CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID
On my second trip to Egypt I followed a telephone line in going from
Cairo to the Pyramids and as I waded through the sands from the edge of
the Nile valley up the plateau where old Cheops stands, I could see a
party of foreigners playing lawn-tennis in the court of the hotel which
has been built near its base. The next improvement in modernizing Egypt
will probably be cable roads running to the top of these great piles
of stone. Already a flagstaff has been planted on the very apex of the
biggest of them.
In driving to the Pyramids I passed along an avenue of acacia trees, the
intertwining branches of which formed a grand arbour extending to the
desert seven miles away. This splendid road was made in a few weeks by
order of the extravagant Khedive Ismail Pasha at the time of the opening
of the Suez Canal. He had it constructed so that his distinguished
visitor, the Empress Eugénie, might drive comfortably to the Pyramids!
It is built ten feet above the fields of the Nile valley and on each
side the green stretches away to the north and south until it is lost in
the horizon. One sees groves of palm trees, camels and donkeys, farmers
ploughing and women carrying water, together with the other strange
scenes that make up the oriental setting of this land of the Arabian
Nights.
Leaving Cairo, I crossed the fine iron bridge which spans the Nile and
is guarded by great bronze lions at each end. I passed the tax office;
I saw farmers bringing chickens, pigeons, and grass or vegetables into
Cairo and stopping to pay a tax upon them before they could offer them
for sale. On I went past a branch of the Nile, where naked men stood in
the water and slapped clothes up and down on stones in washing them; by
wells where women were filling great jars with water and bearing them
away upon their heads, as they did in the days of Rachel when Jacob
gave her that kiss and made the scene which the Italian artists love to
paint; and on out into the country, through this greenest of the green
valley of Egypt. I went by caravans of camels ridden by Bedouins who were
carrying merchandise into Cairo to sell. The air was as fresh as America
in springtime, and the sweet scent of the grass and the clover was blown
into my face by the bracing wind from the desert.
I saw the Pyramids when I left the city. They increased rapidly in size
as I came nearer to them, and at the edge of the desert they looked at
first like huge heaps of stone. Disappointment came over me. I felt that
the travellers of all ages had lied.
Half a mile farther and I was at their base. Now I changed my opinion.
The Pyramids are more wonderful than they have ever been painted, and
their immensity grows upon one more and more as he looks. As I stood in
the middle of one of the sides of the Great Pyramid, it seemed as though
the whole sky were walled with stone. The top towered above my head,
almost kissing the white clouds which sometimes float in this clear
Egyptian sky.
The Great Pyramid has a base covering thirteen acres, and if Herodotus
told the truth, it was during his lifetime about half as high again as
the Washington Monument. The stones in it to-day would make eight hundred
and fifty such monuments, yet fully one half of it, I should judge, has
been carted away for buildings in Cairo. To-day it is over three hundred
feet lower than Herodotus described it, and its sides do not measure more
than seven hundred and fifty feet. It is an almost solid mass of stone,
cut in mighty blocks, which are piled up in the shape of steps, growing
smaller in size as they reach the top, and terminating in a flat platform
large enough to build upon it a house thirty feet square. Such a house
would be four hundred and eighty-two feet above the desert. It would
command a view of the Nile valley for miles, and its back windows would
look out upon the great, billowy plains of golden sand. This pyramid is
built right in the desert, as are, indeed, all of the sixty pyramids of
greater or less size found in different parts of Egypt. The south windows
of the house would have a good view of the Pyramids of Sakkarah, which
stand out in geometrical figures of blue upon the site of old Memphis,
while on the front porch you could have as an ornament in your great yard
below, the old stony-eyed Sphinx who sat with her paws stretched out
before her in this same position when these mighty monuments were built,
and who is one of the few females in the world who grows old without
losing her beauty.
The Pyramids themselves are by no means young. The king who built the
Great Pyramid for his tomb lived some three thousand odd years before
Christ. Now, five thousand years later, we Americans climb to the top of
the huge pile of stones he put up to contain his royal bones and go into
the chambers in its interior, which he thought would outlast the ages.
With magnesium lights we explore the recesses of the rooms in which he
expected to be secluded for eternity, and take photographs in the heart
of this old ruler’s tomb.
[Illustration: Mr. Carpenter and his son are standing on the nape of the
neck of the Sphinx. She has seen more years than the Pyramids and has
been mutilated by successive conquerors and vandals and worn away by the
sand blasts of the desert.]
[Illustration: Helouan and its sulphur springs, once the resort of the
Pharaohs, is again fashionable, and a princess’ palace now serves as
hotel. The porch canopy is of what is called tentwork, made of coloured
pieces applied in elaborate designs.]
The corpse of the king was taken out long ago and history does not
record what became of it. All we know of him comes from Herodotus, who
says he was a vicious, bad man, and that during the fifty years he ruled
the Egyptians he oppressed the people terribly. He built the Pyramid by
forced labour, keeping a gang of more than one hundred thousand workmen
at it for over twenty years. The stones forming the outside, which have
now been taken away, were even larger than those still standing, but many
of those that are left are as high as a table and many feet in length.
The sides of this Pyramid are in the form of immense stairs, which narrow
as they go upward. There are two hundred and fifty of these high steps.
If one will go to his dining room and climb upon the table two hundred
and fifty-two times he will experience something of the work I had in
climbing up the Pyramid. His exertion will be harder, however, for he
will not have the help of three half-naked Arabs who were given to me by
the Sheik of the Pyramids, and who almost worried the life out of me in
their demands for _backsheesh_ all the way up. My wife happened to call
me by my given name and during the remainder of that trip I was “Mr.
Frank” to these heathen. While they jerked my arms nearly off in pulling
me from one ledge to another, they howled out in a barbaric sing-song a
gibberish of English, interspersing it with Cherokee whoops, something
like this:
“All right! Very good!!
Hard work. Good boys!!
Mr. Frank satisfied!!
On top pay money.”
This was a continual reminder of my indebtedness to them, and they
enforced their song with more numerous jerks the higher we rose. They
were surprised when I refused to give them any _backsheesh_ until we got
to the bottom, and lifted me down about as jerkily as they had pulled me
up.
I went inside the Pyramid to examine the great chambers, which are quite
as wonderful as the outside construction. They are built of granite
blocks so closely joined that one cannot put a pin between the crevices.
The Queen’s Chamber is seventeen feet wide by eighteen feet long, and
its ceiling is twenty feet high. It is as dark as the night which the
Lord spread over Egypt when He wanted to soften the heart of Pharaoh,
but the night was turned into day by the burning of magnesium, and we
could see the wonderful polish on the walls. The King’s Chamber is lined
entirely with granite and is as big as a country church. It would take
one hundred and twenty-five yards of carpet to cover its floor. Its
ceiling, which is nineteen feet high, is roofed with nine enormous slabs
of granite, each of which is eighteen feet long. The only thing within
the chamber is a great sarcophagus about three feet wide and three feet
deep, and just long enough to contain the body of a man. There are also
other chambers in this Pyramid. When one considers the machinery of the
times, its structure is a marvel. Its cost can hardly be estimated in the
money of to-day. Before it was mutilated, there was on it a record of
the radishes, onions, and garlic which had been distributed among the
workmen. These alone cost one million seven hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, so the monument itself must have cost many millions more. Yet,
after all, it is nothing but the tomb of a king.
In coming down from the top of the Pyramid my Bedouin guides landed me
at the opposite corner from whence I started, and here was a camel ready
to take me to the Sphinx. It is only about a quarter of a mile from one
to the other, but few ever think of walking through the sand, especially
after the Pyramid exercise.
The Sphinx seems bigger, more sombre, and more wonderful than ever. Her
face is that of a remarkably good-looking Negro girl, though it is said
that her complexion was originally of a beautiful pink. All of this pink
has now been worn away by the sands of the desert, which have for more
than six thousand years been showering their amorous kisses upon it,
until all that is left is a little red paint just under the left eye.
That figure with the head and bust of a woman upon the body of a lion,
carved out of the ages-old rock which stood here upon the desert, has
been noted among the peoples of the world as far back as history extends,
and those stony eyes have seen civilization after civilization rise and
fall.
It would take a good-sized city lot to hold the Sphinx. The body is one
hundred and forty feet long, and the paws each measure fifty feet. Her
head alone is so big that a vault fourteen feet square and the height
of a three-story house would be just large enough to contain it. Though
you measure six feet in your stockings and have arms as long as those of
Abraham Lincoln, if you stood on the tip of this old lady’s ear you could
hardly touch the crown of her head. The ear by actual measurement has a
length of over four feet, and if that mouth would open it could swallow
an ox. The nose is five feet seven inches long, and originally partook
of an Ethiopian character. Now, however, it is sadly mutilated, for it
has formed a target both for the conquering Mohammedans of the past and
the vandal Bedouins of a later day. Tradition says, too, that Napoleon
cut off the nose to spite Egypt when he was forced to retreat from the
country. In front of the Sphinx lies a temple, in the ruins of which one
moves about under ground through a series of dark chambers where some
wonderful statues and mummies were found. Among the halls there is one
room seventy-nine feet long and twenty-three feet wide.
From Cairo I drove out five miles to the site of Heliopolis, the ancient
City of the Sun, where stands the oldest obelisk in the world. This
monument was very old when Abraham came down into Egypt, and under its
shadow Joseph, when he was manager of Pharaoh’s estates, came to court
Asenath, the daughter of a priest in the great temple to which the
obelisk belonged. Near it Mary rested with the child Jesus during the
flight from the wrath of Herod the King. Heliopolis, first set up for
the worship of the sun-god Ra, the ancestor of all the Pharaohs, later
became the Boston of Egypt where two thousand years ago the wise men
studied logic, and it was in the Temple of Heliopolis that Plato taught
philosophy and Herodotus studied history. We learn from some of the
hieroglyphics of Egypt that the temple had more than twelve thousand
employees connected with it. The road to it leads through a long avenue
of acacia trees past the royal summer palace, and the city stood in one
of the most fertile portions of the valley of the Nile. Not a vestige of
its ruins now remains save this obelisk, which stands sixty feet above
the ground in the midst of green crops. Not far from it two buffaloes,
with cloths over their faces, went round and round pulling the bar which
turns the great water-wheel of a squeaking _sakieh_. I found a few
beggars asking for _backsheesh_ and saw half-a-dozen Mohammedans sitting
gossiping by the roadside; but there was nothing else except the green of
the fields, with a bleak and bare desert stretching away beyond them and
the shadowy ghosts of the Pyramids looming large on the distant horizon.
The obelisk is almost the twin of the one in Central Park, New York, save
that the hieroglyphics on its sides are more deeply cut and the bees have
made their nests in many of the figures. Bees very like our honey bees
swarm over the monuments of Egypt. I saw one colony living on the side of
the Sphinx, and the whole of one surface of this obelisk is covered with
their cells.
[Illustration: Seen from a distance, the Pyramids are like gray cones
rising above the horizon and are frequently disappointing in their first
impression. It is only on closer view that their enormous size and the
miracle of their ever being built are realized.]
[Illustration: Gangs of brown-skinned _fellaheen_ dig day after day,
uncovering the tombs and the history of centuries ago. Contractors say
that the Egyptian peasant prefers a basket to a wheelbarrow for dirt
carrying, solely because his grandfather used a basket.]