The White Monastery--Abou Shenood--Devastations of the
Mamelukes--Description of the Monastery--Different styles of its
exterior and interior Architecture--Its ruinous
condition--Description of the Church--The Baptistery--Ancient Rites
of Baptism--The Library--Modern Architecture--The Church of San
Francesco at Rimini--The Red Monastery--Alarming rencontre with an
armed party--Feuds between the native Tribes--Faction
fights--Eastern Story Tellers--Legends of the Desert--Abraham and
Sarah--Legendary Life of Moses--Arabian Story-tellers--Attention of
their Audience.
Mounting our noble Egyptian steeds, or in other words having engaged a
sufficient number of little braying donkeys, which the peasants brought
down to the river side, and put our saddles on them, we cantered in an
hour and a half from the village of Souhag to the White Monastery, which
is known to the Arabs by the name of Derr abou Shenood. Who the great
Abou Shenood had the honour to be, and what he had done to be canonized,
I could meet with no one to tell me. He was, I believe, a Mahomedan
saint, and this Coptic monastery had been in some sort placed under the
shadow of his protection, in the hopes of saving it from the
persecutions of the faithful. Abou Shenood, however, does not appear to
have done his duty, for the White Monastery has been ruined and sacked
over and over again. The last outrage upon the unfortunate monastery
occurred about 1812, when the Mamelukes who had encamped upon the plains
of Itfou, having no better occupation, amused themselves by burning all
the houses, and killing all the people in the neighbourhood. Since that
time the monks having returned one by one, and finding that no one took
the trouble to molest them, began to repair the convent, the interior of
which had been gutted by the Mamelukes; but the immense strength of the
outer walls had resisted all their efforts to destroy them.
The peculiarity of this monastery is, that the interior was once a
magnificent basilica, while the exterior was built by the Empress
Helena, in the ancient Egyptian style. The walls slope inwards towards
the summit, where they are crowned with a deep overhanging cornice. The
building is of an oblong shape, about two hundred feet in length by
ninety wide, very well built, of fine blocks of stone; it has no windows
outside larger than loopholes, and these are at a great height from the
ground. Of these there are twenty on the south side and nine at the east
end. The monastery stands at the foot of the hill, on the edge of the
Libyan desert, where the sand encroaches on the plain. It looks like the
sanctuary, or cella, of an ancient temple, and is not unlike the
bastion of an old-fashioned fortification; except one solitary doom
tree, it stands quite alone, and has a most desolate aspect, backed, as
it is, by the sandy desert, and without any appearance of a garden,
either within or outside its walls. The ancient doorway of red granite,
on the south side, has been partially closed up, leaving an opening just
large enough to admit one person at a time.
The door was closed, and we shouted in vain for admittance. We then
tried the effect of a double knock in the Grosvenor Square style with a
large stone, but that was of no use; so I got one still larger, and
banged away at the door with all my might, shouting at the same time
that we were friends and Christians. After some minutes a small voice
was heard inside, and several questions being satisfactorily answered,
we were let in by a monk; and passing through the narrow door, I found
myself surrounded by piles of ruined buildings of various ages, among
which the tall granite columns of the ancient church reared themselves
like an avenue on either side of the desecrated nave, which is now open
to the sky, and is used as a promenade for a host of chickens. Some
goats also were perched upon fragments of ruined walls, and looked
cunningly at us as we invaded their domain. I saw some Coptic women
peeping at me from the windows of some wretched hovels of mud and
brick, which they had built up in corners among the ancient ruins like
swallows' nests.
There were but three poor priests. The principal one led us to the upper
part of the church, which had lately been repaired and walled off from
the open nave; and enclosed the apsis and transepts, which had been
restored in some measure, and fitted for the performance of divine
service. The half domes of the apsis and two transepts, which were of
well-built masonry, were still entire, and the original frescos remain
upon them. Those in the transepts are stiff figures of saints; and in
the one over the altar is the great figure of the Redeemer, such as is
usually met with in the mosaics of the Italian basilicas. These apsides
are above fifty feet from the ground, which gives them a dignity of
appearance, and leaves greater cause to regret the destruction of the
nave, which, with its clerestory, must have been still higher. There
appear to have been fifteen columns on each side of the centre aisle,
and two at the end opposite the altar, which in this instance I believe
is at the west end. The roof over the part of the east end, which has
been fitted up as a church, is supported by four square modern piers of
plastered brick or rubble work. On the side walls, above the altar,
there are some circular compartments containing paintings of the saints;
and near these are two tablets with inscriptions in black on a white
ground. That on the left appeared to be in Abyssinian: the one on the
other side was either Coptic or uncial Greek; but it was too dark, and
the tablet was too high, to enable me to make it out There is also a
long Greek inscription in red letters on one of the modern square piers,
which looks as if it was of considerable antiquity; and the whole
interior of the building bears traces of having been repaired and
altered, more than once, in ancient times. The richly ornamented
recesses of the three apsides have been smeared over with plaster, on
which some tremendously grim saints have been portrayed, whose present
threadbare appearance shows that they have disfigured the walls for
several centuries. Some comparatively modern capitals, of bad design,
have been placed upon two or three of the granite columns of the nave;
and others, which were broken, have been patched with brick, plastered
and painted to look like granite. The principal entrance was formerly at
the west end; where there is a small vestibule, immediately within the
door of which, on the left hand, is a small chapel, perhaps the
baptistery, about twenty-five feet long, and still in tolerable
preservation. It is a splendid specimen of the richest Roman
architecture of the latter empire, and is truly an imperial little room.
The arched ceiling is of stone; and there are three beautifully
ornamented niches on each side. The upper end is semicircular, and has
been entirely covered with a profusion of sculpture in panels,
cornices, and every kind of architectural enrichment When it was entire,
and covered with gilding, painting, or mosaic, it must have been most
gorgeous. The altar on such a chapel as this was probably of gold, set
full of gems; or if it was the baptistery, as I suppose, it most likely
contained a bath, of the most precious jasper, or of some of the more
rare kinds of marble, for the immersion of the converted heathen, whose
entrance into the church was not permitted until they had been purified
with the waters of baptism in a building without the door of the house
of God; an appropriate custom, which was not broken in upon for ages;
and even then the infant was only brought just inside the door, where
the font was placed on the left hand of the entrance; a judicious
practice, which is completely set at nought in England, where the
squalling imp often distracts the attention of the congregation; and is
finally sprinkled, instead of being immersed, the whole ceremony having
been so much altered and pared down from its original symbolic form,
that were a Christian of the early ages to return upon the earth, he
would be unable to recognise its meaning.
The conventual library consisted of only half-a-dozen well-waxed and
well-thumbed liturgies; but one of the priests told me that they boasted
formerly of above a hundred volumes written on leather (gild razali),
gazelle skins, probably vellum, which were destroyed by the Mamelukes
during their last pillage of the convent.
The habitations of the monks, according to the original design of this
very curious building, were contained in a long slip on the south side
of the church, where their cells were lit by the small loopholes seen
from the outside. Of these cells none now remain: they must have been
famously hot, exposed as they were all day long to the rays of the
southern sun; but probably the massive thickness of the walls and arched
ceilings reduced the temperature. There was no court or open space
within the convent; the only place where its inhabitants could have
walked for exercise in the open air was upon the flat terrace of the
roof, the deck of this ship of St Peter; for the White Monastery in some
respects resembled a dismasted man-of-war, anchored in a sea of burning
sand.
In modern times we are not surprised on finding a building erected at an
immense expense, in which the architecture of the interior is totally
different from that of the exterior. A Brummagem Gothic house is
frequently furnished and ornamented within in what is called "_a chaste
Greek style_," and _vice versâ_. A Grecian house--that is to say, a
square white block, with square holes in it for windows, and a portico
in front--is sometimes inhabited by an antiquarian, who fits it up with
Gothic furniture, and a Gothic paper designed by a crafty paper-hanger
in the newest style. But in ancient days it was very rare to see such a
mixture. I am surprised that the architect of the enthusiastic empress
did not go on with the interior of this building as he had begun the
exterior. The great hall of Carnac would have afforded him a grand
example of an aisle with a clerestory, and side windows, with stone
mullions, which would have answered his purpose, in the Egyptian style.
The only other instance of this kind, where two distinct styles of
architecture were employed in the middle ages on the inside and outside
of the same building, is in the church of St. Francesco, at Rimini,
which was built by Sigismond Malatesta as a last resting-place for
himself and his friends. He lies in a Gothic shrine within; and the
bodies of the great men of his day repose in sarcophagi of classic forms
outside; each of which stands in the recess of a Roman arch, in which
style of architecture the exterior of the building is erected.
About two miles to the north of the White Monastery, in a small village
sheltered by a grove of palms, stands another ancient building called
the Red Monastery.
On our return to Souhag we met a party of men on foot, who were armed
with spears, shields, and daggers, and one or two with guns. They were
led by a man on horseback, who was completely armed with all sorts of
warlike implements. They stopped us, and began to talk to our followers,
who were exceedingly civil in their behaviour, for the appearance of the
party was of a doubtful character; and we felt relieved when we found
that we were not to be robbed, but that our friends were on an
expedition against the men of Tahta, who some time ago had killed a man
belonging to their village, and they were going to avenge his death.
This was only one detachment of many that had assembled in the
neighbouring villages, each headed by its sheick, or the sheick's son,
if the father was an old man. The numbers engaged in this feud amounted,
they told us, to between two and three hundred men on each side. Every
now and then, it seems, when they have got in their harvest, they
assemble to have a fight. Several are wounded, and sometimes a few are
killed; in which case, if the numbers of the slain are not equal, the
feud continues; and so it goes on from generation to generation, like a
faction fight in Ireland, or the feudal wars of the barons of the middle
ages,--a style of things which appears to belong to the nature of the
human race, and not to any particular country, age, or faith.
[Illustration: MENDICANT DERVISH.]
Parting from this warlike band with mutual compliments and good wishes,
and our guides each seizing the tail of one of our donkeys to increase
his onward speed, we trotted away back to the boat, which was waiting
for us at Souhag. There we found our boatmen and a crowd of villagers,
listening to one of those long stories with which the inhabitants of
Egypt are wont to enliven their hours of inactivity. This is an
amusement peculiar to the East, and it is one in which I took great
delight during many a long journey through the deserts on the way
to Mount Sinai, Syria, and other places. The Arabs are great tellers of
stories; and some of them have a peculiar knack in rendering them
interesting and exciting the curiosity of their audience. Many of these
stories were interesting from their reference to persons and occurrences
of Holy Writ, particularly of the Old Testament. There are many legends
of the patriarch Abraham and his beautiful wife Sarah, who, excepting
Eve, is said to have been the fairest of all the daughters of the earth.
King Solomon is the hero of numerous strange legends; and his adventures
with the gnomes and genii who were subjected to his sway are endless.
The poem of Yousef and Zuleica is well known in Europe. And the
traditions relating to the prophet Moses are so numerous, that, with the
help of a very curious manuscript of an apocryphal book ascribed to the
great leader of the Jews, I have been enabled to compile a connected
biography, in which many curious circumstances are detailed that are
said to have taken place during his eventful life, and which concludes
with a highly poetical legend of his death. Many of the stories told by
the Arabs resemble those of the _Arabian Nights_; and a large proportion
of these are not very refined.
I have often been greatly amused with watching the faces of an audience
who were listening to a well-told story, some eagerly leaning forward,
others smoking their pipes with quicker puffs, when something
extraordinary was related, or when the hero of the story had got into
some apparently inextricable dilemma. These story-telling parties are
usually to be seen seated in a circle on the ground in a shady place.
The donkey-boy will stop and gape open-mouthed on overhearing a few
words of the marvellous adventures of some enchanted prince, and will
look back at his four-footed companion, fearing lest he should resume
his original form of a merchant from the island of Serendib. The
greatest tact is required on the part of the narrator to prevent the
dispersion of his audience, who are sometimes apt to melt away on his
stopping at what he considers a peculiarly interesting point, and taking
that opportunity of sending round his boy with a little brass basin to
collect paras. I know of few subjects better suited for a painter than
one of these story-tellers and his group of listeners.
THE ISLAND OF PHILŒ, &c.