FROM MEMPHIS TO SIOUT.
Leaving the Pyramids—A Calm and a Breeze—A Coptic
Visit—Minyeh—The Grottoes of Beni-Hassan—Doum Palms
and Crocodiles—Djebel Aboufayda—Entrance into Upper
Egypt—Diversions of the Boatmen—Siout—Its Tombs—A Landscape—A
Bath.
“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream.”
LEIGH HUNT’S SONNET TO THE NILE.
The extent of my journey into Africa led me to reverse the usual plan
pursued by travellers on the Nile, who sail to Assouan or Wadi-Halfa
without pause, and visit the antiquities on their return. I have never
been able to discern the philosophy of this plan. The voyage up is
always longer, and more tedious (to those heathens who call the Nile
tedious), than the return; besides which, two visits, though brief, with
an interval between, leave a more complete and enduring image, than a
single one. The mind has time to analyze and contrast, and can afterwards
confirm or correct the first impressions. How any one can sail from
Cairo to Siout, a voyage of two hundred and sixty miles, with but one or
two points of interest, without taking the Pyramids with him in memory,
I cannot imagine. Were it not for that recollection, I should have
pronounced Modern Egypt more interesting than the Egypt of the Pharaohs
and the Ptolemies. I omitted seeing none of the important remains on my
upward journey, so that I might be left free to choose another route
homeward, if possible. It seemed like slighting Fortune to pass Dendera,
and Karnak and Ombos, without notice. Opportunity is rare, and a wise
man will never let it go by him. I knew not what dangers I might have
to encounter, but I knew that it would be a satisfaction to me, even if
speared by the Bedouins of the Lybian Desert, to think: “You rascals, you
have killed me, but I have seen Thebes!”
The Pyramids of Dashoor followed us all the next day after leaving
Memphis. Our sailors tugged us slowly along shore, against a mild south
wind, but could not bring us out of the horizon of those red sandstone
piles. Our patience was tried, that day and the next, by our slow and
toilsome progress, hindered still more by running aground on sand-banks,
but we were pledged to patience, and had our reward. On the morning of
the fourth day, as we descried before us the minarets of Benisouef,
the first large town after leaving Cairo, a timid breeze came rustling
over the dourra-fields to the north, and puffed out the Cleopatra’s
languid sails. The tow-rope was hauled in, our Arabs jumped on board and
produced the drum and tambourine, singing lustily as we moved out into
the middle of the stream. The wind increased; the flag lifted itself
from the mast and streamed toward Thebes, and Benisouef went by, almost
before we had counted its minarets. I tried in vain to distinguish the
Pyramid of Illahoon, which stands inland, at the base of the Libyan Hills
and the entrance of the pass leading to the Lake of Fyoom, the ancient
Mœris. Near the Pyramid are the foundations of the famous Labyrinth,
lately excavated by Dr. Lepsius. The Province of Fyoom, surrounding the
lake, is, with the exception of the Oases in the Libyan Desert, the only
productive land west of the mountains bordering the Nile.
All afternoon, with both sails full and our vessel leaning against the
current, we flew before the wind. At dusk, the town of Feshn appeared on
our left; at midnight, we passed Abou-Girgeh and the Mounds of Behnesa,
the ancient Oxyrinchus; and when the wind left us, at sunrise, we were
seventy miles from Benisouef. The Arabian Mountains here approach the
river, and at two points terminate in abrupt precipices of yellow
calcareous rock. The bare cliffs of Djebel el Tayr (the Mountain of
Birds), are crowned with the “Convent of the Pulley,” so called from
its inaccessible situation, and the fact that visitors are frequently
drawn to the summit by a rope and windlass. While passing this convent,
a cry came up from the muddy waters of the river: “We are Christians, O
Howadji!” and presently two naked Coptic monks wriggled over the gunwale,
and sat down, panting and dripping, on the deck. We gave them backsheesh,
which they instantly clapped into their mouths, but their souls likewise
devoutly yearned for brandy, which they did not get. They were large,
lusty fellows, and whatever perfection of spirit they might have
attained, their flesh certainly had never been unnecessarily mortified.
After a breathing spell, they jumped into the river again, and we soon
saw them straddling from point to point, as they crawled up the almost
perpendicular cliff. At Djebel el Tayr, the birds of Egypt (according to
an Arabic legend) assemble annually and choose one of their number to
remain there for a year. My friend complained that the wild geese and
ducks were not represented, and out of revenge fired at a company of
huge pelicans, who were seated on a sand-bank.
The drum and tambourine kept lively time to the voices of our sailors, as
we approached Minyeh, the second large town on the river, and the capital
of a Province. But the song this time had a peculiar significance.
After the long-drawn sound, something between a howl and a groan, which
terminated it, we were waited upon by a deputation, who formally welcomed
us to the city. We responded by a backsheesh of twenty-five piastres,
and the drum rang louder than ever. We stayed in Minyeh long enough to
buy a leg of mutton, and then sailed for the tombs of Beni-Hassan. The
wind left us as we reached a superb palm-grove, which for several miles
skirts the foot of Djebel Shekh Timay. The inhabitants are in bad odor,
and in addition to our own guard, we were obliged to take two men from
the village, who came armed with long sticks and built a fire on the
bank, beside our vessel. This is a regulation of the Government, to which
travellers usually conform, but I never saw much reason for it. We rose
at dawn and wandered for hours through the palms, to the verge of the
Desert. When within two or three miles of the mountain of Beni-Hassan, we
provided ourselves with candles, water-flasks and weapons, and set off
in advance of our boat. The Desert here reached the Nile, terminating
in a bluff thirty to forty feet in height, which is composed of layers
of pebbles and shelly sand, apparently the deposit of many successive
floods. I should have attributed this to the action of the river, cutting
a deeper channel from year to year, but I believe it is now acknowledged
that the bed of the Nile is gradually rising, and that the yearly
inundation covers a much wider space than in the time of the Pharaohs.
It is difficult to reconcile this fact with the very perceptible
encroachments which the sand is making on the Libyan shore; but we may
at least be satisfied that the glorious harvest-valley through which the
river wanders can never be wholly effaced thereby.
We climbed to the glaring level of the Desert, carrying with us the
plumes of a beautiful gray heron which my friend brought down. A solitary
Arab horseman was slowly moving along the base of the arid hills, and we
descried in the distance a light-footed gazelle, which leisurely kept
aloof and mocked our efforts to surround it. At the foot of the mountain
we passed two ruined villages, destroyed several years ago by Ibrahim
Pasha, on account of the marauding propensities of the inhabitants. It
has a cruel sound, when you are told that the people were driven away,
and their dwellings razed to the ground, but the reality is a trifling
matter. The Arabs take their water-skins and pottery, jump into the Nile,
swim across to a safer place, and in three or four days their palaces
of mud are drying in the sun. We came upon them the next morning, as
thievishly inclined as ever, and this was the only place where I found
the people otherwise than friendly.
A steep path, up a slope covered with rounded boulders of hard black
rock, leads to the grottoes of Beni-Hassan. They are among the oldest
in Egypt, dating from the reign of Osirtasen I, about 1750 years before
the Christian Era, and are interesting from their encaustic paintings,
representing Egyptian life and customs at that early date. The rock
chambers extend for nearly half a mile along the side of the mountain.
The most of them are plain and without particular interest, and they have
all suffered from the great spoilers of Egypt—the Persian, the Copt
and the Saracen. Four only retain their hieroglyphics and paintings,
and are adorned with columns hewn from the solid rock. The first we
entered contained four plain, fluted columns, one of which had been
shivered in the centre, leaving the architrave and capital suspended
from the ceiling. The walls were covered with paintings, greatly faded
and defaced, representing the culture and manufacture of flax, the
sowing and reaping of grain, and the making of bread, besides a number
of spirited hunting and fishing scenes. The occupant of the tomb appears
to have been a severe master, for his servants are shown in many places,
undergoing the punishment of the bastinado, which is even inflicted upon
women. He was also wealthy, for we still see his stewards presenting him
with tablets showing the revenues of his property. He was a great man in
Joseph’s day, but the pit in which he lay is now empty, and the Arabs
have long since burned his mummy to boil their rice.
The second tomb is interesting, from a painting representing thirty
men, of a foreign nation, who are brought before the deceased occupant.
Some antiquarians suppose them to be the brethren of Joseph, but the
tomb is that of a person named Nehophth, and the number of men does not
correspond with the Bible account. Two of the southern tombs, which are
supported by pillars formed of four budding locust-stalks bound together,
are covered with paintings representing different trades and professions.
The rear walls are entirely devoted to illustrations of gymnastic
exercises, and the figures are drawn with remarkable freedom and skill.
There are never more than two persons in a group, one being painted red
and the other black, in order the better to show the position of each.
In at least five hundred different groupings the same exercise is not
repeated, showing a wonderful fertility of invention, either on the part
of the artist or the wrestlers. The execution of these figures fully
reached my ideas of Egyptian pictorial art, but the colors were much less
vivid than some travellers represent. The tombs are not large, though
numerous, and what is rather singular, there is not the least trace of a
city in the neighborhood, to which they could have belonged.
The next day at noon we passed between the mounds of Antinoë and
Hermopolis Magna, lying on opposite banks of the Nile. Antinoë, built
by the Emperor Adrian in honor of his favorite, the glorious Antinous,
who was here drowned in the river, has entirely disappeared, with the
exception of its foundations. Twenty-five years ago, many interesting
monuments were still standing, but as they were, unfortunately, of the
white calcareous stone of the Arabian Hills, they have been long since
burnt for lime. Before reaching Antinoë we had just come on board, after
a long walk on the western bank, and the light wind which bore us toward
the mountain of Shekh Abaddeh was too pleasant to be slighted; so we saw
nothing of Adrian’s city except some heaps of dirt. The splendid evening,
however, which bathed the naked cliffs of the mountain in rosy flame, was
worth more to us than any amount of marble blocks.
The guide book says, “hereabouts appears the doum palm, and crocodiles
begin to be more frequently seen.” The next morning we found one of the
trees, but day after day we vainly sought a crocodile. My friend recalled
a song of Geibel’s, concerning a German musician who played his violin by
the Nile till the crocodiles came out and danced around the Pyramids and
in his despair would also have purchased a violin, if any could have been
found in Siout. I had seen alligators on the Mississippi, and took the
disappointment more complacently. The doum palm differs from the columnar
date-palm in the form of its leaves, which are fan-like, and in having
a branching trunk. The main stem divides a few feet from the root, each
of the branches again forming two, and each of these two more, till the
tree receives a broad, rounded top. The fruit hangs below in clusters,
resembling small cocoa-nuts, and has a sort of gingerbread flavor, which
is not disagreeable. When fully dry and hard, it takes a polish like
ivory, and is manufactured by the Arabs into beads, pipe bowls and other
small articles.
We approached the mountain of Aboufayda with a strong and favorable
wind. Here the Nile, for upward of ten miles, washes the foot of
lofty precipices, whose many deep fissures and sharp angles give them
the appearance of mountains in ruin. The afternoon sun shone full on
the yellow rocks, and their jagged pinnacles were cut with wonderful
distinctness against the perfect blue of the sky. This mountain is
considered the most dangerous point on the Nile for boats, and the
sailors always approach it with fear. Owing to its deep side-gorges, the
wind sometimes shifts about without a moment’s warning, and if the large
lateen sail is caught aback, the vessel is instantly overturned. During
the passage of this and other similar straits, two sailors sit on deck,
holding the sail-rope, ready to let it fly in the wind on the slightest
appearance of danger. The shifting of the sail is a delicate business, at
such times, but I found it better to trust to our men, awkward as they
were, than to confuse by attempting to direct them. At Djebel Shekh Saïd,
the sailors have a custom of throwing two or three loaves of bread on
the water, believing that it will be taken up by two large white birds
and deposited on the tomb of the Shekh. The wind favored us in passing
Aboufayda; the Cleopatra dashed the foam from the rough waves, and in two
or three hours the southern corner of the mountain lay behind us, leaning
away from the Nile like the shattered pylon of a temple.
Before sunset we passed the city of Manfalout, whose houses year by year
topple into the mining flood. The side next the river shows only halves
of buildings, the rest of which have been washed away. In a few years the
tall and airy minarets will follow, and unless the inhabitants continue
to shift their dwellings to the inland side, the city will entirely
disappear. From this point, the plain of Siout, the garden of Upper
Egypt, opened wide and far before us. The spur of the Libyan hills, at
the foot of which the city is built, shot out in advance, not more than
ten or twelve miles distant, but the Nile, loth to leave these beautiful
fields and groves, winds hither and thither in such a devious, lingering
track, that you must sail twenty-five miles to reach El Hamra, the port
of Siout. The landscape, broader and more majestic than those of Lower
Egypt, is even richer and more blooming. The Desert is kept within its
proper bounds; it is no longer visible from the river, and the hills,
whose long, level lines frame the view on either side, enhance by their
terrible sterility the luxury of vegetation which covers the plain. It
is a bounteous land, visited only by healthy airs, and free from the
pestilence which sometimes scourges Cairo.
The wind fell at midnight, but came to us again the next morning at
sunrise, and brought us to El Hamra before noon. Our men were in high
spirits at having a day of rest before them, the contracts for boats
always stipulating for a halt of twenty-four hours at Siout and Esneh, in
order that they may procure their supplies of provisions. They buy wheat
and dourra, have it ground in one of the rude mills worked by buffaloes,
and bake a sufficient quantity of loaves to last two or three weeks.
Our men had also the inspiration of backsheesh in their song, and their
dolorous love-melodies rang from shore to shore. The correctness with
which these people sing is absolutely surprising. Wild and harsh as are
their songs, their choruses are in perfect accord, and even when at the
same time exerting all their strength at the poles and oars, they never
fail in a note. The melodies are simple, but not without expression, and
all are pervaded with a mournful monotony which seems to have been caught
from the Desert. There is generally an improvisatore in each boat’s
crew, who supplies an endless number of lines to the regular chorus of
“_hay-haylee sah!_” So far as I could understand our poet, there was not
the least meaning or connection in his poetry, but he never failed in the
rhythm. He sang, for instance: “O Alexandrian!”—then followed the chorus:
“Hasten, three of you!”—chorus again: “Hail, Sidi Ibrahim!” and so on,
for an hour at a time. On particular occasions, he added pantomime, and
the scene on our forward deck resembled a war-dance of the Blackfeet.
The favorite pantomime is that of a man running into a hornet’s nest.
He stamps and cries, improvising all the while, the chorus seeking to
drown his voice. He then throws off his mantle, cap, and sometimes his
last garment, slapping his body to drive off the hornets, and howling
with pain. The song winds up with a prolonged cry which only ceases when
every lung is emptied. Even when most mirthfully inclined, and roaring
in ecstasy over some silly joke, our men always laughed in accord. So
sound and hearty were their cachinnatory choruses, that we involuntarily
laughed with them.
A crowd of donkeys, ready saddled, awaited us on the bank, and the boys
began to fight before our boat was moored. We chose three unpainted
animals, so large that our feet were at least three inches from the
ground, and set off on a gallop for Siout, which is about a mile and a
half from the river. Its fifteen tall, white minarets rose before us,
against the background of the mountain, and the handsome front of the
palace of Ismaïl Pasha shone through the dark green of its embosoming
acacias. The road follows the course of a dam, built to retain the waters
of the inundation, and is shaded with palms, sycamores and mimosas. On
either side we looked down upon fields of clover, so green, juicy and
June-like that I was tempted to jump from my donkey and take a roll
therein. Where the ground was still damp the Arabs were ploughing with
camels, and sowing wheat on the moist, fat loam. We crossed a bridge and
entered the court of justice, one of the most charmingly clean and shady
spots in Egypt. The town, which is built of sun-dried bricks, whose muddy
hue is somewhat relieved by the whitewashed mosques and minarets, is
astonishingly clean in every part. The people themselves appeared to be
orderly, intelligent and amiable.
The tombs of the City of Wolves, the ancient Lycopolis, are in the
eastern front of the mountain overhanging the city. We rode to the
_Stabl Antar_, the principal one, and then climbed to the summit. The
tombs are much larger than those of Beni-Hassan, but have been almost
ruined by the modern Egyptians. The enormous square pillars which filled
their halls have been shattered down for lime, and only fragments of the
capitals still hang from the ceilings of solid rock. The sculptures and
hieroglyphics, which are here not painted but sculptured in intaglio,
are also greatly defaced. The second tomb called by the Arabs _Stabl
Hamam_ (Pigeon Stable), retains its grand doorway, which has on each side
the colossal figure of an ancient king. The sand around its mouth is
filled with fragments of mummied wolves, and on our way up the mountain
we scared one of their descendants from his lair in a solitary tomb.
The _Stabl Hamam_ is about sixty feet square by forty in height, and in
its rough and ruined aspect is more impressive than the more chaste and
elegant chambers of Beni-Hassan. The view of the plain of Siout, seen
through its entrance, has a truly magical effect. From the gray twilight
of the hall in which you stand, the green of the fields, the purple of
the distant mountains, and the blue of the sky, dazzle your eye as if
tinged with the broken rays of a prism.
From the summit of the mountain, which we reached by scaling a crevice
in its white cliffs, we overlooked a more beautiful landscape than that
seen from the Pyramid. In the north, beyond the spires of Manfalout and
the crags of Aboufayda, we counted the long palm-groves, receding behind
one another to the yellow shore of the Desert; in front, the winding Nile
and the Arabian Mountains; southward, a sea of wheat and clover here
deepening into dark emerald, there paling into gold, according to the
degree of moisture in the soil, and ceasing only because the eye refused
to follow; while behind us, over the desert hills, wound the track of
the yearly caravan from Dar-Fūr and Kordofan. Our Arab guide pointed out
a sandy plain, behind the cemetery of the Mamelukes, which lay at our
feet, as the camping-ground of the caravan, and tried to tell us how many
thousand camels were assembled there. As we looked upon the superb plain,
teeming with its glory of vegetable life and enlivened by the songs of
the Arab ploughmen, a funeral procession came from the city and passed
slowly to the burying-ground, accompanied by the dismal howling of a band
of women. We went below and rode between the whitewashed domes covering
the graves of the Mamelukes. The place was bright, clean and cheerful,
in comparison with the other Arab burying-grounds we had seen. The grove
which shades its northern wall stretches for more than a mile along the
edge of the Desert—a picturesque avenue of palms, sycamores, fragrant
acacias, mimosas and acanthus. The air around Siout is pregnant with the
rich odor of the yellow mimosa-flowers, and one becomes exhilarated by
breathing it.
The city has handsome bazaars and a large bath, built by Mohammed Bey
Defterdar, the savage son-in-law of Mohammed Ali. The halls are spacious,
supported by granite columns, and paved with marble. Little threads of
water, scarcely visible in the dim, steamy atmosphere, shoot upward from
the stone tanks, around which a dozen brown figures lie stretched in the
lazy beatitude of the bath. I was given over to two Arabs, who scrubbed
me to desperation, plunged me twice over head and ears in a tank of
scalding water, and then placed me under a cold _douche_. When the whole
process, which occupied more than half an hour, was over, a cup of coffee
and a pipe were brought to me as I lay stretched out on the divan,
while another attendant commenced a course of dislocation, twisting and
cracking all my joints and pressing violently with both hands on my
breast. Singularly enough, this removed the languor occasioned by so much
hot water, and gave a wonderful elasticity to the frame. I walked out
as if shod with the wings of Mercury, and as I rode back to our boat,
congratulated my donkey on the airy lightness of his load.
[Illustration: The Cleopatra.]