WE are on deck early to see the approach to Philæ, which is through a
gateway of high rocks. The scenery is like parts of the Rhine; and as we
come in sight of the old mosque perched on the hillside, and the round
tomb on the pinnacle above, it is very like the Rhine, with castle
ruins. The ragged and rock island of Biggeh rises before us and seems to
stop the way, but, at a turn in the river, the little temple, with its
conspicuous columns, then the pylon of the great temple, and at length
the mass of ruins, that cover the little island of Philæ, open on the
view.
In the narrows we meet the fleet of government boats conveying the
engineer expedition going up to begin the railway from Wady Haifa to
Berber. Abd-el-Atti does not like the prospect of Egypt running deeper
and deeper in debt, with no good to come of it, he says; he believes
that the Khedive is acting under the advice of England, which is
entirely selfish and only desires a short way to India, in case the
French should shut the Suez Canal against them (his view is a very good
example of a Moslem's comprehension of affairs). Also thinking, with all
Moslems, that it is best to leave the world and its people as the Lord
has created and placed them, he replied to an enquiry about his opinion
of the railroad, with this story of Jonah:—
“When the prophet Jonah came out of the whale and sat down on the bank
to dry under a tree (I have seen the tree) in Syria, there was a blind
man sitting near by, who begged the prophet to give him sight. Then
Jonah asked the Lord for help and the blind man was let to see. The man
was eating dates at the same time, and the first thing he did when he
got his eyes open was to snap the hard seeds at Jonah, who you know
was very tender from being so long in the whale. Jonah was stung on his
skin, and bruised by the stones, and he cry out, 'O! Lord, how is this?'
And the Lord said, 'Jonah, you not satisfied to leave things as I placed
'em; and now you must suffer for it'.”
One muses and dreams at Philæ, and does not readily arouse himself
to the necessity of exploring and comprehending the marvels and the
beauties that insensibly lead him into sentimental reveries. If ever the
spirit of beauty haunted a spot, it is this. Whatever was harsh in the
granite ledges, or too sharp in the granite walls, whatever is repellant
in the memory concerning the uses of these temples of a monstrous
theogony, all is softened now by time, all asperities are worn away;
nature and art grow lovely together in a gentle decay, sunk in a repose
too beautiful to be sad. Nowhere else in Egypt has the grim mystery of
the Egyptians cultus softened into so harmless a memory.
The oval island contains perhaps a hundred acres. It is a rock, with
only a patch or two of green, and a few scattered palms, just enough to
give it a lonely, poetic, and not a fruitful aspect, and, as has been
said, is walled all round from the water's edge. Covered with ruins, the
principal are those of the temple of Isis. Beginning at the southern end
of the island, where a flight of steps led up to it, it stretches along,
with a curved and broadening colonnade, giant pylons, great courts and
covered temples. It is impossible to imagine a structure or series of
structures, more irregular in the lines or capricious in the forms. The
architects gave free play to their fancy, and we find here the fertility
and variety, if not the grotesqueness of imagination of the mediaeval
cathedral builders. The capitals of the columns of the colonnade are
sculptured in rich variety; the walls of the west cloister are covered
with fine carvings, the color on them still fresh and delicate; and the
ornamental designs are as beautiful and artistic as the finest Greek
work, which some of it suggests: as rich as the most lovely Moorish
patterns, many of which seem to have been copied from these living
creations—-diamond-work, birds, exquisite medallions of flowers, and
sphinxes.
Without seeing this mass of buildings, you can have no notion of the
labor expended in decorating them. All the surfaces of the gigantic
pylons, of the walls and courts, exterior and interior, are covered with
finely and carefully cut figures and hieroglyphics, and a great deal of
the work is minute and delicate chiselling. You are lost in wonder if
you attempt to estimate the time and the number of workmen necessary to
accomplish all this. It seems incredible that men could ever have had
patience or leisure for it. A great portion of the figures, within and
without, have been, with much painstaking, defaced; probably it was done
by the early Christians, and this is the only impress they have left of
their domination in this region.
The most interesting sculptures, however, at Philæ are those in a small
chamber, or mortuary chapel, on the roof of the main temple, touching
the most sacred mystery of the Egyptian religion, the death and
resurrection of Osiris. This myth, which took many fantastic forms, was
no doubt that forbidden topic upon which Herodotus was not at liberty to
speak. It was the growth of a period in the Egyptian theology when the
original revelation of one God grew weak and began to disappear under
a monstrous symbolism. It is possible that the priests, who held their
religious philosophy a profound secret from the vulgar (whose religion
was simply a gross worship of symbols), never relinquished the belief
expressed in their sacred texts, which say of God “that He is the sole
generator in heaven and earth, and that He has not been begotten....
That He is the only living and true God, who was begotten by Himself....
He who has existed from the beginning.... who has made all things and
was not Himself made.” It is possible that they may have held to this
and still kept in the purity of its first conception the myth of the
manifestation of Osiris, however fantastic the myth subsequently became
in mythology and in the popular worship.
Osiris, the personification of the sun, the life-giving, came upon the
earth to benefit men, and one of his titles was the “manifester of good
and truth.” He was slain in a conflict with Set the spirit of evil and
darkness; he was buried; he was raised from the dead by the prayers of
his wife, Isis; he became the judge of the dead; he was not only the
life-giving but the saving deity; “himself the first raised from the
dead, he assisted to raise those who were justified, after having aided
them to overcome all their trials.”
But whatever the priests and the initiated believed, this myth is here
symbolized in the baldest forms. We have the mummy of Osiris passing
through its interment and the successive stages of the under-world; then
his body is dismembered and scattered, and finally the limbs and organs
are reassembled and joined together, and the resurrection takes place
before our eyes. It reminds one of a pantomime of the Ravels, who used
to chop up the body of a comrade and then put him together again as good
as new, with the insouciance of beings who lived in a world where such
transactions were common. This whole temple indeed, would be a royal
place for the tricks of a conjurer or the delusions of a troop of stage
wizards. It is full of dark chambers and secret passages, some of them
in the walls and some subterranean, the entrances to which are only
disclosed by removing a close-fitting stone.
The great pylons, ascended by internal stairways, have habitable
chambers in each story, lighted by deep slits of windows, and are
like palace fortresses. The view from the summit of one of them is
fascinating, but almost grim; that is, your surroundings are huge masses
of granite mountains and islands, only relieved by some patches of green
and a few palms on the east shore. But time has so worn and fashioned
the stones of the overtopping crags, and the color of the red granite is
so warm, and the contours are so softened that under the brilliant sky
the view is mellowed and highly poetical, and ought not to be called
grim.
This little island, gay with its gorgeously colored walls, graceful
colonnades, garden-roofs and spreading terraces, set in its rim of swift
water, protected by these granite fortresses, bent over by this sky,
must have been a dear and sacred place to the worshippers of Isis and
Osiris, and we scarcely wonder that the celebration of their rites
was continued so long in our era. We do not need, in order to feel
the romance of the place, to know that it was a favorite spot with
Cleopatra, and that she moored her silken-sailed dahabeëh on the
sandbank where ours now lies. Perhaps she was not a person of romantic
nature. There is a portrait of her here (the authenticity of which rests
upon I know not what authority) stiffly cut in the stone, in which she
appears to be a resolute woman with full sensual lips and a determined
chin. Her hair is put up in decent simplicity. But I half think that she
herself was like her other Egyptian sisters and made her silken locks
to shine with the juice of the castor-oil plant. But what were these
mysteries in which she took part, and what was this worship, conducted
in these dark and secret chambers? It was veiled from all vulgar eyes;
probably the people were scarcely allowed to set foot upon the sacred
island.
Sunday morning was fresh and cool, with fleecy clouds, light and
summer-like. Instead of Sabbath bells, when I rose late, I heard the
wild chant of a crew rowing a dahabeëh down the echoing channel. And I
wondered how church bells, rung on the top of these pylons, would sound
reverberating among these granite rocks and boulders. We climbed, during
the afternoon, to the summit of the island of Biggeh, which overshadows
Philæ, and is a most fantastic pile of crags. You can best understand
this region by supposing that a gigantic internal explosion lifted the
granite strata into the air, and that the fragments fell hap-hazard.
This Biggeh might have been piled up by the giants who attempted to
scale heaven, when Zeus blasted them and their work with his launched
lightning.
From this summit, we have in view the broken, rock-strewn field called
the Cataract, and all the extraordinary islands of rock above, that
almost dam the river; there, over Philæ, on the north shore, is the
barrack-like Austrian Mission, and neat it the railway that runs through
the desert waste, round the hills of the Cataract, to Assouan. These
vast piled-up fragments and splintered ledges, here and all about
us, although of raw granite and syenite, are all disintegrating and
crumbling into fine atoms. It is this decay that softens the hardness
of the outlines, and harmonizes with the ruins below. Wild as the
convulsion was that caused this fantastic wreck, the scene is not
without a certain peace now, as we sit here this Sunday afternoon, on a
high crag, looking down upon the pagan temples, which resist the
tooth of time almost as well as the masses of granite rock that are in
position and in form their sentinels.
Opposite, on the hill, is the mosque, and the plastered dome of the
sheykh's tomb, with its prayer-niche, a quiet and commanding place
of repose. The mosque looks down upon the ever-flowing Nile, upon the
granite desolation, upon the decaying temple of Isis,—converted
once into a temple of the true God, and now merely the marvel of the
traveler. The mosque itself, representative of the latest religion, is
falling to ruin. What will come next? What will come to break up this
civilized barbarism?
“Abd-el-Atti, why do you suppose the Lord permitted the old heathen
to have such a lovely place as this Philæ for the practice of their
superstitions?”
“Do' know, be sure. Once there was a stranger, I reckon him travel
without any dragoman, come to the tent of the prophet Abraham, and ask
for food and lodging; he was a kind of infidel, not believe in God, not
to believe in anything but a bit of stone. And Abraham was very angry,
and sent him away without any dinner. Then the Lord, when he saw it,
scolded Abraham.
“'But,' says Abraham, 'the man is an infidel, and does not believe in
Thee.'
“'Well,' the Lord he answer to Abraham, 'he has lived in my world all
his life, and I have suffered him, and taken care of him, and prospered
him, and borne his infidelity; and you could not give him a dinner, or
shelter for one night in your house!
“Then Abraham ran after the infidel, and called him back, and told him
all that the Lord he say. And the infidel when he heard it, answer,
'If the Lord says that, I believe in Him; and I believe that you are a
prophet.'.rdquo;
“And do you think, Abd-el-Atti, that men have been more tolerant, the
Friends of Mohammed, for instance, since then?”
“Men pretty nearly always the same; I see 'em all 'bout alike. I read
in our books a little, what you call 'em?—yes, anecdote, how a Moslem
'ulama, and a Christian priest, and a Jewish rabbi, were in a place
together, and had some conversation, and they agreed to tell what each
would like best to happen.
“The priest he began:—'I should like,' says he, 'as many Moslems to die
as there are animals sacrificed by them on the day of sacrifice.'
“'And I,' says the 'ulama, 'would like to see put out of the way so many
Christians as they eat eggs on Easter.'
“Now it is your turn, says they both to the rabbi:—'Well, I should like
you both to have your wishes.' I think the Jew have the best of it. Not
so?”
The night is soft and still, and envelopes Philæ in a summer warmth. The
stars crowd the blue-black sky with scintillant points, obtrusive and
blazing in startling nearness; they are all repeated in the darker
blue of the smooth river, where lie also, perfectly outlined, the heavy
shadows of the granite masses. Upon the silence suddenly breaks the
notes of a cornet, from a dahabeëh moored above us, in pulsations,
however, rather to emphasize than to break the hush of the night.
“Eh! that's Mr. Fiddle,” cries Abd-el-Atti, whose musical nomenclature
is not very extensive, “that's a him.”
Once on a moonless night in Upper Nubia, as we lay tied to the bank,
under the shadow of the palms, there had swept past us, flashing
into sight an instant and then gone in the darkness, an upward-bound
dahabeëh, from the deck of which a cornet-à-piston flung out, in
salute, the lively notes of a popular American air. The player (whom the
dragoman could never call by any name but “Mr. Fiddle”) as we came to
know later, was an Irish gentleman, Anglicized and Americanized, and
indeed cosmopolitan, who has a fancy for going about the world and
awaking here and there remote and commonly undisturbed echoes with his
favorite brass horn. I daresay that moonlight voyagers on the Hudson
have heard its notes dropping down from the Highlands; it has stirred
the air of every land on the globe except India; our own Sierras have
responded to its invitations, and Mount Sinai itself has echoed its
strains. There is a prejudice against the cornet, that it is not exactly
a family instrument; and not more suited to assist in morning and
evening devotions than the violin, which a young clergyman, whom I
knew, was endeavoring to learn, in order to play it, gently, at family
prayers.
This traveled cornet, however, begins to play, with deliberate
pauses between the bars, the notes of that glorious hymn, “How firm a
foundation ye saints of the Lord,” following it with the Prayer from
Der Freischutz, and that, again, with some familiar Scotch airs (a
transition perfectly natural in home-circles on Sunday evening), every
note of which, leisurely floating out into the night, is sent back in
distant echoes. Nothing can be lovelier than the scene,—the tropical
night, the sentimental island, the shadows of columns and crags, the
mysterious presence of a brooding past,—and nothing can be sweeter than
these dulcet, lingering, re-echoing strains, which are the music of our
faith, of civilization, of home. From these old temples did never come,
in the days of the flute and the darabooka, such melodies. And do the
spirits of Isis and Osiris, and of Berenice, Cleopatra, and Antoninus,
who worshipped them here, listen, and know perhaps that a purer and
better spirit has come into the world?
In the midst of this echoing melody, a little boat, its sail noiselessly
furled, its gunwales crowded with gowned and white-turbaned Nubians,
glides out of the shadow and comes alongside, as silently as a
ferry-boat of the under-world bearing the robed figures of the departed,
and the venerable Reis of the Cataract steps on board, with es-salam
'aleykum; and the negotiation for shooting the rapids in the morning
begins.
The reïs is a Nubian of grave aspect, of a complexion many shades darker
than would have been needed to disqualify its possessor to enjoy civil
rights in our country a few years ago, and with watchful and shrewd
black eyes which have an occasional gleam of humor; his robe is mingled
black and white, his turban is a fine camels-hair shawl; his legs are
bare, but he wears pointed red-morocco slippers. There is a long confab
between him and the dragoman, over pipes and coffee, about the down
trip. It seems that there is a dahabeëh at Assouan, carrying the English
Prince Arthur and a Moslem Prince, which has been waiting for ten days
the whim of the royal scion, to make the ascent. Meantime no other
boat can go up or down. The cataract business is at a standstill. The
government has given orders that no other boat shall get in the way; and
many travelers' boats have been detained from one to two weeks; some of
them have turned back, without seeing Nubia, unable to spend any longer
time in a vexatious uncertainty. The prince has signified his intention
of coming up the Cataract tomorrow morning, and consequently we
cannot go down, although the descending channel is not the same as
the ascending. A considerable fleet of boats is now at each end of the
cataract, powerless to move.
The cataract people express great dissatisfaction at this interference
in their concerns by the government, which does not pay them as much as
the ordinary traveler does for passing the cataract. And yet they have
their own sly and mysterious method of dealing with boats that is not
less annoying than the government favoritism. They will very seldom take
a dahabeëh through in a day; they have delight in detaining it in the
rapids and showing their authority.
When, at length, the Reis comes into the cabin, to pay us a visit of
courtesy, he is perfect in dignity and good-breeding, in spite of his
bare legs; and enters into a discourse of the situation with spirit and
intelligence. In reply to a remark, that, in America we are not obliged
to wait for princes, his eyes sparkle, as he answers, with much vivacity
of manner, “You quite right. In Egypt we are in a mess. Egypt is a ewe
sheep from which every year they shear the wool close off; the milk that
should go the lamb they drink; and when the poor old thing dies, they
give the carcass to the people—the skin they cut up among themselves.
This season,” he goes on, “is to the cataracts like what the pilgrimage
is to Mecca and to Jerusalem—the time when to make the money from the
traveler. And when the princes they come, crowding the traveler to one
side, and the government makes everything done for them for nothing,
and pays only one dollar for a turkey for which the traveler pays two,
'bliges the people to sell their provisions at its own price,”—the
sheykh stopped.
“The Reis, then, Abd-el-Atti, doesn't fancy this method of doing
business?”
“No, him say he not like it at all.”
And the Reis kindled up, “You may call the Prince anything you like, you
may call him king; but the real Sultan is the man who pays his money and
does not come here at the cost of the government. Great beggars some of
these big nobility; all the great people want the Viceroyal to do 'em
charity and take 'em up the Nile, into Abyssinia, I don't know where
all. I think the greatest beggars always those who can best afford to
pay.”
With this philosophical remark the old Sheykh concludes a long harangue,
the substance of which is given above, and takes his leave with a
hundred complimentary speeches.
Forced to wait, we employed Monday advantageously in exploring the
land-route to Assouan, going by Mahatta, where the trading-boats lie and
piles of merchandise lumber the shore. It is a considerable village, and
full of most persistent beggars and curiosity venders. The road, sandy
and dusty, winds through hills of granite boulders—a hot and desolate
though not deserted highway, for strings of camels, with merchandise,
were in sight the whole distance. We passed through the ancient
cemetery, outside of Assouan, a dreary field of sand and rocks, the
leaning grave-stones covered with inscriptions in old Arabic, (or
Cufic), where are said to rest the martyred friends of the prophet who
perished in the first battle with the infidels above Philæ.
Returning, we made a detour to the famous syenite quarries, the openings
of several of which are still visible. They were worked from the sides
and not in pits, and offer little to interest the ordinary sight-seer.
Yet we like to see where the old workmen chipped away at the rocks;
there are frequent marks of the square holes that they drilled, in order
to split off the stone with wet wedges of wood. The great obelisk which
lies in the quarry, half covered by sand, is unfinished; it is tapered
from the base to its tip, ninety-eight feet, but it was doubtless, as
the marks indicate, to be worked down to the size of the big obelisk at
Karnak; the part which is exposed measures ten to eleven feet square.
It lies behind ledges of rock, and it could only have been removed by
cutting away the enormous mass in front of it or by hoisting it over.
The suggestion of Mr. Wilkinson that it was to be floated out by a
canal, does not commend itself to one standing on the ground.
We came back by the long road, the ancient traveled way, along which,
on the boulders, are rudely-cut sculptures and hieroglyphics, mere
scratchings on the stone, but recording the passage of kings and armies
as long ago as the twelfth dynasty. Nearly all the way from Assouan to
Philæ are remains of a huge wall of unburnt bricks, ten to fifteen feet
broad and probably fifteen to twenty feet high, winding along the valley
and over the low ridges. An apparently more unnecessary wall does not
exist; it is said by people here to have been thrown up by the Moslems
as a protection against the Nubians when they first traversed this
desert; but it is no doubt Roman. There are indications that the Nile
once poured its main flood through this opening.
We emerge not far from the south end of the railway track, and at the
deserted Austrian Mission. A few Nubian families live in huts on the
bank of the stream. Among the bright-eyed young ladies, with shining
hair, who entreat backsheesh, while we are waiting for our sandal, is
the daughter of our up-river pilot. We should have had a higher opinion
of his dignity and rank if we had not seen his house and his family.
After sunset the dahabeëhs of the Prince came up and were received with
salutes by the waiting boats, which the royal craft did not return. Why
the dragoman of the arriving dahabeëh came to ours with the Prince's
request, as he said, for our cards, we were not informed; we certainly
intended no offence by the salute; it was, on the part of the other
boats, a natural expression of pleasure that the royal boat was at last
out of the way.
At dark we loose from lovely Philæ, in order to drop down to Mahatta and
take our station for running the cataract in the morning. As we draw
out from the little fleet of boats, Irish, Hungarian, American, English,
rockets and blue lights illumine the night, and we go off in a blaze of
glory. Regardless of the Presence, the Irish gentleman responds on his
cornet with the Star-Spangled Banner, the martial strains of which echo
from all the hills.
In a moment, the lights are out, the dahabeëhs disappear and the
enchanting island is lost to sight. We are gliding down the swift
and winding channel, through granite walls, under the shadow of giant
boulders, immersed in the gloom of a night which the stars do not
penetrate. There is no sound save the regular, chopping fall of the
heavy sweeps, which steady the timorous boat, and are the only sign,
breaking the oppressive silence, that we are not a phantom ship in a
world of shades. It is a short but ghostly voyage, and we see at length
with a sigh of relief the lines of masts and spars in the port of
Mahatta. Working the boat through the crowd that lie there we moor for
the night, with the roar of the cataract in our ears.
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