devotion, “There is nothing like it.” Now, in all Egypt, and I suppose
in all the world, there is nothing just like Philæ. There are temples,
yes; but where else is there a bouquet of gracious buildings such as
these gathered in such a holder as this tiny, raft-like isle? And where
else are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost
feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility?
Once, beyond Philæ, the Great Cataract roared down from the wastes of
Nubia into the green fertility of Upper Egypt. It roars no longer. But
still the masses of the rocks, and still the amber and the yellow sands,
and still the iron-colored hills, keep guard round Philæ. And still,
despite the vulgar desecration that has turned Shellal into a workmen’s
suburb and dowered it with a railway-station, there is mystery in Philæ,
and the sense of isolation that only an island gives. Even now one can
forget in Philæ--forget, after a while, and in certain parts of its
buildings, the presence of the gray disease; forget the threatening of
the altruists, who desire to benefit humanity by clearing as much beauty
out of humanity’s abiding-place as possible; forget the fact of the
railway, except when the shriek of the engine floats over the water to
one’s ears; forget economic problems, and the destruction that their
solving brings upon the silent world of things whose “use,” denied,
unrecognized, or laughed at, to man is in their holy beauty, whose
mission lies not upon the broad highways where tramps the hungry body,
but upon the secret, shadowy byways where glides the hungry soul.
Yes, one can forget even now in the hall of the
[Illustration:
From a photograph by James S. Lee
IN “PHARAOH’S BED,” ISLAND OF PHILÆ]
temple of Isis, where the capricious graces of form are linked with the
capricious graces of color, where, like old and delicious music in the
golden strings of a harp, dwells a something--what is it? A murmur, or a
perfume, or a breathing?--of old and vanished years when forsakened gods
were worshiped. And one can forget in the chapel of Hathor, on whose
wall little Horus is born, and in the gray hounds’ chapel beside it. One
can forget, for one walks in beauty.
Lovely are the doorways in Philæ; enticing are the shallow steps that
lead one onward and upward; gracious the yellow towers that seem to
smile a quiet welcome. And there is one chamber that is simply a place
of magic--the hall of the painted portico, the delicious hall of the
flowers.
It is this chamber which always makes me think of Philæ as a lovely
temple of dreams, this silent, retired chamber, where some fabled
princess might well have been touched to a long, long sleep of
enchantment, and lain for years upon years among the magical
flowers--the lotus, and the palm, and the papyrus.
In my youth it made upon me an indelible impression. Through intervening
years, filled with many new impressions, many wanderings, many visions
of beauty in other lands, that retired, painted chamber had not faded
from my mind--or shall I say from my heart? There had seemed to me
within it something that was ineffable, as in a lyric of Shelley’s there
is something that is ineffable, or in certain pictures of Boecklin,
such as “The Villa by the Sea.” And when at last, almost afraid and
hesitating, I came into it once more, I found in it again the strange
spell of old enchantment.
It seems as if this chamber had been imagined by a poet, who had set it
in the center of the temple of his dream. It is such a spontaneous
chamber that one can scarcely imagine it more than a day and a night in
the building. Yet in detail it is lovely; it is finished and strangely
mighty; it is a lyric in stone, the most poetical chamber, perhaps, in
the whole of Egypt. For Philæ I count in Egypt, though really it is in
Nubia.
One who has not seen Philæ may perhaps wonder how a tall chamber of
solid stone, containing heavy and soaring columns, can be like a lyric
of Shelley’s, can be exquisitely spontaneous, and yet hold a something
of mystery that makes one tread softly in it, and fear to disturb within
it some lovely sleeper of Nubia, some Princess of the Nile. He must
continue to wonder. To describe this chamber calmly, as I might, for
instance, describe the temple of Derr, would be simply to destroy it.
For things ineffable cannot be fully explained, or not be fully felt by
those the twilight of whose dreams is fitted to mingle with their
twilight. They who are meant to love with ardor _se passionnent pour la
passion_. And they who are meant to take and to keep the spirit of a
dream, whether it be hidden in a poem, or held in the cup of a flower,
or enfolded in
[Illustration:
From a photograph by James S. Lee
FORE-COURT OF THE TEMPLE OF ISIS AND “PHARAOH’S BED.” PHILÆ]
arms of stone, will surely never miss it, even though they can hear
roaring loudly above its elfin voice the cry of directed waters rushing
down to Upper Egypt.
How can one disentangle from their tapestry web the different threads of
a spell? And even if one could, if one could hold them up, and explain,
“The cause of the spell is that this comes in contact with this, and
that this, which I show you, blends with, fades into, this,” how could
it advantage any one? Nothing would be made clearer, nothing be really
explained. The ineffable is, and must ever remain, something remote and
mysterious.
And so one may say many things of this painted chamber of Philæ, and yet
never convey, perhaps never really know, the innermost cause of its
charm. In it there is obvious beauty of form, and a seizing beauty of
color, beauty of sunlight and shadow, of antique association. This
turquoise blue is enchanting, and Isis was worshiped here. What has the
one to do with the other? Nothing; and yet how much! For is not each of
these facts a thread in the tapestry web of the spell? The eyes see the
rapture of this very perfect blue. The imagination hears, as if very far
off, the solemn chanting of priests, and smells the smoke of strange
perfumes, and sees the long, aquiline nose and the thin, haughty lips of
the goddess. And the color becomes strange to the eyes, as well as very
lovely, because, perhaps, it was there--it almost certainly was
there--when from Constantinople went forth the decree that all Egypt
should be Christian; when the priests of the sacred brotherhood of Isis
were driven from their temple.
Isis nursing Horus gave way to the Virgin and the child. But the cycles
spin away down “the ringing grooves of change.” From Egypt has passed
away that decreed Christianity. Now from the minaret the muezzin cries,
and in palm-shaded villages I hear the loud hymns of earnest pilgrims
starting on the journey to Mecca. And ever this painted chamber shelters
its mystery of poetry, its mystery of charm. And still its marvelous
colors are fresh as in the far-off pagan days, and the opening
lotus-flowers, and the closed lotus-buds, and the palm and the papyrus,
are on the perfect columns. And their intrinsic loveliness, and their
freshness, and their age, and the mysteries they have looked on--all
these facts are part of the spell that governs us to-day. In Edfu one is
inclosed in a wonderful austerity. And one can only worship. In Philæ
one is wrapped in a radiance of color. And one can only dream. For there
is coral pink, and there a wonderful green, “like the green light that
lingers in the west,” and there is a blue as deep as the blue of a
tropical sea; and there are green-blue and lustrous, ardent red. And the
odd fantasy in the coloring, is not that like the fantasy in the temple
of a dream? For those who painted these capitals for the greater glory
[Illustration: ABU-SIMBEL]
of Isis did not fear to depart from nature, and to their patient worship
a blue palm perhaps seemed a rarely sacred thing. And that palm is part
of the spell, and the reliefs upon the walls, and even the Coptic
crosses that are cut into the stone.
But, at the end, one can only say that this place is indescribable, and
not because it is complex or terrifically grand, like Karnak. Go to it
on a sunlit morning, or stand in it in late afternoon, and perhaps you
will feel that it “suggests” you, that it carries you away, out of
familiar regions into a land of dreams, where among hidden ways the soul
is lost in magic. Yes, you are gone.
To the right--for one, alas! cannot live in a dream forever--is a lovely
doorway through which one sees the river. Facing it is another doorway,
showing a fragment of the poor, vivisected island, some ruined walls,
and still another doorway in which, again, is framed the Nile. Many
people have cut their names upon the walls of Philæ. Once, as I sat
alone there, I felt strongly attracted to look upward to a wall, as if
some personality, enshrined within the stone, were watching me, or
calling. I looked, and saw written “Balzac.”
Philæ is the last temple that one visits before he gives himself to the
wildness of the solitudes of Nubia. It stands at the very frontier. As
one goes up the Nile, it is like a smiling adieu from the Egypt one is
leaving. As one comes down, it is like a smiling welcome. In its
delicate charm I feel something of the charm of the Egyptian character.
There are moments, indeed, when I identify Egypt with Philæ. For in
Philæ one must dream; and on the Nile, too, one must dream. And always
the dream is happy, and shot through with radiant light--light that is
as radiant as the colors in Philæ’s temple. The pylons of Ptolemy smile
at you as you go up or come down the river. And the people of Egypt
smile as they enter into your dream. A suavity, too, is theirs. I think
of them often as artists, who know their parts in the dream-play, who
know exactly their function, and how to fulfil it rightly. They sing,
while you are dreaming, but it is an under-song, like the murmur of an
Eastern river far off from any sea. It never disturbs, this music, but
it helps you in your dream. And they are softly gay. And in their eyes
there is often the gleam of sunshine, for they are the children--but not
grown men--of the sun. That, indeed, is one of the many strange things
in Egypt--the youthfulness of its age, the childlikeness of its almost
terrible antiquity. One goes there to look at the oldest things in the
world and to feel perpetually young--young as Philæ is young, as a lyric
of Shelley’s is young, as all of our day-dreams are young, as the people
of Egypt are young.
Oh, that Egypt could be kept as it is, even as it is now; that Philæ
could be preserved even as it is now!
[Illustration:
From stereograph, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
ABU-SIMBEL FROM THE RIVER]
The spoilers are there, those blithe modern spirits, so frightfully
clever and capable, so industrious, so determined, so unsparing of
themselves and--of others! Already they are at work “benefiting Egypt.”
Tall chimneys begin to vomit smoke along the Nile. A damnable tram-line
for little trolleys leads one toward the wonderful Colossi of Memnon.
Close to Kom Ombos some soul imbued with romance has had the inspiration
to set up--a factory. And Philæ--is it to go?
Is beauty, then, of no value in the world? Is it always to be the prey
of modern progress? Is nothing to be considered sacred; nothing to be
left untouched, unsmirched by the grimy fingers of improvement? I
suppose nothing.
Then let those who still care to dream go now to Philæ’s painted chamber
by the long reaches of the Nile; go on, if they will, to the giant forms
of Abu-Simbel among the Nubian sands. And perhaps they will think with
me, that in some dreams there is a value greater than the value that is
entered in any bank-book, and they will say, with me, however uselessly:
“Leave to the world some dreams, some places in which to dream; for if
it needs dams to make the grain grow in the stretches of land that were
barren, and railways, and tram-lines, and factory chimneys that vomit
black smoke in the face of the sun, surely it needs also painted
chambers of Philæ and the silence that comes down from Isis.”
XVIII
OLD CAIRO
By old Cairo I do not mean only “le vieux Caire” of the guide-book, the
little, desolate village containing the famous Coptic church of Abu
Sergius, in the crypt of which the Virgin Mary and Christ are said to
have stayed when they fled to the land of Egypt to escape the fury of
King Herod; but the Cairo that is not new, that is not dedicated wholly
to officialdom and tourists, that, in the midst of changes and the
advance of civilization,--civilization that does so much harm as well as
so much good, that showers benefits with one hand and defaces beauty
with the other,--preserves its immemorial calm or immemorial tumult;
that stands aloof, as stands aloof ever the Eastern from the Western
man, even in the midst of what seems, perhaps, like intimacy; Eastern to
the soul, though the fantasies, the passions, the vulgarities, the
brilliant ineptitudes of the West, beat about it like waves about some
unyielding wall of the sea.
When I went back to Egypt, after a lapse of many years, I fled at once
from Cairo, and upon the long reaches of the Nile, in the great spaces
of the Libyan Desert, in the luxuriant palm-groves of the Fayyum, among
the tamarisk-bushes and on the pale waters of Kurun, I forgot the
changes which, in my brief glimpse of the city and its environs, had
moved me to despondency. But one cannot live in the solitudes forever.
And at last from Madi-nat-al-Fayyum, with the first pilgrims starting
for Mecca, I returned to the great city, determined to seek in it once
more for the fascinations it used to hold, and perhaps still held in the
hidden ways where modern feet, nearly always in a hurry, had seldom time
to penetrate.
A mist hung over the land. Out of it, with a sort of stern energy, there
came to my ears loud hymns sung by the pilgrim voices--hymns in which,
mingled with the enthusiasm of devotees en route for the holiest shrine
of their faith, there seemed to sound the resolution of men strung up to
confront the fatigues and the dangers of a great journey through a wild
and unknown country. Those hymns led my feet to the venerable mosques of
Cairo, the city of mosques, guided me on my lesser pilgrimage among the
cupolas and the colonnades, where grave men dream in the silence near
marble fountains, or bend muttering their prayers beneath domes that are
dimmed by the ruthless fingers of Time. In the buildings consecrated to
prayer and to meditation I first sought for the magic that stills lurks
in the teeming bosom of Cairo.
Long ago I had sought it elsewhere, in the brilliant bazaars by day,
and by night in the winding alleys, where the dark-eyed Jews looked
stealthily forth from the low-browed doorways; where the Circassian
girls promenade, gleaming with golden coins and barbaric jewels; where
the air is alive with music that is feverish and antique, and in
strangely lighted interiors one sees forms clad in brilliant draperies,
or severely draped in the simplest pale-blue garments, moving in languid
dances, fluttering painted fingers, bending, swaying, dropping down,
like the forms that people a dream.
In the bazaars is the passion for gain, in the alleys of music and light
is the passion for pleasure, in the mosques is the passion for prayer
that connects the souls of men with the unseen but strongly felt world.
Each of these passions is old, each of these passions in the heart of
Islam is fierce. On my return to Cairo I sought for the hidden fire that
is magic in the dusky places of prayer.
A mist lay over the city as I stood in a narrow byway, and gazed up at a
heavy lattice, of which the decayed and blackened wood seemed on guard
before some tragic or weary secret. Before me was the entrance to the
mosque of Ibn-Tulun, older than any mosque in Cairo save only the mosque
of Amru. It is approached by a flight of steps, on each side of which
stand old, impenetrable houses. Above my head, strung across from one
house to the other, were many little red and yellow flags ornamented
with gold lozenges. These were to bear witness that in a couple of
days’ time, from the great open place beneath the citadel of Cairo, the
Sacred Carpet was to set out on its long journey to Mecca. My guide
struck on a door and uttered a fierce cry. A small shutter in the
blackened lattice was opened, and a young girl, with kohl-tinted
eyelids, and a brilliant yellow handkerchief tied over her coarse, black
hair, leaned out, held a short parley, and vanished, drawing the shutter
to behind her. The mist crept up about the tawdry flags, a heavy door
creaked, whined on its hinges, and from the house of the girl there came
an old, fat man bearing a mighty key. In a moment I was free of the
mosque of Ibn-Tulun.
I ascended the steps, passed through a doorway, and found myself on a
piece of waste ground, flanked on the right by an old, mysterious wall,
and on the left by the long wall of the mosque, from which close to me
rose a gray, unornamented minaret, full of the plain dignity of
unpretending age. Upon its summit was perched a large and weary-looking
bird with draggled feathers, which remained so still that it seemed to
be a sad ornament set there above the city, and watching it forever with
eyes that could not see. At right angles, touching the mosque, was such
a house as one can see only in the East--fantastically old,
fantastically decayed, bleared, discolored, filthy, melancholy, showing
hideous windows like windows in the slum of a town set above coal-pits
in a colliery district, a degraded house, and yet a house which roused
the imagination and drove it to its work. In this building once dwelt
the High Priest of the mosque. This dwelling, the ancient wall, the gray
minaret with its motionless bird, the lamentable waste ground at my
feet, prepared me rightly to appreciate the bit of old Cairo I had come
to see.
People who are bored by Gothic churches would not love the mosque of
Ibn-Tulun. No longer is it used for worship. It contains no praying
life. Abandoned, bare, and devoid of all lovely ornament, it stands like
some hoary patriarch, naked and calm, waiting its destined end without
impatience and without fear. It is a fatalistic mosque, and is
impressive, like a fatalistic man. The great court of it, three hundred
feet square, with pointed arches supported by piers, double, and on the
side looking toward Mecca quintuple arcades, has a great dignity of
somber simplicity. Not grace, not a light elegance or soaring beauty,
but massiveness and heavy strength are the distinguishing features of
this mosque. Even the octagonal basin and its protecting cupola that
stand in the middle of the court lack the charm that belongs to so many
of the fountains of Cairo. There are two minarets, the minaret of the
bird, and a larger one, approached by a big stairway up which, so my
dragoman told me, a Sultan whose name I have forgotten loved to ride his
favorite horse. Upon the summit of this minaret I stood for a long time,
looking down over the city.
Gray it was that morning, almost as London is gray; but the sounds that
came up softly to my ears out of the mist were not the sounds of London.
Those many minarets, almost like columns of fog rising above the
cupolas, spoke to me of the East even upon this sad and sunless morning.
Once from where I was standing at the time appointed went forth the call
to prayer, and in the barren court beneath me there were crowds of
ardent worshipers. Stern men paced upon the huge terrace just at my feet
fingering their beads, and under that heavy cupola were made the long
ablutions of the faithful. But now no man comes to this old place, no
murmur to God disturbs the heavy silence. And the silence, and the
emptiness, and the grayness under the long arcades, all seem to make a
tremulous proclamation; all seem to whisper, “I am very old, I am
useless, I cumber the earth.” Even the mosque of Amru, which stands also
on ground that looks gone to waste, near dingy and squat houses built
with gray bricks, seems less old than this mosque of Ibn-Tulun. For its
long façade is striped with white and apricot, and there are
lebbek-trees growing in its court near the two columns between which if
you can pass you are assured of heaven. But the mosque of Ibn-Tulun,
seen upon a sad day, makes a powerful impression, and from the summit of
its minaret you are summoned by the many minarets of Cairo to make the
pilgrimage of the mosques, to pass from the “broken arches” of these
Saracenic cloisters to the “Blue Mosque,” the “Red Mosque,” the mosques
of Mohammed Ali, of Sultan Hassan, of Kait Bey, of El-Azhar, and so on
to the Coptic church that is the silent center of “old Cairo.” It is
said that there are over four hundred mosques in Cairo. As I looked down
from the minaret of Ibn-Tulun, they called me through the mist that
blotted completely out all the surrounding country, as if it would
concentrate my attention upon the places of prayer during these holy
days when the pilgrims were crowding in to depart with the Holy Carpet.
And I went down by the staircase of the horse, and in the mist I made my
pilgrimage.
As every one who visits Rome goes to St. Peter’s, so every one who
visits Cairo goes to the mosque of Mohammed Ali in the citadel, a
gorgeous building in a magnificent situation, the interior of which
always makes me think of court functions, and of the pomp of life,
rather than of prayer and self-denial. More attractive to me is the
“Blue Mosque,” to which I returned again and again, enticed almost as by
the fascination of the living blue of a summer sky.
This mosque, which is the mosque of Ibrahim Aga, but which is familiarly
known to its lovers as the “Blue Mosque,” lies to the left of a
ramshackle street, and from the outside does not look specially
inviting. Even when I passed through its door, and stood in the court
beyond, at first I felt not its charm. All looked old and rough, unkempt
and in confusion. The red and white stripes of the walls and the arches
of the arcade, the mean little place for ablution,--a pipe and a row of
brass taps,--led the mind from a Neapolitan ice to a second-rate school,
and for a moment I thought of abruptly retiring and seeking more
splendid precincts. And then I looked across the court to the arcade
that lay beyond, and I saw the exquisite “love color” of the marvelous
tiles that gives this mosque its name.
The huge pillars of this arcade are striped and ugly, but between them
shone, with an ineffable luster, a wall of purple and blue, of purple
and blue so strong and yet so delicate that it held the eyes and drew
the body forward. If ever color calls, it calls in the blue mosque of
Ibrahim Aga. And when I had crossed the court, when I stood beside the
pulpit, with its delicious, wooden folding-doors, and studied the tiles
of which this wonderful wall is composed, I found them as lovely near as
they are lovely far off. From a distance they resemble a nature effect,
are almost like a bit of Southern sea or of sky, a fragment of gleaming
Mediterranean seen through the pillars of a loggia, or of Sicilian blue
watching over Etna in the long summer days. When one is close to them,
they are a miracle of art. The background of them is a milky white upon
which is an elaborate pattern of purple and blue, generally conventional
and representative of no known object, but occasionally showing tall
trees somewhat resembling cypresses. But it is impossible in words
adequately to describe the effect of these tiles, and of the tiles that
line to the very roof the tomb-house on the right of the court. They are
like a cry of ecstasy going up in this otherwise not very beautiful
mosque; they make it unforgetable, they draw you back to it again and
yet again. On the darkest day of winter they set something of summer
there. In the saddest moment they proclaim the fact that there is joy in
the world, that there was joy in the hearts of creative artists years
upon years ago. If you are ever in Cairo, and sink into depression, go
to the “Blue Mosque” and see if it does not have upon you an uplifting
moral effect. And then, if you like, go on from it to the Gamia El
Movayad, sometimes called El Ahmar, “The Red,” where you will find
greater glories, though no greater fascination; for the tiles hold their
own among all the wonders of Cairo.