Pyramids — Sphinx — Nile — Old Egypt — Citadel of Cairo — Walks Through the Town — Petrified Forest
Cairo, Tuesday, Jan. 8. 1856. — Rose a little after ix, — just before sunrise; and as I looked out towards he east, citadel, mosques, minarets, came out in full elief, like transiarencies upon the reddening sky.
About eight o’clock we set out for the Pyramids, Laving as our dragoman a most obliging Syrian, Haheeh )j name, from Beyrout. For some distance Ave rode hrough an avenue of lubbuk trees. About half a mile rom the city we passed a palace of the Pasha’s, at the ate of which some dozen of his white-robed soldiers mre lounging. I happened to be walking on before, ,nd my donkey followed at some distance. On a uddeii I heard a shrill cry, and, turning round, saw me of these soldiers thrashing my donkey-boy, as if he would have beaten him to pieces. Immediately I inerfered so far as I could; but not knowing how far the poy might be the cause of the mischief, I was not very euergetic, especially as I cuulJ not understand the vociferations of the crowd or the explanations of the boy, who, half in Arabic, half in English, was utteriug hi& complaint. Before I could make out the case, the soldier had mounted my donkey and was riding off. Up came Habeeb. In a minute the boy explained the matter, and off went the Syrian at fall speed. He soon overtook the soldier and laid hold of the animal. The man of war resisted, — vociferated, and laid his hand on his sword. We soon came up and gathered round the combatants. Who was to yield? Not the soldier, we thought, well-armed as he was, and almost within haij of his comrades. Habeeb, however, was a man most detorminsd in will and powerful in body. Not an incL would he allow the fellow to move. Off he must come from the seat he had usurped, or if he would not, he must be dragged or driven off. He got calmer, — looked at us and saw we were Englishmen, — looked a Habeeb and saw he was determined; — so there seemed nothing for it bat to yield, which he did at last, dismounting in sullenness, and leaving me in possession oi my charger. The donkey-boy was overjoyed, — cryino out in his own way to us, “Bad soldier, — bad soldier.’ Habeeb was proud of his victory, and rode on at oui head in triumph. We asked him if he was not afraid that the soldier would draw his sword. “What,” said he, “a Syrian afraid of an Egyptian!” And, flourishing his stick, intimated that his wooden sword would have proved quite a match for the soldier’s steel one
I was glad that I had got back my donkey in peace, — for had it been carried off, I should not have known what to do, as the day was hot, and the way long, and walking almost impracticable. The incident, however, shewed us the oppression which these soldiers exercise over all whom they can safely rob, or injure, or insult.
On we pushed through a continuous line or stream of people and soon reacned the Nile, where the hubbub ot embarkation was frightful. The island of RoclaJi, close by which we sailed, is said to be the place where the infant son of Amram was found by the daughter of the king, in his bulrush-cradle. Here is a splendid palace of the Pasha, and the famous Nilometer. As we crossed, the pyramids of SaJdidrah seemed to rise up in the far south, while those of Ghizeh seemed to stand quite near, and just in front. Our voyage was about fifteen minutes in length, — and as we glided through the floating sunshine, the scene on each side was “goodly to behold,” — for the river seemed lined with palms and palaces on both its banks, between which there crossed and recrossed white-sailed boats without number. Landing, wo rode on through lallages, palm-forests, fields, and sand-flats. We noticed (as often we did in Syria) a man chopping up with an axe a field which had been baked by the sun. He was literally “breaking up his fallow-ground.” (Jer. iv. 3.) We marked also how carefidly our Arabs avoided treading on the fields, — keeping always to the sides, — illustrating Job’s description of the violent man, who pays no attention to landmarks or fences, “He beboldeth not the way of the vineyards.” (Job xxiv. 18.)
But a letter written from the spot will tell the story as well. ...” Leaving Cairo at eight, we reached the Nile in less than an hour. Then ’ rose from sea to sky’ such a hubbub as can only occur in Egy! We and our donkeys must embark. The latter were pulled into the boat, some by the tail, and some by the head, and some by the legs. The jabber of the Arabs was horrific. They screamed, and shouted, and scolded, and shook their fists; they pulled, and pushed, and tore at each other; — such a mob! The sail across the Nile was lovely. The broad brown river (for its colour was dusky olive), gleaming in southern sunshine, — the river boats with their lateen sails, — the Pasha’s palace, — the little isle of Bodah, — the pyamids of Sakhdrah and ■Ghizeh, with a long range of white precipices as a background, to the west, — the forests of noble palms; — here was a scene of wonder, and greatness, and beauty, such as one loves to look back upon through life. As soon as we landed, the Arab shrieks recommenced. We stepped quietly ashore, leaving our donkeys to follow, which they did without delay, though whether with head or tail foremost I cannot say. I am certain they did not know themselves. Remounting them, we trotted and gallopped away through a dirty Arab village, — a mere cluster of dunghills, with holes scooped out of the dried filth for human beings to crawl in and out by. Then we passed out of human vileness into nature’s glory, riding along for above a mile through a wood of tall palms, whose stems were upright as an obelisk, and whose green crowTi of feathers no breeze shook. Then we rode through fields, whose fertile mud, scorched into hardness by the sun, was just beginning to be ploughed up. After passing two other villages we reached the sand of the desert, on the raised edge of which the Pyramids are reared as on a platform. The sand is fine and of a whitish colour, not flat but swelling into gentle hillocks, over which our donkey? went gallantly.*...
We soon reached the Pyramids; but here let me
again quote a letter: —
“Under the Sphynx, Jan. 8, half-past 1 2. ... I meant to have written from the top of the great pyramid, but my writiug-case was left at the foot, through
forgetfulness, so I scribbled a pencil note to on the
top, where I spent half an hour, and then came down to take shelter from the heat under the back part of the Sphynx’s head. It is large enough to give shelter to a score of us. Right before me, as I sit with my back to the stony monster, is first the great pyramid of Cheops, which is about 460 feet high, or nearly 120 feet higher than St Paul’s, London; next that of Cephrenes (or Belzoni’s); then a smaller one, that of Mycerenus. Beyond these are smaller ones, some of them almost like conical mounds. We took about twenty minutes to ascend the great one.” ....
* Tacitus speaks of the Pyramids as being “disjectas inter, et vix pervias arenas.” The forraar of these epithets wo found ti-uo enough, the latter not. — A nn., L. II. § Gl.
Some expositors of Scripture have wTitten of the P^Tamids as if they might be the work of the oppressed Israehtes, in the days of their bondage ‘But the Pyramids (with the exception of two small ones at Dashdr) are built of limestone, not of brick. The limestone seems to have come partly from the immediate neighbourhood of the Pyramids themselves, and partly from the Mukattem ridge near Cairo. The red granite, which IS found in the interior, and also in the surrounding tombs, is from Syene in Upper Egj’pt, 500 miles farther up the Nile.
The view from the top was no common one. Some travellers have written that they were disappointed both yviih the view and with the Pyramids themselves. We were not with either. Seated on the top we had to take breath for some minutes after the ascent, which tries every joint and nmscle in your limbs. Then we began to look about us. To the east the yellow ]Iukatem cliffs, with the desert behind them and Cairo at their feet, gleaming in the fair noon. Between us and the city there flowed the mighty Nile,* — whose waters we coidd trace far north and south for many a mile by the long line of moving silver, dividing the vast waste of
* The Nile is certainly a most majestic river, especially when viewed from a height. In this respect it is quite dififerent from the Jordan, whose high banks seem quite to swallow up the stream and prevent its being seen to advantage. No one who has looked on it would speak of Jordan “windng his stately march,” or say “where stately Joi-daii flows by many a palm,” (Keble). Jordan is not at all stately, nor does it flow by many a palm. The ti-ees on its banks are many and various; but we saw no palms among them.
THE rYRAMIDS, 57
dull unmoving sand. Along its banks rose numerous palm forests, and upon its bosom glittered the sails of a hundred river-boats, which, as they moved along, seemed in the distance like the white wings of sea birds. To the west there lay the Lybian wastes on which the blue horizon rested. To the south rose the fourteen Pyramids of Sakharah, some ten miles up the Nile, where is the lately discovered Necroj)olis with the mummy-pits of kino’s and gods.
There is no doubt that the Pyramids were the tombs of kings,* and the greatness of these structures shews how men strove to undo the humbling circumstances of mortality. To keep up the semblance of perpetual life, they caused themselves to be embalmed. To save themselves from the abasement of the “narrow house,” they cased themselves in polished granite, and reared these enormous tombs. Faith, accepting the righteous sentence of mortality, as the wages of sin, and yet counting on a glorious immortality, in resurrection, said, “let me bury my dead out of sight,” (Gen, xxiii. 4);
It sounds stranjj’o to hear Clcopatrn s;iy, — “Rather make
My country’s high pyramides my gibbet
And hang mc up in chains.”
But it w.-xa tho most expressive contrast sho could have uttered. Tbo honoured tombs of her fathers, where their dust was laid in sacred pomp, to bo her gibbet, where she should be hung in chains! Shal:spearc’s accuracy was great. Milton rather incongruously makes tho palace of Satan to bo based on or adorned with pyramids —
a moimt
Raised on a mount with pyramids and towers
From (lianiond ([uarrics hewn.
58 TTTK PYl^VMTDS,
I)ut unbelief, rebelling at the punishment, and resolved to neutralise it, said, “let us keep our bodies from decay and cover them with mighty monuments, — that is all the life we know of.” And thus “the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house,” (Isa. xiv. 18); so that when God would threaten Babylon he tells her that she shall be “cast out of her grave” and “not joined with them in burial;” and when he would warn Egypt he says, “they shall not lie with the mighty” (Ezek. xxxii. 27).
The prophets no where make the slightest reference to these works of Egyptian pride in their various predictions concerning Egypt, as if that which was the wonder of the nations was not worthy to be named. But perhaps it was to such structures that Job referred when he spoke of “kings and counsellors of the earth, who built desolate ‘places for themselves” (Job. iii. 14.)
The whole place seems a cemetery of giants, — erected not merely to resist the overflow of the Nile or the still more destructive sand-flood, — but to defy time itself. What care men took to make themselves immortal! First of all there was the embalming of the body. Then this embalmed body was placed in a marble coffin, ftagments of which lie scattered here and there. Then this marble coffin was deposited in a granite tomb, of enormous strength. Then above was reared the Pyramid, like a mighty tombstone, securing the dead against all intrusion. Was all this to defy, not merely time, but judgment to come?
But Egypt was not merely the burying place of Egyptians, but of Israelites as well. In the centuries of bondage how many thousands of the seed of Abraham were buried on the banks of the Nile I In after ages too, when Israel fled to Egypt in the days of their last kings, what multitudes of Jews laid their dust in that strange land; as Hosea jDrophesied (ix. 6.)
For lo!
They are gone before the destroyer!
Mizraim shall gather them,
Memphis shall bury them.
No country (their own excepted) contains so much of Israel’s dust as Egypt.
In looking from the Pyramids, it is old Egypt that comes up before your view, — old Egypt on both sides of the river. Modern Egypt, both in its Christianity and its Moslemism, disapjoears. An old bridge seems to spring from the Pyramids, and to rest its first arch on the island of Rodah; from that it springs its second arch, which spans Cairo and rests on Heliopolis; — the Pyramids, the Nilomcter, and the Obelisk, forming links of an unbroken chain. It is all old ]llizraim everywhere, — a land that seems never to die, — or if it does, in its very death to rise up into a vastness that overshadows all modern grandeur. Gazing from the Pyramids, Cairo, fine as it is with its minarets and domes, seems but as a patch of mushrooms between two mighty oaks, or as a pile of white-washed houses between two old cathedrals, Greek philosophy had its day of greatness, but old Egypt was still above it. Moslemism has had its era of grandeur, but old Egypt still towers above it. All the changes of the last two thousand years are but as modern additions to some old temple, which time after time moulder away and leave the ancient structure more venerable and more marvellous than before.
But let me go on th the letter written under the shaggy locks of the Sphynx. “Around me are vast hillocks of sand, the proceeds of the many diggings which have taken place here, by Romans, Egyptians, French and English. Amongst them are noble tombs, from which, however, the sarcophagi have disappeared. There seem to have been here at least a dozen of pyramids, great and small. As I write, a half-naked Arab boy, from the neighbouring village, sits beside me with his earthenware bottle of Nile water, out of which I must now stop to drink, before rejoining my companions... After my twenty minutes rest under the shade of the Sphynx, I joined the party, and we all sat down to lunch in one of the large excavated tombs. It had been unroofed by some explorer and robbed of its contents, but its massive walls of finely-polished granite afforded sufficient shade. About twenty-five wild-looking Arabs, young and old, male, but not female, are sitting round, wondering at us as we uncover our heads and seek blessing on the food set before us. “We soon finished our lunch, and sfiving the fragments to our hungry Arab boys, we rode about 200 yards off, where there is a knot of trees, two derwishes (as the boy called them) and three palms. Their
TOE Pi’IUMIDS. 61
Khaciow was nio.st refro/king, and the north-east breeze, which seemed then to spring up, was most pleasant. The sky was not quite cloudless. A thin sort of gauze seemed spread over it in the shape of light long clouds, which made its blue less deep, but which took off the trying heat. Yet I did not suffer from the heat but rather enjoyed it. One does not perspire so much in this dry climate as at home; nor does one feel the fati<]jue of all this climbing, and riding, and knocking about so much so as in our native climate.”
Our ride to and from Ghizeh was about twenty-eight miles in all. The Pyramids are not much above ten miles north-west of Cairo in a straight line. But our course, being at no time straight, made the ride some miles longer. We had more than once to make a long bend, that we might avoid some pool or ditch or slimeheap which had been left by the Nile, on the edge of fields that were rapidly throwing up from their moist 8oil the fresh verdure of spring.*
I noticed that the quay, — if one may call it so, — on the cast bank of the Nile, was made of planks of the palm, shewing us another of the many uses to which that wondrous tree is put. The vine is for one thing
Spenser’s words arc true enough, —
As when old father Nilu3 ‘gins to swell,
With timely pritle above the Egj-ptian vale,
His fatty waves do fertile slime outwell.
And overflow each plain, and lowly dale;
Bnt when his later ebb ‘gins to avail
Huge heaps of mud he leaves...
Fairy Queen, B. 1. C. I.
only, fruit. If” it bears no fruit, it is useless, — fit only for the fire (Ezek. xv. 1-5). The i)alm is serviceable in an hundred ways. The palm and the camel, — who can tell all their uses?
As we rode slowly back, I noticed several illustrations of Scripture, — women bearing children on their shoulders, which is quite common in the East (Isa. xlix. 22); ’ — a man staying his journey that he might “bow down upon his knees to drink,” instead of “lapping” with his hand and passing on as one in haste and in earnest (Judges vii. 5, 6); — a shepherd carrying a sheep in his bosom (Tsa xl. 11); — a runner, staff in hand and with girded LjIus, running at full sjoeed on some important errand (Job ix. 25), “swifter than a post,” — (” one post shall run to meet another,” Jer. li. 31); — a vine with its branches “running over a Avail.” (Gen. xlix. 22.) These things we noted as we passed along, and then, about sunset, found ourselves at rest for another eveninor.
Wednesday, Jan. 9. 1856. — Rose before seven, — morning pleasant. At half-past eight set off for the Citadel. In our way saw the mosque of Sultan Hassan, — old and crumbling yet magnificent, from its size and the noble simplicity of its architecture. The great court, remarkable for its height and spacious dimensions, not unlike St Paul’s. We saw more than one mosque, both outside and inside, — all of them simple, — unlike the “churches” of the East and West. In a mosque there is no object of idolatiy, — picture, statue, or wafer.
MaliommeJanism was the re-action produced by the worse than Pagan idolatries of Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries. It was the reform of Eastern Christianity, a re-action from vile polytheism, which the worship of the saints and of Mary had produced. Few have a true knowledge of the enormous superstitions and idolatries which then went to make up what was still called Christianity., If they had, they would not indeed think better of Moslemism, but they would admit that it was some improvement upon the system which it supplanted. It was man’s attempt to get rid of a gross religion, and to get back to something like immateriality of worship. A Moslem hates idolatry, and cannot bear to enter a Greek or Latin Church, because of the idolatries which defile every nook and stone. He would not bow before an image nor kiss the foot of a statue, nor burn incense to a picture. But he has learned of late that all Christians are not idolater.s. And not long since, when the Pa.sha visited the Protestant Church at Jerusalem, he was struck with the difference between it and the other churches that receive the name of “Christian.” “I could worship here,” was his remark on coming out. He could not bear the idol-worship, of which he is often compelled to be a spectator, when called to act as preserver of the peace in tlic Church of the Holy Sepulchre, when Latin and Greek clamour and fight and hot, with their wafer-god in their mouths, and their idols looking down with complacency on the warfare. It is really a i)4 SHUBRA GARDENS.
relief to piiss from oue of these idol-shrines into the stem simplicity of a Moslem mosque.
Soon reached the citadel.. situation lofty and view fine.. close at hand the Mukattem ciitfs.. Ghizeh, thf Pyramids, the Lybian Hills.. fields of green, forests oi palm.. the city of Cairo at our feet. We then visitec the Pasha’s palace, and then rode to tombs of the Mamlouks, most of them built on the sandy plain, some or the l)row of the ^lukattem Hills, some cut out of tlu precipitous rock, as in Petra, — all in ruins.. tried U enter one of them less ruined, but it was barred. I pui my hand in at the large hole to unbar it in the inside but could not, which reminded us of the Song of Solomon” My beloved jDut in his hand by the hole of the door’ (chap. V. 4.) Down to the right as we went on, ai Egyptian regiment was drawn out for review.. th( echo of the cannon from the cliff striking. Returned a twelve to the hotel, and after a little rest and food wen off to the SIrubra gardens, four miles off. These an truly fine.. trees, shrubs, flowers of every hue and seen.. long hedges of myrtle which the natives use for strewing on graves.. sprightly acacias rising here and then.. groves of oranges and lemons, gladdening the hot ai with their cool fragrance. In the midst was a mos gorgeous miniature palace, with a small lake in it centre, to which, under a splendid arcade, all the cbam tpers open out. The inside all carpet and tapestry anc pictures, the outside all marble and flowers and divans — art seeming to copy nature and nature to study art.
“Thy plants arc a paradise of pomegranates
With pleasant fruits;
Hennali with spikenard,
Spikenard and saffron,
Calamus and cinnamon,
With all trees of frankincenae i
Myrrh and aloes,
With all the chief spices.” (Song of Sol. iv. 13.)
One of the American missionaries gave us his company and guidance, which we much enjoyed. We returned about five, not sorry to rest.
Thursday, Jan. 10. 1856. — In wandering through ihfferent parts of the town, I saw and heard some more of the sights and sounds of Egypt. Among tlte sights was a native school, poor, du’ty, and confused. The Eastern standard of education is low enough. Among the sounds was one of loud wailing coming out of a house in one of the narrow streets. It was “the wail above the dead,” but it seemed quite an uproar. It brought to mind such words as these, “Teach your daughters wailing, and every one his neighbour lamentation, for death is come up into our windows” (Jer ix. 20, 21), and still more the words of another prophet, “Wailing shall be in all streets” (Amos v. 16). Still more exactly did it seem to resemble the scene at Capernaum in the house of Jairus, where the mourning is called a “tumult,” and the mourners are said to have “wept and wailed greatly” (Mark v. 38). The sounds appeared to me quite inarticulate, but I believe they formed a regular lumcnt, repeated again and again for hours or days. If the deceased was a son, the cry of the parents is, “Ya Walladi, Walladi, — Ya ^Valladi, Wulla-li ’ “— Alas, my son, my son! — just like David’s bitter outcry over his dead, ‘’ O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam. xvm. oo.j
Friday, Jan 11. ISjO. — Went to the petrified forest, a curious place, where, on the surface of the sand, there lie scattered masses, fpreat and small, of petrified trees. These extend over miles, — nay, afterwards we traced them all the way to the Red Sea. We would fain have gone to Hellopolis or On, the city of Pharaoh, where Joseph dwelt, and to which his brethren resorted, — the city which Herodotus and Plato vi.sitetl, — the city to which tradition says the infant Jesus was brought, when Herod sought his life. But the distance is considerable, and om: time was short. We could only turn our eyes in the direction of the mounds of ruin, and imagine that we saw the solitary obelisk, the very stone on which Joseph must often have gazed. On has had a strange and noble history, — a history for the Egyptian and the Syi-iau, — a history for the Gentile, the Jew, and the Christian. But no trace of its glory remains. The unsparing sand has swept through the forsaken city. Yet is it not of this that the prophet speaks, when pointing to latter-day blessing, “in that day shall five cities in the laud of Egypt speak the langaiage of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; one shall be called the city of the Sun.” (Tsa. xix. IS, margin.)