Changes made in the city during the last twenty years—Its present beautiful and European aspect—Praise due to Ismail Pacha—Sketch of Cairo—Opera and theatre—Christian schools and missions—Change in the habits of Mahometan ladies—Visit to the Pyramid of Cheops—The climb to its top—Theory touching the purpose of its builders—Views of different archeologists—The Sphinx and the Pyramid of Chephren—The Pyramids of Sakkara and the tunnel of the Sacred Bulls—Mariette Bey's wonderful discovery of an unopened tomb—The statue of the high priest “Ti”—Paintings delineating domestic and every-day scenes of country life—The ancient city of On or Heliopolis—Tombs of the early Caliphs—Ceremony of starting on the Mecca pilgrimage—Utter destruction of Heliopolis.
I ARRIVED at Cairo on my second visit in January, 1870, after an absence of some years, in that most delightful of all seasons, unlike the winter of any other climate, when everything is green and beautiful, the air soft and balmy. The train was filled with representatives of the two great travelling nations of the world, America and England. The plains were golden with rich harvests and dotted with elegant villas, embowered in roses, the grounds of which were adorned with luxuriant and well-cultivated lebbek and acacia trees. On one side, in full view, stood the Mokuttum hills, the citadel on their slope, with the tall minarets of the mosque of Mehemet Ali peering far above and overlooking in their height the 400 mosques in the heart of the curious old city beneath. It was upon entering the Arab city that we were pleased to find untouched the narrow and crooked streets teeming with people, and its little shops, with their picturesquely dressed crowds of customers, as in the olden time. But, leaving these familiar scenes, one is impressed by the stately beauty of the new city immediately alongside of it with its comfortable hotels and commodious mansions, its broad avenues tastefully planted with costly shade trees, and skirted by modern cottages surrounded by rich parterres of flowers, shrubs, and trees. These interesting objects are evidences that in a few years the strong hand of Ismail had called into existence, as if by magic, a new city. The spectacle of two distinct cities in one, each filled with a different people, unlike in race, customs, and religion, is very impressive. Nothing is more suggestive than the lofty minarets crowned by the crescent, the emblem of the Mahometan faith, and near by the steeple of the Christian church surmounted by the cross. This evidence of toleration inclines one to the belief that civilization has at last brought these fanatical people under its powerful influence. The cry of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from the top of the minaret is scarcely hushed before the merry chime rings out from the church towers of the Christians. The wonderful changes which had been wrought in this ancient city since my first visit suggested the idea of just such work as is credited to Haroun-el-Raschid in the Arabian Nights. In scanning these vast improvements the traveller asks, How can they charge the author of them with extravagance ? Was there, then, nothing to show for the vast sums expended ? Why, the new Cairo teems with splendid answers to this accusation. If the man of truth and sense will survey Egypt and mark its advancement spread broadcast to its remotest boundaries, he will find more solid improvement wrought with the revenues of the country and with the wealth of Ismail's own private purse than can be shown for twice the amount in any other country in the world. Out of a mud-heap he has created a splendid European city, and filled it with the advantages and attractions of civilization. This gigantic work was completed in a few years, while it took centuries to build many European cities of equal size.
From the veranda of the New Hotel at Cairo, the coup d'oil is entirely changed from what it was a few years ago. Where the hotel now stands and far beyond it had been an uncultivated garden. In the place of the ragged old sycamores which stood some distance in front and which surrounded a public ground, a receptacle for filth and a haunt for dogs, with here and there a little drinking-booth for the low foreigner and dirty Arab, now stands one of the most enchanting gardens in the East, with a broad avenue between it and the hotel. This garden is laid out with beautiful pebble walks, adorned with fountains, and decked with rare exotics, flowers, and trees. There is a silvery lake in its centre with graceful swans to add to its interest, boats for the amusement of the passing stranger, and many other attractions which render it a diminutive Bois de Boulogne to the Egyptian capital. In one of the arches stands a grotto of large proportions with subterraneous passages and chambers. A little to the right of the garden, separated from it by a broad avenue, is a handsome opera-house, where for many years there were employed some of the best artists and most accomplished orchestras in the world. Ismail, educated in Paris, had, among other tastes, a fondness for European opera and early introduced it into his capital. It was so arranged that the ladies of his harem and those of the wealthy pachas might sit in their boxes, hidden by lace curtains, and enjoy the opera unseen. Beyond this there was a circus for the rougher sex and a theatre for the foreigner. It is said that the Khedive was no little chagrined that the fair ladies of Egypt, educated to the slow, monotonous Asiatic music, could not appreciate the strains of Rossini, Verdi, and Gounod. This accounted for the numerous carriages winding their way to the circus, where the ladies could better appreciate l'opéra de l'hippodrome.
This did not, however, apply to the young daughters of the Khedive and those of many of the high functionaries, for under the auspices of Ismail and one of his queens, a bevy of beautiful and accomplished young houris had come upon the scene of harem society during the last twenty years who had been taught the requirements of scientific music. While the more mature princesses were caged behind lace, his sweet and pretty daughter of thirteen, Zaneeb, for several years took her seat in a box with her young brother unveiled, and enjoyed her cultivated taste for music with as much zest as any other young girl. It was afterward when another year was added to her young life that, much against her will, the traditional veil was forced upon her, and she, too, sat at the opera behind lace curtains, and with others of her sex was compelled to undergo the seclusion of the harem. This was the beautiful young woman whose melancholy death and funeral at the palace by the sea I have already adverted to.
On the other side of the Esbikeeyah Garden there is a large, well-arranged and extensive structure, erected by the American Presbyterian Mission, which has within its walls a handsome church and an extensive school-house for girls and boys, and I cannot do better than advert to the work that has been done under the administration of Dr. Lansing, one of the ablest and most philanthropic foreign residents of Egypt, who is the patron of this institution. There has grown up not only this fine institution, but more than twenty others under his auspices in the villages, towns, and cities. Always amiable in social life, the doctor has labored under many difficulties in this field, assisted by a number of devoted and good men and women. The Mahometans and the Copt Christians in large numbers go to his schools, but the instances are rare where a child of the Prophet is ever converted.
Great numbers of the Copts are, however, brought within their fold. There was scarcely a clerk in any department, civil or military, in Egypt during the last twenty-five years who was not educated in these schools, and I have often been impressed with the great service the rich who give to missionaries in other lands might effect in this Mahometan and Copt country by liberally supporting the doctor. I feel assured that if they once visited his church in Cairo on Sunday morning and heard him discourse in the Arab language to his large audience of turbaned Orientals, their hearts would expand and the doctor would be saluted with “ Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” I will not further dilate upon the massive structures with their arcades nor the broad streets which with their shady trees add so much beauty and comfort to the city. One acquainted with it can tell where miserable habitations have given way to the abode of civilized man, and wretchedness has been replaced by the palatial residences and business houses of wealthy Arabs and Levantines. Escaping the eternal sun as he walks under arcades and the shady trees which line the broad streets, he is interested with the noisy throngs of active and intelligent people in pursuit of their various callings.
The traditional ass and riding camel are now reserved for the stranger, and the American and Englishman hear the cry of the donkey-boy when he salutes them : “ Here is Yankee Doodle” or “ John Bull,” as his shrewd perception of nationality bids him call his beast. The dainty wife and daughter of Bey and Pacha, instead of wrapping themselves up like packages and straddling an ass, are now seen in their lace caps, tulle veils, and ample dresses of lavender or saffron silk, in their handsome European carriages, followed by their dark guardians on horseback in rich trappings. To add a touch of romance to the scene, they do not hesitate, when unobserved by their sable nondescripts, to coquette with the handsome foreigners as they pass beneath the old sycamores in the favorite drive on Friday to the Shubra Palace. Like their Western sisters, they like to have their beautiful dresses and jewels admired, when only a few years since it was etiquette for all males to turn their backs on their approach. Neglecting the duty of concealing their faces, they are certain to be reminded of it by the thing of authority who was in close attendance. I well remember, on my first visit, the picturesque groups of turbaned Turks, Arabs, and Copts in their rich and parti-colored dresses mounted on camels and asses, and in the distance, riding richly caparisoned donkeys, but wandering like ghosts through the dark streets, were to be seen the wives and daughters of these dignified Orientals muffled in their habarahs as though they feared observation. Their blue eyes looked out from under their covering in timid and startled amazement at a new manner of man as if they had never before seen a European. They have changed all that, and the traditional ass with his rich trappings for the élite is scarcely more than a reminiscence now.
It was my first experience among these transformed Eastern people, and the impression was vivid. Returning to see European dress and vehicles in common use, it seemed at first as though Oriental Cairo touched by the hand of Ismail had lost some of its time-honored splendor. In truth, Cairo showed in former days the glittering ostentation of the favored few, which sadly contrasted with the most squalid and repulsive poverty of the many. There was that sort of wretchedness which made Egypt a pest-house, but the improvement of the people and the forced observance of sanitary precautions in the fourteen years of the reign of Ismail had effaced many sad and sorrowful pictures. In all that time Egypt had never been visited by an epidemic ; formerly the curse was periodical. No man of feeling who knew the past failed to be gladdened by the change ; every such man kindly extended his sympathy to that ruler who had fearlessly wiped out old customs and landmarks in the interest of humanity ; whose reign commenced with heaps of mud houses, and closed with so many finely constructed buildings and other material improvements ; who transformed Egypt into a civilized country, where the stranger was welcomed, and through which he could journey with as much comfort and safety as in any other part of the world.
One of the pleasures of a visit to Cairo was in seeing the vast monumental ruins in its immediate vicinity. Among the many gentlemen whom it gave me pleasure to meet were Governor Hoffman of New York and General Ingalls, U.S.A. ; being old acquaintances, I accompanied them to the ruins around the city. Our first venture was across the beautiful iron bridge recently constructed over the Nile, which replaced the unsafe pontoon formerly used. We entered upon a vast plain, now being improved at great expense as an extensive park with plants and fountains, as a breathing-place for health and amusement, so necessary to the dense population of Cairo. It was here that Ismail also proposed to construct a museum, in which, under the wise administration of Mariette Bey, it was designed to place the fine collection of Egyptian antiquities now in the Boulac Museum at Cairo, where it would no doubt in time exceed in richness and interest any other in the world. Driving over the avenue leading to the Grand Pyramid of Geezah, shaded by the lebbek-tree planted for the comfort of the traveller, we passed on the one side between the magnificent palace of Geezah, of recent construction, with its miles of cultivated gardens, and on the other side those of the Khedive's sons, two airy-looking structures surrounded with verdure and rare flowers. Leaving this pretty picture in the rear, we again emerged upon the open avenue with its broad fields of waving grain, and in the distance directly in front was the famous Pyramid of Cheops, and beyond it the gracefully lined Libyan hills. When we arrived at our destination the two visitors, with the aid of the Arabs, painfully made the laborious ascent, and were rewarded by one of the grandest and most interesting views in the world. It is impossible to describe one's emotions while standing on the top of this great Pyramid, 500 feet high, and isolated in the midst of the Desert of Sahara, much of the view over the sea of sand bounded by the horizon. Then to the east beyond the Nile, the city of Cairo, with its 400 minarets glittering in the eternal sun, is nestled in great beauty at the base of the Mokattum hills, on the inner slope of which stands the Citadel, in its centre the grand alabaster mosque towering above it and overlooking the city. Nearer is the Nile, like a silver ribbon coursing through the fertile fields, dotted with the palm, acacia, and lebbek trees. The sun's rays shining through the dust over the city makes it look like a canopy of powdered gold floating in the air. The panorama which unveils itself around the spectator is wonderfully varied and picturesque, and though the ascent may be difficult, it repays the toiler for the labor expended in climbing. This great Pyramid was originally 500 feet high, and its base covered 13 acres. Its material amounts to 89,000,000 cubic feet, or 6,848,000 tons of stone, and to complete the construction it took 100,000 laborers 30 years. I entered on one occasion the highly polished tube, 320 feet in length, leading through its centre from the opening in the north to its base. Thence I painfully mounted through the forced passage, over the sunken well, and found myself at last in the handsomely finished apartments called the Queen's and King's chambers. In the latter is the famous granite coffer, placed on the western side of the room. Great air-shafts pierce the massive walls—one pointing to the north, the other to the south. Standing in the centre of this huge pile of stone, one understands why it is that the learned in all ages have variously speculated upon the origin and purpose of this seventh wonder of the world, and have advanced conflicting theories in explanation of its existence.
The coffer in the King's Chamber is made to play a prominent part in all these speculations. Having had a personal acquaintance with many of the great Egyptologists, I propose to give some of their opinions. Herodotus having said that Cheops built this Pyramid, and that he was buried beneath it, though the coffer was found in its centre and after diligent search no other object that looked like a sarcophagus has been discovered, many have settled into the opinion that in this coffer the mummy of Cheops was placed, and as the chamber in which it is a fixture looked like a tomb, it was the best evidence to prove their theory, and they named it the King's Chamber. The coffer, too, was on the side of the setting sun, in the direction of Amenti, the region whither the ancients thought the soul went after death, and it was after this manner that they buried their dead. This opinion is supported by the fact that much older pyramids were used as tombs, and there are many other facts besides to sustain this theory. Other learned men have argued that this coffer has given standards of measures and weights, and that the metric system originated in its measurements ; while others have written that the Pyramid was intended for astronomical purposes, and that the proper place for the sarcophagus was in a subterranean vault beneath the pile, and not in the room called the King's Chamber, it being the custom to place mummies in the lower vault. One of the strongest writers of the present day has published an elaborate work in which he attempts, with much scientific acuteness, to prove that the construction of the Pyramid was a divine inspiration. Mariette Bey, whom I knew for many years, and for whose sincerity, experience, and vast knowledge I entertain the most profound respect, thinks that Cheops built the Pyramid for his tomb at a time anterior to the earliest dawn of history in any other quarter of the world—namely, in the epoch of the fourth dynasty of Egyptian kings, which Mariette dates back 4335 years before the Christian era.
Another great Egyptologist, Brugsch Bey, the learned German professor, agrees with Mariette Bey that the great Pyramids are tombs, but places their date at 4455 B.C. Bunsen, the celebrated German traveller, goes still farther back, and yet another noted man, the English historian Rawlinson, is uncertain on the subject, and is waiting further developments before venturing any opinion as to the date. In mentioning the remarkable men who have expressed their opinions upon this interesting subject, it is well to speak of the Arab authors, who go back nearly 1200 years in their knowledge of these structures. As usual, they are very positive, and state that the antediluvian astrologers who prophesied of the coming of the deluge induced the building of the Pyramid to preserve the learning of the past. The name of the star Sirius, which was venerated by the early Egyptians because it appeared just before the inundation of the Nile and was sometimes called Sothis, gave rise to the name Seth ; and the Arabs, seizing upon this name, have dignified it as that of the great constructor of the Pyramid of Cheops. I offer the views of one more distinguished man, than whom there is no Egyptologist more entitled to consideration for sincerity and knowledge. Hakekeyan Bey, an Armenian, who resided in Egypt from early infancy, was sent to Oxford by Mehemet Ali, and returned profoundly versed in the science and literature of Europe. Besides holding for many years some of the highest positions in the government, he devoted a long life to the study of Egypt's ruins, and his opinions were much respected by the learned. It was my happiness to form his acquaintance on my first visit to Egypt, and to retain his friendship through the many years of my late residence there. He was fond of Englishmen and Americans, and they were ever welcome to his hospitable home. This ripe scholar, now gathered in his old age to his fathers, I remember with great veneration, and I recall with pleasure his goodness and kindly nature. In a memorandum which he gave me he expresses the opinion that the coffer which stands on the west side of the King's Chamber in the Pyramid of Cheops was deposited there by the primitive Aryans as a record of their standard measure. He believed that these Pyramids were erected for great national purposes ; that their wonderful plan and construction could only have been founded upon the concentrated wisdom of ages, and that only a whole people would undertake the building of such a gigantic pile of stone as the Pyramid of Cheops for some purpose of great public utility. He was impressed with the conviction that this Pyramid was an embodied record of science, particularly of astronomy and of standards of measurement so necessary to men at that early period, especially in a purely agricultural country, the landmarks of which were yearly wiped out by inundations. He held that there is no reason for adopting the theory of successive layers built by succeeding kings so as to increase the burying capacity of the structure. He truthfully said : “ It is well known that a tyrant scarcely ever completes a work left unfinished by his predecessor.”
However interesting these theories of learned enthusiasts may be, there is no question that the Pyramid of Cheops is “ a miracle in stone,” whose builders must have had considerable knowledge of geometrical proportion and of abstruse science. There is no reason, in the great size and necessary cost of the Pyramids in money and toil, for thinking that they were built simply for the vainglory of the ancient Pharaohs. While they must have added brilliancy to the reigns of these monarchs, they were not only of immediate and practical importance, but they embodied for future ages symbols expressive of the most enlightened conceptions of human knowledge ; they were great books, containing within their massive folds the concentrated wisdom of ages, founded upon the eternal principles of truth. The question naturally occurs, Can it be possible that the 480,000,000 of people whose mummies are encased in the rocks of the Libyan hills that border the banks of the Nile, and who possessed a scientific culture equal in some respects to that of our own boasted era, carried through such mighty works simply to provide a place of sepulture ? This it is difficult to believe. It is equally clear, however, that kings made use of the Pyramids for tombs as well as for astronomical purposes. Mariette Bey, who was for so many years in charge of the excavations of the ruins of Egypt, gives it as his opinion that there is more valuable information concerning ancient Egypt buried beneath the sands of the desert bordering the Nile than has yet been revealed. It is more than possible that by unearthing it much of the great mystery surrounding that people, its Pyramids, and its other great ruins, may yet be more clearly solved.
Leaving the Pyramid, we next visited the Sphinx, carved out of the solid rock. This is a recumbent lion with the head of a man. The face is broken, but enough is left to betray the inscrutable gaze and the stolid, changeless smile with which its human face greets the rising sun. For a long time it was supposed to date from a period posterior to that of the Pyramids, but it is now thought, from its close connection with a lately discovered temple belonging to the ancient empire, that it was a sacred symbol.
The Arabs are superstitious in regard to this mysterious and gigantic rock, and believe that among its other supernatural powers it holds in check the encroaching desert sands. The name given the Sphinx by the ancients was “ Hermachis” (Watcher), and it was considered as the guardian of the celebrated Necropolis which was located around it. It was made famous by the great Thothmes III., who showed special veneration for the Sphinx, and chose it as his tutelary god. We descended into the neighboring excavated temple of alabaster, and picked our way among the rows of granite columns. Its architecture is simple and grand, of exquisite finish, and without writing upon any part of it. An American civil engineer, erudite and scientific, Mr. Walter W. Evans, of New Rochelle, told me that he had never seen stone more beautifully polished, or known such gigantic blocks of stone to be fitted with such nicety—so close, to use his own words, “ as almost to defy discovery.” He added that “ handling, polishing, and perfecting their surface at the present time, as is done here upon these hard rocks, would require powerful modern machinery.” This temple is no doubt many thousands of years older than any other place of worship in the world, and is therefore an object of great interest. It was in one of its chambers, in a well thirty feet deep, that the magnificent statue of Chephren, or Shafed, the builder of the second Pyramid was discovered. The statue is now in the Boulac Museum. It is of breccia, and Mariette Bey says that it has come down not less than sixty centuries, and is not only remarkable for its high antiquity, but is marked by a finish of detail, a fulness, and a majesty which render it one of the most valuable relics of antiquity that have ever been discovered. It throws an unexpected light upon the earliest Egyptian art, and shows us that Egyptian artists 6000 years ago had attained a perfection closely approaching that of later ages.
Our next visit was to Badresham, a village twelve miles by rail up the Nile, whence we had donkeys. On the side of the Libyan hills we soon found ourselves in the famous tunnel of the Sacred Bulls. Lighting our candles, we penetrated its thick darkness, and at every step realized the amazement which Mariette Bey has so graphically described as incident to his visit on discovering the tomb.
Though I had been in this tunnel of the Sacred Bulls before this visit, its wonders always impressed me with renewed interest. Huge blocks of granite, nearly twelve feet square, were brought from their quarry at Syrene, 650 miles down the Nile, hollowed, polished, and shaped like a beautiful urn, and placed in a tunnel dug into a mountain nearly a quarter of a mile, which, like the niches fitted for them on its sides, was scarcely large enough to admit them. When it is considered that all this enormous work was, according to our mind, simply to preserve a miserable mummied bull, their god Apis, it seems indeed a mystery. The only solution, so far, appears to be that the ox was useful to the Egyptian in the cultivation of the soil, and for that reason they worshipped him as they did the dog and the cat because they destroyed the rat and other smaller animals that devoured their grain. Mariette Bey told me that one of the chief delights experienced in a long course of archćological research was in discovering these tombs, which had been hidden for so many ages, though the bulls, with all their precious relics, had been removed, probably by Cambyses the Persian, who had shown such contempt for the god by running his sword through the then living Apis. Mariette Bey, however, subsequently, while examining the walls of the tunnel, discovered a small stone with the impress of a man's hand in mortar upon it, and another tomb was disclosed which had never been opened. The mummy was intact, covered with all the rich cerements, encased in a beautifully polished urn, with its history in hieroglyphics inscribed upon it. The inscription showed that this tomb had been placed there by Rameses II., the Pharaoh whom the Bible speaks of as not knowing Joseph, the persecutor of the Jews, and no doubt the father of the king from whom Moses fled to Mount Sinai. The fact was fully explained from this connection that Aaron understood the worship of the bull when he permitted his people to make the golden calf. I asked Mariette upon one occasion if it was true that when he entered this tomb, which had been sealed up untouched for 3700 years, that he saw the tracks of the naked feet of the ancient Egyptians, as had been stated, printed in the dust on their leaving the tomb. His reply was that it was his custom to look as soon as possible into all places of his unearthing, in order to discover what objects were there, as some instantly crumbled, and that his attention was at once attracted by the footprints in the undisturbed dust and débris.
In the museum of Boulac there is a finely preserved statue of a priest, an exalted official “ enthroned in the heart of his Lord,” by the name of Ti, of the fifth dynasty, who held many of the highest offices, civil and sacerdotal. Though of humble origin, he became great, and married “ the palm of amiability,” a daughter of the royal family of Egypt. His statue is delicately finished and apparently perfectly true to nature. A wig covering his head and a cloth around his loins constitute the simple dress which adorns it. The statue is of large size, and if uniformed in continentals would make a good representation of Washington. Not far from the tombs of the Bulls we entered the mastaba (chapel) of this official, not long uncovered by the Bey from the sands of the desert. The largest chamber looks as fresh as though just finished. Ti is seen pictured as a wealthy farmer, beautifully sculptured in bas-relief upon its walls, with his wife and children walking leisurely in his yard, with poultry and other domestic animals around, while the servants are feeding geese and cranes after our modern mode of stuffing. There are seen also sailing boats on the Nile, with men constructing others. Judges sitting in judgment, and prisoners being brought to trial ; great numbers of women with baskets on their heads ; offerings of sacrificial food and drink from the villagers ; ploughing, reaping, and the driving of sheep ; taking an account of and branding cattle ; fishing and hunting with a stick and cat, and a park filled with wild animals and fishing-ponds, are portrayed. Without a knowledge of hieroglyphics, through this picture one can read the everyday life of this man, his interior domestic economy, his profession, riches, and offices. Notwithstanding the conventional type of the art, everything is strikingly full of action, and the great similarity of much of the life depicted to that of the present day impresses one with the idea that the present is but a familiar panorama of the civilization of nearly six thousand years ago. The historian can learn more from this single tomb of that ancient people than he can from volumes written on the subject. Though the Egyptians wrote upon papyrus for eternal preservation, yet they were so anxious to transmit their history that they made it enduring in stone.
Our next visit was to Heliopolis, or the old city of On, seven miles below Cairo, on the same side of the river. The first object on the way to interest the traveller is the “ seebel” (fountain), which the mother of the Khedive charitably erected for the poor and the thirsty Bedouin who wanders in from the desert with his thorny aromatic plants, or now and then to sell an Arabian horse or a camel. As he slakes his thirst he never fails to ask Allah to reward the beneficent donor for this thoughtful munificence. In the East, where water is always scarce, there is no kindness that equals the establishment of a fountain, and the true believers are happy in the thought that in this good work they are assured of the prayers of the Faithful in securing for them seats in Mahomet's Paradise. For this reason no charity is so universal. Turning to the east, we follow the old Saracenic walk ending in the curious bastions on the desert constructed by Saladin (Saleh-el-Deen), the famous warrior who defended Cairo against the assault of the Christian invader. Near these fortifications is the tomb of Amalek-Adatté, the mother of Saladin. With the chivalric gallantry of a great soldier, he showed, in the erection of this beautiful memento to the one who gave him being, a filial gratitude which does him greater honor than the laurels of grim-visaged war, which so splendidly encircle his name. The dome which surmounts the tomb with its lace-like covering is the chaste pencilling of the highest Saracenic art of that period. Admiring its beauty, the spectator is amazed that this relic, so interesting in history and historically connected with a brilliant epoch, should be allowed by the Arabs to crumble into ruin. But the Mahometan has forgotten the past and is occupied with the present. He never sheds a tear or speaks a prayer over the mother of his renowned leader. The Moslem never repairs even the most sacred mosques, unless they are so situated that he can make use of his faith in turning an honest piastre with the least possible trouble to himself. To the right are the so-called tombs of the Caliphs, properly Mameluke's tombs. Their numerous domes are still standing, but, like the mosques and tombs beneath, they are crumbling. Their remains, surrounded by the desert, are very beautiful in precious stone and marble, carved in rich Saracenic devices. I know of but one tomb of a Caliph standing. It is just within the city, a rare old structure, and is the tomb of Saleh-el-Eiyoub, the conqueror of St. Louis, the Crusader, in his foolish attempt upon Cairo. The location probably accounts for its preservation. The others were all destroyed to make way for the present city.
There are beautiful domes over the ashes of remarkable Caliphs and Sultans, who are forgotten by the Mahometans. Sometimes the intelligent foreigner hunts up the name of the distinguished individual, or they would all pass into oblivion. I have never met an Arab who could tell where Saladin was buried. When I visited Damascus, twenty years ago, there was no one there who knew. Finally a Greek dragoman informed me that he had got the account of the place from an Englishman. This ignorance may not seem altogether singular when I state that at Westminster Abbey, forgetting for the moment that Alexander Pope was a Catholic, I asked a highly intelligent usher, who was wandering with me, pointing out the illustrious dead in that celebrated repository, where the grave of the great Pope was. Looking at me with a dazed expression, he acknowledged that he did not know, and I then remembered that the poet was buried at Twickenham.
To our left, opposite these tombs, I have seen thousands of pilgrims from Africa take their leave for the desert on their visit to the tomb of the Prophet. Near the Citadel the Khedive, with all the dignitaries and military of Egypt, en grande tenue, places in the keeping of the military sheik, who is naked and mounted on a dromedary, with his bushy head uncovered, the beautifully gold-embroidered carpet (mahmal) to be placed upon the tomb of the Prophet. The custom is said to have had its origin from a Caliph providing a handsome carpet upon which his favorite sat during her trip to the Holy City ; in the excitement of religious frenzy she threw the carpet over the tomb, and the Faithful have ever since celebrated the event. Headed by the naked sheik, a grand procession passes through Cairo amid salutes of artillery, and at this spot joins the cavalcade, when the mob in fanatical excitement commences its wanderings.
A few years since much of the fertile land cultivated on each side of us was a desert, but the planting of the lebbek tree in broad rows, and between them the cactus, soon forms, with the help of constant irrigation, a soil. In this way broad acres are reclaimed by a rapid fertilization. Passing the shapeless mass of buildings used for military schools and barracks, the drive is through shady avenues lined with exotics and orange-trees, and turning around the palace of Prince Tewfik, now Khedive, we again visit the Virgin's tree at Amateriah. Everybody goes there because of the tradition that the Holy Family was sheltered under the tree during the celebrated flight into Egypt, and no one fails to drink from the spring which, when tasted by the Virgin, turned at once from salt to the sweetest water. A few minutes more and we stood under the famous obelisk at Heliopolis, the City of the Sun. This name, derived from the Greeks, designates the city of On of the Bible. Jeremiah calls it Bethshemeth, “ The House of the Sun.” The obelisk was erected by Osetarsin of the twelfth dynasty, 3061 B.C., according to Mariette Bey. Among the inscriptions on it is that Osetarsin was “ the friend of the spirits of On, the ever-living golden Horus,” and placed in front of the temple of the sun are the Jachin and Boaz of the Egyptian sanctuary, I Kings 7 : 21.
A visit to the Boulac Museum, near Cairo, is one of the great events to the stranger soon after his arrival. Residing many years near this wonderful collection of antiquities, my visits were frequent, and each object became familiar to me. The ablest Egyptologists have written of its contents, but without their aid it is easy to learn much of the history of that ancient people simply from the inscriptions found here. Here also is much of their mysterious literature, recorded in papyrus and folded away among these dusty remains. These records upon stone and papyrus go back to the first Egyptian monarchy—to that prodigious distance of time, according to noted Egyptologists, 5004 years before the Christian era. They believe there is evidence of thirty-four dynasties ; in presenting which it is always with the qualification that their investigations of the truth of their existence should be taken with many doubts, as they necessarily pass through the clouds of a misty past which in some sort belongs to the infancy of the human race.
One of the most celebrated monuments in assisting investigations is in this museum—a tablet found at Saccarah, in the tomb of a priest named Tounar-i. This tablet is valuable, as it corroborates the book of Manétho, the pagan priest, the book itself being lost. A mosaic of the fragments make out the thirty-four dynasties. The Egyptians believed, “ when the dead merited eternal life they were admitted, in the other world, into the society of kings.” This priest is represented on this stone as entering the presence of fifty-eight kings. It not only assists in fixing the date of their earliest monarchy, but it is one of the evidences of their belief in the immortality of the soul. The meeting of the ghosts by the Egyptian is singularly in accordance with the passage in Isaiah, already quoted, of the defunct king who had penetrated into the august assembly of the departed, who exclaimed to him as he entered, “ Is this the man that made the earth to tremble?” Before unearthing the Egyptian belief in the immortality of the soul, this passage in the Bible had strengthened the Christian in his belief. The Egyptian believed in body, soul, and spirit ; at death, the soul, after many trials, came to judgment. Passing through the Osirian ordeal, it returns to its body in the form of a dove with the face of a man, and is seen hovering over the corpse with outstretched wings, the cross of life, or Tat, in one hand, and the Sail, or vital spark, in the other. An interesting instance is on the tombstone of Menai, a prophet of Osiris. While it is over his body, he is made to say, “ My soul goes to unite itself to my body.” There are frequent prayers upon other tombs to save their bodies from destruction, not to leave their corpses to dissolve.
This belief in the resurrection is made still more impressive by picturing the goddess Neith, the divine mother, overhanging the firmament. Beneath her is the body of a red man (the natural body) falling to the earth ; another figure of a blue color (the spiritual) is stretching forth his arms as though rising to the firmament. It is thought that this has direct reference to the resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul, and that their belief was similar to that of Plato, and particularly that of St. Paul.
Another interesting incident in the life of Neith, the divine mother, is in a tomb of one of the Rameses, where she is beautifully sculptured and painted. Champollion has elaborately described this sculpture. The ceiling in the chamber of the sarcophagus is not only rich in ornament, but extremely mystical. The description of the sun is portrayed in its procession through the hours of the day and night, symbolizing the life of the burning orb, the sun, or Pharaoh. The symbolic paintings are inclosed by the immense person of Neith, the goddess of the firmament, extended round the ceiling and sides of the chamber, separating the day and night. In the east Neith becomes the mother of the sun, who is then an infant and tenderly placed in a boat, when he descends the celestial river accompanied by a grand cavalcade of divinities. Each hour of the day is marked by a globe, and those of the night by a star. In the seventh hour of the voyage they sound, and the pilot comes on board the boat and guides them through the remaining hours of the night. At the twelfth hour they enter the sea into which the river empties, when the eastward voyage through the hours of the night commences, towed up a course of the celestial river, which with the main stream ends in the western sea.
The life of man was assimilated by the Egyptians to the march of the sun over our heads, and his death to the setting of that orb, which disappears at the western horizon of the heavens, to return on the morrow victorious over darkness.
There is another stone tablet in this museum, discovered by Mariette Bey, which is important. He thinks it identifies the rock temple with the great Sphinx, and makes them anterior to Cheops and his Pyramid, as it refers to his repairing the Sphinx. This temple is thus the oldest in existence for the worship of God.
The statues of the young Prince Ra-ho-tep and his wife Neferte are among the oldest relics of the past, some think the oldest statues that the hand of man ever fashioned. The wonderful display of art in these perfectly preserved statues, at a time almost coeval with the earliest evidence of the existence of man, is another link in the chain that goes to show that man in the earliest day was at his best.
In speaking of their painting it is difficult to particularize where everything they handled, from statue to temple, was made brilliant by variegated colors. Even their tombs inside and out were touched by the pencil of the painter. What pleased my taste, both in beauty of form and in color, were several Egyptian ducks, painted upon stucco, of the age and found near the tomb of the Prince Ra-ho-tep.
Other paintings which elicited my wonder were of a much later date, found in the tomb of Rameses III. at Thebes. They are of harpers. These paintings are as fresh and beautifully drawn as when they came from the artist's pencil. They are of such elegant construction and the numerous strings are so delicately touched, are so real, that in imagination one can almost hear the notes vibrate through the immense tomb cut into the side of the mountain at Melek-Boulouk. These too, show the wonderful knowledge of those ancient people in lasting colors.
Going back again to the wonder of Thebes, I recall some of their sculptured battle-scenes. The same glowing war imagery which Homer described in the heroic age of Greece, the artist in the age of Rameses II., anterior to that of Achilles, has sculptured upon the walls of the Memnonium. Here the Pharaoh “ lifted up the flame of the sword and the lightning of the spear,” and hearing “ the rattling of the wheels” and seeing “ the prancing horses and the jumping chariots” carry one back more vividly to one of the many heroic ages than does even the renowned poem of the Grecian bard.
Passing the village sheik, the wooden man of 6000 years, whose eyes, though dimmed by too much handling, are still wonderfully beautiful, and the visitor is immediately in full view of the golden face on the mummy-box of Queen Aa-ho-tep. Mariette Bey has collected over 200 beautiful articles of her jewelry and virtu of which mention has been already made ; he thinks she was the mother of Aahmes. Not being able to present her portrait, I have given that of Nefert-Ari-Aahmes, “ the beautiful companion of Aahmes,” and his queen. She is dark-skinned, and was an Ethiopian of the highest physical type. Brugsch Bey says she was worshipped in after ages as an ancestress and founder of the eighteenth dynasty. Another attractive statue is a fine likeness of Ameneritis, the queen of Piaukhi, the Ethiopian king and conqueror of Egypt. It is of alabaster, and its head, breast, and shoulders are perfect, with a very expressive face. Herodotus says that in his day the Egyptians were a temperate people, before and subsequent to his being there. There are many evidences of their being greatly addicted to strong drink ; they delighted in painting and engraving drunken people. Men and women were convivial, and liked the juice of the grape. They planted the grape and extracted the juice by presses and by treading the grape with their feet. Another portrait of the queen of Aahmes is given to show the every-day costume, head-dress, wig, and long transparent robe, with a good deal of jewelry worn. The Western man is amused at their primitive instruments of agriculture, but the modern Egyptians and some of the Spanish race are not, there being among them some of these very implements—those that were in use at the time of Joseph.
Their immense number of volumes of papyrus and their writing on every conceivable thing in stone, show that they were a literary people. They wrote upon morals, science, and art, and many novels and works of travel have been found in their tombs. They excelled in writings upon agriculture, architecture, and mathematics ; but much of that wisdom they are credited with has not come down to us ; their books upon astronomy and medicine are not considered so wonderful. In the earliest period, which is somewhat shadowed, they may have been more intellectual and with fewer of the superstitions which seem to have cramped them later.
There were three extraordinary periods in their history when they flourished in great splendor and their arms were irresistible. After each of these eras there was a sudden eclipse, when civilization was thrown back. Were they conquered by the people they had taught to fight ? Or did they meet an enemy on equal terms, like the Persians, who blotted them out ? The bright epochs in their history are engraved on their monuments, but upon those followed by darkness they are utterly silent. In the era after the sixth dynasty it does not appear, from papyrus, tomb, or temple for several hundred years, that one human being existed in the country, and were it not for the obscure mention of one or two kings by Manétho, the pagan priest, it would be doubtful whether Egypt existed as a nation.
It was impossible to walk through this museum without thinking those ancient people were fond of amusement and dress, and that they were jovial and rollicking, and given to drinking and feasting. Men and women were fond of banquets and fine equipages, and liked an easy, luxurious life.
The king made his people build temples for his use, into which they had no right to enter. They believed him divine, and worshipped him. They were a nation of toadies, from the peasant to the Pharaoh. Though the most religious people who ever existed, they are said to have been faithless to their foreign engagements. They were true to them at home, if for no other reason than that the forty-two judges would decide against their burial. This was a great calamity ; it interfered with their hope of eternal life, and made them a better people among themselves. They were industrious and skilful in working the most delicate embroidery and jewelry, manufactured glass and fine linen, and many valuable things in glass and stone that are very beautiful. The antiquarian is amazed at the quantity of these things preserved here.
Boxes of paint and cases of cosmetics, fish-hooks, luxurious chairs and tables, and many objects of art enamelled and in mosaic, capture and bewilder one with their beauty and curious workmanship.
I shall close this short sketch by a reference to the monument known as the Tanis stone. This stone attracts the attention of the world because, with all the information contained in the one found at Rosetta, which enabled Champollion to a great extent to decipher their hidden hieroglyphics, this one, being perfect, supplies that which was defaced and lost in the other. Brugsch Bey and Mariette Bey have made wonderful use of the Tanis stone in unravelling the mysterious language. This tablet is a decree written by the priests in the time of the Ptolemies, in three languages, Hieroglyphics, Greek, and Demotic, or the popular dialect. As usual, it commences with fulsome praise of the god who is their king, and commends him for having brought back to Egypt the gods that had been taken away. For peaceful intentions as well as for his victories in war he has their applause. They then give him great praise for saving the country from famine, and close by declaring the Princess Berenice, his virgin daughter who died young, a divinity, and a decree that her virtues thereafter should be sung by a choir of trained virgins.