THE PYRAMIDS AND MEMPHIS.
Howling Dervishes—A Chicken Factory—Ride to the
Pyramids—Quarrel with the Arabs—The Ascent—View from
the Summit—Backsheesh—Effect of Pyramid climbing—The
Sphinx—Playing the Cadi—We obtain Justice—Visit to Sakkara
and the Mummy Pits—The Exhumation of Memphis—Interview with
M. Mariette—Account of his Discoveries—Statue of Rameses
II.—Return to the Nile.
“And Morning opes in haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids.”—EMERSON.
We went no further than the village of Gizeh, three or four miles above
Cairo, on the first evening, having engaged our donkeys and their drivers
to meet us there and convey us to the Pyramids on the following morning.
About dusk, the raïs moored our boat to the bank, beside a College of
dervishes, whose unearthly chants, choruses and clapping of hands, were
prolonged far into the night. Their wild cries, and deep, monotonous
bass howlings so filled our ears that we could not choose but listen,
and, in spite of our fatigue sleep was impossible. After performing for
several hours, they gradually ceased, through sheer exhaustion, though
there was one tough old dervish, who continued to gasp out, “_Allah!
Allah!_” with such a spasmodic energy, that I suspected it was produced
by the involuntary action of his larynx, and that he could not have
stopped, even had he been so minded.
When we threw open the latticed blinds of our cabin, before sunrise, the
next morning, the extraordinary purity of the air gave rise to an amusing
optical delusion on the part of my friend. “See that wall!” said he,
pointing to a space between two white houses; “what a brilliant color
it is painted, and how those palms and these white houses are relieved
against it!” He was obliged to look twice before he perceived that what
he had taken for a wall close at hand, was really the sky, and rested
upon a far-off horizon. Our donkeys were in readiness on the bank, and
I bestrode the same faithful little gray who had for three days carried
me through the bazaars of Cairo. We left orders for the raïs to go on
to Bedracheyn, a village near the supposed site of Memphis, and taking
Achmet with us, rode off gayly among the mud hovels and under the
date-trees of Gizeh, on our way to the Pyramids. Near the extremity of
the village, we entered one of the large chicken-hatching establishments
for which the place is famed, but found it empty. We disturbed a numerous
family of Fellahs, couched together on the clay floor, crept on our hands
and knees through two small holes and inspected sundry ovens covered
with a layer of chaff, and redolent of a mild, moist heat and a feathery
smell. The owner informed us that for the first four or five days the
eggs were exposed to smoke as well as heat, and that when the birds began
to pick the shell, which generally took place in fifteen days, they were
placed in another oven and carefully accouched.
The rising sun shone redly on the Pyramids, as we rode out on the broad
harvest land of the Nile. The black, unctuous loam was still too moist
from the inundation to be ploughed, except in spots, here and there,
but even where the water had scarce evaporated, millions of germs were
pushing their slender blades up to the sunshine. In that prolific soil,
the growth of grain is visible from day to day. The Fellahs were at
work on all sides, preparing for planting, and the ungainly buffaloes
drew their long ploughs slowly through the soil. Where freshly turned,
the earth had a rich, soft lustre, like dark-brown velvet, beside which
the fields of young wheat, beans and lentils, glittered with the most
brilliant green. The larks sang in the air and flocks of white pigeons
clustered like blossoms on the tops of the sycamores. There, in November,
it was the freshest and most animating picture of Spring. The direct road
to the Pyramids was impassable, on account of the water, and we rode
along the top of a dyke, intersected by canals, to the edge of the Libyan
Desert—a distance of nearly ten miles. The ruptures in the dyke obliged
us occasionally to dismount, and at the last canal, which cuts off the
advancing sands from the bounteous plain on the other side, our donkeys
were made to swim, while we were carried across on the shoulders of two
naked Arabs. They had run out in advance to meet us, hailing us with many
English and French phrases, while half a dozen boys, with earthen bottles
which they had just filled from the slimy canal, crowded after them,
insisting, in very good English, that we should drink at once, and take
them with us to the Pyramids.
Our donkeys’ hoofs now sank deep in the Libyan sands, and we looked up to
the great stone-piles of Cheops, Cephrenes and Mycerinus, not more than
half a mile distant. Our sunrise view of the Pyramids on leaving Gizeh,
was sufficient, had I gone no further, and I approached them, without
the violent emotion which sentimental travellers experience, but with a
quiet feeling of the most perfect satisfaction. The form of the pyramid
is so simple and complete, that nothing is left to the imagination. Those
vast, yellowish-gray masses, whose feet are wrapped in the silent sand,
and whose tops lean against the serene blue heaven, enter the mind and
remain in the memory with no shock of surprise, no stir of unexpected
admiration. The impression they give and leave, is calm, grand and
enduring as themselves.
The sun glared hot on the sand as we toiled up the ascent to the base of
Cheops, whose sharp corners were now broken into zigzags by the layers
of stone. As we dismounted in his shadow, at the foot of the path which
leads up to the entrance, on the northern side, a dozen Arabs beset us.
They belonged to the regular herd who have the Pyramids in charge, and
are so renowned for their impudence that it is customary to employ the
janissary of some Consulate in Cairo, as a protection. Before leaving
Gizeh I gave Achmet my sabre, which I thought would be a sufficient show
to secure us from their importunities. However, when we had mounted to
the entrance and were preparing to climb to the summit, they demanded a
dollar from each for their company on the way. This was just four times
the usual fee, and we flatly refused the demand. My friend had in the
mean time become so giddy from the few steps he had mounted, that he
decided to return, and I ordered Achmet, who knew the way, to go on
with me and leave the Arabs to their howlings. Their leader instantly
sprang before him, and attempted to force him back. This was too much
for Achmet, who thrust the man aside, whereupon he was instantly beset
by three or four, and received several hard blows. The struggle took
place just on the verge of the stones, and he was prudent enough to drag
his assailants into the open space before the entrance of the Pyramid.
My friend sprang towards the group with his cane, and I called to the
donkey-driver to bring up my sabre, but by this time Achmet had released
himself, with the loss of his turban.
The Arabs, who had threatened to treat us in the same manner, then
reduced their demand to the regular fee of five piastres for each. I took
three of them and commenced the ascent, leaving Achmet and my friend
below. Two boys followed us, with bottles of water. At first, the way
seemed hazardous, for the stones were covered with sand and fragments
which had fallen from above, but after we had mounted twenty courses,
the hard, smooth blocks of granite formed broader and more secure steps.
Two Arabs went before, one holding each of my hands, while the third
shoved me up from the rear. The assistance thus rendered was not slight,
for few of the stones are less than four feet in height. The water-boys
scampered up beside us with the agility of cats. We stopped a moment to
take breath, at a sort of resting-place half-way up—an opening in the
Pyramid, communicating with the uppermost of the interior chambers. I
had no sooner sat down on the nearest stone, than the Arabs stretched
themselves at my feet and entertained me with most absurd mixture of
flattery and menace. One, patting the calves of my legs, cried out;
“Oh, what fine, strong legs! how fast they came up: nobody ever went up
the Pyramid so fast!” while the others added: “Here you must give us
backsheesh: every body gives us a dollar here.” My only answer was, to
get up and begin climbing, and they did not cease pulling and pushing
till they left me breathless on the summit. The whole ascent did not
occupy more than ten minutes.
The view from Cheops has been often described. I cannot say that it
increased my impression of the majesty and grandeur of the Pyramid, for
that was already complete. My eyes wandered off from the courses of
granite, broadening away below my feet, to contemplate the glorious green
of the Nile-plain, barred with palm-trees and divided by the gleaming
flood of the ancient river; the minarets of Cairo; the purple walls of
the far Arabian mountains; the Pyramid groups of Sakkara and Dashoor,
overlooking disinterred Memphis in the South; and the arid yellow waves
of the Libyan Desert, which rolled unbroken to the western sky. The
clear, open heaven above, which seemed to radiate light from its entire
concave, clasped in its embrace and harmonized the different features of
this wonderful landscape. There was too much warmth and brilliance for
desolation. Every thing was alive and real; the Pyramids were not ruins,
and the dead Pharaohs, the worshippers of Athor and Apis, did not once
enter my mind.
My wild attendants did not long allow me to enjoy the view quietly.
To escape from their importunities for backsheesh, I gave them two
piastres in copper coin, which instantly turned their flatteries into the
most bitter complaints. It was insulting to give so little, and they
preferred having none; if I would not give a dollar, I might take the
money back. I took it without more ado, and put it into my pocket. This
rather surprised them, and first one, and then another came to me and
begged to have it again, on his own private account. I threw the coins
high into the air, and as they clattered down on the stones, there ensued
such a scramble as would have sent any but Arabs over the edge of the
Pyramid. We then commenced the descent, two seizing my hands as before,
and dragging me headlong after them. We went straight down the side,
sliding and leaping from stone to stone without stopping to take breath,
and reached the base in five or six minutes. I was so excited from
the previous aggression of the Arabs, that I neither felt fatigue nor
giddiness on the way up and down, and was not aware how violent had been
my exertions. But when I touched the level sand, all my strength vanished
in an instant. A black mist came over my eyes, and I sank down helpless
and nearly insensible. I was scarcely able to speak, and it was an hour
before I could sit upright on my donkey. I felt the Pyramid in all my
bones, and for two or three days afterwards moved my joints with as much
difficulty as a rheumatic patient.
The Arabs, who at first had threatened to kill Achmet, now came forward
and kissed his hands, humbly entreating pardon. But his pride had been
too severely touched by the blows he had received, and he repulsed
them, spitting upon the ground, as the strongest mark of contempt. We
considered it due to him, to ourselves, and to other travellers after
us, to represent the matter to the Shekh of the Pyramids, who lives in a
village called Kinnayseh, a mile distant, and ordered Achmet to conduct
us thither. We first rode along the base of the Pyramid of Cephrenes,
and down the sand drifts to the majestic head of the Sphinx. I shall not
attempt to describe this enormous relic of Egyptian art. There is nothing
like it in the world. Those travellers who pronounce its features to be
negro in their character, are certainly very hasty in their conclusions.
That it is an Egyptian head is plainly evident, notwithstanding its
mutilation. The type, however, is rather fuller and broader than is usual
in Egyptian statues.
On reaching the village we found that the shekh was absent in Cairo,
but were received by his son, who, after spelling out a few words of my
Arabic passport and hearing Achmet’s relation of the affair, courteously
invited us to his house. We rode between the mud huts to a small
court-yard, where we dismounted. A carpet was spread on the ground,
under a canopy of palm-leaves, and the place of honor was given to us,
the young shekh seating himself on the edge, while our donkey-drivers,
water-boys and a number of villagers, stood respectfully around. A
messenger was instantly despatched to the Pyramids, and in the mean time
we lighted the pipe of peace. The shekh promised to judge the guilty
parties and punish them in our presence. Coffee was ordered, but as
the unlucky youth returned and indiscreetly cried out, “_Ma feesh!_”
(there is none!) the shekh took him by the neck, and run him out of
the court-yard, threatening him with all manner of penalties unless he
brought it.
We found ourselves considered in the light of judges, and I thought
involuntarily of the children playing Cadi, in the Arabian tale. But to
play our Cadi with the necessary gravity of countenance was a difficult
matter. It was rather embarrassing to sit cross-legged so long, and
to look so severe. My face was of the color of a boiled lobster, from
the sun, and in order to protect my eyes, I had taken off my cravat
and bound it around the red tarboosh. My friend had swathed his felt
hat in like manner, and when the shekh looked at us from time to time,
while Achmet spoke of our friendship with all the Consuls in Cairo, it
was almost too much to enjoy quietly. However, the shekh, who wore a
red cap and a single cotton garment, treated us with much respect. His
serene, impartial demeanor, as he heard the testimony of the various
witnesses who were called up, was most admirable. After half an hour’s
delay, the messenger returned, and the guilty parties were brought into
court, looking somewhat alarmed and very submissive. We identified the
two ringleaders, and after considering the matter thoroughly, the shekh
ordered that they should be instantly bastinadoed. We decided between
ourselves to let the punishment commence, lest the matter should not be
considered sufficiently serious, and then to show our mercy by pardoning
the culprits.
One of the men was then thrown on the ground and held by the head and
feet, while the shekh took a stout rod and began administering the blows.
The victim had prepared himself by giving his bornous a double turn
over his back, and as the end of the rod struck the ground each time,
there was much sound with the veriest farce of punishment. After half a
dozen strokes, he cried out, “_ya salaam!_” whereupon the crowd laughed
heartily, and my friend ordered the shekh to stop. The latter cast the
rod at our feet, and asked us to continue the infliction ourselves,
until we were satisfied. We told him and the company in general, through
Achmet, that we were convinced of his readiness to punish imposition;
that we wished to show the Arabs that they must in future treat
travellers with respect; that we should send word of the affair to Cairo,
and they might rest assured that a second assault would be more severely
dealt with. Since this had been demonstrated, we were willing that the
punishment should now cease, and in conclusion returned our thanks to the
shekh, for his readiness to do us justice. This decision was received
with great favor; the two culprits came forward and kissed our hands and
those of Achmet, and the villagers pronounced a unanimous sentence of
“_taïb!_” (good!) The indiscreet youth again appeared, and this time with
coffee, of which we partook with much relish, for this playing the Cadi
was rather fatiguing. The shekh raised our hands to his forehead, and
accompanied us to the end of the village, where we gave the coffee-bearer
a backsheesh, dismissed our water-boys, and turned our donkeys’ heads
toward Abousir.
Achmet’s dark skin was pale from his wounded pride, and I was faint from
pyramid-climbing, but a cold fowl, eaten as we sat in the sun, on the
border of the glowing Desert, comforted us. The dominion of the sand has
here as distinct a bound as that of the sea; there is not thirty yards
from the black, pregnant loam, to the fiery plain, where no spear of
grass grows. Our path lay sometimes on one side of this border, sometimes
on the other, for more than an hour and a half, till we reached the
ruined pyramids of Abousir, where it turned southward into the Desert.
After seeing Cheops and Cephrenes, these pyramids are only interesting on
account of their dilapidated state and the peculiarity of their forms,
some of their sides taking a more obtuse angle at half their height.
They are buried deep in the sand, which has so drifted toward the plain,
that from the broad hollow lying between them and the group of Sakkara,
more than a mile distant, every sign of vegetation is shut out. Vast,
sloping causeways of masonry lead up to two of them, and a large mound,
occupying the space between, suggests the idea that a temple formerly
stood there. The whole of the desert promontory, which seemed to have
been gradually blown out on the plain, from the hills in the rear,
exhibits traces here and there of ruins beneath the surface. My friend
and I, as we walked over the hot sand, before our panting donkeys, came
instinctively to the same conclusion—that a large city must have once
occupied the space between, and to the southward of, the two groups of
pyramids. It is not often that amateur antiquarians find such sudden and
triumphant confirmation of their conjectures, as we did.
On the way, Achmet had told us of a Frenchman who had been all summer
digging in the sand, near Sakkara. After we had crawled into the
subterranean dépôt of mummied ibises, and nearly choked ourselves with
dust in trying to find a pot not broken open; and after one of our
donkeymen went into a human mummy pit and brought out the feet and legs
of some withered old Egyptian, we saw before us the residence of this
Frenchman; a mud hut on a high sand-bank. It was an unfortunate building,
for nearly all the front wall had tumbled down, revealing the contents
of his kitchen. One or two Arabs loitered about, but a large number were
employed at the end of a long trench which extended to the hills.
Before reaching the house a number of deep pits barred our path, and the
loose sand, stirred by our feet, slid back into the bottom, as if eager
to hide the wonders they disclosed. Pavements, fresh as when first laid;
basement-walls of white marble, steps, doorways, pedestals and fragments
of pillars glittered in the sun, which, after the lapse of more than two
thousand years, beheld them again. I slid down the side of the pit and
walked in the streets of Memphis. The pavement of bitumen, which once
covered the stone blocks, apparently to protect them and deaden the noise
of horses and chariots, was entire in many places. Here a marble sphinx
sat at the base of a temple, and stared abstractedly before her; there a
sculptured cornice, with heavy mouldings, leaned against the walls of the
chamber into which it had fallen, and over all were scattered fragments
of glazed and painted tiles and sculptured alabaster. The principal
street was narrow, and was apparently occupied by private dwellings, but
at its extremity were the basement-walls of a spacious edifice. All the
pits opened on pavements and walls, so fresh and cleanly cut, that they
seemed rather the foundations of a new city, laid yesterday, than the
remains of one of the oldest capitals of the world.
We approached the workmen, where we met the discoverer of Memphis, Mr.
Auguste Mariette. On finding we were not Englishmen (of whose visits he
appeared to be rather shy), he became very courteous and communicative.
He apologized for the little he had to show us, since on account of the
Vandalism of the Arabs, he was obliged to cover up all his discoveries,
after making his drawings and measurements. The Egyptian authorities
are worse than apathetic, for they would not hesitate to burn the
sphinxes for lime, and build barracks for filthy soldiers with the marble
blocks. Besides this, the French influence at Cairo was then entirely
overshadowed by that of England, and although M. Mariette was supported
in his labors by the French Academy, and a subscription headed by Louis
Napoleon’s name, he was forced to be content with the simple permission
to dig out these remarkable ruins and describe them. He could neither
protect them nor remove the portable sculptures and inscriptions, and
therefore preferred giving them again into the safe keeping of the sand.
Here they will be secure from injury, until some more fortunate period,
when, possibly, the lost Memphis may be entirely given to the world, as
fresh as Pompeii, and far more grand and imposing.
I asked M. Mariette what first induced him to dig for Memphis in that
spot, since antiquarians had fixed upon the mounds near Mitrahenny (a
village in the plain below, and about four miles distant), as the former
site of the city. He said that the tenor of an inscription which he
found on one of the blocks quarried out of these mounds, induced him
to believe that the principal part of the city lay to the westward,
and therefore he commenced excavating in the nearest sand-hill in that
direction. After sinking pits in various places he struck on an avenue
of sphinxes, the clue to all his after discoveries. Following this, he
came upon the remains of a temple (probably the _Serapeum_, or Temple of
Serapis, mentioned by Strabo), and afterward upon streets, colonnades,
public and private edifices, and all other signs of a great city. The
number of sphinxes alone, buried under these high sand-drifts, amounted
to two thousand, and he had frequently uncovered twenty or thirty in a
day. He estimated the entire number of statues, inscriptions and reliefs,
at between four and five thousand. The most remarkable discovery was that
of eight colossal statues, which were evidently the product of Grecian
art. During thirteen months of assiduous labor, with but one assistant,
he had made drawings of all these objects and forwarded them to Paris. In
order to be near at hand, he had built an Arab house of unburnt bricks,
the walls of which had just tumbled down for the third time. His workmen
were then engaged in clearing away the sand from the dwelling of some old
Memphian, and he intended spreading his roof over the massive walls, and
making his residence in the exhumed city.
The man’s appearance showed what he had undergone, and gave me an idea
of the extraordinary zeal and patience required to make a successful
antiquarian. His face was as brown as an Arab’s, his eyes severely
inflamed, and his hands as rough as a bricklayer’s. His manner with the
native workmen was admirable, and they labored with a hearty good-will
which almost supplied the want of the needful implements. All they had
were straw baskets, which they filled with a sort of rude shovel, and
then handed up to be carried off on the heads of others. One of the
principal workmen was deaf and dumb, but the funniest Arab I ever saw.
He was constantly playing off his jokes on those who were too slow or
too negligent. An unlucky girl, stooping down at the wrong time to lift
a basket of sand, received the contents of another on her head, and her
indignant outcry was hailed by the rest with screams of laughter. I saw
the same man pick out of the sand a glazed tile containing hieroglyphic
characters. The gravity with which he held it before him, feigning to
peruse it, occasionally nodding his head, as if to say, “Well done for
old Pharaoh!” could not have been excelled by Burton himself.
Strabo states that Memphis had a circumference of seventeen miles, and
therefore both M. Mariette and the antiquarians are right. The mounds
of Mitrahenny probably mark the eastern portion of the city, while its
western limit extended beyond the Pyramids of Sakkara, and included
in its suburbs those of Abousir and Dashoor. The space explored by M.
Mariette is about a mile and a half in length, and somewhat more than
half a mile in breadth. He was then continuing his excavations westward,
and had almost reached the first ridge of the Libyan Hills, without
finding the termination of the ruins. The magnitude of his discovery will
be best known when his drawings and descriptions are given to the world.
A few months after my visit, his labors were further rewarded by finding
thirteen colossal sarcophagi of black marble, and he has recently added
to his renown by discovering an entrance to the Sphinx. Yet at that time,
the exhumation of the lost Memphis—second only in importance to that of
Nineveh—was unknown in Europe, except to a few _savans_ in Paris, and the
first intimation which some of my friends in Cairo and Alexandria had
of it, was my own account of my visit, in the newspapers they received
from America. But M. Mariette is a young man, and will yet see his name
inscribed beside those of Burckhardt, Belzoni and Layard.
We had still a long ride before us, and I took leave of Memphis and its
discoverer, promising to revisit him on my return from Khartoum. As we
passed the brick Pyramid of Sakkara, which is built in four terraces of
equal height, the dark, grateful green of the palms and harvest-fields
of the Nile appeared between two sand-hills—a genuine balm to our heated
eyes. We rode through groves of the fragrant mimosa to a broad dike, the
windings of which we were obliged to follow across the plain, as the
soil was still wet and adhesive. It was too late to visit the beautiful
Pyramids of Dashoor, the first of which is more than three hundred feet
in height, and from a distance has almost as grand an effect as those
of Gizeh. Our tired donkeys lagged slowly along to the palm-groves of
Mitrahenny, where we saw mounds of earth, a few blocks of red granite
and a colossal statue of Remeses II. (Sesostris)—which until now were
supposed to be the only remains of Memphis. The statue lies on its
face in a hole filled with water. The countenance is said to be very
beautiful, but I could only see the top of Sesostris’s back, which bore a
faint resemblance to a crocodile.
Through fields of cotton in pod and beans in blossom, we rode to the
Nile, dismissed our donkeys and their attendants, and lay down on some
bundles of corn-stalks to wait the arrival of our boat. But there had
been a south wind all day, and we had ridden much faster than our men
could tow. We sat till long after sunset before the stars and stripes,
floating from the mizzen of the _Cleopatra_, turned the corner below
Bedrasheyn. When, at last, we sat at our cabin-table, weary and hungry,
we were ready to confess that the works of art produced by our cook,
Salame, were more marvellous and interesting than Memphis and the
Pyramids.