DER EL-BAHRI, AND SOME INCIDENTS WHICH TOOK PLACE DURING MY STAY THERE
From 1905 and onwards I spent five long seasons in Upper Egypt. I
was engaged during a part of that time in reproducing a series of
eighteenth dynasty bas-reliefs for four different museums. By the
courtesy of the Antiquities Department I was allowed the use of the hut
built by the Egyptian Exploration Fund, when, under the direction of
Professor Naville, the excavations of the Mentuhoteb temple at Thebes
were begun. I joined the camp during the last season of its work there.
I spent a delightful winter in the companionship of four enthusiastic
excavators. The exciting finds while Professor Currelly was in charge
of the camp, as well as the epoch-making discovery of the tomb of Queen
Tyi in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, all tend to make the
winter of 1905-1906 a memorable one in the annals of Egyptian research.
It was an exciting time; but as these events, as well as my own work
for the museums, has been given in detail in _Below the Cataracts_, I
propose now to recount some of the incidents which occurred since the
Egyptian Exploration Fund broke up their camp to carry on their work at
Abydos.
The reproduction of the bas-reliefs in the Hatshepsu temple, which
I originally undertook rather as an experiment, brought me numerous
commissions from various museums. The work was interesting as well
as lucrative; but after some months of it I yearned to get back to
my water-colour drawings. I therefore engaged an artist in Paris to
come out the following season to assist me. We then had the hut to
ourselves, and we turned the antiquities store-room into a studio for
such work as we had not to do in the temple itself.
We led the ‘simple life’ here with a vengeance. We slept under the
canopy of the starlit heavens; we fed on what our Arab cook could find
in the village between us and the cultivated land, supplemented with
preserves I had sent out from England; we rose with the sun and retired
not very long after it had set. Hatshepsu’s temple rises in terraces a
couple of hundred yards from the hut, and the foundations of the newly
excavated shrine of Mentuhoteb lie beside it, the former more or less
an enlarged copy of its neighbour of twelve centuries earlier date.
An amphitheatre of imposing limestone cliffs backs the two ruins and
divides us from the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.
The great Theban necropolis spreads over the desert between us and the
cultivation, and stretches some two miles both to the north and to the
south of our hut, the vast temple of Medinet Habu being at the southern
extremity and the road to the Valley of the Kings at its northern end.
In these two to three square miles of broken ground, raised above
the limits of the Nile’s overflow, can we read most of what is known
of the history of Egypt from the Middle Empire up to the Mohammedan
invasion. Little is known from the decline of the twelfth dynasty until
the rise of the New Empire some five-and-thirty centuries past. But the
story of the renaissance during the eighteenth dynasty, the conquests
of the second and the third Rameses, as well as the gradual decline
of the empire until the foreign domination, can be read here by the
Egyptologist as in an open book. Of the rule of the Tanites, of the
Libyans, and of the Ethiopians, we find fewer indications. Some remains
remind us of the second renaissance during the late Egyptian period,
and we are also reminded of Cambyses and the Persian domination, when
we behold the overturned colossal image of Rameses. A beautiful little
temple of Nektanebos carries us forward to when the Egyptians came by
their own again.
The Ptolemaic façade at Medinet Habu, the beautiful little shrine at
Der el-Medineh, and the inner sanctuary of Hatshepsu’s temple remain as
examples of the work done under the Ptolemies. If we go a mile beyond
Medinet Habu we find a little temple of Isis erected by Hadrian and
Antoninus Pius, and bearing the inscriptions of Vespasian, Domitian,
and Otho.
The early Christians have left their mark in Hatshepsu’s shrine to
Ammon Ra; unfortunately little of their constructive work is seen,
but a great many obliterations of beautiful eighteenth dynasty
bas-reliefs make us regret their pious zeal. Until recently a partly
ruined Christian church stood in the centre of the second court of the
Rameses III. temple at Medinet Habu. Misplaced zeal on the part of
Egyptologists caused this primitive place of Christian worship to be
cleared away so as not to obstruct the view of the earlier building.
A broader view of archæology might have spared such an interesting
structure.
To settle down to a stay of seven consecutive months in an arid waste,
surrounded by tombs and the crumbling remains of a bygone age, might
strike the man in the street as holding out a gloomy prospect. The
idea that I had not been particularly favoured never entered my head
till, after four or five months passed here, I received a visit from
a relative. This lady had picked her way on a donkey, through a mile
or more of pit tombs, rock tombs and broken mausoleums, on a hot and
dusty day, before she reached my hut. After our greetings she remarked,
‘You must be fed up with this place by now.’ She asked me to come and
stay, as her guest, in the huge new hotel which we could see from here
outlined against the eastern horizon. That I had become an object of
pity instead of one to be envied was a new and strange idea to me. To
give up my free life in this fine air, surrounded as I was with an
infinity of things which filled me with interest, and my only regret
being that the days were far too short--to give this up to loaf about
the hotel at Luxor amidst a crowd of people whose one object is to kill
time--the very thought of it gave me a shudder. I tried to console my
kindly intentioned relative that she would think better of my locality
when she had seen the beautiful things Hatshepsu’s temple had in store
for her.
The beautiful series of reliefs illustrating the expedition to the
Land of Punt, the presentation of Queen Aahmes to Ammon Ra and the
divine birth of Hatshepsu, all executed during the best period of
the eighteenth dynasty, did less to expel the gloomy thoughts of my
relation than did the cup of tea which my Arab cook had prepared for
her. The frank admission that the chipped and cracked examples of an
archaic art did not appeal to her was refreshing, and I began already
to have my suspicions as to the genuineness of many exclamations of
admiration I had heard.
Early Egyptian art must ever remain as caviare to the masses until they
learn that art is not merely a slavish reproduction of some natural
objects. They would do well to credit those who have studied it and
who assure them that it is in truth a very great art, and that it well
repays any intelligent person who approaches it with proper reverence.
The absence of perspective and of all foreshortening in these low
reliefs shocks the tyro, and he may express himself that the figures
must be wrong when an attitude is depicted which it is impossible
to hold. The mind, however, soon accepts these conventions and is
free to admire the wonderful drawing of the outline, the sense of
proportion, and the marvellously suggested modelling in a relief that
seldom surpasses the eighth of an inch in thickness. Apart from the
purely æsthetic pleasure the eighteenth dynasty work gives us, it is a
delight to be carried back to a remote age and to see depicted not only
the gods and the kings, but the everyday life, with its joys and its
sorrows, of a people who flourished more than three millenniums ago.
The past may seem too remote to awaken much sympathy in many who
are always surrounded by the comforts of the present day. But if we
enter into the life of the fellaheen who dwell in the villages where
desert and cultivation meet, we find much in common between the early
Egyptians and this country-folk.
Some actually live in the tombs, using the forecourts for their beasts.
Where exceptionally interesting wall inscriptions exist in the ancient
sepulchres, the Antiquities Department has stepped in and protected
them from the risk of being damaged. The evicted tenants then build
their homes nearer the cultivation. The one I give as an illustration
to this chapter is a fair sample of a modern Theban homestead. The
dress of the people has altered slightly from that of their remote
ancestors, and the camel was presumably non-existent in pharaonic
times; but little else has been changed. The rude bins made of dried
mud are of early Egyptian rather than of Saracenic design. The stone in
the right-hand corner with which the fellaha grinds the corn, finds its
prototype on the walls of many an adjacent tomb.
The farming operations have little changed during this great lapse of
time. The scenes depicted on the walls of the tomb of Nakht: the men
reaping with sickles, the women gleaning; others packing the ears of
corn or measuring the garnered grain--all this can be seen now, in any
of these villages, and it is done in the same simple and primitive
manner. The types of the labouring people are less changed than their
simple garments. The women plucking durra or winnowing the corn in
Nakht’s sepulchre might have been drawn from any of the women we now
see carrying their pitchers of water from the wells. All are now
followers of the Prophet save a few Coptic Christians; the worship of
Isis gave way to that of the risen Christ, and the crescent has since
replaced the cross. But many a superstition has survived these changes.
The mental characteristics of the Upper Egyptian differ very much from
those of the true bred Arab; it is therefore rational to believe that
these have been transmitted as well as the cast of the features.
Some allowance must be made for the inhabitants of Gurna, the long
straggling village at the base of the necropolis. Year after year
tourists pass by its hovels, and from a coin thrown now and again to
the children, a breed of beggars is replacing an otherwise hard-working
people. The demand for ‘antikas’ has caused a supply of false ones, or
tempted the men to steal from the temples whenever a favourable chance
presents itself. Many have lost the habit of work in consequence of
these evil influences; thus, on the whole, the Gurna peasants compare
badly with those of less frequented villages.
[Illustration: THE BIRTH COLONNADE IN THE TEMPLE OF HATSHEPSU]
With the exception of a few friends who were connected with the
excavations, or an occasional visit from acquaintances who were
spending a season in Upper Egypt, I saw few human beings beside the
Gurna peasants. I endeavoured to see the best side of their natures,
and to make allowances for the centuries of bad government under which
they have existed. I found them not quite so bad as they are painted.
Their ingratitude, of which I had heard a good deal, can be explained
in two ways; firstly, hospitality is a duty of the Mohammedan religion,
and hospitality of a kind is expected and taken for granted. We are
seldom grateful for what we consider our due. Secondly, many favours
conferred by the foreigner are little more than common humanity
demands, and he is liable to place too high an estimate on what he may
have done. Where too much gratitude was not expected for some service
performed, I generally found that the fellah could be as grateful as
the peasant nearer home.
Their greed for money is a characteristic which the tourist cannot
fail to perceive; but the tourist seldom meets any of the fellaheen
save those who live near the frequented ‘sights.’ The annual influx
of sightseers has become as a crop, to these peasants, from which
a harvest should be gathered. In their eyes the _Sauwâhîn_ are all
millionaires, and, according to the oriental mind, the rich man
should pay out of the abundance of his riches, and not necessarily
in proportion to the services rendered. Our mediæval ‘largess’ was
taken in that light by our forebears, and corresponds very much to
the fellaheen’s notion of _baksheesh_. This is not expected of those
who live and work amongst them, for ‘How can a man be rich if he
works daily with his hands?’ _Baksheesh_ from such as myself would be
expected not as largess, but more as a gratuity after a certain period
of service.
I remember a man asking where the _Beled es-Sauwâhîn_ was, that is, the
‘Land of the Foreigners.’ On being told that the English, the French
and Germans, who were all _Sauwâhîn_, had each a separate country, my
questioner retorted, ‘But surely you are not one of them?’ I told him
that as I was an Englishman, I was of course one of them, and I, in
my turn asking him a few questions, managed to arrive at his views on
the subject. He was aware that there existed beyond the seas a land of
the _Ingleesi_, also one of the _Fransowi_, and one of the _Nemsawi_;
but besides these there was a land of the _Sauwâhîn_, a rich people who
apparently did no work, and annually migrated to the south to visit the
temples and tombs of the ancient Egyptians for some obscure purpose
which he had not quite fathomed.
They are superstitious to a greater degree than the pure Arab, who,
to my thinking, is less so than most other illiterate people, and it
would be an interesting study to sift the superstitions which date back
to the Pantheism of the early Egyptians from those which have been
imported since the Mohammedan invasion.
They seem to credit every foreigner who lives amongst them with a
certain amount of medical knowledge, and when their own treatment will
have failed in its object, any European living amongst them may expect
a visit from the sufferer. A supply of Epsom salts and a solution of
boracic acid, left in my hut by the last tenants, did duty for most
internal and external complaints which were brought to me during my
first season; and these remedies, largely assisted by the antiseptic
air of the desert, soon established my reputation as a _hakeem_.
The remedies being gratis, and a bottle thrown in, it is possible
that the bottle may have attracted some of my patients. There is a
well-appointed hospital at Luxor to which I vainly tried to persuade
many to apply. Wild stories of imaginary horrors practised there, and
the usual fear that some means would be used to extract money from
them, prevents many an excellent hospital from being the blessing it
should be.
A painful case that was brought to my notice decided me to augment not
only my medical stores, but also to gain some elementary knowledge as
to first-aid treatment. In early November scorpions are still active,
and are not hibernating, as they do while the tourist’s season is on,
and only those who live here in the hot season have any idea what a
pest scorpions can be. The case in point was that of a little girl who
had been stung, and the father hurried round to my hut to ask me for a
remedy. The only treatment I had then heard of was to take alcohol in
sufficient quantities to counteract the poison of the scorpion. As the
child was only eleven years old, I put more water than whisky in the
bottle, and told the man to give his girl a teaspoonful about every
half-hour, and to be careful to keep the wound clean. I saw the man
the next day, and he told me that the child was well again; how far he
had applied the whisky solution I could not tell. A suspicion crossed
my mind that he had probably drunk the whisky, and possibly rubbed
the wound with the empty bottle. The child, however, being well, I
thought no more about it till I again met the man, a week or so later.
I playfully remarked that I hoped no more whisky might be required for
scorpion stings, and received the startling answer that the child was
dead. The man took his loss in the resigned fatalistic manner of most
Mohammedans. ‘It was the will of Allah, and we must accept that as all
for the best.’
I sent a letter the next day to the dispensary which is attached to the
American mission, and begged the man in charge of it to supply me with
any known remedies for the sting of the scorpion, and also to kindly
write out how the remedies should be applied. My servant brought back
two preparations of ammonia, some lint, and detailed instructions how
to use them. There was no mention of alcohol, so I trusted that my
suspicions as to who had swallowed my whisky had been well founded.
As we got into December, we heard and saw little of scorpions, and,
during the season of hibernation, I forgot about these creatures
as well as about the remedies, till a very rude reminder of their
existence brought one and the other back to me.
While lifting up some stones in the Ramesseum so as to arrange a
level place to stand my sketching-stool, I put my hand inadvertently
on a sleeping scorpion. He was soon awake, and the sting I got in my
hand caused the most acute physical pain I can ever remember. I was
a mile away from my hut and the remedies; but remembering the first
instructions, I endeavoured to tie my handkerchief tightly round my
wrist, so as to stop the poison, which I felt shooting up my arm. I
could not manage this with one hand, and had to call in the assistance
of two American ladies who happened to be viewing the temple. When one
kindly tied the handkerchief as tight as I could stand, the shooting
pains up my arm lessened, and the poison then worked its way to my
finger-tips. My good Samaritan tried to induce me to mount her ass and
ride into Luxor to see a doctor. This and the crossing of the Nile
would have taken me over an hour, and the pain in my finger-tips became
too acute to make an hour of it even thinkable. Besides which, I was
keen on trying my new remedies.
The treatment which my missionary friend had written out worked very
well; the application of ammonia to the wound, and the drops taken
internally, soon had some effect, and Ebers’s _Bride of the Nile_,
which I was reading, and on which I tried hard to concentrate my
thoughts, probably did some good also. A native acquaintance called
to suggest a cure. I was to repeat certain words accompanied by some
signs, and I know not what else, for I was not in the mood to take his
instructions in. Not wishing, however, to throw cold water on his good
intentions, I told him that, good as his remedy might be, I was afraid
that it might act counter to the one I was trying. The cabalistic words
and signs might not agree with the ammonia treatment prescribed by one
who had no belief in these words, and my friend admitted that he had
never thought of that. I also pretended to fall asleep, and succeeded
thereby in ridding myself of my well-intentioned visitor.
A peculiar stiffness hung about my finger-joints for nearly a week
and then left me; it was my left hand, so it did not interfere with
my work. One detail I had omitted may be well to mention, in case a
reader be similarly circumstanced, and that is, when using some sharp
instrument to open the puncture so as to squeeze out as much poison as
possible, be sure to disinfect this instrument properly. I imagined a
good wipe of the hypodermic syringe I used for the purpose would be a
sufficient precaution; but a sore place which took some time to heal
has taught me in future either to dip the instrument into carbolic
acid, or, failing that, to heat it in the flame of a candle before
trying any surgical operations with it.
No patients from scorpion stings applied to me again, for the death of
the poor little girl may have been put to my charge. As an eye doctor
I was in great request. Dirt being the chief cause of the complaints,
a wash with the boracic solution did no harm, and generally did some
good. Some brought blind people to my hut--rather a lot to expect from
a little boracic acid! Some cases were probably only cataract, and
quite curable; but say what I would, I could not persuade these people
to go to the Luxor hospital.
Since then I hear that a member of the Khedivial family has devoted
a large sum of money to send properly equipped medical men to the
villages to see how far they can cope with the various eye maladies. A
wiser and better charity it is hard to conceive. Had my patients dwelt
in the towns or on the cultivated land, my cures might have been few
and far between. The pure desert air had much to do with my healings.
I mentioned the case of the little girl who had died to a medical
friend who happened to be spending the season at Luxor. In his opinion
the poison from the scorpion was not the cause of the death; but when
picking at the little wound some poisonous matter must have got in and
caused blood-poisoning.
I went out the next season more fully provided with medical stores, and
our good doctor in Haslemere had given me some hints as to bandaging a
wound and applying first-aid treatment. I had not long to wait before
putting my freshly acquired knowledge to a test. One of the guards at
the Hatshepsu temple trod with his naked foot on a jagged bottle end
which some careless picnickers had left there. It was a ghastly wound,
and though I told the man I would pay for a donkey to take him to
Luxor, and would see that he lost no wages while he might be laid up,
he would not go, and preferred taking the risk of losing his foot. As
all persuasion failed, I set to work to do my best. I washed his foot
and bandaged it with the antiseptic material I had, and sent him home
with a broomstick for a crutch. He and the broomstick appeared early
next morning to have the wound dressed, and his visits were repeated
twice daily for the best part of a week. The rapidity with which
that foot healed up made me doubt as to whether I had not missed my
vocation. No London surgeon could have effected a cure as rapidly with
all his experience and his up-to-date appliances. But lest I should
become too conceited, I reflected that the London surgeon had neither
the desert air to operate in, nor had he as abstemious patients as
mine was. No strong drinks had ever heated his blood, and his simple
fare was sufficient for the easy work he had to do, but not enough to
produce the acids of the often overfed Britisher.
Now this man was grateful for the trouble I had taken, and I’ll be
bound to say, more so than many London hospital patients who take all
that is gratuitously done for them as a matter of course.
He tried to show his gratitude one day in a manner I had to decline. I
found him shaving the head of his fellow-guard with pieces of broken
glass. I watched him for some time performing this dry shave: he would
break a piece off a bottle and then jag the sharp edge over his mate’s
skull. When the edge was blunted, he would break off another piece of
glass and continue the operation, till finally the head appeared as
free of hair as a billiard ball. It took the best part of an afternoon
to complete the job to his satisfaction. It was past the season when
visitors to the temple might be expected, and time was therefore of
no object. Seeing that my hair wanted cutting badly, my late patient
seriously offered to shave my head in like manner.
I dislike long hair, especially in hot weather, but I thought I might
dislike the broken glass still more. Neither I nor my assistant from
Paris wished to lose a whole day by going to Luxor to visit the
hairdresser, and the latter decided that he would let our cook try his
hand on his head. Our cook appeared to be as expert a barber as the
temple guard, and time being rather more valuable to him, he cleared
the hair off my companion’s head very quickly.
Even this did not encourage me to submit to the operation, and I
reflected that as my time was more valuable than that of a native Luxor
barber, I would get a barber from thence to come to me. I also prefer
these artists in hair to use my own brushes to any they may themselves
possess. The brushes were, however, of little use, for there was
nothing to brush for a fortnight after the Luxor hairdresser’s visit.
[Illustration: THE HAIRDRESSER]
I have no picture of the broken bottle school of barber; but I painted
one of the craft, at a recent date, plying his trade in a street in
Cairo. He had a pair of scissors to take off the main crop, and a dry
shave (where no blood was spilt) followed with a razor. He got through
his job very much quicker than the amateurs at Der el-Bahri, but he
did not do it as cleanly. While I painted my street corner, I noticed
several heads the worse for the razor, and though some talk as to the
charge for the operation usually preceded it, there were seldom any
complaints about the cuts in the scalps.