Cairo is the largest city in Africa, having a population of 570,000, of
whom 35,000 are Europeans. It is the Paris of the East, and is the
most varied and fascinating place on the earth. It is a military city
with English soldiers, Arab lancers, Soudanese infantry and Egyptian
cavalry, all in picturesque variety of uniform; added to this is the
gayety of the official government life, all on pleasure bent. Most of
their time is spent in play, as they only work from 10 till 1 P.M.--the
climate prevents longer hours. Cairo has every amusement of the
European capital, and each is played for all it is worth. I was there
in 1874 on my way round the world, and I now found it so much changed
and improved that it was a strange place to me. I stayed at
"Shepheard's" both times. On my first visit this hotel was set in a
tropical park and had no buildings near it; now it is closely
surrounded by high, costly, substantial structures quite cosmopolitan
in their appearance. It was the only good hotel then; now there are
half a dozen rivals, as Egypt has become a great winter resort for
fashion and health. From Shepheard's veranda, crowded with tourists,
one may see hawkers of all kinds yelling, or coaxing possible
purchasers, and offering post-cards, ornamental fly-whisks,
walking-sticks, shawls, scarabs, etc.; snake charmers, boys with
performing animals, jugglers, and every possible thing you can think of
that might be bought for a souvenir; then we have the Egyptian women
with blue gowns and their faces below the eyes hidden by hideous black
veils; Bedouins from the desert; a pasha in state, with runners both
before and behind his carriage; a professional letter-writer who for a
couple of _piastres_ will write a letter in almost any desired
language; a camel train laden with oriental merchandise passing in the
midst of trolley-cars, bicycles and automobiles; a fellah woman with a
donkey loaded with baskets of poultry, or a turkey vendor driving his
flock before him, guiding its movements by a palm branch; a milkman
driving his cow and milking it in public for his waiting customers; a
wedding procession preceded by a group of dancing girls, or two
half-naked mountebanks engaging in pretended combats; a gaudily
bedecked bride riding in a gorgeous palanquin borne by two camels,
followed by camels carrying furniture and presents; a funeral
procession with black-shawled professional mourners howling their
mercenary grief--all this and more too is Cairo.
[Illustration: POOL OF SILOAM, JERUSALEM, HOLY LAND]
The climate of Egypt is peculiar: from noon till 5 P.M. it is hot and
uncomfortable; the other nineteen hours are delightfully cool in
winter, the air being very dry and healthful, with little or no rain.
At Cairo the Citadel is the main attraction. It stands on a rampart
two hundred and fifty feet above the city and is a splendid fortress.
The city has many mosques--hundreds of them; the most important one is
that of Sultan Hassan. The Museum is very interesting, and contains
the best things from all the temples of Egypt, objects that could not
well stand exposure nor the risk of theft. Then, of course, there are
the Pyramids of Gizeh, three in number, and the Sphinx. These world
wonders are about six miles from Cairo. Few will realize that the big
one sits on a base of thirteen acres and is over four hundred and fifty
feet high. Pick out in your mind's eye some large field of about that
size, and then build it up from that base and you will have some idea
of what this structure is like. It contains three million cubic yards
of stone and was simply a tomb for an Egyptian king. It has a majestic
dignity and impressiveness exceeding that of any other work of man; as
it is approached one feels like an ant in its presence.
The Sphinx near by is of the same nature. It is sixty-six feet high,
hewn out of the living rock. No one has discovered with what intention
it was made nor what it is meant to represent. It is said to be the
emblem of immortality, and it impresses the visitor with the idea that
it sits serene in its nobility above the earth and its inhabitants and
all else that the world contains. It has always been a riddle and will
always remain one. A thought struck me when looking at the Pyramids
and the Sphinx, and that was that no object of any kind, natural or
artificial, has ever been seen by so many great men in all ages as has
this group at Gizeh. For six thousand years the great of all nations
have made an effort to look upon these mammoth monuments: Alexander saw
them, so did Napoleon and Admiral Nelson; also the heroes of Salamis
and Marathon; all the Roman emperors who could spare the time; lines of
European kings and emperors; poets, sculptors and dramatists of ancient
and modern days; statesmen, painters and writers--all made pilgrimages
to them; while these very same stones were seen by Cleopatra, Mark
Antony, Joseph, Jacob and Abraham, as well as by thousands who preceded
them in history. They are awe-inspiring, and the spectator, do what he
may, cannot release himself from this feeling.
[Illustration: VIRGIN'S FOUNTAIN, HOLY LAND]
A short ride on a camel round the group winds up the visit, and the
view from the "high ground" of its back across the great desert
convinces the rider that he is really in the East. Since it rarely
storms in lower Egypt and rains are unknown here, this would seem to be
the ideal spot for our new wind wagons. They would carry you above the
flies, the reflected heat and the dust. Then, too, what a nice, soft
place the sand would make for a final landing place!
Cairo lately had a real estate boom which ended in a financial crash.
One man made about three million dollars in it, and when he lost this
fortune committed suicide. They employed American methods, holding
auction sales of lots in tents, with brass bands, refreshments, etc.
The East is hardly ready for that sort of thing just yet.
_The Mummy and the Scarab_
The word "mummy" is derived from the Arabic word mumiya, meaning
bitumen, or wax, which was the principal ingredient used in preserving
the human body by the Egyptians. To this were added spices, aromatic
gums, salt and soda. The rich paid about the equivalent of $1200 per
body to have the embalming done; the middle classes for a cheaper
process paid about $100, while it cost the poor but a small sum to
simply salt their dead. I saw the naked body of Rameses II. in the
Cairo Museum; it had been preserved with bitumen, and was black and
hard, but perfect, and will last forever. Many bodies more cheaply
embalmed fall to pieces when the cloth is unrolled from them. The
people of Thebes understood the business best, and brought the art to
perfection, but each of the twenty-six dynasties had its own method and
reputation. The reason for preserving the body was the belief that the
soul after purification would return to it in ages to come, and the
corpse was made impervious to decay so as to receive the spirit again.
Egypt was consequently a vast sepulchre: it has been estimated by
eminent authorities that there were over seven hundred millions of the
dead preserved in tombs and graves.
The scarab is an Egyptian beetle of varying size; I have seen lots of
living specimens on the Nile. The ancients believed that if this
beetle were placed in the coffin or grave of the dead, no harm could
come to them, and that its presence would promote their future
happiness and bring them good luck; therefore, it became the custom to
place the scarabs in all graves. At first the real insects were used,
but it was found that these did not last, so imitations made of
semi-precious stones were substituted, and then large quantities were
allotted to the dead, so as to make sure. By easy transition, the
custom of placing scarabs on the bodies of the dead passed to putting
them on the living, and men and women wore the scarab as a silent act
of homage to the Creator, who was not only the God of the dead but of
the living also. These charms are easily carried and can be used in
settings for many ornamental purposes; therefore they are the most
popular and widely sought article in the market. They are as small as
a coffee bean, and run up sometimes to the size of a walnut, green and
brown being the most popular colors of the stones out of which they are
made. Vast quantities of them have been taken from graves, but these
have been absorbed by museums and amateur collectors, and now we have
to fall back on imitations. No yearning desire is allowed to yearn
long here, and so we find factories making scarabs at Luxor and in many
other parts of Egypt. Of course there is a marked difference between a
scarab cut by an old Egyptian, which has been buried for thousands of
years, and something made out of glazed terra-cotta and sold by the
dozen; the former being worth a good sum of money and the latter a mere
trifle. I have spoken of this at such length because there is now a
veritable and increasing boom in scarabs all over the Nile Valley, but
particularly in Cairo. More than half the men you meet on the streets
are peddling them, shouting that they sell only the "real thing." A
man was trying to sell me a gem for $10, and I knocked him out by
saying I wanted only an imitation; he put the gem in his pocket,
pretending he was exchanging it for an imitation, brought it out again
and sold it to me for five cents! I looked at him for a long time and
smiled; then he smiled also--we understood each other. This fad is
very like the tulip mania of old, and almost every one is touched by
it. I saw a dragoman sell a lady three scarabs for $30, and I am quite
sure they did not cost him fifty cents.