THE PYRAMIDS AND THE SPHINX.
There are two things in Egypt which amply repay the traveller for his
trouble. One is the museum at Gizeh, and the other the pyramids,
especially the Great Pyramid of Cheops. I did them both in one day. It
is a pleasant ride from Cairo, on a road broad, well watered, and shaded
all the way by large acacia-trees. I did the museum first, though it
will be a matter of regret to me that I had only an hour to visit a
collection where one might usefully spend weeks, and that our guide
indulged in an English almost as unintelligible to us as
‘The heathen Greek
That Helen spoke when Paris wooed.’
The palace which shelters the museum is said to have been built at a cost
of nearly 5,000,000 sterling. The edifice is placed in spacious grounds
close to the river, just opposite the spot on the other side where
Pharaoh’s daughter is said to have come to bathe when she discovered
Moses. It was opened by the Khedive in 1890. The section devoted to the
exhibition of papyri is remarkably interesting, but to most of us the gem
of the collection is the splendid sarcophagus which contains the body of
Rameses II., the persecutor of the Israelites. The features of his face
are well preserved, but his head does not give you any idea of any
special intellectual capacity; and the face of his father, who lies close
by, is almost that of a pure negro—that is, as far as I could make it
out. On one of the papyri is an inscription, of which I copy a portion,
in order to [Picture: Colossal Statue of Rameses II] give the reader an
idea of the piety of the ancient Egyptians:
‘When thou makest an offering to God, offer not that which He
abominateth. Dispute not concerning His mysteries. The God of the
world is in the light above the heavens, and His emblems are upon
earth. It is unto these that worship is paid daily. When thou hast
arrived at years of maturity, and art married and hast a house,
forget never the pains which thou hast cost thy mother, nor the care
which she has bestowed upon thee. Never give her cause to complain
of thee, lest she lift up her hand to God in heaven to complain of
thee, and He listen to her complaint.’
It seems to me that we have a good deal to learn of the ancient Egyptians
yet.
To the Pyramids it is a drive of about five miles. When we reached them
it was too hot for most of us to attempt climbing; yet several of our
party did so, and came back delighted with the view they had thus gained
over all the country round. I need not describe the appearance of the
Great Pyramid, standing as it does on the edge of the Libyan desert—an
enormous pile of stones, up which it would be impossible to climb were it
not for the help of the guides, who are remarkably skilful in aiding the
traveller in the perilous ascent and the far more perilous descent, and
at the same time remarkably pressing for backsheesh. There is no
evidence to show that the Pyramids were built for astronomical purposes,
and the theory that the Great Pyramid was built as a standard of
measurement is equally worthless. Outwardly, they seem nothing but a
pile of big stones, broad at the base, tapering at the top. A French
savant has asserted that the stones of the three Pyramids would make a
wall round the frontier of France. The Pyramid of Cheops was built B.C.
3733. Its four sides measure in length about 755 feet at the base; its
height is now 451 feet, but it is said to have been originally about 481
feet.
Of late, as I have shown, the trip to the Pyramids cannot well be easier
or more agreeable. In 1868 Sir Stafford Northcote thus describes his
experiences: ‘We observed nothing particular till we reached the Nile,
when the scene of crossing in the ferry-boats afforded us unmixed
satisfaction. The usual amount of noise in the streets at Cairo was as
silence to the noise at the waterside. Hosts of donkeys were being
pushed, pulled, beaten, or shouted at, and eventually lifted into the
boats, and then shoved off with loads [Picture: Pyramid and Sphinx] that
looked very unmanageable. We had a boat to ourselves, and our donkeys
took their places in it like old stagers. We had a pretty strong breeze
in our favour, and sailed across easily enough, wondering how we were to
get back again. Soon after crossing, we came into the fine new road
which the Viceroy has made to the Pyramids, and which is perfectly
luxurious. It is as wide as the Edgware Road, but not so hard, [Picture:
The Great Sphinx. (From a photograph taken by Dr. W. Ogle, February,
1888)] and must be charming for a horse’s foot. Avenues of acacias are
planted all along it, and when these have grown to the size of those
which line the earlier part of the road, the approach will be in
delicious shade all the way. Avenues of trees are inferior in dignity to
avenues of sphinxes, but make pleasanter travelling. We were seized on
in the usual way and dragged up the Great Pyramid by the Arabs. I could
have got up a great deal better by myself, but it would have been
contrary to all precedent, and might have led to an _émeute_. It took me
twenty minutes to go up, including a good stoppage for breath and another
for a wrangle between two Arabs. The view from the top was good, but one
could not enjoy it much in the presence of such a crowd. The first thing
my Bedouin did was to go down on his knees and offer to cut my name,
which I indignantly forbade. He then proceeded to tender some coins
(genuine antique, of course) at a suspiciously low price, and finally he
urged me to come down quickly, in the hopes, no doubt, of getting hold of
another victim.’
Sir Stafford adds that he admired the Sphinx, which is, in some respects,
more interesting than the Pyramids themselves. Now there is to be a
tramway to the Pyramids. But I fear the nuisance of the Arab guides
shouting and pushing will remain a nuisance still.
As I sit under what little shade I can find on the burning sand, I am
badgered to death by the dealers in imitation antiques and the donkey
boys. The white donkeys of Egypt are beautiful animals, and sometimes
fetch a hundred pounds. I have seen a gentleman whose donkey cost him
that sum. The value of the common donkey to be met with in the streets
of Cairo is about seven pounds. The finest donkeys in the world come
from Cyprus. The next best are those to be had at Syene, in Egypt. I
could tell much of the artfulness of the donkey-boys. One of my
companions was very stout, and did not think it right to gallop, on
account of his weight. ‘Me too fat,’ said he to the donkey-boy. ‘No,’
replied the latter—‘not too fat; you fine man.’ Again, one of the ladies
of our party was enjoying a ride, when the boy plaintively remarked:
‘Fine lady—fine donkey—poor donkey-boy!’ And the boy secured a little
extra backsheesh. I could fill a chapter with the smart sayings of the
donkey-boys. So far as I can make out, there is no need for the
donkey-boy to travel to Ireland to kiss the Blarney-Stone. Alas for him,
I was deaf to all his flattery, and plunged on in the burning sand till I
stood in the presence of the world-renowned Sphinx.
At first I was disappointed in the Sphinx, but, like Niagara, the more
you look, the more you admire. Poets and literary men have told us how
it stands in the desert, and has stood for centuries, overlooking the
eternal sands as nations and dynasties come and go. In reality its
position is by no means elevated, and you don’t see it till you are
actually before it. And yet one can in time realize something of that
fine passage in ‘Eothen,’ written half a century ago, which tells how
this unworldly Sphinx has looked down on ancient kings of Ethiopian and
Egyptian origin, upon Greek and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors,
upon Napoleon, dreaming of an Eastern empire, upon battle and pestilence,
and how it will remain watching when Islam will wither away, and the
Englishman will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile. Originally
it was crowned with a helmet; the stone cap was only discovered as lately
as 1896. Mr. John Cook runs a four-horse coach to the Pyramids and back
during the season, and thus, at the foot of the Sphinx, the present and
the past meet and mingle. The age of the Sphinx is unknown. All that is
certain is that it was the work of one of the kings of the ancient
empire. A stele discovered of the time of Thothmes, B.C. 1533, records
that one day, during an after-dinner sleep, Hermachis appeared to
Thothmes IV., and promised to bestow upon him the crown of Egypt if he
would dig his image the Sphinx out of the sand. Another inscription
recently discovered shows that the Sphinx existed in the time of Cheops.
The Sphinx is here hewn out of the solid rock, but pieces of stone have
been added when necessary. The body is about 150 feet long, the paws are
50 feet long, the head is 30 feet long, the face is 14 feet wide, and
from the top of the head to the base of the monument the distance is
about 70 feet. Originally there were probably ornaments on the head, the
whole of which was covered with a limestone covering, and the face was
coloured red. Of these decorations scarcely any traces now remain,
though they were visible towards the end of the last century. The
condition in which the monument now appears is due to the savage
destruction of its features by the Mohammedan rulers of Egypt, some of
whom caused it to be used for a target. Around this imposing relic of
antiquity a number of legends and superstitions have clustered in all
ages. A little to the south-east of the Sphinx stands the large granite
and limestone temple excavated by M. Marriette in 1853.
And now I have done with the East, and my face is turned towards
Marseilles. I am once more on board the _Midnight Sun_, the quiet and
repose of which are infinitely refreshing after the tumult and bustle of
Egypt. Long, long will I remember the gorgeous East—its heat, its
confusion, its noise, its undying charm. To enjoy Cairo, you must go and
stop there a winter. My fellow-passengers seem to have been lavish in
their expenditure. One gentleman alone of our party expended as much as
£60 in the purchase of carpets and gold-embroidered cloths, and for the
ladies the bazaars seem to have had peculiar charms. I am sure Dr. Lunn
deserves the hearty thanks of all our party for organizing what has
proved to be such a gratifying time. His brother and his secretary, Mr.
Wight, have done all in their power to make us comfortable. There was no
hitch in any of the arrangements. Carriages and hotels were all of the
very best, and the cost of the whole trip was really remarkably small.
The ordinary traveller, making the trip on his own account, must have had
to pay a great deal more, and experienced an amount of trouble and
fatigue, and consequent loss of temper, of which we passengers by the
_Midnight Sun_ have had no conception.
The Doctor calls his tours educational ones, and provides us with
lectures. I did not much profit by the lectures, my hearing being, alas!
rather defective; yet we all of us got a good deal of education during
the course of our visit—the education which comes to all of us from the
use of our eyes and ears, and the gift, or, rather, exercise, of
common-sense.
I ought to mention that there is a very good hotel on your right just as
you get to the Pyramids; many gentlemen I met were staying there, and
spoke well of it. Some years since a gentleman suffering from
consumption built a house, and went to live there in the hope that the
pure air of the desert would restore him to health. It did not. As is
the case with so many consumptive people, the remedy was deferred too
long. Many are those who have gone to the desert to recover, but fade
away and die, to the sorrow of those who loved them, simply because they
have deferred the remedy too long. On the decease of the builder of the
house, it was greatly enlarged, and is now known as the Mena House Hotel.
Mena is the name of one of the most ancient Egyptian kings. All round it
stretches the desert right away to the great Sahara, and there Byron
might have realized his dream—which, happily, he never realized, nor
ever, perhaps, wished to—of the desert being his dwelling-place, with
some fair spirit for his minister,
‘Where he might soon forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her.’
It was well for the noble poet, whose fame will grow when that of our
Poet Laureate and his brother rhymesters will have collapsed, that the
elements did not hear his prayer and accord him his heart’s desire. But
a fellow might do worse than put up at the Mena Hotel, of which I, alas!
only saw the outside. One ought to stop some time at the Pyramids. Mr.
Pollard, who devotes considerable space to them—the last authority on the
subject—says the rocks upon which they are built, ‘and the stones with
which they are constructed, abound with small fossil shells, which, from
their resemblance to money or coins, have caused this limestone to be
called nummulite. Other round, small shells, closely resembling lentils,
are also found; the Arabs say that they were the food of the masons
turned into stone. The flora is interesting, though limited: an
anthromis bearing its strong characteristic scent, but without petals; a
very pretty small plant of the herbage family; and an umbelliferous plant
smelling strongly of aniseed, were all much appreciated by the camels and
snails.’
While I was there I saw no flowers, nor heard of any. They had all
withered under the scorching sun.