THE CITY OF KINGS
I think this is the gayest scene I have ever looked upon in my life. See
those mahogany-coloured boatmen in their brilliant scarlet and white
striped jerseys and blue petticoats, grinning so as to show all their
milk-white teeth. The boats are apple-green and scarlet, and they are
reflected in the clear still water, and the dragoman, who marshals all
the party into them, is a very splendid person indeed, in a long
overcoat of turquoise blue cloth as soft and fine as a glove, with a
striped gown of yellow Egyptian silk underneath.
We are off with a party of Cook's tourists to explore the Tombs of the
Kings on the other side of the river It is a pretty stiff day's work, so
we are up early, and it is only half-past eight now. As we near the
other side of the river we see an excited group of donkey-boys who have
brought their animals over earlier, and now stand expectant, looking
like a fringe of blue beads.
[Illustration: THE FAT LADY ON HER DONKEY.]
"Lily best donkey--Lily name for Americans, Merry Widow for
Engleesh----"
"Come, lady, with me, Sammy best donkey in Egypt, verry good, Sammy my
donkey, best donkey----"
"Kitchener, lady, best donkey in Egypt, me speak verry good Engleesh,
alla way gallop."
And so on in a continuous yell. The dragoman shouts out the numbers of
the donkeys, and helps the ladies of the party to mount. Some ride on
side-saddles, others, unused to any form of riding, prefer to get up
astride, which they find difficult in the tight modern skirts. One
German girl, after a frantic attempt, has to give it up, and sits
wobbling on her saddle with her arms round the donkey-boy's neck,
agonisingly appealing to him not to move! A very stout lady in black is
lifted on to her mount by the united efforts of the dragoman and two
donkey-boys, and, held in position by the boys, moves off, threatening a
convulsive landslide to one side or the other at every step.
We are lucky in securing two fine greyish-white animals, almost as large
as mules and very well fed and kept; yours is named "Sirdar" and has a
single blue bead slung on a string round his neck as a charm, while
mine, "Tommy Raffles," has a rattling chain of yellow and blue beads and
much scarlet wool in his harness. You won't have much difficulty, I
know, as you have been used to a pony since you could walk.
At first the soft powdery sand makes the going stiff, and we have much
difficulty in restraining our boys, who run behind, from smacking or
prodding the donkeys as they plough through. These boys are very proud
and fond of their donkeys and treat them well, but it is the ambition of
every donkey-boy to see his donkey head the cavalcade, and he is ready
to die of envy and mortification if any other boy's donkey gets in front
of him. We pass through clouds of dusty earth and then turn on to uneven
narrow ways between tall green stalks of growing dhurra, stuff which
looks like maize, except that it has a heavy head of grain which is
ground up for making rough bread for the poorest people.
Along by a canal, over a bridge and a railway line we gallop, our
animals going well. Their trot is impossible, as we soon find, but the
easy loping canter delightful. We pass many black-clad women working in
the fields, with crowds of bright-eyed friendly children who murmur
"'Shish" in the vain hope that we may throw them some money. Then we see
herds of black goats in among the cut stalks, and a tethered baby camel,
who looks at us with innocent wondering eyes.
Far off rise up from the plain two mighty seated statues, the Colossi,
set up by Amenhetep III. as part of a temple now vanished. Presently we
all stop to see another temple, interesting enough, but not so
interesting as those already visited at Luxor and Karnak.
The dragoman, whose work is not easy, brings up the rear of the
cavalcade, having managed to keep even behind the fat lady, who has
stuck to the slippery surface of her saddle with many a desperate plunge
firmly resisted by her escort.
[Illustration: BOATMAN.]
The dragoman describes the temple fluently and intelligently, first in
English, then in French, and adds a little explanation in German for the
benefit of two men of that race who have talked loudly in their own
guttural tongue all the time he has endeavoured to make the rest of the
party hear. The dragoman does not reel his words off as if he were
repeating a lesson, as, alas, so many of the guides at our own
cathedrals do. He is a clever man, well educated and capable. It has
taken him years to learn all he knows, and it is only the clever boys
who can become good dragomans. One of our donkey-boys, a bright little
fellow who speaks far better English than most of his companions, tells
us, "I am going to be a dragoman." He says it deliberately, with a pause
between each word to get them correctly. "Thus I speak always with the
English and the Americans. To the English I speak English, which is
what I have learned, but when I am with Americans I can talk to them in
their own tongue too."
Laughing, we mount and are off again.
We are now penetrating into the great hills of sandstone we saw afar off
from the hotel. The road winds into a gorge, and at each turn displays
more vivid beauty. We feel a strange joy rising within us, so that we
would like to sing or shout at the tops of our voices. The brilliance of
the air shows up every line in the great precipices of orange-yellow,
streaked with red and purple, which rise against a sky of thrilling
blue. There is not a blade of grass or a leaf to be seen in these vast
solitudes, only the massive stones, broken and split and scattered, lie
in the fierce sun or black shadow. We can imagine these defiles looking
much the same when three or four thousand years ago the funeral
procession of one of the mighty Pharaohs wound its way into the heart of
the mountains, carrying the man who had never known opposition or denied
himself his slightest wish. They were very magnificent these
processions, composed of hundreds of people who carried all sorts of
things--furniture, chariots, boats, animals, fruit and flowers--with
tremendous ceremony.
It is a longish ride before we alight again, and leaving the donkeys
under a slight straw shelter penetrate into the fastnesses of the hills.
How many of these rock-tombs were made here will probably never be
known, but year by year more are uncovered. The first we step into is
like a large well-lighted cave cut out of a cliff-side, from it opens
another cave-like room, and from that another, each sloping downward and
the whole series giving the impression of a series of puzzle-boxes
fitting into one another and then drawn out. The walls are covered with
pictures, paintings on plaster, not outline pictures like those we saw
in the temples, but filled in with blue and green, orange and
terra-cotta, laid on thickly, and as fresh as the day they were done.
Ever descending we pass on until we reach the last chamber, where the
great sarcophagus or coffin of the king was placed right up against the
face of the rock. The sarcophagus might be a mighty block of granite,
enclosing a wooden case, and that again another case, probably carved
and gilt, and finally, as a kernel, there was the body of the king,
preserved and dried by spices, lying awaiting the final resurrection.
The Egyptians believed in a future world, but they could not imagine a
future world without there being human bodies in it such as we have now,
so they took infinite trouble in preserving the dead body that it might
be ready for its time of call. Most of the sarcophagi from these tombs
have been removed and taken to the museum at Cairo, but in one to which
we penetrate, hewn out at a slope so steep that we have difficulty in
keeping our feet as we slither down, the mummy has been replaced and is
left uncovered.
Lit up by electric light we see King Amenhetep II., with his skin
blackened to a parchment, drawn tightly over his chiselled aristocratic
features. In the dome-shaped forehead, the Roman nose, and the tightly
compressed lips there is an expression of infinite disdain, as if he, in
his time the mightiest ruler in the world and the leader of
civilisation, knew that now he was exposed to the gaze of a party of
outer barbarians whose national histories were but of mushroom growth.
This king struck terror into the hearts of his enemies; he raided the
land of Syria, slew seven chiefs with his own hand and brought them back
to Thebes, hanging head downward from the bows of his boat!
The very day after a king ascended the throne he used to begin hewing
out the sepulchre where he should lie. The scenes drawn on the walls
show what he expected to find in the other world. We see a pair of
scales with the heart of the dead man in one balance and a feather in
the other; a monkey sits on the top and adjusts the weight. The heart
must weigh the feather exactly, for to be over-righteous was as bad as
being wicked! The dead man also had to pass before forty-two judges, who
each examined him searchingly as to whether he had committed one
particular sin. As one of the party remarked in an awe-struck voice,
"And if he did pass them all safely and another started up and asked him
if he ever told a lie he'd be done, for no man could deny that he had
committed any of the forty-two principal sins and remain truthful!"
To accompany the soul to the other world many things used to be buried
in the tombs, clothes and food and utensils and weapons, and, thanks to
this custom, numberless things have been saved to show us how the
ancient Egyptians lived. These, however, have mostly been taken to Cairo
for safe keeping. But here in Amenhetep's tomb one thing has been left.
In a small side chamber, with the light falling full upon them, are
three mummies, each with a hole in the skull and a gash on the breast,
showing that they were the king's slaves, killed in order that their
souls might accompany him and serve him beyond the tomb!
They lie there with their hair still on their heads, and even the false
hair, they used to increase it, showing; on their faces is a ghastly
grin. We wonder if they submitted quietly, proud of having been chosen,
or if each fought fiercely for the life which belonged to him and was
not any man's to take away.
It is very hot and close down in the rock-hewn chamber, and we are glad
enough to stumble up and out again, though we are blinded by the
sunshine as we emerge.
The next part of the day is the hardest of all, for we scramble up a
mountain-side to gain a splendid view of gorges and valleys on one side
and the flat plain spreading to the Nile on the other. The view is
indescribable; from lemon-yellow to orange and saffron are the hills,
with blue-grey shadows in their folds. Right opposite is one absolutely
perpendicular, with immense rounded columns looking like giant organ
pipes rising on its face. A fresh wind is blowing, and when we mount our
donkeys, which have come round to meet us another way, and ride along a
path a few feet wide, with no fence of any kind and a drop of some
hundreds of feet on one side, we are devoutly thankful that the German
girl and the stout lady went round the other and longer way by the
valley!
Over the summit the donkeys are set free to get down the steep descent
as best they may, and they are as sure-footed as goats, but we who
follow find considerable difficulty as the loose stone and sand fall
away in miniature avalanches from beneath our slipping feet and we get
very hot. We are sheltered here from that fresh wind which is such a joy
in Egypt, the sun is at its height, and we have done a good morning's
work already after an early start. There, far below, looking like a
doll's house, is the rest-house where we lunch, and beside it two of the
men of the Mounted Police Camel Corps in khaki on their long-legged
beasts.
Whew! That last bit was tough! I am glad to get a long drink and equally
glad to go on after it to an excellent cold lunch which has been brought
to meet us. Hard-boiled eggs, salad, cold meat and fruit! We try them
all and then rest on the verandah looking at the towering orange cliffs
which hem us in. They seem to hang right over that little temple near,
to which we shall presently pay a visit. That is the temple of Der El
Bahari and was built by Hatshepset, the greatest of Egyptian queens.
Hatshepset was the daughter of one king and the wife of another, and
after her husband's death she ruled for about sixteen years. She made
expeditions to the Red Sea and acted in every way like a man. In the
drawings of her on the temple wall she is represented as a man and is
dressed in man's clothes. When her son-in-law, Thothmes III., who had
married her daughter, succeeded her, he scratched out her name wherever
he found it and chiselled out the pictures of her. He had evidently had
a bad time while she lived, but he must have been a small-minded and
spiteful man to take that petty revenge after her death!
[Illustration: A SOLEMN GIRL-CHILD.]
On the way home across the dhurra fields I see you stop riding suddenly
and stare intently down at something on the ground. I think at first it
is a scorpion you have found on the patch of light-coloured sand, but it
is only an immense black beetle, with a strong horny skin and a horn or
trumpet-shaped excrescence on the front part of its head. He belongs to
the scarabaeus, or dung-beetles, and big fellows they are; this one would
just about cover the palm of your hand. The Egyptians called one of
their gods Khepera, or the beetle, and believed him to be the creator of
all things, so they used to make images of these beetles and put them in
their temples; you saw a huge one, you remember, on a pedestal at
Karnak, and any time you are in London you can see them at the British
Museum. There were also tiny images of them made in stone and amethyst
and porcelain, and almost anything else, and these were frequently
buried in the tombs with the mummies. Sometimes they had the name of the
person with whom they were buried inscribed on the back in hieroglyphic
writing, or the name of a god. These scarabs, as they are called, are
bought and worn in rings and ornaments by visitors. The natives quickly
found out that there was a demand for them, and as they could not always
find old genuine ones they set to work to make them! Hundreds of new
ones are palmed off as old in this way on unsuspecting tourists.
"Scarab!"
A solemn girl-child clad in a rust-coloured garment has come up on
seeing our donkeys halt and holds out a brilliant blue scarab for sale
in a hot little hand. She nods violently, repeating, "Scarab! Verry
old." "Found in tombs," says our donkey-boy gravely, willing to help her
to take us in. He picks it up and pretends to examine it carefully,
"Genuine anteekar," he pronounces. Laughing, we hand the "genuine
antique" back to its owner, knowing that it is probably "genuine
Birmingham," and then we canter after the rest of the party.
[Illustration: A NILE STEAMER.]