The mysterious past of Egypt—The Nile in the religious symbolism of the country—The colossal ruins and strange political mutations of Egypt—The traveller's first impressions—Mariette Bey and the Boulac Museum—Recent changes in Egyptian character—Alexandria and its surroundings—An Egyptian funeral—The ruin wrought by English policy in the past and present—How Christian England is completing the evil work of Mahometan misrule.
THE first impression of every traveller who lands in Egypt is that the country is strangely unlike any other in the world ; and he who tarries long, making Egypt his home for years, as the present writer did, finds that impression strengthened with every day's increased knowledge. No other country has a history so ancient or so remarkable. Thousands of years before any other nation had civilized existence, Egypt was the scene of great events, the records of which have come down to us in stone. Babylon and Nineveh, Greece and Rome, copied their religion and borrowed their science and their learning from this ancient and mysterious land. Here was the primeval repository of learning and civilization. From this source all other ancient peoples drew the inspiration of advancement and gathered strength for great achievements. There is reason to believe that the very earliest civilization that mankind knew had its centre in the rich valley of the Nile.
That great river, deified by the early Egyptians in sheer wonder at its fertilizing power, cleaves in its course five thousand miles of desert. Without its miracle-working alluvium, the valley lands which are now a garden of marvellous fruitfulness would speedily become an arid waste. The bounty of the Nile lands is the wonder of every traveller ; and this fruitfulness is guarded by the Mokattum and Libyan hills as by nature's sentries. On those hills the desert winds are broken, and the valley is thus preserved from the choking drift of sand which would otherwise cover its fair surface, converting it—in spite of the inundations—into a desolate plain.
To the primitive Egyptians water was the obvious source of life, the necessary agent of the earth's fruitfulness ; the Nile was their benefactor and the chief of their divinities. Their conception of it gave to the great river a human form, in which the characteristics of both sexes were combined. To make it still more typical of observed facts, they covered this figure with the leaves of various plants in the form of a great rainbow. The office of this Nile numca was to make offerings to the great gods of Egypt, in the name and behalf of the Pharaohs. Before this Nile god were set four vases containing the sacred water, each separated from its fellows by a sceptre. By every fact of life and every device of symbolism the people were taught reverence for the Nile, and it taxed their imaginations very little to invest the river with so holy a character that a person drowned in its waters was held to be sacred. The corpse, in such a case, could be touched and embalmed only by the priests at the expense of the temple specially dedicated to the god of the Nile.
Standing on the main heights of the Libyan and Mokattum hills and surveying the seemingly boundless desert through which the Nile courses, the spectator is impressed with the awful grandeur and solitude of the scene. In contemplating, too, the great ruins beneath these hills which fringe the silver thread of the river from the Pyramids to Isamboul, the mind is still more awed by the stupendous structures which the genius of man has raised there. The wealth of the Nile waters and the aridity of the deserts bordering the stream gave rise to the beautiful fable of the ancients that Osiris—that was the river, the greatest of all the Egyptian gods—had for his spouse the sweet and lovely Isis, who represented the fruitful Earth. The desert they embodied in Nepthis, another interesting divinity, whom they made the sterile spouse of Typhon, the god of rain. They held, further, that Nepthis could only be made beneficent through the power of Osiris.
Amrou, the Mussulman conqueror of Egypt, in a letter written twelve hundred years ago to Omar the Khalif, well described the extraordinary changes wrought by the inundations : “ To the most abundant harvest succeeds sudden sterility. It is thus that Egypt offers successively, O Prince of the Faithful, the image of an arid and sandy desert, of a liquid and silvered plain, of a marsh covered with black and thick soil, of a green and undulating prairie, of a parterre ornamented with flowers the most varied, and of a vast field covered with a golden harvest. Blessed be the name of the Creator of so many marvels!”
More than twenty years since, after visiting the different kingdoms of Europe and while in the interior of Russia, where intercourse between the people of Asia and Europe is constant, the writer became especially interested in the peculiar habits, customs, and dress of the Eastern nations. He then determined, before returning home, to visit Constantinople, Damascus, and Cairo, where the Oriental can be seen and studied better perhaps than in any of the other great capitals of the East. The interest engendered more than twenty years ago has been more recently deepened and intensified by a long official residence in Egypt ; and the experience thus gained may, it is hoped, interest the reader.
The traveller landing in Alexandria looks on a city of which Ampère graphically says : “ It was founded by Alexander, defended by Cæsar, and taken by Napoleon.” Embellished by Ptolemy, it became the most famous city of its day ; but suffered to fall into decay under Christian and Mussulman rule, it is only in these latter days that it has again arisen from its dejection under the inspiration of Mehemet Ali and his successors, but more especially under his grandson, Ismail Pacha.
The last twenty years had done wonders for Alexandria, until recent Christian diplomacy laid the fairest portions of the city in black and unsightly ruins. Entering the port, formerly an open roadstead, a beautiful revolving light, on the site of the ancient Pharos, guides the seafarer into one of the finest harbors in the Levant. To Ismail Pacha the country is indebted for this surprising change. He it was who constructed the grand and costly breakwater which incloses numerous solidly built quays. The harbor is filled with shipping which anchors in perfect safety, thanks to the energy of the late Khedive. At the landing the familiar Oriental scenes are encountered. That very questionable product of modern civilization, the tide waiter, is here. The guttural tones of the Arab, intent on his piastre, drowns all other noises, and the traveller is but too glad to get under the patronizing protection of his dragoman, a nondescript and objectionable but necessary person, who pushes him into a carriage.
Though amused with his first impressions of the picturesque Oriental scene, the traveller, unaccustomed to the din of a people unlike any he has encountered before, is delighted to get away from the noise and turmoil. He congratulates himself on this, his first visit to Egypt, on having made his way safely through the greatest confusion of tongues and the most dissonant screeching and yelling with which his ear has ever been assailed. Proceeding further his amusement increases as he passes through the narrow Arab streets lined with small shops, and his joy is complete when he finds himself quietly seated at his fine European hotel, where he can breathe freely and leisurely retemper his nerves for another essay among these people. It does not take him long to gain a realizing sense of the fact that he is in the East, in the midst of a race totally different from his own in customs, color, dress, and religion. Having fought his first battle and won it by a masterly retreat, he finds his new acquaintances harmless and amiable, extremely anxious to serve him, always provided the piastre is at once forthcoming. This understood, he sallies forth with renewed energy to new scenes and encounters, and is greatly delighted that the fates have guided him to this distant land. Next he is astonished at the broad, well-paved streets of the new city, with its colossal statue of Mehemet Ali in the grand square, and its stone buildings which would beautify any European city. There is one nuisance which meets him at every turn-namely, the traditional beggar, whose cry for backsheesh is agonizing and whose deformity—which the Arab petitioner thinks a blessing—is painfully obtruded upon attention. Soon, however, one learns the magic Arab expression “ Rue al Allah” (“ Go to the Lord”), which acts like a charm and sends the beggar flying as though the Khedive himself were after him with uplifted kourbash.
It is difficult to convey an idea of the impressions made upon one by early experiences in this strange land. One is haunted by a persistent but indefinable sense of the greatness of the race that inhabited it ages ago, whose works on every hand attest their prodigious energy, industry, and skill.
As painters differ in the chosen subjects of their art—one being enamored of the human face or form, another of beauty in landscape—so the visitors to such a land as Egypt differ in the choice of objects upon which to bestow their attention. Human kind in the present, the evidences of what was done by human kind in the remote past, the phenomena of nature, the monuments of art—all these and other subjects of interest are there, and each visitor is affected by one or another of them according to his mood. I have seen one in love with nature absorbed in the peculiarities of a desert flower, or forgetful of all else in contemplation of a nest of ants in the very shadow of the Pyramids. In a land so rich in interest of every kind, no one mind can hope to grasp all or do justice to all. Each must see as it is given him to see, and each must submit to his limitations. In recording the observations made during a long and intimate acquaintance with Oriental and especially with Egyptian life, therefore, I ask the reader's indulgence not only for the infelicities of a hand better used to the sword than the pen, but also for any apparent slighting of matters in which the individual reader may feel special interest. Seeing with but one pair of eyes and led by but one set of sympathies, the writer can scarcely hope that his observations have always taken precisely the direction which each reader could wish.
Most noteworthy are the changes wrought in Egypt during the last ten years, and they are all in favor of the traveller and the student. Ismail turned modern science to account in working improvements almost as wonderful as those wrought in fable by Eastern magic. He beautified the villages and made the cities wonders of splendor and magnificence. He brought the ruins that lie scattered for hundreds of miles along the Nile within easy accessibility by dahabeeyah and steamer, making the journey even to the remotest of them easy and speedy. He stayed the hand of prying chippers and mutilators and relic-hunters, and instituted scientific excavation and investigation in the stead of mere idle curiosity. In his devotion to this purpose and his zeal for knowledge, the late Khedive appointed as sole conservator of the ruins of Egypt, Mariette Bey, a man of world-wide reputation as a scientific and single-minded archæologist. Under his care the Museum at Boulac, near Cairo, has been filled with objects of the rarest interest, selected and arranged with such care and skill that the intelligent student may there read the records of the human race, on stone and papyrus, almost from the earliest dawn of history. But of the museum and of Mariette Bey's work we shall have occasion to write more fully hereafter.
Among the changes wrought by Ismail's policy, not the least interesting is the improvement in the character of the fellah. In his former estate he submitted to kicks and cuffs without a whimper, accepting ill-treatment as his due. Long ages of oppression had effectually crushed the manhood out of him. The change in this respect has been great. The Arabs have begun to feel their manhood and to assert themselves in various ways—mostly noisy, as the traveller is reminded every day. They do not talk, they scream. Seeing a pair of them in apparent altercation, swinging their arms, seeming to threaten each other with immediate destruction, yelling, screaming, with distorted faces and snapping eyes, the bystander fancies their fury to be such that nothing but blood can appease their wrath. Upon inquiry he finds that all this is a harmless harangue preliminary to a bargain. Among themselves all these Eastern people are given to loud talking. Of late they have gone so far as to assert their rights by boxing-matches with Europeans, when refused the piastre agreed upon, where before they were ready to take a kicking as a settlement in full of all claims.
Other changes of a less pleasing character have been made in Egypt, however, by one of which our own country has profited in a questionable way. In former times the so-called Cleopatra's Needle was the first object of interest to the traveller landing at Alexandria ; but now the land that knew it for three thousand years will know the great obelisk no more. It seems a sad desecration to have removed from the land where it had significance to a park where it has none, a shaft written of by Herodotus, which had looked down upon the achievements of Alexander, Cæsar, and the great modern captain, Napoleon. One of England's poets bitterly rebuked his countrymen for plundering Greece of her marbles in gratification of a selfish vanity ; and now even America “ violates a saddened shrine,” and bears to her shores one of Egypt's altars.
Pompey's Pillar, the only monument now left standing to link Alexandria with the past, was not named after the great warrior, but after a prefect of Alexandria, who erected it by order of the people in honor of Diocletian's clemency. The destruction of Alexandria had been ordered, but the Emperor's horse stumbled on a hill, and, anxious to save the city, he seized upon this omen as an excuse. This magnificent monument of red granite, one hundred feet high, was erected on this sole commanding eminence in or near the city.
Alexander, who conquered all the country east of the Mediterranean Sea, turned to account the advantages of the bay, where stood the ancient fishing village of Racotis. He conceived the idea of a new and splendid city at the mouth of the mud-choked Nile, to be the great mart between the Greek mainland and archipelago and the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs. This was to be the crowning of his plan of a great Greek empire. The legend runs that in 323 B.C. the oracle of Ammon-Ra informed the Macedonian madman that he was the son of the gods, and that in the future, as in the past, he would be invincible. Enchanted, he returned from his visit to the shrine determined to build a great city on this site and to give it his own name. It will be recollected that there is another legend of a venerable old man appearing to the Macedonian in a dream and repeating the lines of Homer (Od. w. 545) :
“ One of the islands lies in the far-roaming waves of the sea,
Opposite Egypt's river, and its name is Pharos.”
There is but little left of the past grandeur of the mighty city, only here and there the fragment of a column deeply imbedded in the earth ; while the modern city, with its stately structures and teeming population, covers the ground where stood the temples, palaces, and museums of the Ptolemies and Cæsars. Not being a city of the earlier Pharaohs, Alexandria has scarcely anything within its borders to remind you of the ancient people. A few stones among its débris tell you in hieroglyphics that they came from the Delta of the Nile to aid in the construction of the museums and seats of learning of a later day. The imagination readily carries one back to the days of the city's splendor described by the earlier writers, and sees the bold Origen mingling with the Egyptian priests and distributing palms near the gates of the temple of Serapis to Pagan and Christian while exclaiming, “ Receive them not in the name of the gods, but of the one and only true God”; the myrmidons of Julian dragging the Christians to the altar and immolating them for refusing to worship the god Serapis ; and then again the Christians under Theodosius breaking the mosaic doors, overturning and destroying beautiful objects of art because they were called idols. The temple, with its hundred steps, was a noble specimen of Greek art. It was destroyed in the year 389 A.D. by Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, in a frenzy of religious fanaticism. The god to whom the temple was dedicated was an invention of the Greek Ptolemies. In this god the wrangling Greek and Egyptian priests had a divinity at whose shrine they could forget their quarrels in a common worship. Serapis was a compound of the Pluto of the Greeks and the Osiris of the Egyptians, and as both of those personages were inhabitants of the infernal regions, the religious zeal of the wranglers was satisfied.
A picturesque structure built by Mehemet Ali, though devoid of much architectural beauty, stands on a small island once surrounded by the sea but now a part of the mainland. It is called the Ras el Tin (Head of the Fig), because of its resemblance to that fruit. Part of it was destroyed by English cannon shot in the recent war. It is the first object observed on entering the harbor, and stands upon the island of Pharos, the same upon which stood the ancient lighthouse of that name.
There is another palace west of the city known as Gabara, beautifully situated on a neck of land between the sea and Lake Marcotis, which commands a fine view. It is picturesque because of its massive rotunda, domes, and marble mosaic terraces. Erected for the summer palace of Saïd Pacha, the former Viceroy, its large rooms and galleries were expensively decorated, and its façade was of wonderful beauty. The surroundings were embellished with fountains and gardens, and planted with rare flowers, exotics, and fruit trees. This prodigal man covered several acres of ground in front of this palace with an iron pavement, in order that he might escape the dust on his elevated terrace while watching the drill of his favorite Nubians. It was here, when in command of Alexandria, that for a long time I had my headquarters.
This palace to the south-west of Alexandria was the ancient site of the Necropolis of the Ptolemies. They, like the ancient Egyptians, embalmed their dead. Time and modern improvements have swept away from this interesting locality the last vestige of the past, and the Arab has not the slightest idea of its former use. I recollect one night conversing on the subject with an intelligent Arab, who had never before heard that this was the resting-place of countless dead. Just then an owl on one of the huge acacias near by gave an ominous screech, and my companion trembled with fear while his dilated eyes expressed great agony of spirit. He insisted that the owl was a genius embodying the spirit of Saïd, the Viceroy who had lived here. At the next screech my companion fled, upsetting chairs and tables and smashing my astral lamp. This accelerated his speed, convincing him that the evil spirit was pursuing him. I tried to overtake him, but he was soon lost to sight, and the only sound disturbing the stillness of the night was the clattering of his heels over the iron pavement which the folly of the earthly Viceroy had put there for his comfort. The Arabs believe that they are surrounded by good and bad genii, and darkness is a terror to them. They never sleep alone, if they can help it, and always burn a light at night. They even burn torches in their stables to protect the animals. An Arab never enters a solitary or dark place without supplicating the presiding genius to guard him against the spirits under his orders. The ancient Egyptians, Mariette Bey writes, always had their city of the dead close by the side of their city of the living, and it was uniformly situated to the west. In speaking of the ruins of ancient Egypt which I have visited, I shall enlarge more fully upon this interesting theme, as well as upon their religion, so intimately connected with it. This custom rested on a very sacred belief, as they placed in the region where the sun sets the dwelling-place of their souls after death, expressing both by the word Amenti.
Driving out through the Rosetta Gate, on the road which leads to the famous old city of Canopus, you come to comparatively high hills, formed to a great extent by the débris of the ancient city. On one of these heights, about three miles out, there are two new palaces, beautifully situated immediately on the sea and commanding a picturesque view of the surrounding country.
These palaces, adorned with lavish magnificence, surrounded by luxuriant gardens, and fanned by refreshing breezes from the sea, are the most desirable summer residences in Egypt. The first season, about 1875, that the Khedive occupied them with his numerous harem, a great affliction overwhelmed him and his family in the death of his daughter, Zaneeb, a most interesting and beautiful young lady who was just married. Cairo being the mausoleum for Egyptian royalty, every preparation was made to vacate these palaces at once. The corpse was carried in great state to a train to be conveyed to the tomb at Cairo. It was proceeded by numbers of men called the “ Yemeneeyah,” who recited the profession of faith to a melancholy strain, “ There is no deity but God ; Mahomet is God's apostle ; God bless and save him.” They were followed by the present Khedive, then a prince, accompanied by a number of Pachas and Beys and other distinguished personages ; then came several boys carrying the Mushaf (Koran) on a support covered with an embroidered handkerchief, and chanting verses from the poem called “ Hashieeyah,” descriptive of events of the last day and judgment. These marched in front of the bier, which was a long box with a roof, resembling in make and size the mummy-case of the ancient Egyptians. Ordinarily the Egyptians bury simply in winding-sheets. The bier on this occasion was covered with rich Cashmere shawls. An upright piece at the head was also covered by a shawl and surmounted by a lace head-dress ornamented with glittering gems. The bier was borne upon the mourners' shoulders, a goodly number of veiled women following, but not with the lamentations customary at funerals. There were, however, terrible shrieks coming from the carriages of the ladies of the harem, the friends and relatives of the dead princess, who were passing at the time, and their cry of “Zaneeb!” the name of the young lady, was heard in the most piteous sobs. Numbers of camels, loaded with bread, dates, and other food for the poor, walked in front and on the sides of the cortège. Their burdens were distributed to the crowds of Arabs assembled to witness the procession. Arriving at the station, all male spectators were inclosed in the salon, so that the Queen and the ladies accompanying her might pass into the cars unobserved. Subsequently, while I was standing on the platform near Tewfik in the midst of a great crowd, one of those occurrences happened which sometimes mar the solemnity of such an occasion. Alone in front of the vast and silent assembly on the opposite side of the track stood two enormous Arab fellahs in the tarboosh and blue dress, sobbing and bellowing as though their hearts were breaking, and attracting the attention of everybody. Suddenly a policeman, coming up in the rear, gave each of them a kick, and the dumb-struck howlers at once took to their heels. The scene was exquisitely ridiculous, and the whole crowd broke into a loud laugh ; and even one of the princes, a half brother, who, like the two Arabs, seemed more distressed than the others, joined heartily in it until his governor, standing behind him, gave him a prod with his stick which renewed the flow of his tears. At Cairo there was great pomp and ceremony in the final disposition of the body. According to the custom, it was so placed that the face should look toward Mecca. On the first night it is believed by the Moslem that the soul remains in the body and is visited by two angels, who examine and sometimes torture it. A Fakir, one of the Mahometan saints, remains with the dead to instruct it what answers to make, which he takes from the Koran. He is particular in giving the Islam or profession of faith. This night is called the Leyht-Wahdeh (the night of solitude). The soul after this takes its flight to the place of good souls until the last day, or to the abode of the wicked to await its final doom. The religion of the Faithful gives very minute accounts of the soul's place of abode between death and judgment.
I have said this much upon this subject because in no relation of life can we learn the hopes and fears of a people so well as in their manner of disposing of the dead. With how much interest do we read of Abraham bowing to the great law in purchasing a sepulchre in the land where his posterity were to live, and of Jacob and Joseph showing their faith in accepting the covenant. “ There,” said Israel, “ they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, and there I buried Leah . . . bury me with my fathers in this cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite.” The ancient Egyptians buried deep into the rock, and the Greeks and Romans cremated their dead, and encased the urns holding the sacred ashes in magnificent mausoleums. Mahomet, believing in the importance of funeral rites, left an elaborate law to guide the Faithful ; though, strange to say, in this as in much that he said to them, they violate his law in the most palpable and extraordinary manner. It is a curious fact that the site on which the palace just mentioned was built was for two centuries a Roman cemetery, though, luckily for the peace of its Mahometan inmates, the fact was not known. As in the case of the palace of Gabara, all trace of this former use had been swept away and forgotten. In digging the hills for the railroad near by a populous abode of the Roman dead, numerous cinerary urns were found. Like the mummies of a still earlier people, these urns with their contents could be bought at that time in great numbers for a few francs each. The Khedive could not for some time induce his ladies, who were full of every kind of superstition, to inhabit the deserted summer abode. They finally consented, provided that for more than a year he would give in these palace halls grand banquets, balls, and entertainments to the Europeans, so that they might, by eating, dancing, and making a noise generally, dance Affreet (the devil) out of them. On that condition only would they return. It is said that they had commenced dancing old Nick out, but before effecting this most desirable object the English and French danced the Khedive out of Egypt, and the lovers of fun and good living not only lost their entertainments, but Old Nick still remained in undisputed possession.
In attempting a survey of the splendid ancient city the mind is saddened, as not even vestiges enough remain to mark its limits. But for natural landmarks the boundaries could not be traced at all. Leaving Alexandria, the railroad crosses a broad sheet of shallow salt water called Lake Mareotis. In vain you search for traces of those old convents, filled with thousands of Christian devotees, which bordered the beautiful basin once filled with fresh water. Nor is there a vestige of the splendid gardens where, amid clustering vines, Cleopatra and Antony drank golden wine to celebrate their union. All is swept away, and a salt lake with its arid border covers the spot. To add the finishing touch to the picture of sad havoc which Mahometan misrule had produced was reserved for civilized Europe. Just below Aboukir there was a massive dike, erected by the ancients to separate the sea from the shore, and in the course of centuries a large tract of land was reclaimed. The splendid engineering skill of the English opened this obstruction, created the present vast expanse of waste, and covered it with destructive salt water, in the merciful attempt to drown the French out of Egypt, when these most Christian nations were so intent upon annihilating each other. No less than sixty villages were submerged by the ocean and their teeming population driven from their homes to starve. The waters still cover the once fertile fields. How much more magnanimous it would have been if England in our own time, instead of driving Ismail from his home and battling against Arabi Pacha, who fought for the liberties of his race, had paid into the Egyptian treasury the value of the great property and territory thus destroyed. It might then have prevented the kourbash from wringing from the impoverished fellah the means needed to pay the indebtedness of Egypt. The hopeless misery entailed by British policy can never be estimated. The principal inhabitants of this inhospitable region are now jackals, which live here in great numbers. They are the scavengers of the suburbs of the city, and are named by the Arabs, for some unknown reason, “ the father of Solomon.” There is another little animal, more gentle and more numerous, often seen jumping about its borders, called the jerboa, which burrows in the ground. It is of reddish color, with short fore and very long hind legs, about the size of a large rat, and makes its appearance at dark, hopping about like a bird. Such are the living creatures which now monopolize a region where, less than a century ago, the eye was delighted with great numbers of thriving villages and the rich green of rice and wheat fields. Here, as elsewhere in the East, Christian England has left the eternal blight of her greed.