The men who are digging history out of the earth with pick and shovel
rely upon something more than chance to obtain their results. The
general idea of a man casually strolling out into the desert, and
uncovering a city which has never been heard of, has little relation
to the facts. It would be just as reasonable to start fishing for
Japanese pearls in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, as to start
blindly digging through the sands of Egypt in the hope that something
would turn up.
Ancient monuments, papyri and wall-paintings, even the legends of
the country, are carefully considered with a view to finding a clue
to the past. The sites of the ancient tombs and palaces and cities
have gradually been located, and the explorers naturally select a
spot which holds out some prospect of success. They generally have a
definite object in view when they start their search. For instance,
Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter were hoping to find another tomb
when they came across that of Tutankhamen. When Maspero made his
discovery of so many of the Pharaohs about forty years ago, the mummy
of Tutankhamen was missing, and there was accordingly the possibility
that some diligent man might eventually unearth it.
For forty years the search went on. Other tombs were found, but that
of Tutankhamen still eluded discovery, until the autumn of 1922. The
digger always has hopes of finding a certain thing, but as often as
not he comes across something else.
Before a pick is stuck into the ground, the digger will spend
several days on the spot, going over it carefully, and noting any
irregularities. Long experience teaches him many things. What the
ordinary man cannot see, even when it is pointed out to him, may be
quite plain to the trained eye. A slight depression may indicate to
the expert the site of a buried building, a tiny bank may tell him
where the sand of the desert has blown against a wall and gradually
accumulated until the wall is covered beneath the drift. It is
invisible, but there is the slight slope to prove that the sand has
been heaped against something, to show that its path has been stayed
by some object. These are some of the things which help the experts
to select the spot on which to dig. The man who prospects for gold
knows what signs to look for, and the scientist prospecting for
relics of past ages is equally proficient in reading the signs.
The gold prospector digs a hole, and washes the contents to find a
colour of gold; the seeker for relics prospects by digging a trench
to see if he can find a bit of brick or stone showing traces of man’s
handiwork.
Egypt happens to be a particularly happy hunting-ground, inasmuch as
it not only possessed an extremely ancient civilization, but also
enjoys a wonderful climate, which preserves the relics of the past.
The sun is always shining, and rain falls so seldom that things are
preserved almost indefinitely from damp and mildew where in other
countries they are destroyed in a few years.
The ancient cities of Egypt were founded on the banks of the
Nile, just as are the modern cities. Away from the river, life
is insupportable. It has often been said that the Nile is Egypt,
and Egypt is the Nile. This is true, for the cultivable land of
Egypt above the Delta is just a green strip a mile or two wide on
each side of the river all along its course. On the margin is the
encroaching desert, which only the waters of the Nile prevent from
overwhelming the land. Where the waters of the Nile flow into the
little irrigation canals and feed the fields, there abundant crops of
cotton, sugar-cane, and other things are raised. Beyond, are the arid
hills, and the cruel sands where the rock in summer becomes so hot
that it is possible to bake bread by the heat of the sun.
The people living in lands that are blessed with an adequate rainfall
can have no conception of what the Nile means to Egypt. The drought
which occasionally affects our own country brings home to us the
importance of rain to the land. Our whole country-side soon begins to
complain about lack of water. Wells begin to run dry. Water has even
to be carried to some villages by train.
A traveller spent a night at an old inn on the Sussex downs, and
found an inch of chalk sediment at the bottom of his small jug of
shaving water in the morning. Crops which should have been 4 feet
high had struggled up only a few inches. There was no moisture to
help them to develop. Fields of heavy land were all ploughed up, but
before the farmer could harrow them and prepare a fine tilth for the
seeds, the clods were baked as hard as iron, so hard that it was
impossible to do anything with them, and the fields carried no crops
at all. A succession of such seasons would have a profound effect on
the life of this country, and compel our people to live where water
could be obtained.
That is why the Egyptians were—and are—chained to the Nile. The
floods fed the land. When the river failed to rise, and the water was
confined within the banks, there was famine. No wonder those ancient
Egyptians worshipped the Nile. Their lives depended on it.
They watched the river anxiously to see what it was going to do,
scanning the chocolate-coloured waters as they went flowing by. They
wondered whether the river was going to condemn them to starvation,
or whether it was about to scatter plenty over the land. Far away
from Cairo, up at Khartoum, the rise began about the end of April,
but so great is the distance that no perceptible increase was to be
noticed at Cairo until the end of June.
As the water rose, so did the spirits of the natives. We can imagine
with what joy they saw the flood break over the banks and sweep into
the fields on either side. Stone pillars were put up to measure the
rise. They were marked off in cubits, and the officials would watch
the water stealing up and up. If it only reached 12 cubits there
would be wailing throughout the land, for the people knew that famine
would overtake them, that the life-giving water would not reach
their fields. Another 3 cubits would suffice to feed them until the
next harvest came round, if they exercised care and were not unduly
wasteful, while 16 cubits, or 28 feet, would fill their granaries to
overflowing, and every one would have enough and to spare.
[Illustration: ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GRAND AVENUE OF SPHINXES AT
KARNAK, ORIGINALLY A MILE LONG, TO REMIND US OF THE GLORIES OF EGYPT
LONG AGO (_see page 71_)]
They prayed long and earnestly to the Nile god, and held great
festivals in his honour in a temple built in the vanished city
of Nilopolis. Here they performed their rituals and made their
offerings, and gave thanks to the god in years of plenty, expressing
their joy and gratitude for the bounty they had received. They
worshipped the Nile as the source of their blessings, just as they
worshipped the sun.
The sun worshippers built a magnificent temple to their god, whom
they called Ra, at Heliopolis, and Cleopatra’s Needle, now standing
on the Thames Embankment, is one of the two monuments which Thothmes
III set up before the Temple of the Sun on the banks of the Nile.
Here they remained until the legions of Augustus Cæsar defeated
Cleopatra just before the dawn of the Christian era. Eight years
after the dramatic death of the beautiful Egyptian queen, whom
Julius Cæsar loved and Mark Antony worshipped, Augustus set his
engineers and slaves to work transporting the obelisks down the
Nile, to set them in front of the wonderful palace of the Cæsars
built in Alexandria. The new palace of the Roman invaders grew old,
decayed, and fell in ruins, but the ancient obelisks of Heliopolis
still reared their pinnacles to the skies. For fifteen hundred years
Cleopatra’s Needle stood firm before crashing to the ground, to lie
half buried in the drifting sands for three centuries, leaving the
twin obelisk standing alone.
Then British soldiers, flushed with their victory over the French
in Egypt in 1801, craved a memento of their triumph. Seizing on the
fallen obelisk, they subscribed their hard-earned money, and sought
to remove the stone to England. That weight was too much for them; it
defied their efforts, so, fixing a commemorative brass plate, they
left the stone lying in the sands.
Mehemet Ali, knowing the British were interested in the obelisk,
presented it to George IV. That monarch made no effort to remove the
unwieldy present. Once more, in 1831, Mehemet Ali approached the
British Government, and this time offered to ship the monument free
to Great Britain. The offer was politely declined. By the time the
British Government decided to remove the stone, in 1849, there was
such opposition to spending £7000 on its removal, that the matter was
dropped.
Eighteen years later, the land on which the monolith lay was sold,
and the new owner quickly requested the British Government to remove
their property. The Government were so loath to do anything at all
that the Khedive informed them they must either remove it, or forfeit
the title to it. The threat had no effect. The Government seemed to
look upon the present much as a suburban dweller would look upon the
present of an elephant.
The owner of the land began to plan to break up the obelisk, and use
it for building purposes. For ten years all the efforts of General
Alexander were needed to induce the landowner to refrain from such an
act of vandalism, and at last, when it was seen that the Government
would do nothing, Sir Erasmus Wilson came forward and offered to
remove the obelisk to England.
Accordingly a mighty iron cylinder 100 feet long was made. The
obelisk, which measures 86½ feet high, and weighs 186 tons, was dug
out of the sand, and after tremendous trouble safely housed in the
cylinder, which, upon being completely sealed, was quite buoyant.
Eventually it was floated, and taken in tow for England. All went
well until the Bay of Biscay was reached, when a terrific gale sprang
up, so terrific that Cleopatra’s Needle threatened to drag the tug to
the bottom. At midnight the situation became so desperate that the
captain ordered the obelisk to be cut adrift, feeling certain it was
sinking, and when he arrived in England Cleopatra’s Needle was given
up for lost.
But the monument, which had survived the accidents of Time for so
long, was fated to survive the storm. Instead of plunging to the
bottom of the Bay of Biscay, it tossed about on the heaving waters
for nearly three days. Then it was sighted by a steamer, and taken
in tow, to be brought at last to England.
It is remarkable that this same monolith, which a Pharaoh erected on
the banks of the Nile to tell the sun-worshippers of his glorious
deeds in war, should now be reposing on the banks of the river
Thames, and that it has survived the age of bows and arrows to be
damaged by bombs from aeroplanes. What a story Cleopatra’s Needle
would tell if it could only speak.
Kings were more than kings to the common people of Egypt. They were
looked upon as gods, the possessors of divine power. They were called
the sons of Ra, and Ra often figures in their titles. From being
called the son of Ra, the ruler in the eyes of the people acquired
the mythical power of the god himself, and was worshipped by his
subjects, who shielded their faces from the glory which the monarch
spread around him.
The Egyptians have worshipped many gods in many ages. Gods have
risen, grown powerful, and been superseded, but always the kings have
shared the powers of the various gods, and the people looked upon the
king as the living image of the god they worshipped.
Their religions, after the lapse of ages, seem very strange to
peoples in other lands. Yet they had much to commend them, and many
of the teachings of the Christian religion were anticipated in the
religions of the ancient Egyptians.
We look upon the Nile dwellers as pagans, but we cannot deny the
logic of the religion which taught them to worship the sun and the
Nile, on which they depended for light and life.