddle-bags, and other articles, from
Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco.

With regard to purchases, bargaining is, of course,
necessary. Even if the tourist is inexperienced and ignorant
of the value of Oriental wares, he might better trust to
his own powers of bargaining than allow a guide or interpreter
to intervene. The seller, it must be remembered,
has a different price for each customer, as a rule. Seasoned
travellers in the East lay down the axiom that the prospective
buyer should, as a rule, offer half what is asked, when
a bargain can be struck midway between the two prices.
The objection to this “splitting the difference” is that the
dealers are fully aware of this rule, and raise the original
price to cope with it. Real bargains can, however, still
be obtained by a visitor who is making a long stay in Cairo,
and has the necessary patience to go through the tedious
preliminary negotiations. The winter resident who makes
several visits to the bazaar quarter, and is not in a hurry
to spend his money, will, sooner or later, get the refusal
of really valuable articles at not very much more than
their market value. When purchasing jewelry, the buyer
should see that it has the Government stamp, indicating
number of carats. Genuine Mushrabiyeh work (carved
wooden latticework) is very costly. Most specimens sold
are imitations, the pieces being turned out in one uniform
size by a lathe. In the real article (the most characteristic
Cairo industry) each piece is irregular, and is cut by hand.
The best days for the bazaars are the market-days, Mondays
and Thursdays, and the hours early in the morning or late
in the afternoon.

Even now, in this tourist-ridden native quarter, which is
apt to be regarded by most strangers in the light of an
Oriental spectacle conveniently arranged for the benefit of
European visitors, at the threshold of New Cairo in the
Ezbekiya (the hausmannised Cairo of Ismail), in bargaining

for the more costly wares, the time-honoured Oriental
methods prevail. The negotiations are hedged round
with a certain amount of ceremony which recalls the stately
fashion in the Arabian Nights, when the purchase of a
brass tray or an embroidered saddle-cloth was a solemn
treaty, and the bargain for a lamp a diplomatic event
not to be lightly undertaken or hurriedly concluded by
either of the high contracting parties. Those who are
anxious to imbibe the Oriental “atmosphere” will, no
doubt, be more inclined to tolerate the long and tedious
process of chaffering, considered an indispensable preliminary
to a purchase, than the ordinary, matter-of-fact
tourist. Native manners and customs, and the multifarious
phases of Cairene life — for, as in all Oriental countries, the
inhabitants live and carry on their various occupations and
avocations in the open air as much as possible, and the
Cairene is as great a sun-worshipper as the Neapolitan —
are, of course, best observed in the region of the bazaars.
The El-Muayyad Bazaar, behind the mosque of that name,
is a particularly good field for the searcher after local
colour. This is peculiarly a native mart, and less of a
tourist resort than most of the bazaars.

But, for broad spectacular effects, the visitor must betake
himself to the Mooski, the most characteristic thoroughfare
of Cairo. Here a strange amalgam of Eastern and
Western life bursts upon the spectator's astonished gaze;
and here, indeed, the “East shakes hands with the West.”
This living diorama, formed by the brilliant and ever shifting
crowd, is, in its way, unique. A greater variety of
nationalities is collected here than even in Constantinople,
the most cosmopolitan city, in a spectacular sense, in Europe;
and in this great carnival one seems to meet every
costume of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Let us stand aside
and watch this motley throng of all races and nationalities
pouring along this busy highway. The kaleidoscopic variety

of brilliant colour and fantastic costume is a little bewildering
to the stranger. Solemn and impassive-looking
Turks, gently ambling past on gaily caparisoned mules,
grinning negroes from the Soudan, melancholy-looking fellahs
in their scanty blue kaftans, cunning-featured Levantines,
green-turbaned Shereefs, and picturesque Bedouins
from the desert, stalking past in their flowing bernouses,
make up the mass of this restless throng. A sakkah, or
water-carrier, carrying his picturesque goatskin filled with
Nile water, still finds a sale for his drinks in spite of the public
fountains; while among other dramatis personœ of the
Arabian Nights are the vendors of sweets and all kinds of
edibles. Interspersed, and giving variety of colour to this
living kinetoscope, are gorgeously arrayed Jewesses, fierce-looking
Albanians, their many-coloured sashes bristling with
weapons, and petticoated Greeks. Then, as a restful relief
to this blaze of colour, appears a white group of Egyptian
ladies, — “a bevy of fair damsels richly dight,” no doubt,
but their faces, as well as their rich attire, concealed under
the inevitable yashmak and voluminous haik. Such are
the elements in this mammoth masquerade which make
up the brilliant and varied picture of Cairene street-life.

These are, no doubt, the aspects which force themselves
on the notice of the most unobservant tourist, and are
among the impressions of every scribbling globe-trotter.
Less obvious is the “charm of endless contrasts, — not chromatic
alone, but contrast of race, feature, form, costume,
attitude, occupation, movement, mood. This it is that
makes the magic of the marvellous Eastern city for the
Western eye. Nor is the medley of manners less striking
than the hotch-potch of races and the tangle of tongues.”
The Oriental justifies the popular Western conception of
gravity and impassiveness of demeanour. Plenty of these
types abound, but there are others, — souvent homme varie.
“In one form he treads the roadway with the majesty of

Haroun Alraschid; in another, he scampers through the
streets like a Parisian gamin. The features of that venerable
pipe-merchant are as unemotional as a Red Indian's;
but if the purchaser, who is haggling with him for the
abatement of a piastre, were pleading for the life of his
only child, the passionate, suppliant expression of his countenance
would more than satisfy the dramatic requirements
of the situation.” Thus are the salient features of the
Cairo streets amusingly and cleverly hit off by Mr. H. D.
Traill, in his “Impressions de Voyage,” recently published
under the title “From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.”

IT must be admitted that mosques are not of great
interest, from the casual sight-seer's point of view,
owing to their uniformity and severe simplicity of design,
which, however, harmonises well with the almost complete
absence of ritual in Moslem worship. The chief features
are an open court (sahn) with a fountain or cistern in the
middle, surrounded by a covered cloister (liwan). The
more sacred part of the building (maksura), corresponding
to the choir of an English cathedral, is often screened off
from the rest of the building. Here the tomb of the
founder is usually placed. In the centre of this sanctuary
is the niche (mihrab or kibla) showing the direction of
Mecca, and the pulpit (mimbar).

The visitor should remember the names of these principal
portions of a Mohammedan temple, if he wishes to
obtain an intelligent grasp of Moslem ecclesiastical architecture.
Archæologically speaking, the most correct mosque
in Cairo is Amru, which will be described later in the chapter
devoted to Old Cairo and the Coptic churches. This is
the original and normal type of mosque, the best example
of which must not, however, be sought in Cairo, but in
Cordova, the mosque cathedral there being considered to
be the most perfect and best-preserved specimen of this
form of Saracenic art in existence. In Cairo the only
mosques, besides Amru, which strictly follow the orthodox
pattern, are Ihn Tulun and the University Mosque, El-Azhar.

There are over three hundred mosques in Cairo,—
indeed, it is said by the Arabs that, as in the case of the
churches of Rome, there is one for every day of the year,—
but most are in ruins; a large number have been devoted to
secular purposes, and there remain scarcely over a score
that even the most conscientious sight-seer would care to
explore. In some of the larger mosques, such as the
Kalaun, a whole group of public buildings are comprised.
Besides the mosque proper, there will be found a hospital,
school, court of justice, monastery, library, etc. In short,
the mosque may be said to serve as a kind of embodiment
of the national life.

One of the largest mosques in Cairo is Muristan Kalaun.
It is not strictly a mosque, but a hospital, and is now in a
ruinous condition. The mosque-tomb of the founder, adjoining,
is a much-frequented shrine of the poorer classes,
who firmly believe in the curative properties of the columns
of the prayer-niche, which they are accustomed to
lick. Certain relics of the Sultan are preserved here,
which, of course, possess equally miraculous powers in the
eyes of the devout. These antiquities— a turban and sash
of the Sultan Kalaun — cannot, it need hardly be said, be
shown to strangers.

The adjoining mosque is comparatively uninteresting;
but the next one (Barkuk), which contains the tombs of
the wife and daughter of the Mameluke Sultan Barkuk,
should be visited, if only to see the exquisite workmanship
in bronze of one of the doors. The tomb of the Sultan
himself, whose body would be thought to be desecrated if
placed in the same building as that of his wife, is buried in
the Tomb Mosque Barkuk, in the Eastern Cemetery.

In one of the most striking features of the Kalaun may
be seen a trace of Gothic influence introduced by the Crusaders.
This is the beautiful arched doorway, which was
brought from a Christian church at Acre built by the

Crusaders. This archway is a fine specimen of early
English architecture, and Mr. Stanley-Poole pertinently
observes that it would not be out of place in Salisbury
Cathedral.

For beauty of decoration this mosque must, however,
yield the palm to the twin mosques of Kait Bey,
especially the one in the Eastern Cemetery (usually, but
erroneously, known as the Tombs of the Caliphs). The
exterior is unequalled among the monuments of the Arabic
art of Cairo for richness and variety of decoration. The
delicate scrollwork and tracery of the fawn-coloured dome,
and the graceful pagoda - like minarets, are familiar to
every traveller. The interior has little decoration of any
kind. Possibly this was intentional, to mark a place of
sepulture, for Kait Bey is buried here. In the sister
mosque within the walls, the highly elaborate decoration
of the interior offers a strong contrast. This mosque,
owing, probably, to its not being prominently mentioned in
the guide-books, — for the average tourist rarely strikes
out an independent line for himself, — or perhaps because
it is a little difficult to find, is seldom visited. Yet this
mosque is one of the most characteristic in Cairo, and
should on no account be neglected. It has been restored
in good taste by the Commission for the Preservation of
Arabic Monuments.

This admirable Society, which receives an annual subsidy
of no more than £4,000 from the State, has done excellent
work since its institution by the late Khedive Tewfik
in 1881. It carries out all necessary renovations under
the old established, but somewhat cumbrous, Wakfs Administration,
the Department which has the charge of all
the mosques, corresponding in some respects to the Ministry
of Public Worship in the French Republic, or to the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners in Great Britain. This body
depends for its income, apart from the State convention,

on the entrance fee of two piastres, which is levied on
strangers for each mosque. In this ancient corporation is
vested all ecclesiastical property in Egypt; in fact, next
to the Khedive, the Church, if such a word may be used in
connection with a heathen faith, was the richest landlord
in Egypt. If a man died without immediate issue his
property went to the nearest mosque, — in practice to the
Wakf; and if his next of kin claimed it, he would have to
pay an enormous percentage of the value to the Administration
in order to redeem his inheritance. Then a tithe
was obligatory on every head of a family. Consequently,
as Mr. Richard Davey observes, in his exhaustive work on
“The Sultan and his Subjects,” Mohammedanism, though
it had no regularly endowed priesthood, was as richly furnished
with this world's goods as the Church in England
before the Reformation. In theory, the Church devoted
her vast wealth to the poor, to education and charity, the
service and preservation of the mosques, and to the maintenance
of the preachers, attendants, and other officials of
the mosques. But the practice was far worse than the
worst which Henry the Eighth's Visitors discovered in the
monasteries before the old order was swept away, as may
be seen by a visit to most of the mosques whose restoration
has not been taken in hand by the Commission for the
Preservation of Arabic Monuments. Now, of course, since
the removal of Ismail from the viceroyalty by the Sultan,
at the demand of the Great Powers, and the appointment
of an English Comptroller of the Exchequer, under the
title of Financial Adviser to the Khedive, the powers of
the Wakf corporation have been much curtailed, and the
collection, and to a large extent the expenditure, of this
revenue is controlled by the State.

After visiting the Kalaun, it is worth while to turn aside
into one of the picturesque alleys branching off from the
Sharia (street) en-Nahhassin, — the great mosque thoroughfare,

though a narrow street, according to modern
notions, — and make one's way to a small but beautifully
decorated mosque, called Abu Bekr. As the guide-books
barely mention it, the ordinary tourist misses it; but a
visit will be well repaid. The exquisite marble mosaics
are almost unequalled in Cairo. Great pains have been
taken in the restoration of this mosque by Herz Bey, the
architect of the Wakfs Administration, who has carried
out the work with the most scrupulous fidelity to the
original plan. The result is an architectural gem, as
pleasing to the eye as it is archæologically correct.

El-Ghuri, near the Attara Bazaar, is another mosque
which is not visited as much as it deserves. The restorations
carried on here by the Ancient Monuments Commission
also reflect considerable credit on this body.

The mosque known as El-Hassanen is dedicated to the
two sons (Hasseen and Hassan) of Ali, the son-in-law of
Mohammed, and in the eyes of devout Moslems it consequently
possesses peculiar sanctity. It has been entirely
rebuilt, and in modern style, and lighted throughout with
gas, to the dismay of artists and archæologists. In spite of
this aggressive note of modernity, this mosque, as the
burial-place of the head of Hasseen (one of the most
venerated saints in the Mohammedan calendar), is much
frequented by the Cairenes, and the Festival of the Molid
(birthday) of the two saints celebrated here is the most
important after that of the Prophet. The Khedive visits
the mosque in state, followed by thousands of the populace,
who throng the building till midnight. The illuminations
of the mosque and surrounding bazaars are magnificent.
“There is no scene in Cairo which reminds one more
forcibly of the Arabian Nights,” says that high authority,
Murray. In the Mosque Siti Zenab, generally known as
the “Women's Mosque,” at the other end of the city, is
buried Zenab, the sister of the Hassanen. It is elaborately

decorated and has a great wealth of coloured glass; but the
restorations have not been tastefully carried out, and “the
mixture of Turkish decoration with the modern style of
architecture does not produce a pleasing effect.”

The Ihn Tulun Mosque, like the mosque in the Place du
Gouvernement at Algiers, and the Agia Sofia (St. Sophia),
of Constantinople, was designed by a Christian architect,
and is said to be a copy of the Kaaba at Mecca. The
original idea of Sultan Tulun (the founder of the Tulunide
dynasty, A. D. 868 to 895) was to build a mosque which
should vie with that of Kerouan (Tunisia) in the number
of its columns, taken, as was usual with the Arab mosque-builders,
from the ruins of Greek and Roman temples.
Fortunately, he renounced this vandalistic scheme. The
columns of the arches which form a colonnade skirting
the sides of the court are of brick instead of stone. The
pointed arches recall the Norman style of architecture, and
Mr. Lane-Poole declares that this mosque constitutes the
first example of the employment of pointed arches throughout
a whole building, for their adoption in England did
not take place till some three hundred years later. An
absurd number of traditions are attached to the building,
which, according to some chroniclers, is built on the site
of the “Burning Bush,” where the Almighty conversed
with the Patriarch Moses, as well as the site of Abraham's
sacrifice, and the landing-place of the Ark. The fact that
Ihn Tulun is, next to Amru Mosque, the oldest in Cairo,
perhaps explains the wealth of legendary lore which clusters
round this venerable ruin. Owing to its ruinous state,
the mosque is of more interest to the historian or Egyptologist
than the ordinary traveller. Its exterior view bears
a curious resemblance to a dismantled fortress.

The Mosque El-Azhar is unique among the Cairene
mosques. It is the largest Moslem university in the world,
and perhaps the oldest of any university, Christian or

Mohammedan, the old mosque having been set apart for
purposes of study towards the end of the tenth century.
Over eleven thousand students, drawn from every Mohammedan
country, are said to be “inscribed on the books,”
and the professors number over three hundred. The educational
methods might, in the present-day vernacular, be
termed undenominational, for all the chief Moslem sects
are represented in this truly catholic institution. Innumerable
chambers are partitioned off among the colonnades
of the Great Court, which correspond to the side chapels
in a Christian cathedral, each of which serves as the lecture-hall
of natives of a particular country; these represent
the colleges of the university. On Friday, the
Mohammedan Sabbath, no teaching takes place; and as
this is its most salient feature, travellers should take care
to choose some other day for their visit. The authorities
do not encourage the presence of strangers, and, pace the
guide-books, admittance is not always practicable. Some
of the sects are decidedly fanatical, and strangers will be
well advised to abstain from any overt expression of amusement
at the extraordinary spectacle of some thousands of
students, of all ages, repeating verses of the Koran in a
curious monotone, while swaying their bodies from side to
side, — supposed to be an aid to memory.

The Mosque Sultan Hassan is a magnificent building of
the palmy days of Arab art, and, on account of its grand
proportions and splendid decorations, is called by the Cairenes
the “superb mosque.” It is said to have cost over
£600,000. The mosque may, in a sense, be considered
the national mosque of Cairo, and is attended by the Khedive
on the occasion of any great religious function. The
building, too, has often served as a kind of meeting-place
of the natives, in times of public disturbance, and has
always been the rallying-place of demagogues and opponents
of the Government, notably at the time of the Arabi

revolt in 1881. The body of the Sultan, who was assassinated
in 1361, lies in a mausoleum which is crowned with
a magnificent dome one hundred and eighty feet high.

The Mameluke sovereigns were great mosque-builders,
and it will be noticed that many of the most interesting
mosques date from the end of the thirteenth century to the
beginning of the sixteenth (when the Ottoman sultan,
Selim II., conquered Cairo), which synchronises with the
golden age of the two Mameluke dynasties.

The following description of this majestic building will
give an idea of its enormous proportions:

Perhaps one of the most attractive mosques is that
popularly known as Ibrahim Agha, or by tourists, “The
Blue-tiled Mosque.” Its official title is Kher-bek, as it was
built by this renegade Mameluke, who afterwards (1517)

became the first Pacha of Egypt under the Ottoman sultans.
On this account it is not surprising that the Cairenes
have not wished to perpetuate the name of this traitor, and
prefer to call the mosque after Ibrahim Agha, who enlarged
and restored it in 1617. The interior is well
described by Colonel Plunkett in his slight but charming
little brochure, “Walks in Cairo.”

The vaulted colonnade on the east side rests on massive
piers, and between them glows the rich blue of the tiles
which cover the wall; they are set in panels, though
somewhat irregularly, and with some serious gaps, where,
doubtless, unscrupulous collectors have obtained valuable
specimens by the aid of dishonest guardians. The effect
depends greatly on the light by which the mosque is seen,
but is always rich and striking; the open court, too, with
its little garden of palms and other trees in the centre, and
the graceful minaret rising above the crenelated wall, is
very attractive, and has, especially towards sunset, a peculiarly
quiet and beautiful appearance.

El-Hakim is one of the largest mosques of Cairo, as well
as the oldest (after Amru, Tulun, and El-Azhar), but it is
in a deplorably ruinous condition. The mosque is unique,
as being the sole one provided with a makhara (an external
platform, not to be confounded with a minaret), on
which incense is burned on important festivals. It is
visited chiefly as the temporary house of the Museum of
Arabic Art.

In most cases, the best movable decorations and fittings of
the mosques, such as the carved mihrab, bronze doors, enamelled
lamps, woodwork, etc., have been removed from the
mosques and preserved in the Arab musuem. Most visitors
would, no doubt, prefer to see these objects in situ, but
the authorities are certainly justified in their action; for
there is no doubt that most of the more artistic objects
in the mosques would have been sold, sooner or later, to

strangers and collectors by the mosque guardians, and
what escaped their rapacity would soon have been spoiled
by neglect. For many years the objects in this unique
collection were stowed away in one of the mosque buildings,
without any attempt at systematic or chronological
arrangement, and were lost to most visitors; but recently
the authorities have had the objects carefully arranged and
scientifically catalogued. In a subsequent chapter this
magnificent collection will be described at some length.

Though, next to the bazaars, the mosques are, in the
opinion of the guides and dragomans, the chief sights of
Cairo, it must be allowed that the ordinary visitor will
find a whole day devoted solely to these Moslem temples
somewhat tedious. It is certainly advisable to combine
the excursion to the mosques with some other kind of
sightseeing. However, whatever the tastes of the traveller,
I think the mosques described above are fairly representative
specimens of Moslem architecture.

I have said nothing of the mosques of the Citadel,
but these will be treated of in the chapter in which I propose
to describe the Cairene Acropolis.

THE Tombs of the Caliphs are a remarkably interesting
group of mausolea, strictly mosque-tombs, situated
outside the walls, a little north of the Citadel. They are
easily reached by the Mooski and Rue Neuve. These
tombs have no connection with the Caliphs, but as the
guides invariably employ this designation, it has naturally
been adopted by visitors. The Caliphs have no separate
burial-place, and, in fact, most of their tombs in the various
mosques of the city have been destroyed. As the
tomb-mosque of Kait Bey is the most important in this
necropolis, it is often called by Cairenes the Cemetery of
Kait Bey. It also goes by the name of the Eastern Cemetery.
The Sultans buried here belong to the Circassian
Mameluke dynasty, and most of the tombs date from
the fifteenth century. They are, for the main part, in a
terribly dilapidated condition; the Wakfs Administration
seem to have recognised the impossibility of restoring
them properly with the funds at their disposal, and have,
perhaps wisely, made no attempt at restoration, except in
the case of one or two of the more important ones.

The title Caliph, in connection with the various Mohammedan
dynasties in Egypt, is often used loosely by
those who have written their history. Cairo was never,
according to the orthodox view of Mohammedans, the
seat of the Caliphate, though some of the Arab rulers,
who were strictly viziers, or viceroys, usurped the title itself
as well as its functions. Up to 750 A. D., Damascus

was the seat of the Caliphate. Then Bagdad, under the
Abbasside dynasty; and finally, on the conquest of Egypt
by the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Selim, Constantinople
became the titular city of the Caliph, and has remained
so down to the present time. It is true, however, that
during the later Arab dynasties in Egypt the actual Caliph
was occasionally under the virtual protection of the Egyptian
Sultan, and Cairo was the residence of this fainéant
Commander of the Faithful. The last of these nominal
Caliphs died in Egypt about 1537 A. D.

It is important, then, to distinguish between those who
were Caliphs de facto merely, and those who were both
de facto and de jure successors of Mohammed, which is the
strict interpretation of the much-abused term Caliph.

What might be called the historical instinct would be
required for a clear comprehension of the intricate succession
of dynasties who controlled the destinies of Egypt,
from its conquests by Amru, the general of the Caliph
Omar (a genuine Caliph), in 1638, down to the invasion
by the Turks in 1517, when Egypt was reduced to a
mere pachalic of the Ottoman Empire. The most important
of these dynasties were the Abbassides, Fatimites,
Ayyubides, and the Mamelukes. Perhaps the former is
the most familiar to the general reader, as it was to this
dynasty that our old friend Haroun-Al-Raschid belonged.
The Fatimites form a highly important landmark in our
rapid survey of Mohammedan Egypt, as the first of these
sovereigns founded the city of Masr-El-Kahira (modern
Cairo), transferring the seat of government from Fostat to
the “City of Victory.”

The Ayyubide dynasty is noteworthy from its founder,
Salah-Ed-Deen, known to us as Saladin, who at first ruled
in the name of the then incapable Caliph. In 1169 Saladin
usurped the supreme authority of the Caliphate, though
by the orthodox Mohammedans this was considered to be

still vested in the representative of the deposed sovereign
of the Abbasside dynasty, whose throne had been usurped
by the famous Ibn Tulun. The dynasty of the Ayyubides,
founded by this twelfth century Napoleon, lasted nearly
a century, — a respectable age for a mediaeval Egyptian
dynasty; and during this period the Caliphs of Bagdad,
who were still reckoned as the spiritual heads of Islam,
were unable to exercise even a show of sovereignty in
temporal affairs. The era of Saladin, during which Egypt
was transformed from a vassal province into an empire, is,
of course, familiar to all of us. But though best known
on account of the long struggle with the Crusaders and the
conquest of Jerusalem, these are only a part of Saladin's
achievements. “He made his power felt,” writes Mr.
Stanley Lane-Poole, “far beyond the borders of Palestine;
his arms triumphed over hosts of valiant princes to the
banks of the Tigris; and when he died, in 1193, at the age
of fifty-seven, he left to his sons and kinsmen, not only the
example of the most chivalrous, honourable, and magnanimous
of kings, but substantial legacies of rich provinces,
extending from Aleppo and Mesopotamia to Arabia and
the Country of the Blacks.”

With the rise of the Mameluke Sultans, who established
their rule over Egypt for the unprecedented period of two
hundred and seventy-eight years, we enter upon a kind of
renaissance in art and literature, in spite of the perpetual
wars and internecine struggles between rival claimants to
the throne.

The question of the Caliphate during this troublous time
is, however, rendered comparatively free from difficulty, as,
possibly with the view of conciliating the orthodox Moslems,
the Mameluke Sultans protected the successive representatives
of the Abbasside dynasty (named from Abbas,
the uncle of Mohammed), and formally recognised them as
nominal Caliphs. On the conquest of Egypt by the Ottomans,

in 1517, the Turkish Sultan confirmed the claim of
the then Abbasside Caliph, and on his death assumed the
title. This title has since been claimed by every successive
Sultan of Turkey.

Let us now visit the most interesting of these sepulchral
monuments.

Kait Bey, Burkuk, and El-Ashraf are considered the
show-mosques, and are the only ones visited by the majority
of tourists. To visit the latter special permission
is necessary. Those fond of architecture are, however,
strongly recommended not to confine their attention to the
three principal ones.

The mosque of Kait Bey, whose beautiful dome is so
familiar in sketches and photographs, is not only incomparably
the finest mosque in this cemetery, but for beauty
ranks high among all the innumerable mosques of Cairo.
Fergusson, in his famous architectural text-book, speaks in
enthusiastic terms of the elegance of the building:

Two slabs of red and black granite, with a depression of
about the size of a man's foot, will be shown by the guide.
Naturally a legend attaches to these curiously formed stones,
and they are said to have been brought from Mecca by Kait
Bey, and the depression is said to be the impress of the
Prophet's foot.

Not far from the Kait Bey Mosque is the large and more
imposing tomb-mosque of Burkuk, the first of the Circassian
Mameluke dynasty who flourished towards the end of

the fourteenth century. This mosque can easily be recognised
by its magnificent twin domes, which mark respectively
the burial-place of the male and female members of
the Sultan's family.

This style of architecture is unusual in Egypt, and,
indeed, certain features of the building are quite unique
among the Cairo mosques. The court is surrounded by
loggia, which form very picturesque cloisters. Though a
great part of the building is in ruins, the remains give one
an idea of its magnificent proportions. “The symmetrical
plan of the edifice, its massive masonry, and the symmetrical
disposition of the rows of pilasters with domes constitute
this mosque one of the most perfect examples of
Arabian architecture in existence.” One of the most
interesting objects is the beautifully chiselled stone-pulpit,
perhaps the best specimen of its kind in Cairo; while next
to the domes the most noticeable external features are
the splendid minarets, the roof decorated with chevron
mouldings.

A striking feature of this mosque is the remains of
buildings which served as temporary dwellings of relatives
and friends of the deceased, the residence of the custodian,
etc. This group of buildings (called Hosh), which
corresponds to the precincts in English cathedrals, are
sometimes, as in this case, almost as extensive as the
mosque itself.

Another mosque worth visiting is the tomb of the Sultan
Barsbey, or in full El-Ashraf Barsbey, a Sultan who
earned the unusual distinction of dying a natural death.
It is smaller than the two mosques described above, and is
in a ruinous state. The dome, with its intricate pattern of
stone lace-work, is very striking. A mosaic pavement in
coloured stones is much admired by connoisseurs of Arabian
art. The ornamentation of the dome, with its network
of arabesques, is very graceful.

Many other mosques are scattered around, but they usually
serve more as a subject for the artist than as goals for
tourists, owing to their ruinous condition. The same may
be said of the tombs of the Mamelukes south of the Citadel,
which are even more in need of repair at the hands of the
Wakfs Commission. “Many of these tombs present admirable
examples of dome architecture in, perhaps, its greatest
perfection, and are models of beauty as regards both
form and decoration.” The sculpturing of the exterior is
in some cases exquisite. Several are enriched by bands of
porcelain, containing inscriptions in white letters upon a
coloured ground. In others, discs of blue porcelain figure
among the interstices of the variegated moulding. None
of the monuments, situated in what has often been a battleground,
have remained intact, and time is making sad
havoc with some of the most beautiful, as every traveller
notes with regret.

Between the Tombs of the Caliphs and the walls of
Cairo stretches the extensive Mohammedan cemetery,
which should be visited if only to see the grave of Burckhardt,
the celebrated Eastern traveller, who died in Cairo
in 1817. Like the ill-fated Professor Palmer, he was best
known to the Arabs under a native name, and many stories
of the old traveller, known all over the East as Sheik
Ibrahim, are told by the Arab guides. His tomb for many
years was unknown to travellers, but in 1870 it was
restored by Rogers Bey.