‘Letters from Egypt: [by Florence Nightingale
_A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL,
FROM GALE, CENGAGE LEARNING ©
AND THE BRITISH LIBRARY
Digitized by the Internet Archive
In 2023
https://archive.org/details/lettersfromegypt00O0Oflor
ew
LETTERS
FROM
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Rye Dae
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TOR PRIVATE CIRCOLATION ONLY.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY A. & G. A. SPOTTISWOODE,
NEW-STREET-SQUARE.
1854.
Pes
Lonpon : ee .
A. and G. A. Sporriswoopr, .
ew-street-square, -
CONTENTS.
Alexandria - ———ag v , . ae
A night on the Nile - = 4 a - V7
Cairo - - : . “ ST)
African Village re Z 2 : for a6
Armenian Governor x . “4 - 39
Beauty of the Nile - es Pe. P - 46
Desert of Shekh Hassan - - : - 46
Benee Hassan - - 2 2 aan
A Khamsin_ - - : a 7 eG
Osyoot - i P ; . 67
Lycopolis - “ 7 % \ ha tee
Ancient Christianity = - - - - - 83
Divine Triads - - 2 re - 87
Kenneh - - : . - - «95
Metareh - - - - ~ - 96
Karnak - — - - - ano 7,
Luxor - - - ” - - 100
Egyptian Household Words - - - - 107
Temple of Hermonthis - - - - - 108
Syene - . - - - 116
Mahometan burying-ground - - - emi lg
Phila - ao ; : q » 125
lv
Ipsamboul — - “
Temple of Athor -
The Four Colossi — =
Rapids of Kalabsheh -
Tombs of Elethyia -
Esne - -
Thebes ~ -
The Valley of the Kings
The Valley of the Queens
Karnak and St. Peter’s
Medina Tabou -
Dendera - .
Gizeh
Memphis - :
Fostat =
The Pyramids -
Heliopolis - =
Joseph’s Well 7
Farewell to Egypt
The Mosques of Cairo -
Cairo University
Vision of Temples -
CONTENTS.
LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Alexandria, Nov. 19. 1849.
Yas, my dear people, I have set my first footfall in
the East, and oh! that I could tell you the new world
of old poetry, of Bible images, of light, and life, and
beauty which that word opens. My first day in the
East, and it has been one of the most striking, I am
sure,—one I can never forget through Eternity.
I am writing by candlelight, on Monday morning,
because I had not a moment yesterday, the day we
landed; and one is quite surprised to find darkness at
all in this land of warmth, and light, and life. We had
a splendid run of ninety hours from Malta, and should
have had less, but that we were obliged to put off our
steam, in order not to arrive at those dangerous old
Syrtes till daylight. Isis welcomed us to her country
with the most delicate and silvery of crescents, and at
half-past four we went on deck, on the purest and
mildest of starlight nights, watching Venus rising’ so
large, that the captain mistook her for the Pharos, and
brought the vessel to a stand. Then came up the rose-
coloured clouds of dawn, like Guido’s Aurora: he must
have seen an Eastern sunrise, for the colours of his
Hours are exactly those of the early dawn here, and not
the least those of an Italian sunrise. It looks not lurid
B
20 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
and thick, as very brilliant colours in an English sky
sometimes do, but so transparent and pure, that one
really believes one’s self looking into a heaven beyond,
and feels a little shy of penetrating into the mysteries of
God’s throne. The Pharos and masts of Alexandria,
and Pompey’s pillar, and a long low line of coast now
appeared against the crimson clouds, and from his own
Morgenland, his own East, the sun sprang up as he
ought to do. I cannot describe the initiation into old
poetry he gives you on his first rising in the East. He
does not come up slowly and solemnly, and rather
sadly, as he does in the chill dawn in England, while
one is feeling a sinking, and a trembling, and a shiver-
ing from having been up in the cold to see him; but he
leaps from the horizon into the sky, whips his fiery
steeds, shouts for joy, and brings in brilliant day imme-
diately ; it is his “ glad” course here, and the flood he
pours forth is “living” light. One never understood
the word “living” before. It is as if each ray was a
messenger, alive. ‘Che northern sunlight is like lamp-
light. I shall never forget my first sight of him. Now
we crowded on all our steam, and came gallantly into
the old port, only stopping to pick up an Arab pilot,
and perpetually throwing the lead, which showed us to
be in only four fathom water. The crescent and the
star was floating idly on the morning breeze; but a
crowd of Arabs, the busiest and the noisiest people in
the world, came immediately on board, frantically gesti-
culating, kicking, and dancing, — an intermediate race,
they appeared to me, between the monkey and the man,
the ugliest, most slavish countenances. Before nine we
had landed, and were on our way to the Frank Square,
ALEXANDRIA. 3
in the omnibus, for it was already too hot to walk.
Before ten, Mr. Gilbert had called upon us in our inn-
yard, and he has already placed a janissary at our dis-
position (who does every thing for us), and given us
every thing we could want. The first thing after we
had saved our baggage from the hurrying Indians, was
to ask our janissary, Alee, who walks before us, and is
the most gentle, yet most dignified being I ever saw (I
am quite afraid to speak to him), to show us the way
to the baths. After a longish walk we came to a gate-
way, and through an avenue of date-palms, bananas,
and petunias, trellised overhead, to a long, low build-
ing with Pompeian baths, in red, and green, and blue
squares, and with low archways (against the heat),
leading from one to the other. Egyptians sitting about
at their dinner of fruits. They gave us a tangle of
palm-tendrils to wash ourselves with, with a lump of
beautiful Egyptian soap in the middle of the nest: all
European appliances are vile compared to those palm-
tendrils. And when we came out again into that
enchanted garden, it was like an Arabian night. I
thought we were in the Chatsworth conservatory, and
should come out, when we had passed the gates, into
the chill air, from all that radiant vegetation, and find
it was a dream. But we did not. And when we re-
turned, luncheon was spread at the table-d’héte ; bana-
nas, and dates, and oranges, and citrons, — such a beau-
tiful table I never saw, — and the stately Egyptian to
serve us; women we did not see. Then we went to
church, —a little, quiet, solemn, English church, —
and afterwards, Mr. Winder, the clergyman, took us
to the garden of the Armenians. Those Armenians
B 2
4 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
have always something so poetic and mysterious about
them. Fancy a church in the middle of alleys and
‘tangles of palms, loaded with bunches of golden fruit,
stretching every way into a forest, so that you lose the
enclosure ; daturas, bignonias, oleanders, cactusses, and
bananas making the underwood; a great well in the
midst, upon the edge of which sate the most beautiful
group of Egyptian and Smyrniot women, and the ra-
diant sunset behind. So ended my first day in the
East,—a true Sunday of rest and joy. ©
You cannot conceive, besides, the impatience to get
on shore after eight nights on shipboard, in a crowded
steamboat, with an atmosphere of, I really believe, 120°
in our cabin, the men drinking punch from morning
till night, the women giggling and clacking.
Of course there are drawbacks to all this light and
beauty ; the mosquitoes are at this moment (six o’clock
in the morning) so bad, that I am surrounded by the
dead bodies of those slain in single combat. The
heavy dew drove us home last night before sunset.
But what is that to pay for the joy of the East? I wish
I could describe the groups in the Armenian garden—a
little triangle of children at the gate, eating their dinner
out of a porringer of beans, not gobbling or messing, as
European children do, but like little gods, with infant
dignity slowly and majestically dipping their sop in the
dish, and conversing. One, a magnificent, broad-shoul-
dered boy of four, resting his little paw upon his knee,
with one single loose skirt on, looking up at us undis-
turbed, with an attitude like an Apollo at rest; another,
a little coquette of three, with her hand and wrist loaded
with bracelets and rings,—but not a vulgar coquette,-—
ALEXANDRIA. aea5
she had the airs of a Juno; and the third, a thing of
eighteen months, with its leg stuck straight out, and
quite as stately as the other two. We did so wish for
P. to draw it. Then the group on the well, three
Egyptian ladies, in their black silk mantles, which
shroud them entirely, except the blue or white pendant
in front, which hangs from their foreheads, only letting
their eyes be seen. A tall, graceful Nubian behind, en-
tirely robed and shrouded in white, who is not so parti-
cular about her black face, which looks so well in that
white Westall drapery; and two Smyrniots, with their
' hair dressed @ la Grecque, large bunches of flowers
in it, and Guercino colours of blue, and red, and
brown, made, with a yellow woman, the most Oriental
- group. The Egyptian costume (of the high-born lady),
the enormous black mantle, is not graceful; but here
you see all costumes, from the Ethiopian to the Wal-
dense. We saw a funeral. procession, too, holloaing |
like forcats. The sun has now risen as pure and bright -
as yesterday, and I am sitting on my deewan, with a
stone floor, and the window wide open, the donkeys, and
Arabs, and those hideous camels, setting up the most
frightful noise. 7
This place is full of Roman Catholic Sisters and Laz-
zarists, Greek church, Armenian church, Mussulman
Moulas, Protestant Waldenses—Alexandria the Cosmo-
polite. There is nothing to say about its architecture.
The state of things here is horrible. Every man is a
conscript for the army, and mothers put out their chil-
dren’s right eye, cut off their forefingers, or lamed them,
to save them from conscription, till Mehemet Ali, who
was too clever for them, had a one-eyed regiment, who
B 3 :
6 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
carry the musket on the left shoulder. The number of
one-eyed men you see is frightful.
My time has been spent much to my satisfaction, as
I travelled with two sisters of St. Vincent de Paul from
Paris to Auxerre, who gave me an introduction to the
sisters here; and I have spent a great deal of time
with them in their beautiful schools and Misericorde.
There are only nineteen of them, but they seem to do
the work of ninety. They bleed, dress wounds, and
dispense medicines; the Arabs come to them by hun-
dreds for advice. ‘To-day I saw there a little orphan
girl of nine years, who had found, some months ago, a
deserted baby in the streets, and had adopted it! The
baby is now ill, and the little foster-mother brings it
daily to the convent for medicine: the sisters said the
care and love she showed for it was marvellous. They
gave her a para a-week (a farthing) for it, and the
neighbours added dates or rice, —- and so the little crea-
tures live. In this climate life is supported on so little,
and. for clothing a rag suffices. The sisters give a fear-
ful account of the debasement and ignorance of the
women; they have no religion, and are mere beasts
they say.
There is not much to see here, nothing but the per-
petual feeling of being in the East, the eastern colouring,
and eastern atmosphere. On the day of the Presenta-
tion of the Virgin all the children of the St. Vincent
sisters go to a children’s mass and sing — so pretty
it was—all costumes, the Levantine, the Smyrniot,
the Maltese, the Egyptian, people of all nations and
tongues uniting in the worship of one God. Many of
the mothers were there
ALEXANDRIA. ”
The lands are of course untilled in this, the richest
country inthe world. Ifthe Nile did not do all the work,
the poverty, which is only extreme, would be at extre-
mity. Yet the Egyptian is an excellent workman, and
most industrious: he lives, too, upon nothing. If they
were not the most peaceable nation existing, the Govern-
ment could not goon a moment. Every Cadi gives the
sentence to the highest bidder: every body seems to be
allowed to bastinado every body else; and no consul
who has any humanity sends a criminal before the po-
lice, for nobody there counts the lashes ; if there are fifty
ordered, there are several at once to give them, and he
may just as well receive two hundred as fifty, and die.
The taxation is enormous. Every guild or trade,
grooms, gardeners, &c., elects its Shekh, and these
Shekhs are a sort of odious middlemen or publicans,
who have to pay the whole amount due by their guild
to Government; so of course they exact it to the utter-
most farthing ; and more, for Hassan’s sieve is buttered,
and the piece of gold sticks there for him, as it does for
every functionary in the land. He may use the basti-
nado at pleasure to exact the tax, and the moment he is
elected he becomes a tyrant.
How difficult it is to believe that this race is also on its
progress to perfect life! —as difficult as the Jewish popu-
lace found it to believe that the Son of Man, whom they
had all worshipped on the previous Sunday, was on the
Friday morning, covered with dirt and rags, and mocked
and scourged, the Son of God. Yet these dirty sons of
men are all, too, the sons of God, all on their way to
perfect truth. The Jews doubted his word, and cruci-
fied him; if we doubt his word about these poor de-
p 4
8 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
graded Arabs being, as he said, sons of God, we crucify
him afresh. It was Pilate’s doubt that there was a truth,
which wrecked him: from the moment a man asks,
what is truth? he must stagger and fall. Pilate could
not know, it is true, whether Christ were divine or a
popular ringleader, but he might have known that he
was not to execute an Innocent man.
Meantime, Ibrahim Pacha died here the death of a
dog, on his way to eternal truth. No one wore mourn-
ing for him. The politics of this country are worse
even than those of Europe ; but I suppose we shall have
none at Philc “ with him who sleeps in Philce.”
Nov. 24.
Yesterday we took our first donkey ride to the Cata-
combs; but donkey riding in Egypt is a very different
thing from donkey riding elsewhere. The donkey is
very small, and you are very large (the Egyptian is a
very tall race), and you sit upon his tail; and as he
holds his head very high, you look like a balance to his
head. After mounting, a feat which is effected by curl-
ing your right leg round your saddle bow (the saddles
are men’s), you set off full gallop, running over every
thing in your way; and the merry little thing runs
and runs and runs like a velocipede. There is no-
thing in Alexandria but the Frank square, which is
larger than any square in London, and the huts of
the Alexandrians, which look more like a vast settle-
ment of white ants than any thing else. The hut is
always but one room, about eight or nine feet square
(the walls prolonged in front to make a sort of alcove),
about six feet high, made of plastered white mud, with
or without windows, which are furnished with shut-
ALEXANDRIA, ‘9
ters; no chimney; nothing inside but one pot, and
sometimes a box. They seldom adjoin; but a space is
left between each. The first effect is that of a vast col-
lection of ovens. You can hardly believe they are
human dwellings. Some, I should think, were ai
ther but a cube of five feet.
We went to the Catacombs, which, after those of
Rome, are rather a farce; to Pompey’s Pillar, through
a great dismal cemetery: I thought we were coming to
the end of the world. The earth was strewed, not
planted, with little white round mounds of mud, a stone
stuck in it, and a dry aloe in the middle,— not one bit of
green ; often the grave only a heap of stones,—the best,
two white slabs. the middle was not in the middle.
Even to my inexperienced eye the
effect was painful, the highest part
of the curve being on one side. But the sense of beauty
in the Egyptian evidently was not, —I mean in the
Egyptian of that age: we shall see what a later era will
produce. No beauty, however, can surpass in impres-
sion what this first day has made. Our Dahabieh wad-
dled slowly across to meet us; it had not been able to
move a step without us, and our Reis, with his grizzled
beard, and his head swathed in shawls, looked like a
Rembrandt, as he stood on deck waiting the arrival of
the English sisters of Joseph and the Pharaohs. The
queerest contrast of all, however, was ‘I’. sitting at the
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door of a tomb (for she went with us), crochetting a
pattern in small of a new polka, with her back leaning
against the hieroglyphs of Osirtasen, on the door-post of
the sepulchre. It was less painful, however, than the
childishly ignorant Arab, who stood degraded and bruti-
fied under the shadow of his magnificent ancestor’s tomb.
Poor Arab !—is it the end or the beginning of his civi-
lisation ?—and did God intend it so?—is what one asks
continually.
Perhaps the thing which came most home to one was
a Greek alphabet, sprinkled all over the wall, the letters
all manner of ways. It was like surprising the man in
the very act of teaching his little Greeks in this cool grot.
Another thing which struck one was the excessive
THE PROSAIC ART OF THE TOMBS. 61
prosaicness of the representations. Nothing was left to
the imagination, — probably they had none. You were
to see it all. If a drapery over a chair was painted,
the chair was painted through. Your Egyptian artist
would not have trusted, as the Duke of Cambridge did
to his duchess being behind the Duchess of Sutherland
in Hayter’s picture of the Coronation, but would have
painted her through. The homeiness of the whole con-
trasted strangely with the wild scenery without.
The bodies do not lie in the chambers, but in pits in
the rocky floor below; most of these now stand open,
and you look down and see them running far into the
rock. The place where the body lay is generally
marked by a hieroglyphical tablet in the wall above.
‘¢ His body shall be cast into the pit” is literal.
I must say that the Egyptian never seemed to have
an idea but he spoilt it. The idea of those lotus was
beautiful. They merely swelled out a little at the bot-
tom, as if they were growing out of roots; their necks
were first tied together by a fillet under the buds, which
made the capital; and if they could have let them
alone, it would have looked like a river-cave with na-
tural pillars: what had they to do with painting them in
stripes? Some of the painted processions were, how-
ever, beautifully done. One of a man doctoring a sick
goat was in real perspective, done by an artist of ge-
nius, not of the usual Chinese fashion. So ends our
Beni Hassan day, the first of many wonders, but none
more curious.
We tracked but a little further that day, and an-
chored for the night at Nezlet e Shekh Timay. Now it
happened that Nezlet e Shekh Timay was at war with
62 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
the village of the opposite bank, Shekh Timay, on ac-
count of some palm trees, for which N. e S. T. had killed
a man of the other village, and though two men are now
in prison at Minieh for it, yet “blood for blood,” ‘an
eye for an eye,” is the universal law here; and till
every relation of the murderer is‘ murdered, the villages
are not at peace, and the affair is not at anend. Now
N. e S. T. would not let any boats anchor there, for fear
the inhabitants of the other village should take the op-
portunity, and either do the boats a mischief, in order
that it might be retaliated by government on the nearest
village N. e 8S. T. (perhaps by extermination), or crawl
upon the village itself, now all its male inhabitants but
twelve are at Cairo. But we had seen the Shekh of
N. e S. T. at Minieh, and treated him with coffee on
board our boat, and his daughter had married, d la Ca-
pulet, the Shekh of the hostile village. So he gave us
aletter to his village, ordering them to let us anchor
there, and give us three guards, and two cats, which we
wanted almost as much, for the rats in my cabin are so
fierce and bold, that I am obliged to get up at night to
defend my dear boots. You cannot keep clear of rats
with all your care, when you are anchored near grain-
boats sometimes all night. Accordingly we received our
three guards ; the whole boat was packed up like a brown
paper parcel, both sides, with mats, to protect us from
both Timays ; and we lay like birds in a nest all night.
N. Timay is on an island, so we were cheated of a morn-
ing walk. It was the first cloudy day we have seen.
Everybody knows that Mehemet Ali took possession
of the whole property of Egypt, — not only the land of
the proprictors, but the income of all religious institu-
TAXATION. 63
tions. He levies, besides, two dollars on every acre,
takes the whole of the produce of some things, cotton,
flax, &c., and buys the whole of the rest; the price
being generally kept back to pay the taxes, and when
one village cannot pay its taxes, the next is made to pay
for two. The fellahs are obliged to steal their own pro-
duce to live. They may borrow seed from government,
but ifthey do, half is stolen by the middlemen before it _
comes to them. In this “rabbia” of taxation, palm
trees pay 13 piastre each; grain, coming into town,
pays a tax equal to its own price in a good harvest
in the country ; the income-tax is one-twelfth of a man’s
income ; and government makes a profit of 50 per cent.
on the sale of ail produce. When one hears all this,
one only wonders that the Egyptians work at all, — not
that they are idle; and one thinks it a proof of some
civilisation in them that they prefer their property to
their flesh, and boast of the bastinadoes they got before
they gave up their money. Adding insult to injury,
government makes them pay for the camels which
carry their own grain to the government granary. No
wonder Lane says they could not suffer more and live.
Off Manfaloot, Dec. 17.
We have not had a gasp of wind these two days, and
have made very little progress,—about six or seven miles
a-day. Our crew are not very able-bodied fellows.
To-day we have had a sunrise breeze, and went boldly
in this morning under the grand cliffs of Gebel Aboo-
feda. 1 went ashore on the other side, when the crew
stopped for breakfast, and saw the Shekh Jacob coming
into Egypt with his flocks and herds, --- such droves of
64 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
buffaloes, herds of camels, and flocks of brown-horned
sheep, with asses in abundance. This was quite a new
sight; you forget in Egypt the existence of pastoral
countries, “for every shepherd is an abomination to the
Egyptians,” so purely agricultural is the land.
We had had heavy clouds for two days, and yet no
wind ; the sailors did not know what to make of it, they
had never seen such a sky before without a Sirocco.
At last a north wind brought us gallantly through the
Straits of Gebel Aboofeyda, but towards noon, the river
turning to the south-east, the crew were obliged to
track; soon the wind increased so much that they
could not pull against it. We got into a little bay,
where the eddy became quite a whirlpool. Five times
we tried to tow out of this corner, and five times we
were swung round and back again by the whirlpool, till
we were obliged to giveit up. This we thought the more
provoking, as five Dahabiehs, which kept in the middle
of the stream, passed us, going very near the wind; and
one with her sail flapping. About three, the Khamsin
increased; it was a wind like this which destroyed six
years ago a caravan of 300 camels belonging to Moham-
med Ali. The air became filled with sand. The river
seemed turned upside down, and flowing bottom up-
wards, the whirlwind of sand from the desert literally
covering it. We could not see across the river; and
when we could stand upon deck, which was not often,
our eyes were completely filled and our faces covered
with sand. As to the Critic making Thames not to
walk between his banks, he does not deserve the credit
of originality for that idea, for Nile invented the plan
first, and to-day, instead of walking between his banks,
A KHAMSIN. 65
his banks walked between him. I saw the sand blown
up into a ridge upon the water, and it looked as if you
could have passed the river on dry ground, only the dry
ground was on the top. J am glad to have seen it, for I
should never have believed in it if I had not, and I give
you leave not to believe. By this time Nile seemed to be
walking with his bed on his head; but it was no beneficent
miracle, like the paralytic man’s, for it looked as if earth,
air, and water had been blasted together into one whirl-
wind of sand. We could not wash, for it was no use fish-
ing for water in the Nile: instead of water he gave us a
stone, z7. e, a sand-bank. The waves were as high as
when there is a moderate sea in the Channel, and the
wind was hot. It grew dark, and the blast increased
so, that we drove a stake into the bank, and fastened a
rope to it for the night. Presently Paolo rushed in for
one of the guns, which was always kept loaded. He
said he saw a strange boat coming in sight. I ran out
on deck after him, and sure enough, in the pitchy dark~
ness, I saw one of the Dahabiehs which had overtaken
us in the afternoon, floating past us, bottom upwards;
nothing to be seen of her passengers. She struck in
the sand just astern of us, and remained fast there. By
this time the wind had increased so much, and we
bumped so incessantly, that we were afraid the rope
would not hold, and we put out another. I could not
help laughing, in the middle of all this, at the figure of
our Rais, who had squatted himself at the bottom of our
little boat (which was between the Dahabieh and the
bank), and sat there smoking his pipe, and taking no
further interest in the question. If the rope wouldnt
hold it would’nt, and why should he be disturbed ?
F
66 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
I did not go to bed — we bumped incessantly, and at
the stern especially so hard that we thought we must
spring a leak. It was so dark that we could see
nothing, but in the morning we found that our boat
had been astride of the poor wreck all night, which had
been whirled round by the eddy under us. At dawn I
looked out, she had entirely gone to pieces — nothing
was left of her but a few of the cabin planks, which our
boat picked up, a chest of clothes which we saved, and
her oranges floating in the whirlpool. I never saw any-
thing more affecting than those poor oranges, the last
luxury of their life in the midst of death. Torrents of
rain were falling—our cabin roof was completely
soaked through — the sky was still one heavy mass,
but the wind had a little fallen, and we struggled on,
towed by the wretched crew, their teeth chattering,
dripping with wet, and evidently thinking the Day of
Judgment, the end of the world, was come (for to them
rain is much what to us Enelish an earthquake might
be), to Manfaloot, which we reached about twelve.
There we learnt that of the five boats which passed us
yesterday to windward four had gone down, and of their
passengers, twenty (including women and children) had
been lost. Almost all their relations were in Manfaloot.
We gave up the chest of clothes to the governor, to the
great displeasure of our crew, who fully intended to
keep it for themselves. At Manfaloot the miserable
crew went on shore, and baked themselves — literally
dried themselves in an oven. Such a storm had not
been known since 1839, when half the houses in Manfa-
loot were washed down by the rain. The heavens had
rained first sand, and then water, for the last twenty-
four hours.
A KHAMSIN. 67
Our hold was full of bilge-water, otherwise we had no
hurt. “If Nile do this,” said Paolo, ‘him see me no
more.” Paolo had been up and down the Nile fifteen
years, and never seen such a storm; and our Rais, who
looks like Abraham, never but once. We began to
think that old Nile had got it up as alittle gentillesse for
us (as Italians prepare half raw roast beef and plum pud-
ding for English), thinking to please us by a specimen of
our own climate, and gratify us by a thought of home.
But if he knew what a figure he made of himself, he
would not have done it.
The consternation of the Arabs seemed quite to stun
and palsy them,— they were incapable of doing any thing.
Four days of storm we had before the sky righted itself.
Whoever has seen a Nile Khamsin will hope never to |
see one again.
The poor wretched boat which passed us so gaily in
the afternoon, and came back, four hours after, a mere
hulk, her mast and yard arm just appearing above the
water, had been in company with us for two days, and
we had seen her merry Nubians, and some of her pas-
sengers, fifty times a day, in racing with one another.
They had evidently broken open the cabin in their
efforts to escape; but how, even in that pitchy darkness,
they could not have waded to the shoal, we could not
conccive.
Osyoot, Dec. 20.
Just arrived — for to-day the weather has gloriously
cleared up, and enabled us to reach this, the capital of
Upper Egypt, which we had been in sight of almost for
four days. With rapture I found myself upon an ass
again, riding like a Caliph into Osyoot, a mile from the
yr 2
68 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
river side, and after our return to the boat, on this the
eve of the shortest day, sauntering like Pharaoh’s
daughter along the river’s bank, to see the sun set
behind the minarets, with the mountain beyond full of
sepulchres in the rock.
We must stay here two days, though the wind is fair
at last, to let the crew bake. They take an oven for a
day and night, go to the mill, buy the wheat, wash and
grind it, knead it themselves with their feet, and then
bake it, spending the night at the oven, and going into
it with their own bread; I suppose to keep it warm.
Such is the method of providing oneself with bread
here! We had been without it for four days, and
could get no milk either.
Lycopolis, shortest day, 1849.
We have been spending the day in the caves of
Lycopolis, above Osyoot. There is nothing in them so
interesting as in Beni Hassan,—no cartouches suffi-
ciently legible to determine their date, — every thing
destroyed, defaced, plundered. But the position, the
associations, the picturesqueness, mental and moral, as
well as physical, made them to me, if possible, more
striking. For here the Anchorites of the Thebaid
clustered, — John of Lycopolis, of course, and many
others,—and the religious plays of the Nun Hrosvita,
which I used to devour in the Revue des Deux Mondes,
all came before one’s imagination.
Y had that strange feeling as if I had been here
ANCHORITES, 69
before, —it was so exactly what I had imagined,—a co-
incidence between the reality and the previous fancy,
which never comes true with me. Twice I have had
that feeling,—once here, and once in finding the chapel
of M. Angelo’s Piet’ in St. Peter’s. Below you, far
below you, lies the city of Osyoot, the capital of Upper
Egypt, looking like the sort of city the animals might
have built, when they had possession of the earth, as we
are told, before man was created,—a collection of mud-
heaps, except where its thirteen minarets cut the sky.
I had read Mungo Park’s descriptions of an African
village, and Bruce’s, and had fancied I understood
them, but no description gives the idea of the debase-
ment and misery. ‘This was the type of the savage life,
while, in those caves of the rock, the saints of the The-
baid stood, each before one’s imagination, at the door of
his narrow cell, as the types of the spiritual life; and
Alexandria stood afar, where in the Neo-Platonist
school, these men, the Platonist Christians, had pro-
bably been nourished, as the type of the intellectual
life. There they had seen the extreme of Epicurean
refinement, of intellectual luxury, where enjoyment be-
came a science, — and one sees how naturally the feel-
ings of these men sprung out of such a past as that, —
how they came to think prayer, and meditation, and
self-denial the only good, after having been told that
pleasure was the supreme end. (An immense cone of
clay, into which the wild bee was flying, hung close to
the door of one of the tombs. “ His meat was locusts
and wild honey.”) Alexandria, Osyoot, and the The-
baid,—-what a picture it was !
Numbers of heads and tails of mummy-jackals were
¥ 3
70 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
lying about in their rags, — for Lycopolis was sacred
to Anubis, a jackal-headed god, who was the god
of Death in its good sense,—death in the sense of re-
generation and resurrection. It was his office to preside
over the dying moments, to carry away the escaping
Psyche from the bed of death to the presence of his
father Osiris, whose name the new-born fuxy then took,
and under which name it entered Paradise. Anubis
was, in the same sense, the god of Time. But Time
itself now lay dead; and the mummies, so carefully put
under his protection, all lay tumbled about among the
rocks. It was curious to see these things, to which a
reverence for life, or even for where life had been,
under any form, had given birth,—a reverence so great
that, even in the animal, life was sacred, — to see now,
not only the mummy-animals, but even the skeleton of
a human being, a young woman, 5000 years ago so
reverentially cared for, now handled by our childish
Arabs, pulled to pieces, and thrown at one another’s
heads. Little she would care for it now, —still I could
not bear it, — more for the feelings of those who had
cared for her 5000 years ago, than for her own, — and
we buried her decently out of sight, the sand with a
heap of stones covering. It was little good, for five
minutes afterwards we found the skeleton of her hus-
band. But there is nothing painful in all this,—the
ideas of the old Egyptians about death were so cheer-
ful,—it was so completely to them the portal of life, that
one felt as if the god of Death must have rejoiced over
his own death, now that he is gone to join his wor-
shippers.
¥ shall not describe the caves,-- whoever imagined
LYCOPOLIS. 71
any thing from description? The atmosphere within
is not chill or damp, like vaults or churchyards, but
warm, and genial, and dry, to the last and farthest
chamber in the rock. Little remains to tell their story,
but some beautiful blue scrolls still covering the rocky
ceiling, — blue, the old Egyptian type of wisdom, be-
cause sapphire, its favourite stone, means, as in Hebrew,
to write,— so the Hebrews still call their Bible Se-
phir, the book, and the Egyptian priests wore (like
the “Urim and Thummim”) on their breasts a blue
stone, a sapphire, with Truth engraven on it. The
two breastplates appear to have been exactly similar,
Mr. B. and I climbed the mountain, through a cleft,
in search of the site of the old Lycopolis, and found on
the very summit the place cleared,—no doubt the Acro-
polis,—and a smaller round space, the Acropolis of the
Acropolis; and such a view !— not beautiful,—bird’s eye
views never are, but all Egypt, all the windings of the
Nile, seemed to lie at our feet, like a map. And the
great Libyan desert here approached the cultivated land,
not, as before, rising up from it, with a difference of
level which accounted for the change, and seemed to
make it natural, as being where the Nile could not
reach, but level with the valley, like a great dragon,
putting out his fiery tongue and licking up the green,
fertile plain, biting into it, and threatening to encroach
still more. You have no idea how frightful it looked.
I had never seen this effect lower down the Nile, and
the Desert seemed to me more terrible than before. On
the Arabian side as well, the plain was bounded with
desert. That view I never shall forget.
It is good for a man to be here, —~ good for British
vy 4
72 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
pride to think, here was a nation more powerful than
we are, and almost as civilised, 4000 years ago, — for
2000 years already they have been a nation of slaves,—in
2000 years where shall we be ?—shall we be like them ?
It is good for Christian pride, too, to be called “ dog”
in the street, pointed at, spat at, as we are here. No
one looks at us with respect, hardly with curiosity,—
we are too low. They take our money and have done
with us.
It is good for British exclusiveness, too, to become so
completely inhabitants of another age as we are here.
Till I caught myself rejecting a Roman temple as unin-
teresting and modern, I had no idea how completely we
were living in the time of 4000 years ago. There is no
affectation in it. One says, “ We will not go to that
place, it is only Roman,” or “the Romans have spoilt
that tomb.” One learns to distinguish the antiquity of
the cartouches by their simplicity, as in heraldry,—those
of the Ptolemies are overladen and complicated, those of
the earliest dynasties have but three or four figures, —
and to go to those tombs where the cartouches are the
simplest. But I like the chambers best where there is
nothing to learn,—nothing but pure plaster for the ima-
gination! The mountain here is literally riddled with
tombs and chambers. We crawled from one into the
other. We rode home through the modern burial-
ground, a city without the walls, rows and rows of
square, white-washed, ogived enclosures, with divans
round them, under which the inhabitants of the living
city, which is much less handsome, lie, — beautiful
palms, acacias, caroubas, filled it ;—while the living city,
base and dirty, with its houses windowless, of sun-
LYCOPOLIS. 73
burnt bricks, looked degraded and hopeless. How
can it be otherwise, when government fixes the price of
produce, buys it, compels work by bastinado, and not
by the natural incentive — interest, and leaves the
wretched fellah nothing but taxes to live upon. The
women, dirty beyond description, use their one veil for
a basket. And yet they are a noble-looking race. I
have never seen so many tall men, noble presences,
stately heads, as in this wretched Osyoot and miserable
bazar, where the shopkeepers sit, keep their goods, and
work at their trade in holes, four feet by five, raised on
either side the narrow street.
The only whitewashed house is the Pacha’s palace
just inside the gate. A number of people were crouch-
ing at the door, waiting for audience. “ He sits and
judges in the gate.” The ride into Osyoot is really
through quite a wooded country, with yellow, flowering
mimosas, and ponds, and white ibises in them. And at
the corner of every road is that beautiful observance of
Mahometan hospitality, the covered water-tank, long
and narrow, with three little starry openings, and three
little dome-lings like a holy water vessel, which is always
kept filled with water, for the traveller arriving at the
city to refresh himself, even before he enters it. J have
drunk there myself, and blest the observance towards
the stranger. |
To-morrow we leave Osyoot, and set our sails to
Thebes, but shall not, we now fear, spend our Christ-
mas-day there, as we had intended. Our bread is
baked, and we are off. The day was from about ten
minutes to seven to ten minutes past five, about ten
hours and twenty minutes from sunrise to sunset to-day.
74 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
In the middle of the day it was hot, nights cold as usual.
In a garden in Osyoot the trellice was covered with
vines in leaf, castor-oil plant in flower, but no attempt at
flowers anywhere.
A noble cat has come aboard of its own accord, and
killed two rats: I believe it is a god!
But now farewell, dearest people. And now that Nile
has got up this little divertissement in our honour as
English people, to remind us of our own climate, I hope
he will give us fine weather.
God bless, and he will bless you. My Christmas love
to all. |
Christmas Eve, 1849.
On board the Parthenope,
Half-way between Osyoot and Girgey.
I must write to you all, my dear ones, this holy day,
and think of you with your holly boughs, as you will
of us with our palm branches —- your yule-log in the
drawing-room chimney, and our hot sun overhead. _
Tell M. 8. with my love that I walked alone at
sunset one Eastern evening on the seashore near Alexan-
dria, on the very spot as I like to believe where Justin
Martyr met his old man, and as I thought of their
meeting I thought of ours made under auspices almost
as holy. I wish she could have seen the sunset which
glorified that spot; the sands of gold, the transparent
green caves of the sea.
Till you see an Eastern sea you never understand
the Homeric idea of Thetis and the Nymphs living in
its caves. In our dull green and blue waves there
SQUARE FORMS. 95
seems no inducement to live; but in the transparent
green caves of the East, the colour of that green fluor
spar, or of chrysolite, and of nothing else that I have
ever seen, you can hardly fancy that something blessed
does not dwell.
But I must come back to Christmas. We break-
fasted out of doors, and walked slowly under a hot
sun on Christmas eve —and what a sunset! — the
Nile was like the colour of copper pyrites, or of mica
when the sun is making prismatic colours on it,—not
the colours of a rainbow, those are too faint, but
of a metal suddenly cooled, an ore run out of the fur-
nace. Then we have had the strangest scenery since
Osyoot. Those expressions ‘the ends of the earth,”
“from the corners of the world,” come here quite natural.
The mountains either form squares going off at a right
angle, or make quite a sharp corner, so that the general
ground plan of the valley is this ;>——y_[\._J" a L__
Ais Anteopolis. I assure you this is not in the least ex-
aggerated. Last night when we arrived at Ekhmin,
the ancient Chemmis or Panopolis, the whole river was
shut in by a square of cliffs and turned into a square
lake, so that it looked like the corner of the world
finished off in that way! This division of the river into
lakes gives one continually the feeling of some Sinbad-
the-Sailor or Rasselas valley,—not in our sense of valley,
but shut up, and made up at both ends from the rest of
the world.
The hills are sometimes pyramids, but oftener square-
headed. Not one blade of vegetation, not one cliff from
the top to the bottom, but all blown over with sand.
You cannot conceive the strange effect of this nature,
76 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
unnatural tous. As to drawing, = declares it impossible.
And when in the evening a spectral bark with its glassy
white sails comes standing in silently like a phantom
ship upon this molten sea, you fancy yourself any
where but in this world. We have the lovely moon
again in her first quarter, and she has brought us a fair
wind.
This morning I went ashore at a village more miser-
able than any thing we have seen. The people here
did not live in huts but in half a hut, just a mere semi-
circular screen of mud put up with a penthouse of sugar-
cane stalks at the top, and underneath it squatted, half
naked, eating with their hands, the whole family in the
mud, with a sheep, a dog, and a hen, their two or three
pots round them, their shelf a scoop in the mud wall.
The cliffs are now all blown over with hills of sand
rising at their bases.
I liked Osyoot much better than Beni Hassan. Beni
Hassan is of infinitely more value to the chronologist;
and if the twelfth dynasty lies buried there, as Bunsen
says, it is unique. (It seems strange, for the twelfth
was the conquering dynasty, and the pictures on these
tombs are all of peaceful arts and,sciences, and matter-
of-fact, jog-trot amusements.) Still it is only an iso-
lated fact in chronology, while the long train of associ-
ations at Osyoot is much more interesting.
Christmas day, nearing Girgeh.
You are just going to church, my dear people, in the
close carriage, and we are holding our church on deck,
where the thermometer (your thermometer) stands at
101, and 75 in the cabin. This morning, however, it
CHRISTMAS NIGHT. 77
was so cold that the windows were all crusted over with
vapour ; the dew was like rain at the dawn.
Christmas night,
Many boats passed us to-day of pilgrims coming back
from Mecca, and holy women squatting in the boat like
old hags: Boats, too, of slaves from Ethiopia, where
you can buy one for a pocket handkerchief or a looking-
glass. At the first cataract a slave costs three hundred
piastres (3/.), at the second a woman cost six dollars
(about 17.) and a man eight — less than a horse.
The wind was so fair that we did not stop at Girgeh,
the second great town in Upper Egypt, but sailed on,
doing as much in an hour as the men can track in a
day. Just before Girgeh, as the sun was going down,
we came to another of those great squares shutting in
the river, which disappears at a right angle. The sun
came back again and again, and once again, to give his
last farewell, and say a few words more, not like a child
at play, but like a dying Socrates, going to his rest and
unveiling his head from under his mantle once more to
give his one more word of comfort to his followers.
Every thing in Egypt is so imexpressibly solemn ;
nothing ever laughs or plays here; the moon is like a
melancholy sun, and the sun is like a Jupiter Capitoli-
nus, not an Apollo. Every thing is grown up and grown
old. One never sees creatures at play here as in other
countries; the camel is so solemn that when he stands
idle against the sky you might mistake him for a stone
camel. Nothing is pretty. I have seen nothing pretty
since we left Cairo,—yes, once, two little kids which
skipped ; otherwise the young creatures are as solemn
78 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
as their fathers. I think no greater contrast could the
world afford than England, busy England, and Egypt,
solemn, melancholy, splendid Egypt.
At last the sun was dead, and Girgeh with her mina-
rets passed in the dusk, and the moon rose-—such a
moon. >and I sat on deck till late at night, “ sunning”
ourselves in her warm beams,—think of that my people,
—on Christmas day. Not one touch of damp, not one
breath of chill in the air, though the wind was high.
We glided along in a supernatural stillness, for the wind
being, as usual, dead fair, we were sheltered from it by
the cabin behind us; and every little wave was ridden
by its own silvery Jinn, like a fleet of Jinnee come out
suddenly in the moonlight. Night lets her footsteps
here fall so gently, one fluttering shadow on the water
was all that we could see of her, while, in Europe, she
comes on with such a heavy tread. The fire was
lighted at the bows, and the glare from it fell upon the
sail; but the moonlight was brighter, and held its own,
undisputed. Jt was like Raphael’s Deliverance of St.
Peter — there was the torchlight and there was the
moonlight ; but where was the angel, with his superna-
tural light, come to deliver ws from the bonds of earthly
error? I donot doubt but that He was there. I never
wanted his presence so much, but his light is not so
visible as in the days of Peter. The river got wider and
wider, and we seemed floating out upon an immeasur-
able sea, the flood of go’den moonlight over every thing,
for so near the tropic as we now are, the colours by
moonlight are as bright as by day, and the sky, instead
of being only light round the moon, and getting misty
towards the horizon, as in Europe, in the East is deep
CHRISTMAS NIGHT. 79
blue about the Lady of the Night, and gets lighter and
lighter to the horizon, all round which there is a bright
band of light: let natural philosophers contradict me,
and say it is impossible when the sun is so low beneath
the horizon. I say it s.
_ We seemed to go on and on to unknown shores. We
have long since passed the lands of civilisation, and
have come to the countries of the savage. Now, it
seems as if we must be coming to the countries of the
Jinn, which, as we all know, encircle the earth at the
distance of 200 days’ journey ; — and they were there
already, the little Jinn, each riding on his wave, his
green chrysolite wave, in his little silver chariot. The
Eastern moonlight looks so supernatural, because one is
accustomed in Europe to see the moon low in summer,
and casting an immense shadow (and in spite of all one’s
almanac, one always fancies this summer), so that see-
ing her above one’s head, and the great sail casting not
a bit of shadow on the water, one sits down resigned
to the conviction that one is being carried away ina
phantom-ship to Jinnee countries. The distant song
of Arab boatmen, ending in a wild yell, sounds all
supernatural ; and if one of the crew rouses himself from _
the deck,—where they either sit motionless in little heaps,
or lie covered up, heads and all, so that you tread upon
them, mistaking them for a blanket,—he looks, in his
striped brown-and-white African blanket, scattering fire
upon the waves from his hand, like anything certainly but
aman. We could not bear to go in—this our one real
night of tropical moonlight. We have felt the difference
of climate more these last few days than all the way
south we had come before from Cairo. ‘The days and
80 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
nights are now really African — from day-break till ten
or eleven o’clock it is cold.
We have never had the slightest trouble with our
crew; that odious word “ baksheesh” has never come out
of their mouths. Whether it is owing to our having that
capital man Paolo with us, I don’t know, but they are
so agreeable that we are only sorry we don’t get on
with our Arabic; they are despairingly indifferent, that
is all. If Paolo says, How far is it to Girgeh? God
knows. But how soon shall we get there? When God
pleases. But I ask you how many hours it is, because
the master wants to put it down in his journal? God
knows. One got drunk at Osyoot, and made a beast of
himself with booza (whence our word “ boozing!”), upon
his present of five-pence; this is our only disaster, for
the Arabs are temperate, oh! to a proverb: poor souls!
the pleasures of the flesh, in one sense, are not their
stumbling-block. ‘The Pacha only eats once a day; and
our Arabs are happy with brown bread, baked a month
ago, and quite as hard as brick, and a little thin broth.
We gave them a fish on Sunday, but have not yet gone
the extent of a sheep. Our housekeeping is simple, our
store-room and pantry stand before us in the shape of
two large chests on deck, which separate our domain
from the crew’s; our larder hangs over head in the
shape of a basket full of bread, and two cages full of
oranges and meat; our kitchen is immediately beyond
— another box, about six feet by four, and behind it is
our water goullel (where the water is filtered) ; so that
we have kitchen, scullery, still room, larder, safe, and
pantry, all in a nutshell, or at least ina walnut. Ah!
would that you could keep house in England so, my
OUR PILOT. 81
dearest mother. ‘“ Mustafa’s womans”—this is Paolo’s
language— bought our provisions for us at Osyoot, and
some tape! for me, which turned out a narrow muslin
embroidered scarf.
The Arabs are no sailors, only pilots; they cannot
even rig their own vessel. When it is rigged for them,
they are as awkward about handling their own yards,
though first-rate climbers, as I should be. They cannot
tack ; and unless the wind is dead fair, prefer tracking to
sailing ; the skill they show is in piloting, which is really
wonderful, considering the ever changing bed of the
river. Our Nubian stands on the poop, robed in his ma-
jestic folds, never wearying nor stopping to rest — if the
wind is fair, steering with his enormous rudder, hardly
ever getting us aground, which in a distance of nearly
1000 miles from Cairo to the second cataract, with this
bed, seems miraculous. He appears to have long since
forgotten all human language in his sublime solitude up
there; but when he is very anxious there issues forth
a singular splutter from the poop, which I long mis-
took for the turkeys who live there too. The pigeons
are not in a coop, but never try to escape. We have
now four cats, the god and three others; the god is the
only one who does any work, but he has cleared us of
rats, and with an ornamental border of boots all round
the tops of our beds we do very well. My Levinge
is without price, as much against draughts now as
mosquitoes.
Christmas day produced us two ancient towns, Pano-
polis and Ptolemais, and our first crocodile; his great
paws left heavy footmarks on the sand.
We get milk now everywhere, and bread, which is a
G
82 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
great luxury after we had been some time without
either. Butter, too, we find now at most places.
Near Kenneh, Dec. 28. 1849.
Dearest People,
I wish you could have seen the sunset last night, how
the wilderness blossomed like the rose, in the last crim-
son tints of the dying sun. I wish you could have seen
the nosegay of the beautiful yellow cotton-flower I
gathered — our first cotton-plants — as we passed the
island of Tabenna, where once St. Pachomius taught to
pray twelve times a day, to labour; and to deny the
body. Now no one prays, no one labours; and if they
deny the body, it is because they have nothing to give
it. Then he had 1300 followers in the island of Tabenna
alone, and 6000 in the Thebaid, besides monasteries in
the Arsinoite (Suez) Nome, and in the Nitria. Then, in
thefourth century, all Egypt was Christian, or almost all;
now she is not even Mussulman; and very zealous Chris-
tians too they must have been, to judge by the enormous
per centage of religious orders to the population, and
the first principle of these orders was to work; and what-
ever my dear Protestants of the West may say, an
anchorite now appears to me an angel, in comparison
with what we have daily before our eyes. In this
whole wide waste of corruption, misery, and sensualism,
the Christians seem to use their residence in the East
not for the sake of leavening the lump, nor for doing
any earthly good, but merely for the sake of using
ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY. 83
the customs of the country ‘to gratify their own vices,
and profiting by their sojourn among Mussulmen to
live like Mussulmen (since we have been here, we
have not been surprised at, but have heartily joined
in, the Moslem contempt of Christians), so that when the
only people whom we have seen in all this miserable
land attempting to do it the slightest good, or to live for
anything but their own gratification, are the Roman Catho-
lic sisters —I assure youwe do heartily wish for a sprink-
ling, a little city, only a very little one, of the monks of the
Thebaid, that some incense of service may go up to God
among all these people, who know not what they are put
into the world for. St. Pachomius received my warmest
sympathy as we went by the now utterly desolate island,
—no blade of grass, not even a stone remaining.
I should think there were few instances in history of
a country being so thoroughly de-christianised as
Egypt*, after having been entirely Christian, even
pre-eminently so, if we are to judge by the Christian
schisms which tore her in the fourth century — Atha-
nasius five times an exile from Alexandria (I suppose
Christian discord and Christianity must be reckoned
as synonymous). Has Islam usually obtained such com-
plete possession of a formerly Christian country?
But when one thinks of Egypt as the birthplace of
Monasticism, the mother of all religious orders, as I
suppose she undoubtedly was unless one excepts the
Essenes, it is a curious speculation to see the very reli-
gion become an abomination. One solitary monk, a
Franciscan, still exists in Osyoot (whom Mr. B. went to
* The 20,000 Copts can hardly be considered as Christians.
G 2
84 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
see), the sole successor of the Johns of Lycopolis and
the legions of the Thebaid. There he said his solitary
mass, and had done so for ten years; wearing the very
disguise of a Moslem by special dispensation from his
superiors ; and this in the land which, 1400 years ago,
was the Rome of Christianity, uniting, like Rome,
the classic with the religious capital of the world, and,
unlike Rome, at the same period of time. Alexan-
‘dria was then still the Queen of cities; the Serapeum,
with its 700,000 volumes, was still the chief building in
the world (excepting perhaps the Capitol); the Augustan
age was hardly passed there; but she was also the place
of all Christian learning, the arena of all Christian dis-
pute, and the interior of her province the refuge for every
man who retired from the intellectual struggle to the
spiritual solitude. How one would like to understand the
law as one perceives the history of the succession of these
periods of a nation’s mind, to find the thread on which
to string these isolated beads! Now we have little more
idea of the law, than if they were really but so many
unconnected facts; and painful it is that so much expe-
rience should be lost, that nations should fall, and their
successors see them fall, without knowing why ; and if
you ask, people will tell you, It is prophecy; look at the
fulfilment of prophecy—a convenient word, which seems
to save historians the trouble of all inquiry.
But the wind has arisen, and, after two delaying day
of tracking, we are at last approaching Kenneh.
We have had a good voyage of a week from
Osyoot to Kenneh, 150 miles, with wind five days,
which has greatly raised Mr. Bracebridge’s spirits ; but
we think it all too fast. If the wind is good, we shall
EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANITY. 85.
scarcely stop at Thebes, but I hope that it will not be,
that we may have just one moonlight walk there (for
the moon is now full), as our first initiation to the hun-
dred-gated city. Only imagine our being within fifty
miles of Thebes: I can hardly believe it, and feel almost
afraid of first seeing those awful spectres of dead Time
and Space. There is nothing beautiful in Egypt to les-
sen the awe which one feels before these ghastly shrouds
—mere shrouds, as they are in Osyoot, — these bodies
petrified, suddenly turned to stone in the midst of their
daily occupations, as they seem in Beni Hassan — these
gigantic phantoms, as I fancy they will be, in El-Uksor,
of a dead Past. If you can imagine seeing an awful
spectre under the broad radiance of a meridian sunlight,
that is Egypt— my noble, melancholy, sublime, dead
Egypt. Travelling here is nothing like the tourist see-
ing sights of beautiful art and sunny landscape in Italy
or the South of France; it is like the ghoule haunting
the tombs; that is, Lepsius was the ghoule, rifling,
and despoiling the monumenis, stealing the bodies;
we are the poor harmless Phookas.
We have come to the region of the Dom Palms,
which I think really very pretty; they remind me of
my beloved stone pines of Rome, and her gardens.
We saw the post last night, walking along the river
bank on his ten toes, with a bell round his neck; but
I hope you will get this before I come back.
I have written all this in desperate haste, my people.
I cannot make much of the goddesses at present, but
hope to do better; and am always, my beloved souls,
your humble, loving
PHOOKA.
86 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Kenneh, Dec. 29. 1849.
The Egyptian religion suffers cruelly by comparison
with the Greek, when we think of the worshippers of
cats in juxtaposition with the worshippers of the Ju-
piter Olympius. Yet one could fancy, even with
those supernatural images before one’s eyes, that there
was something nearer truth in the mind of the unar-
tistic old Egyptian. There seems no doubt that the
educated Egyptian believed in the “ one God,” the Un-
approachable, the Indivisible, the ‘ One,” that could
neither be named nor represented ; and that the differ-
ent names and representations he used, were to express
the system of different relations under which the Crea-
tor appeared to his creatures; as, in Neph, He is the
intelligence working upon intelligences, willing, for in-
stance, that mankind should be progressive; in Amun,
He is planning or arranging how this progression is to be
secured; in Phthah, He is executing His plans; and in
Osiris, He is adapting them to mankind. Their names
for the one God might be substituted thus for ours :—
Neph, for the Divine Intelligence.
Amun, for the Almighty.
Phthah, the Creator, or the Almighty at work.
Osiris, for the Good Shepherd.
We make a distinction almost similar between F ather,
Son, and Holy Spirit, when we call the Father the
thought, the Son the word, and the Holy Ghost, if I
may so say, the hand, 7%. e. the worker, the communi-
cating medium. As, with us, the First Person of the
Trinity arranges, the Second commands, the Third
DIVINE TRIADS. — 87
actuates or vivifies ; so, with them, Neph was the Intel-
lect, Amun the Will or the Active Energy, Phthah the
Wisdom, é. e. the application of knowledge, the fitting it
into form, the life.
Hermes Trismegistus says expressly, that “ the One,”
by the Egyptians, ‘‘ was venerated in silence.” And
as, to apply the Christian Trinity to human ideas, the
Father might be the Philosopher, the Son the Speaker,
and the Holy Spirit the Artist; so, clothing the Egyp-
tian theology in human facts, Neph was the thinker, the
author of political theories; Amun the statesman, who
brought those theories into projects ; Phthah the lawyer,
who framed them into laws; and Osiris the magistrate,
who adapted them to the particular case, or the school-
master who taught them: Phthah was the executive,
as Amun was the legislative power. There was yet
another god, poor old Khem, whom I have left out all
this while ; although after him the land of Egypt (Che-
mi) was called, as it stands ‘in all the sculptures,—Chemi
and the land of Ham are synonymous,—Khem being
identical with Ham. Upon Khem seems to have been
put off the awkward and ungrateful task of framing
man, and upon Khem perhaps devolved the relation of
the human species with its Creator. We may perhaps
compare him to the Holy Ghost, the vivifier ; so that,
in English theology, Neph would answer to the Father; -
Amun and Khem both to the Holy Ghost; Phthah to
the Son, in his character of Wisdom, of the Creator of
the world, such as St. John gives it; and Osiris, to
his later character, of bringing gifts to men and suffer-
ing for them.
With regard to sacrifices, the temples of Jerusalem
a4
88 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
and of Thebes appear to have closely resembled each
other, and the system of sacrificing to have been the
same in both, except that there appears no trace of burnt
offerings in Egypt.
If we compare the Egyptian with the Greek, the
metaphysical theory of the Egyptian seems to have
soared a higher flight towards truth: he cared little
about his emblems, which were clumsy, ugly, and
often absolutely deformed; he had little idea of form,
none of beauty; he had no Word, but his thought was
right.
The Greek, when he made Amun into Jupiter,
Phthah into Vulcan, and Osiris into Pluto, and mani-
fested them to himself in such wonderfully sublime and
even spiritual forms, seems to have stopped there; and
carried away by his own love of beauty, bewitched by
the glorious forms of his own creation, believed these,
the mere relations of God with mankind, to be themselves
gods; the channels to be the sources. And while the
Egyptian kept in mind the First Cause, undisturbed
by his own ugly representations of its effects or work-
ings, the Greek really believed that all those effects
were in themselves causes,—believed “in Nature, not
the God of Nature.”
Perplexed by his sensuous imagination, that perfect
artist (the Greek) saw Apollo at work driving the cha-
riot of the sun, Jupiter holding the scales of fate, Pluto
judging the dead; while the clumsy philosopher (the
Egyptian), with no imagination at all, and no artistic
hands, but a metaphysical head, saw the First Cause
throughout. When we say that the Egyptian had no
hands, we should rather say, no ideal, for in the mecha-
THE ARTIST AND THE ARTISAN. 89
nical he was unrivalled. He was no “ artist,” but a
first-rate “ artisan.”
He appears to have had no ideal, no poetry, no art;
while the Greeks, overflowing with all three, erecting
their poets into the place of even theologian, teacher,
and prophet, became idolaters of their own creations,
Perhaps the difference between Egyptian, Jewish, and
Greek religion was this, that the Egyptian made the
metaphysician his religious teacher, the Jew chose the
statesman and afterwards the priest to be his, and the
Greek elected the poet and the artist to the office.
Hence the greater preponderance of ethics in the
Jewish religion, which indeed eclipse all theory,even con-
cerning the most interesting subject to man,—a future
life: hence the subtlety of metaphysics in the Egyptian,
which necessitated the inordinate use of symbols to
make it at all intelligible to the people; and having no
talent for idealising the symbolical, no artist mind,
hence the proverbial ugliness of their symbols.
The exquisite perception of beauty and form in the
Greek organization explains the third religion and its
results.
Ethics, Philosophy, and Art appear to have been the
characteristics of the three.
Perhaps we may say that the Greek deified the
agent; the Egyptian saw the “ one,” working artificer-
like, it is true, but always saw him through the agent.
The Greek saw a “god in clouds,” not “heard him
everywhere ;” the Egyptian saw him everywhere, work-
ing through the clouds, the sun, the river. Thus the
Greek made a deity of the sun, the Egyptian made him
only an emblem; which accounts for the sun having
90 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
come forth from the Greek hand the sublimest form of
beauty the world has ever seen; from the Egyptian
hand, a little round O. Had Raphael not deified the
Virgin, he could never have produced the woman-god-
dess, equally divine, as the goddess of purity, with the
Greek Juno (Ludovisi), as the goddess of liberty. The
Egyptian is the old African Protestant.
There is a strong likeness between Osiris, Isis, and
Horus, the triad of Philo, and Plato’s theory of a
Trinity, in which the first was the intelligence working,
the second the matter by which it worked, and the
third Kosmos, beauty or order, the result of the two.
For, according to the Egyptians, Osiris was the intel-
lect at work, forming; Isis, the matter being formed,
and Horus, composition, or the effect of the two.
The Trinity of Orpheus is —
I. Will, or Counsel.
II. Light, or Love.
If. Life, or Life given.
All these theories seem to agree with each other,
and in some measure with the Christian Trinity. Why
should we use the obnoxious word “ borrowed?” What
can be more natural if God inspires us, as He is in all
ages doing, through our reason, our feeling, and our
conscience, than that the Egyptian reason, conscience,
feeling, should have borne a similar fruit to the Greek
and the European Three, modified by the respective
climates it grew in?
Past and Present are words which in Europe we are
fond of usmg; to us they generally present a cheerful
view of things, except when some rabid old Tory comes
and talks about the “golden days of good Queen Bess,”
THE FATHERS OF CIVILISATION. 91
we read the third chapter of Macaulay and joyfully con-
trast our liberty and our luxuries with those of the times
of Charles II. ; we look at our antiquities, the castles of
chivalry, and bless our good angels that we did not live
in the “ good” feudal times. Here the words Past and
Present are above all that you can conceive strange and
painful. You enter an Egyptian tomb of, at the very
lowest computation, 4000 years ago, and you see on the
walls in the imperishable colours of this all-preserving
climate (colours, too, which themselves prove what a
perfection of chemistry these Egyptians had attained),—
you see a nation possessed of almost all our civilisation,
and our philosophy, and I believe most of our art
and science; for much of theirs,—that, for instance, of
quarrying and raising the enormous blocks of their
architecture,—is entirely lost: we have had no inheri-
tance of their mechanical skill, and but little, I sup-
pose, of their chemical, mathematical, and astronomical
science. When you see painted in the rock chambers
of B. c. 3000, all the amusements of what we call the last
refinement of a nation,—the dancing, music, painting of
Paris and London,—you cannot but imagine the begin-
ning of this nation to have been long before our date for
the creation of man; but when you find traces of a reli-
gion so enlightened as the worship of the one God, the
distinct conception of a progression through Eternity,
and a philosophy so deep that all which Solon knew of
legislation, all that Pythagoras and Plato guessed of
ethics and spiritual theories, seems to have been borrowed
from them, and at a time, too (and for long after), when
the Jews seem to have worshipped God the Creator as the
God of the Hebrews, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
92 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Jacob, not the God of the whole world,—one cannot but
compare this Egyptian religion and philosophy with all
others we have known.
As for their habits of daily life, their trades and arts, all
before our eyes in a form which we cannot doubt (no false
historian, no vanity of a biographer, can here exaggerate
or extenuate), they seem to have been on a par with the
civilisation of France and England. You see glass blow-
ing, thousands of years before the young Phoenicians
were said to have discovered it; you see the pen and
inkstand in the tombs of the fourth Dynasty, which can-
not be much less than 3,500 years B. c.; but more,
much more interesting than all, you see a nation so spi-
ritualised that death was to them more interesting than
life; or rather death, as they put it, did not differ from
life; life was so small a fragment of the whole to them,
that the whole became of course of immeasurably more
consequence, not as being different from the part, but
as the axiom which nobody disputes, of the whole being
greater than its part. I have often thought that there
was much more evidence for a future world than there
is for this. or the existence of this, we can only draw
evidence from our perception (which perceptions are
often destroyed or blunted); for the existence of another,
we can draw evidence from our reason, our feeling, our
conscience, all that some short-hand writers include
under the ill-used word Faith, which means, I suppose,
all that is not Perception. But the Egyptians seem to have
gone farther; they seem to have said, we will consider
this life as interesting only in its connection with the
whole of which it is a part. I have often thought how
dull we were not to see that Christ’s life showed us
RISE AND FALL OF NATIONS. 93
this more advanced stage of existence which we call
heaven ; how we have persisted in calling him the “man
of sorrows,” instead of calling him the man who is already
in the state of blessedness, the man who has progressed
and succeeded.
I have left my “ Past” and “ Present,” but it does
not need my words to show what it is to look out from
these tombs, this Past of a spiritual and intellectual life
and see the Present, the savage, sensual, childish life,
Why is there not national like individual progression?
Does it not seem as if the greatest amount of progress
would be secured by the same nation continuing to
carry its own on, and profiting by its own experience ?
It cannot be a law that all nations shall fall after a cer-
tain number of years. God does not work in that sort
of way: they must have broken some law of nature
which has caused them to fall. But are all nations to
sink in that way? As if national soil, like the soil of the
earth, must lie fallow after a certain number of crops.
And will England turn into Picts again, after a certain
number of harvest years, as Egypt has turned into
Arabs? Or will a nation find out at last the laws of
God by which she may make a steady progression ?
However that may be, I really think a traveller
should consider the question, whether it is not less pain-
ful to him to travel in America, where there is no Past,
an ugly and prosperous Present, but such a Future! or
in the East, where there is such a Past, no Present, and,
for a Future, one can only hope for extinction!
For the last hundred miles the cliffs on either side the
Nile have been lined the whole way with rows of tombs
94 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
(chambers in the rock), riddled with caves. The king-
dom of the dead is greater than that of the living.
The evening we left Osyoot, with a splendid wind,
we ran aground several times. The fact was, that the
Modeer or Vice-Governor, who came to look at us, was
so pleased with our boat (and it is indeed the best on the
river, we have seen none at all like it), that he sent his
four carpenters to measure it, which they did with their
hands, and having carefully measured one side measured
the other too: they admired the boat aloud. Now you
know you must not admire any thing among Mahome-
tans, except by a pious ejaculation. You must not say
to a mother, “ What a pretty child!” but you must say,
‘“¢ Mashallah,” or what God wills (comes to pass); you
must not praise the thing, but the Creator. If you ever
say, “ How pretty!” you are desired to bless God ; and if
you don’t, you draw upon the thing the “evil eye.”
This is so touching; I wish it would prevent us from
spoiling children in England. If I take a child in my
arms here, I must say, “‘ In the name of God, the com-
> and if I admire it, I must
say, “I seek refuge with the Lord of the daybreak for
thee.” Now, the carpenters had admired our boat, and
the consequence was, that we ran aground perpetually.
The crew would not go on that night; and the night
we were to have reached Kenneh, it was found impos-
sible to move; the crew took out the little boat, towed
her a little ahead, and then pulled up the dahabieh with
the towing rope. In this way we made about half a
mile, and then it was found impossible to move the boat ;
the crew declared there was an Efreet on board, or
passionate, the merciful ; ’
KENNEH HOSPITALITY. 95
Sheytan (a devil), and stopped. We reached Kenneh
about nine the next morning.
Mr. B. and I rode up to the town directly: at high
Nile you go up by water, but now it is a mile from
the river. The road to this centre of the manufacturing
interest, as Kenneh is, lies up steep banks, where my
donkey-boy held me on, through a water, and over a
ploughed field. We stopped at our Consul’s house; his
two sons stood at the door, and ushered us into a square
mud area, hypethral, the walls two stories high, and at
the top of all a latticed cage, which I watched in vain;
no faces were visible. In this mud well two chairs were
placed for us, and one for my parasol. We gave Mr.
Murray’s letter in Arabic, which the youths pressed to
their foreheads, and they then sat down upon a hencoop.
They were splendidly dressed; and a tall black slave
brought me coffee and Mr. B. pipes. Presently the old
father came in, our Consul, Shekh Hoseyn, in four kaf-
tans (or robes), one over the other,—for the Moslems
dress very warm,—and three turbans; and “ genteel ”
Moslems always wear the cloth outside, and the beauti-
ful silks within, which is very good taste. Our Consul
kissed the letter, asked us to eat bread and salt with
him, repeated * Bracebridge” over some twenty times,
saying Taib (good) at his own pronunciation every
time, made his son write it down in Arabic, and took
our letters, which we took the precaution to enclose
to Mr. Murray. Then came in some turkeys into
the Consul’s drawing room for us to feel and buy, which
we did, and then we rode away, I dying to dine with
him, as he asked us, but we had no time: I never
96 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
wanted to dine out before. We saw a Dervish in the
bazar, with his tall peaked felt cap.
Abbas Pacha had just left Kenneh — he had had 101
guns fired for him— and had come on shore to, visit aSan-
ton’s tomb, and then gone on board again. His steamer,
followed by two others, passed us to day, on its way
back to Cairo. This was all that that Prince of the
Faithful thought it worth while to do among his loyal
people.
I went ashore at night in the most beautiful moon-
light I ever saw, at the village where we stopped, and
peeped into a Santon’s tomb. You know that a Santon
or Welee is an idiot, and is sacred, because his spirit is
in heaven, while his body only is with us. Heaven
keeps it there because he is a favourite. A saint may
commit all sorts of enormities, which are but the “ ab-
straction of his soul from worldly things,” which is
“ absorbed in devotion, while his body is left without
control.”
On Sunday, the 29th, we went ashore on the island of
Metareh, where St. Pachomius had another monastery.
Here the Christian spirit of zeal and devotion was
nurtured. Now nothing seemed to grow there but a
little Indian corn. If the inhabitants were Copts, as
most of the people are about there, they had not
even a church— worse than the Mahometans. The
crew carried Mr. B. ashore on their backs, and us
on their joined hands; we walked some distance,
but could not even make the people understand that
we wanted to see the ruins of a Deir (monastery).
And yet here Christianity grew up, nursed by the milk
KARNAK BY NIGHT. 97
of these institutions till she was old enough to live on
strong meat. If St. Pachomius can look on his
island now, is he sorry ?
The people were ploughing with the rudest possible
plough ; but the corn comes up here if you only scratch
the earth.
In the morning there was Khamsin; and we saw a
sandbow. It was on a level with the sun, and not
opposite it, as in rainbows, but about 30° from it; not
the shape of a rainbow, but of a nebula; all the colours
perfect. It had a most singular effect; it was about
midday, so that the top of the pillar of sand must have
reached to that height.
El Karnak, the last night of 1849.
Yes, my dear people, I think your imagination has
hardly followed me through the place where I have
been spending the last night of the old year. Did you
listen to it passing away and think of me? Where do you
think I heard it sigh out its soul? In the dim unearthly
colonnades of Karnak, which stood and watched it, motion-
less, silent, and awful, as they had done for thousands of
years, to whom, no doubt, thousands of years seem but
asaday. Would that I could call up Karnak before
your eyes for one moment, but it “is beyond expression.”
No one could trust themselves with their imagination
alone there. Gigantic shadows spring up on every side;
‘«‘the dead are stirred up for thee to meet thee at thy
coming, even the chief ones of the earth,” and they look
out from among the columns, and you feel as terror-
a
a5 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
stricken to be there, miserable intruder, among these
mighty dead, ‘as if you had awakened the angel of the
Last Day. Imagine six columns on either side, of which
the last is almost out of sight, though they stand very
near each other, while you look up to the stars from be-
tween them, as you would from a deep narrow gorge in
the Alps, and then, passing through 160 of these, ranged
in eight aisles on either side, the end choked up with
heaps of rubbish, this rubbish consisting of stones twenty
and thirty feet long, so that it looks like a mountain fallen
to ruin, not a temple. How art thou fallen from heaven,
oh Lucifer, son of the morning! He did exalt his throne
above the stars of God; for I looked through a colon-
nade, and under the roof saw the deep blue sky and a
star shining brightly ; and as you look upon these mighty
ruins, a voice seems continually saying to you, And
seekest thou good things for thyself? Seek them not, for
is there ought like this ruin? One wonders that people
come back from Egypt and live lives as they did before.
Yet Karnak by starlight is not to me painful: we
had seen Luxor in the sunshine. I had expected the
temples of Thebes to be solemn, but Luxor was fearful.
Rows of painted columns, propylea, colossi, and—built
up in the Holy Place—mud (not even huts, but) unroofed
enclosures, chalked out, or rather mudded out, for fami-
lies, with their one oven and broken earthen vessel ; and,
squatting on the ground among the painted hieroglyphs,
creatures with large nose-rings, the children’s eyes
streaming with matter, on which the mothers let the flies
rest, because “it is good for them,” without an attempt
to drive them off; tattooed men on the ground, with
camels feeding out of their laps, and nothing but a few
LUXOR BY DAY. 99
Doura stalks strewed for their beds ;—I cannot describe
the impression it makes: it is as if one were steering
towards the sun, the glorious Eastern sun, arrayed in
its golden clouds, and were to find, on nearing it, that it
were full—instead of glorified beings as one expected—
of a race of dwarf cannibals, stained with blood and
dressed in bones. The contrast could not be more ter-
rible than the savages of the Present in the temples of
the Past at Luxor.
But Karnak by starlight is peace; not peace and joy,
but peace,—solemn peace. You feel like spirits revisit-
ing your former world, strange and fallen to ruins; but
it has done its work, and there is nothing agonizing about
it. Egypt should have no sun and no day, no human
beings. It should always be seen in solitude and by
night ; one eternal night it should have, like Job’s, and
let the stars of the twilight be its lamps; neither let it
see the dawning of the day.
New Year's Day, 1850.
I OPEN my eyes, my dear people, to wish you a happy
New Year, and my eyes look upon the obelisk and
colonnade of Luxor, under which we lie at anchor, with
the sun rising behind them. I have written in haste,
because ‘we shall leave Thebes to-day, if the wind be
fair. Wearrived here yesterday; as soon as we had
passed the cliff which hid the Valley of the Tombs of
the Kings, I was on the roof of the cabin, among the
hens. The Nile was too low to see much, but what I
did see!
H 2
100 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
~ IT could not believe that we should ever see Thebes ;
I was afraid to die, before our eyes should have lighted
upon her. I had a dream the night before, that we had
been obliged to turn back before we arrived. I walked
on the shore the evening before in a grove of palm-
trees, cactuses, vines, and cotton plants, and saw the
glorious sun set behind the hill which covers the Lybian
suburb; the next day we were to see Thebes, if we
lived. :
And how she opened before us! The wind deadened
to a perfect calm, the river spread out to a perfect lake ;
not, as before, with a current, but a glassy breathless
lake; the Arabian hills retreated and hid themselves, as
if in terror to approach the bed of death. Karnak and
Luxor came in sight on the eastern bank; the heads of
the Colossi and the Rameseum appeared out of the
Lybian suburbs ; there lay the imperial corpse of the
spirit which had gone out and animated the world.
Hail to thee, poor glorious Egypt! Let our tears and our
silence, and our reverence, be thine; for there are no
words to celebrate such a death as this. There she lay,
in the stillness of death, — even the sun had veiled his
light,—and she looked the metropolis of the world, as
if herself ready to be ferried over that glassy lake to the
Hades beyond. Nothing can equal the first impression
of seeing Thebes. We landed, and ran up to Luxor, to
see her temple before dark, her one obelisk still standing
fresh, and unbroken as the day it was cut, before the Pro-
pyleum, at the gate of which sit two colossi of Rameses
II.; but alas! the faces gone, the figures covered up to
the elbows. A third colossus, a little farther, sat at the
corner of the Propylzeum ; its crown now only marks the
RIDE IN THE DESERT BY NIGHT. 101.
spot, projecting above the-sand. There stands the
colonnade of the seven lotus columns, immeasurably vast,
against the sky. The Holy Places are all blocked up,
choked with huts and sand; but the cartouches, where
you can see them, are all so fresh and sharp, that even
our inexperienced eyes could read the legends of the
Kings. :
In the evening we went to Karnak; the night was
dark, the moon had betrayed us. No one can describe
the desolation of riding over the desert by night; at
home one’s imagination used to rest in a smooth desert :
this was all, as usual, tumbled about; but we could
see little. All I know is, that one man held me on
behind, while another led my ass; and the blasts of
sand in your face, though there was no breath of wind,
were the only thing stirring beside ourselves, and the
howling of the wild dogs all round us, which sounded
like the spirits of the old Efreet Egyptians let loose.
(With regard to danger, I must assure an anxious pub-
lic that that was not the question, we had two mounted
men with us, besides Paolo, and the numbers of running
men I could not tell in the dark, except by their white
staves; I only speak of the effect on the imagination.)
In this silent procession we followed one the other for
about a mile and a half, till we passed under palm trees ;
and a little farther, a gleam of moonlight shining out,
we saw on either side a ghostly avenue, gigantic sitting
Sphynxes, with their faces toward us, nearly as close
as they could be placed, but most of them headless,
limbless, or overthrown. The intellectual and physical
force (there typified) lay in the dust. Its body, that is,
lay there, ~~ its spirit had vivified the world. This
H 3
102 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
dromos used to extend all the way from Karnak to
Luxor. |
Then we stood under the Pylon, whose top reaches
heaven; then passed between the propyla into the vast
atrium. One single column still stood there, not wring-
ing its hands, but raising its unearthly head among the
stars, and watching calmly and ceaselessly the course,
not of years, but of periods. Then, climbing over hills and
valleys made of ruins, you enter the immeasurable forest
of columns; one, which had fallen across its aisle, drag-
ging with it the huge stone which bridged it to the next,
was the first thing which gave me the least idea of its
vastness. It was too sublime in its ruin for one to dare
to give pity. Opposite it, two, which had fallen together,
blocked up the space: they cannot, you know, fall to
the ground; their weight makes no impression on their
brother giants, but the shaken giant leans against his
fellow, and has probably leaned there for two thousand
years, and will for many more. But there is no help-
lessness in their fali, they still stand immovable; what
could have produced it is the only question (still unan-
swered). Wecame out at the other end where stood
the double pair of obelisks, one only left of each.
Around on the horizon you see the distant pyle, the
“gates” of the “ hundred-gated ” Thebes, which had,
you know, no wall. Mr. B. and I mounted the towers
of the Propyleaum and looked abroad over the world,
and the temple; it was too dark to see much, but the
vast stones which formed it. Every column, every
stone, is loaded with sculpture; but it hardly attracts
your eye in the overwhelming effect of the whole.
Roberts’s Karnak gives you not the slightest idea of it,
THE SINGLE COLUMN. 103°
and you know these things are buried almost up to the
neck.
At Luxor stands the widowed obelisk at the Propy-
leum gate; its fellow, which stood over against it, has
been carried off, you know by whom: this one is ours,
but whether from feeling, or want of feeling, I cannot
say, we have left it in its own rightful home.
Abbas Pacha was here last week, and left the place
as he found it; he was below all sentiment, either for
the glories of his temples, or the miseries of his people.
Two women sat grinding at the mill, when we were
there, under the lotus capital ; a calf was rubbing itself
against the painted hieroglyphs; other enemies had
been there — the Ptolemies had scratched out the name
of the King in every one of the cartouches, leaving the
rest, and the Persians had been spoiling the temple,
painting their red legs over it. I stood on the ground,
which is about half way above the elbow of the sitting
Rameses, and could hardly reach the shoulder. From
the Luxor shore you can see the Pair,—the two “ Wit-
nesses ”—sitting like spectres in the Lybian suburb,
where we have not touched yet.
We are just off—this New Year’s morning—off for
the Cataracts.
Yours, dearest people, ever in this world or the next.
We left Thebes at twelve yesterday, after having
stayed there a night. The view of the whole temple of
Luxor from the poop, as you sail away, is beautiful,—the
plan of it being less disturbed by the mud huts. What
the disturbance of these is, morally and physically, no
one can describe. It is not the bodily misery which
n 4
104 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
shocks one: I have seen greater than that in London.
On the contrary, the huts in Luxor temple were each
full of calves, turkeys, hens, goats, camels, together
with their men and women; the corn which the women
were grinding was excellent, the breads in the oven
were of the whitest, finest flour, and as well baked as
yours. If it had been physical misery, one could have
borne it,—it was the moral degradation, the volun-
tary debasement, which was so hideous. ‘To see those
columns lifting their heads to the sky even now, when
half buried, and carrying one’s eyes naturally on high,
and to see human beings voluntarily losing their prero-
gative as men of the “os sublime,” choosing darkness
rather than light, building their doorways four feet high
or less, choosing to crawl upon the ground like reptiles,
to live in a place where they could not stand upright,
when the temple roof above their heads was all they
needed! In a cold climate, one could have understood it ;
but here it seemed as if they did it on purpose to be as
like beasts as they could. There was no reason—there
was plenty of room, but they chose to live all in a little
yard (not even a hut to each family); pigsties and cow-
houses were palaces to these. If they had been deserted,
you would have thought it was the dwelling-place of
some wild animal. I never before saw any of my fellow
creatures degraded (thieves, bad men, women and
children), but I longed to have intercourse with them,
to stay with them, and make plans for them; but here,
one gathered one’s clothes about one, and felt as if one
had trodden in a nest of reptiles. It sounds horrible to
say so; but one cannot conceive how even Moses
could set about his work of regeneration here—because
THE FLESH-POTS OF EGYPT. 105
they have plenty. Where would you find, in England,
the people who had milk every day, who eat turkey and
chicken? But these seem voluntarily to have abdicated
their privilege as men. The thieves in London, the
ragged scholars in Edinburgh, are still human _be-
ings; but the horror which the misery of Egypt excites
cannot be expressed, for these are beasts. What can
be the ideas of virtue, or decency, in a people who
choose to live in this way? You never see an emaciated
person in Upper Egypt, you always see them healthy
and fat, their bones well covered, and no signs of disease
but in the eyes. The effect is all the more dreadful.
And Mehemet Ali was called an enlightened ruler! I
assure you no one can express the “ baseness” of this
kingdom — ‘his land of slaves. A year ago they were
all deprived of arms. No wonder.
The colourlessness of Egypt strikes one more than
anything. In Italy there are crimson lights and purple
shadows; here there is nothing in earth, air, sky, or
water, which one can compare in any way with Europe ;
but with regard to absence of colour, it is striking. It
was probably on account of this that the ancient Egyp-
tians painted so much: and one does not feel the
colouring of the sculptures barbaric, but necessary ;
for everything, ground, rivers, houses, men, camels,
asses, palm trees, are the same dusty-brown “sad-
colour.” The houses in Luxor are built of jars, the
interstices filled with mud.
We did not make much way on New Year’s Day;
but L was so tired that I slept all the way, though I had
only run up to Luxor before breakfast. But Thebes
takes so much out of one. I fell fast asleep on my ass,
106 | LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
riding home a mile and a half from Karnak. It was
no use trying to think or to feel anything, I only
managed to stick on.
We looked Luxor thoroughly over twice, and climbed
up to peep into the dark sanctuary. The propyleum
is now a guard-house. The nuisance of these places is
that one must not leave one’s party a moment. On the
towers of the propyleum are the most spirited chariot
and horses, and king driving them to battle, that Homer
ever sang. The king standing, as usual, upright in his
chariot—(no charioteer), the reins tied round his waist,
drawing his own bow—a noble fellow |
I must now explain that I spell, whenever I can
remember it, in accordance with British prejudices; but
that, as El-Uksor only means “the palaces,” it is always
called so here, not Luxor; as Karnak is “ El-Karnak,”
and Kenneh “Gheneh;” which occasions a pleasing
variety in my orthography not always intelligible.
Our steersman, Absheer, who had been absent at
Coptos, on leave to see his friends (he is a freed slave),
returned to-day with a sheep round his neck,—a black
hairy sheep,—which he brought us as a present.
The ‘two witnesses,” the Pair at Thebes, sit with
their faces to the river. There is something uncanny
about these two portraits of Amunoph III., as about the
two of Rameses II. at the propyleum gate of Luxor
Temple. It is a truly Egyptian idea, and makes one
creep as if one saw one’s own self sitting opposite to one.
They must have looked still more curious when perfect
and fresh; but even in their present disfigured state,
one cannot get accustomed to the repetition.
Egypt is like Shakspeare: we discover here whence
EGYPTIAN HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 107
come familiar household words, of which we knew not
before the origin; just as one opens Hamlet and says,
‘* I did not know it came from there.”
‘It would not, weigh a feather in the balance.” On
the Egyptian walls we see the literal original of this :—
the good actions of men are weighed (in the funeral
scenes) against a feather in the other balance. This
feather is the ostrich feather, the symbol of Truth. No
doubt it at first meant a record. Alas! it has come to
mean lightness. So, when one sees the great wings over
the doors of all the temples (the winged disk), one is no
longer perplexed by our singular symbol of the Saviour,
—a winged sun, the Sun of Righteousness, arising with
healing on his wings.
I could not (between ourselves) get up a single feeling
of enthusiasm about the Pair, nor, indeed, about the Py-
ramids, from first to last: bigness does not make great-
ness. The difference between Thebes and the pyramids
seems to me the same as between Milton and Dante’s
imaginations. When Dante wants to impress you, he
gives an all-material measurement of the size of his
spirit. His head is 72 by 35 by 19; and what idea
of sublimity does that give you? So it is with the
pyramids ; there is nothing but size about them to make
their ugliness great. Milton and Thebes knew better.
But I dare say the impression will be quite different on
a nearer acquaintance with the pyramids. Recording as
they do, the most hideous oppression in the world; one
of them having cost its builder his house and empire ;
the ashes of two never having been laid in their own
pyramids, for fear of the people;—with nothing but
horrible associations, it is no wonder that the first
108 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
impression of them should be nothing but repulsive —
not even interesting.
Hermonthis, Jan. 2. 1850.
WE went on shore this morning, while the moon was
yet up, to see the Temple of Hermonthis. Before we
came back to breakfast at half-past eight it was quite
hot walking. The last few days have made such a
difference in the climate that we dine on deck ; even I
hardly find the mornings cold, who the first month from
Cairo could hardly keep myself alive till ten o’clock ;
and the days are really hot.
There is nothing very striking about the Temple: it
was chiefly remarkable as the place where the goddess
Reto gave birth to the god Horpire. The sacred place,
2. ¢ the adytum, or sekos, was built over this; and ereat
torches of palm leaves were lighted inside to show us the
sculptures in the alto relievos, with which the sanctuary
and an inner chamber for the oracle were covered, repre-
senting the birth and nurture of this deity. But it was to
me very interesting. ‘The Triad of Hermonthis is Man-
doo, Reto, and Horpire. Mandoo is sometimes called the
Sun; but he appears rather to have been the metaphysical
God of War, differing from the physical God of War the
mere destroyer, or Mars, who occupies a very low place
in the EgyptianTheology,—but representing the avenging
principle, the Retribution of God, the divine attribute
which attaches to evil its consequences. The name of
Kte-to signifies the “Sun and the World;” and in these
TRIAD OF REPENTANCE. 109
Triads the third member is’ always the result of the
action of the first upon the second, generally the action
of intellect upon matter, producing some created being.
Horpire signifies literally ‘“‘ Horus, the Sun;” and seems
to have been the same as Harpocrates, or Horus, the
symbol of the resuscitated soul, of youth, of the new
birth, united with the idea of the Sun. The coincidence
with our Sun of Righteousness, our type of Resurrection,
is striking; and the birth of this god upon earth being
produced by the retributive principle acting upon Earth
(Reto), is also curious. People laugh, when they look at
this sanctuary erected over the birth-place of the child-
god, but why? The idea of the Triad may have been one
purely metaphysical ; viz. that the suffering attached to
sin upon earth, when united with light, produces the
new birth, the spring time of life, repentance. Or it
may have been a physical event, like the birth of our
Saviour.
Whichever it be, it 1s a most interesting place
(though there is nothing beautiful about it); and made
still more interesting by the succession of ruins, ending
with a Christian Church, which strew the ground. But
the desire of the mind to find some law, to learn some
reason, for this rise and fall of nations, is almost painful
in Egypt. We take little pains in Europe to seek for
it, besides a few moral reflections or pious ejaculations
which the fate of nations calls forth from us; a few
«How wonderfuls,” in which the mind rests, when it is
oppressed by the feeling of seeking a law and finding
none; a few references to the prophecies. Ezekiel and
Isaiah do not seem to have done the same. When shall
we, instead of quoting, imitate them as far as we can?
110 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
When shall we be able to say such governments had
such consequences in Egypt, Assyria, Persia ?—such
governments twill have such consequences in England,
France, Germany? There never was such an oppor-
tunity as here, where the smallest details are laid open
to us, for studying history in the future.
I should fancy that the ideas about a future state of
any nation would very much arise from the natural
features of its territory. The idea of a sleep after
death, an intermediate state of repose, could only arise,
for instance, in a northern nation. The expanse of
snow, the sleep of seeds and of nature, naturally suggests
the idea of repose before the Resurrection. In Egypt
there is nothing to give this feeling, and accordingly we
find no sleep after death in their Theology. For the
lifelessness of the desert does not give the idea of sleep
or peace, but of the burning, forced, tension of despair,
-- not the silence of the grave, but the silence of suilen
endurance.
The valley of the Nile, on the other hand, gave the
idea of the Elysian fields, and all between was the pro-
gress or retrogression of one into the other; so that the
ideas of suffering versus enjoyment, and both progress-
ive, neither a fixed state, but alterable, came naturally
to the people of a country where too is no autumn or
winter, where the leaves never fall and the frost never
comes.
If you ask me whether the desert has not greatness to
redeem it. Yes, it is great; at least, it has one of the
elements of greatness—oneness, but not the most essen-
tial, 7. ¢. to be without change, without unrest. It gives
one the idea of being perpetually restless, of Milton’s
‘*FAR OFF SYENE.” 111
Satan, turning ceaselessly from side to side in his lake
of fire. | |
In the sanctuary is now the prison of the Pachas.
Erment (Hermonthis), not having paid its tribute a
little time ago, the village was razed to the ground, and
the inhabitants had their ears and noses cut off. A few
columns are left, nothing else. The place is now full
of soldiers. Before the revolt Ibrahim Pasha had taken
away all their lands, no wonder they would neither
work nor pay tribute.
That disgusting Cleopatra had been at work on the
temple, making herself, Julius Cesar, and their son,
into the triad of the place. The columns of the pronaos
still stand before the sekos; the reservoir lined with
stone for ablution is near ; and just beyond, the columns
of beautiful Egyptian granite, broken and overthrown,
of a Christian Church, built at a time when the esta-
blished religion here was Christian. Many of the columns
have been carried away, and are now part of S. Paolo
in Rome. A Moslem burying-ground is close to the
temple portico, and a pit with a mummy goat in it a
little further on. Egyptian, Roman, Christian, Mos-
lem, what is the law of their succession ? *
“Far off Syene,” Twelfth Night, 1850.
HERE we are, my dearly beloved mother, at the island
which was the birth-place and throne of dynasties; to-
morrow we go up the Cataracts, and in the evening kiss
the shores of Phils, and then Nubia, no longer Egypt, is
to be our home. We have won the cup; we are to go
112 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
up to the Second Cataract, to see Ipsamboul and the
Ethiopian Kings. It was a chance, but we have been
successful. We sailed in this morning to Syene; sent
for the Rais of the Cataracts. At first he pronounced
the boat too large to go up; it was a cruel blow, but he
was only making difficulties ; and to-morrow, at dawn of
day, with another English boat, we are to make the
ascent. The wind is fair, the Nile not low, and all is
favourable. Now, give us your blessing on our journey,
dear mother. We have had a splendid sail of five days
from Thebes, which we left on New Year’s Day, and
arrived here (without stopping anywhere, but half an
hour at the Temple of Hermonthis, and another half
hour at the quarries of Hagar Silsilis), with the hottest
weather all the way, at twelve o’clock. to day. We
came dancing in with a merry breeze; and whether it
was, that to see waves on that solemn old Nile is as un-
natural as it would be to see the colossi dance, or whe-
ther it was that so much depends on the mood of mind,
I was not at all so much struck with Syene as I ex-
pected. The boundary between Egypt and Nubia is
well defined; the Nile closes up; the country alters all
at onag to black granite, sticking out of the river in a
hundred little islands, hemming it in with cliffs on both
sides, striped with sand-drifts, but projecting out of
them the blacker and the more frowning.
Do you remember the island and burying-place of the
McNabs, and the river running into Loch Tay? It is
exactly like that, with every feature magnified to a
gigantic size; every stone a rock; the island of the
McNabs Elephantina, on which the palms grow very
like firs. We anchored at Syene, and while Paolo went
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. 118
up to the Governor to see if there were any letters for
us, rowed over to Elephantina, and landed. Not one
stone remains there upon another: yes, there is the bit
of a gateway, a quay, and a hideous Syenite statue;
otherwise it is one mountain of broken pottery, fragments
of red granite, sand, and’ mounds; there is not an inch
of level walking. Troops of South Sea savages received
us at the landing-place, running away when we looked
at them, and then running back to look at us, like a
troop of jackals, with loud yells, which continued all the
while we were there. The island looks as if it were
a world turned upside down, and then stirred up, and
that was the scum which had come to the surface. It
was such a world as might have been turned out of the
ealdron of Macbeth’s Weird Sisters. Iam glad to have
been there, but hope never to see Elephantina again.
It is impossible for any one to come away, except with
an impression of horror; there is nothing on which one
can rest for a moment. It was as if a devil had been
there, heaving underneath, upturning, tossing, and
tumbling it till everything was in atoms and confusion.
The yells of those children I never shall forget, as they
threw up clouds of dust, not shiny as savages ought to be,
but their black skins all dim and grimed with sand, like
dusty tables, their dirty hair plaited in rats’ tails, close to
their heads, naked, all but a head veil. I heard some
stones fall into the river, and hoped it was they, and
that that debased life had finished; they were not thin
or starved. I gave them all the pins I had; it was all
one could do for them. The very granite rocks looked
all grown old, and were not sharp, but rounded into
huge boulders, of fantastic shapes, as if they, too, were
I
114 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
worn away, and ruined, and waiting for death — huge
granite forms ground away like mortar. And here
was the Elephantina which sent forth the fifth dynasty,
more than three thousand years before Christ, which
ruled when Meeris Apappus was turning the Nile into the
Faioum —a work the world has not seen the like of,
turning a desert and a marsh into the garden of the
world; atime of the highest art and science, when writ-
ing had already taken the place of mere hieroglyphs;
when Ethiopia, instead of being, as now, a byeword for
slaves, was sending out civilised kings (instead of castor
oil) to rule other parts of the world. And now to look
at Elephantina, and see her, not peacefully asleep, but
the tumbled lair of a horde of savages. Nothing one
reads of the South Sea Islanders is so bad as what we
see here. We crossed over to the other shore, where
we saw, on a granite rock, the cartouche of a Pharaoh,
to show the place where he had been cutting hewn blocks
for his temple. It was Amunoph III.’s cartouche of the
eighteenth dynasty, the Augustan age of Egypt, and
the marks of the tools, and the wedges, by which they
hewed out the huge granite blocks, were still on the
rock, A boat — such a boat as a South Sea canni-
bal would not have put together, so rude and leaky,—
with an old white-bearded black Charon, and a half
naked woman carrying dust on her head, put to shore.
Four Ethiopian women, perfectly black, were washing
in the river, dancing on the clothes like imps, not with
movements like human creatures. We returned to the
boat, and saw there the Kings of the East, the three
Magi, sitting on our divan, talking to Paolo, with each
an arm passed round his neck, They were the Shekhs
TWELFTH NIGHT VISIT. 115
of the Cataract, or, as he introduced them, “ The Great
Father is dead ; the two bigs are brothers ;” 4. e. the two
eldest, «I know them, ours mans, since so high.” The
two “bigs” startled us at first, and crushed our hopes
about the boat, but they soon came to, and promised to
take us up the Cataracts, and on to the Second and back,
without scathe (as the pilot of Egypt does not know any
further than this). This matter off our minds, we con-
sidered our great anxiety over, and our Twelfth Day
most successful. (I have just bought some ostrich eggs
for Twelfth Night.)
A beautiful little ape came on board, not like our
mangy Zoological apes, but with a green head, a back
of a chaste dove colour, and a long yellow silky bib under
his chin, and put his little paws on our knees; he looked
so clean and so clever, and when I gave him one of my
‘* paternal aunts” (Arabice for date), he smelt the Euro-
pean glove, and satisfied his curiosity before his appetites.
The followers of the Three Kings all sate round
them in a circle on the ground: they are to manage
our boat entirely to-morrow; our crew does nothing,
not knowing the rapids.
Before dark we went out to see Asouan (Syene) ;
traders from Darfur were passing through with skins
and slaves, and stopping for the night. The skins were
heaped up under the palms, and so were the slaves,
most of them girls of about ten or fifteen, with beautiful
little hands, making ready measures of meal, kneading
it, and making cakes on the hearth, ¢. ¢., on an iron plate
upon the smallest bit of fire on the ground: they took
hardly any notice of us; they were sitting on their heels,
some of them had three cuts on each cheek. The
re Qe
116 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Ethiopian slaves are sold by their parents willingly
for a couple of handkerchiefs, or a little box, and
are often exposed and picked up. We passed a boat full
yesterday, crammed together, all women, half naked.
The Abyssinian slaves are stolen by horsemen ; they
were quite black and very small: the washing imps on
the shore were four of them. As we came back after
dark, they were sitting round their fire for the night;
they came out to beg of us, and, in the dusk, looked like
skulls, with their white teeth; they set up a horrid laugh
when we gave them nothing: our guide poked one
with his stick, when it was sitting down, as if it were a
frog. We walked on through Syene: interminable
mounds, as they seemed to us; its size must have been
enormous, and nothing, not even a palm-tree now; a
village smaller and more scattered than any ever we
have seen; not even a goat, or anything that gives milk ;
the only living things we saw here were two camels,
belonging to the traders from Darfoor, and among the
tombs, a bayadére, finely dressed: the most painful look~
ing creature of all. That the only living thing now
here, beside those poor slaves, should be a thing of
vice! Of the old Egyptian and Roman buildings of this
great capital, nothing but a few granite columns here
and there, and mounds behind mounds, a perfect desert
of them. Then we climbed up to the old Saracenic wall ;
another wilderness of mounds lay beyond the Saracenic
city, and at the top a ruin, which, by its pillars, had
been a heathen temple, then a Christian church, then a
Mahometan mosque, then a ruin. We peeped through a
gap in the wall, and on the other side, whata scene! A
vast Mahometan burying-ground, deserted these thou-
MAHOMETAN BURYING-GROUND. 117
sand years, and, indeed, there is nothing now to be
buried there, and seeming to extend far into the Desert:
it is called the Valley of Martyrs. We had already
passed through one, where the graves were only three
or four fragments of granite, heaped together. Then
rocks and mounds, and black stones tumbled together
down to the Nile, an “ universe of death,” not even the
usual repose for the eye on the river bank,—but the
desolate islets of the Cataracts closing it in. It was a
place where a ghoule could not have lived. ‘ Among
the tombs” receives, for the first time, here a horrible
meaning. A ghost would have died terror-struck here
ina week. The stars seemed to refuse to give their
light, and it was like looking over the edge of the world.
It is useless to try to describe these things, for Euro-
pean language has no words for them. How should it,
when there is no such thing in Europe. All other
nature raises one’s thoughts to heaven; this sends them
to hell: it makes one think of a devil (not of God),
who has been following his ways out, turning up every-
thing till he has made it to his own destructive fancy.
Oh! if this is hell we have seen (I am sure there can be
no worse), it is a perfect one, and enough to deter us,
if fear could ever do so, from sin.
We came back, through a wilderness of stones and
sand, to the river, where the few poor creatures who
inhabit Syene seemed to have congregated in boats, as
shunning the land.
Is the earth worn out, that she can no longer bear
man? this earth, which has nourished, after a dynasty
of her own (the Elephantine, in B. c. 3074), the Pha-
raohs, the Persians, the Greeks, Romans, Saracens,
r3
118 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
whose memorials strew the rocks, though not one of
them is standing? I saw, on Elephantina, broken pot-
tery with Greek inscriptions, a Ptolemaic quay made
of Pharaonic blocks, besides its more legitimate off-
spring. Is the earth sick, that she can no longer bear
any but the distorted monsters she has now?
To-morrow we shall see “‘ Him who sleeps in Philo,”
and that will cure all. The gods of Elephantine are
Neph, “the Spirit of God that moves upon the waters,”
Sate, and Anouke. Where is Neph, that he has so
deserted his charge? He, the Spirit who, when the
earth was without form and void, called shape out of
chaos; how curious and confounding it is, that there, in
his very sanctuary, in his own island, chaos should
have come again in its most astounding, hideous form-
lessness! Oh, Neph! why hast thou forsaken them?
Is his spirit there, sitting among the ruins of his own
island? Is he a fallen angel now, whose rebellion
has been punished by the ruin of that which his hand
had made? Has he dragged down his own creation in
his fall? or what is the reason of this horrible destruc-
tion? By the ruins of Elephantina I could have sat
down to-day and cried, when I thought on the wheel
broken, lying among its own pottery, the potter pros-
trate. Poor fallen Neph, will he rise again ?
The similarity to our traditions of the Creator is most
striking. In Philo: he appears in the form of a potter !
with the wheel, making a figure of Osiris (the primitive
soul), with this inscription, “ Neph, who forms on his
wheel the divine limbs (i. e. the soul) of Osiris, who is
enthroned in the Great Hall of Life.” He is called, too,
“Him who has made the sun and moon to revolve un-
THE CATARACTS. 119
der the heaven and above the world, and who has made
the world and all things in it.” He was worshipped in
Elephantina as the “ Lord of the Inundations ” (whence
the ruins of his temple have been just removed to make
the Governor of Asouan a house), and the boat or ark
is his, — a trace of the old Arkite worship, and evidently
connected (for he is “ as without beginning, so without
end,” therefore it cannot be a material symbol) with the
“ Spirit ” brooding over the waters, making them fruit-
ful, and “ gathering together the waters, and making the
earth bring forth.” The name of Sate means ‘the
ray,’ as Neph does “the Spirit : ”—perhaps some idea of
Laght —- of the Spirit producing, or acting upon, Light,
and both producing Anouke (or Vesta), the hidden fire,
the animating soul.
But I must put up, my friends, for I am weary, and
to-morrow is a great day,—- the day we touch the Holy
Isle, the day of Philos. Philce and Iona! What a poem,
for him who could imagine it! What a year (for me)
which sees Philce and Iona, the Northern and the South-
ern worship, both! Yet it is the same God under the
different forms.
And I am, whether at Philce or at Iona, yours, and
ever yours, my people.
Nubia, Jan. 7. 1850.
WELL, my dears, the great feat is over; the British
flag floated proudly up the last steps of the staircase at
half-past one to-day, and found herself in a position
where she never had been before; and we came up stairs
14
120 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
to another world. It was a grand sight. I would not
have missed it for the world. Every bedy at Cairo dis-
suaded us from it; but let nobody come to Egypt with-
out going up the Cataracts: they have never seen such
an exhibition before, and never will again. It is quite
as interesting, in its way, as Karnak in another, or Cairo
in a third, as the most wonderful development of in-
stinct I suppose the world contains. I thought it quite
beautiful ; and tears fill one’s eyes when one sees the pro-
vision of God for the preservation of life always an-
swering exactly to its need inevery country. In Europe,
the intellectual developments are quite enough to pre-
serve life, and accordingly we see instinct undeveloped.
In America, the wild Indian tracks his way through a
trackless forest, by an instinct to us quite as miraculous
as clairvoyance, or anything we are pleased to call im-
possible; and in Egypt the wild Nubian rides on the
wave, and treads upon the foam, quite as securely as the
Indian in his forest. The strife of man with the ele~
ments,—-wind, earth, and water,—- and his overcoming,
was as grand an epic poem as any I ever read in Homer or
Milton. I should have expected to find the Triad of the
Cataracts, Physical Skill, Strength, and Rapidity. Here
the poor Arab is in his element, and, instead of the sen-
sual, debased creature you see him in his idle moments,
he seems the god of the winds and the whirlpool. I
think riding up the Cataract was one of the most delight-
ful moments of my life. The inward excitement of
European life is so great, its outward excitement so
small, that a violent external call upon our senses and
instincts to us is luxury and peace: the sense of power
over the elements, of danger successfully overcome, is
ARABS IN THEIR GLORY. 121
(to us, at least, the excitement of whose inner life has
been so great) one of the keenest delights and reliefs,
We were four hours and a half surmounting the Cata-
racts. We left Syene at nine o’clock this morning,
with all the “ bigs ” on board, viz. the Shekhs, consisting
of the * Great Father,” his four sons, their children, and
their grand-children, four generations, and passed
through “ the opening” (which the name means), 7. e. the
rocky portals of Nubia, formed by Elephantine and
Asouan. The island of Sehayl, the ancient Saté, where
was worshipped the ** Ray ” of the Elephantine Triad in
gorgeous temples and chapels, is now one heap of stones.
We wound our way, with a fair wind, to the foot of the
First Rapid, about a mile from Asouan. Here were men
posted on every rock to receive us, and we threw out
our first rope. ‘To me it would be the most interesting
thing to go through every Rapid with you; to de-
scribe the unerring aim with which the rope was thrown
from the poop,—the man on the rock standing in the at-
titude of an Apollo Belvidere, watching the direction of
the arrow, to receive it, his keen eye glistening with the
eagerness of his watch. When a sunken rock came in
view, twenty eyes had already seen it, and a dozen men
had thrown themselves out upon it, and were pushing
the boat off by main force, their feet only against the
rock, their backs against the boat; or had plunged upon
an opposite bank, and, throwing themselves upon their
backs, were pulling the rope towards them. On they
sprang, from rock to rock, like chamois: I did not see
~ one false step upon the shiny, slippery Syenite; one ex-
pected them to be dashed to pieces every moment. So
the boat surmounted the First Rapid. Our rope was not
122 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
strong enough, and if it had not been for a sudden puff of
wind, which came exactly at the right moment, we
should. not have got through with our large boat; so
Mr. B. said. At the Second Rapid more men came: the
divers sprang into the water, not head foremost, as ours
do, but sitting, on their feet (for you must remember
there is no question of sand banks here, but all hard
granite), with the rope in their mouths, or under one
shoulder and over the other, crossed a current which
would have carried down an alligator, swam to a
rock, made fast the rope round the rock, sitting on the
noose, and holding it with their feet, while they kept
their hands ready for action. Then ali hands on board
the boat pulled at the rope; and so we got through the
Second, Third, and Fourth Rapids, which are short and
straight, and the angle of pulling does not require alter-
ing. At dawn of day in the morning our decks had
been cleared for action; everything carried into the
cabins which could be moved, to leave space for the men ;
aud the pantry, larder, still-room, and scullery piled up
in a heap on deck, on which we were made to stand.
Between every rapid comes a dead mill-pond, where old
Nile rests from his labours, and where all the men came
on board; they sat (as birds stand) upon the gunwale,
not holding on by their toes, but the whole weight rest-
ing upon the back sinews of their legs, and balancing ©
themselves by their ankles. They touch with nothing
but their heels, and seem perfectly comfortable. I never
saw such a feat ; they look exactly like cormorants: our
old Rais perched in the flukes of the anchor, which had
been brought and laid on deck.
They do not swim as we do, but with their shoulders
THE “ BIGS.” 123
and arms out of the water, beating the water with their
arms ; and when they make a great effort, the head goes
down under water, and they spring like porpoises. To
see these men dive into the middle of a whirlpool, and go
down where the bottom of the river is all granite, is to
us, like a feat of an Indian juggler going into the fire,
almost incredible: or to see them come riding down a
rapid upon a log, with their clothes on their heads!
They come on board trembling, and their teeth chatter-
ing, where a companion receives them and wraps them
in a sheet as tenderly as a bathing-woman, gives them a
rub, and drags them to the fire kept burning on the
bows, while Mr. B. administers the brandy. Tosee
them watching the exact moment at which, and at
no other, it will do to let the rope go, with all their
senses, eyes, ears, touch, in a state as perfect as a dog’s,
is the most beautiful instinct I ever saw at work.
But there is a great deal beside this: the skill to seize
the whirlpool exactly where, and as far as, it will carry
the boat on; to profit by a counter current, and the mo-
ment it ceases to serve, and there is danger of the boat
being whirled back—up with the sail, out with the ropes,
forty hands overboard :—an instant, or, as Paolo calls it,
a lamp (2. e. a “ lampo”), and it would be too late. We
approached the Fifth Rapid, and it seemed impossible
that we could be going through that—the passage so
narrow, the current so rapid, the rocks so sharp. We
threw out two ropes, one on each side, for here our line
of tactics altered: the rapid was too winding, the angles
too numerous for us to pull to a stone; we had a line of
men oneach side to pull at us, and, of course, the fixed
point wanting, the difficulty was greater. Crash went
124 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
something : the right hand rope had broke, and the boat
whirled round; but our bows caught upon the opposite
rock. The other rope held, at which sixty men were pul-
ling: the “bigs” worked like heroes,—in the water —
out of the water ; it reminded one of the time when chiefs
were chosen for their bodily prowess, their strength in
throwing, or swiftness in running—the zrodwxns ’Axir-
Nevs,-—and we pulled through. By this time the rocks
were lined with natives, many carrying spears and clubs.
The wildness of the place is beyond expression,—not a
palm, not a blade of grass; an expanse of heaps of
Syenite, with rapids between them; the rocks hollowed
out into the most inconceivable shapes,—some like bowls,
some like boilers, some like boot-jacks, some like Etrus-
can vases, where little whirlpools must have established
themselves in inundations. It is the most beautiful red
Syenite: veins of quartz running through, mica and horn-
blende sparkling ; sometimes layers of pure red pebbles
set in rows in the mixed granite.
And here I must confess that the deafening, dizzying,
din of the crews takes away very much from the idea of
the power. As for the “ bigs’” giving orders, it was out
of the question; they were only understood by their
gestures. One would have thought the consciousness of
power would have been calm; one thinks of strength as
so gentle: but I suppose it is only the intellectual that is
still; and it is toremind us of the wide difference which
lies between intellectual or moral power, and physical,
that the latter is made so turbulent. However that be,
the wild cries of these gods of the waves make the scene
more grotesque, but not more impressive. At the Sixth
Rapid—which is along winding bay, where the wind
THE WORSHIPPERS IN PHILG. 125
fails in its help, and nothing’is to be done but by sheer
strength—we were put ashore, partly to see the other
English boat, who, as Paolo said, “had got a stocked ”
(a stick, a blow), ‘and he leak.” Atthelast Rapid, our
Shekh had got out his new, his best rope, when the other
broke: and now, with 120(!) men pulling at this, and
another rope to the stern to regulate the angle, slowly and
steadily we saw her pulled up, and we floated into still
water. !
A mile further down we had seen a boat lost, her
back broken, her yard just out of the water.
Abundance of salams followed; we parted with our
Shekhs of four generations, and set our sail for Nubia
A mile further on, we came in sight of Philo. There!
there! look! it stole upon our sight gently and softly
from behind its grey rocks, — such a contrast to Ele-
phantine! It was the sleep of calm and lovely death,
instead of the agony of convulsion. It was all that I had
hoped and expected. The wind was not high, and we
stole upon the rest of “ Him who sleeps in Philce” like
whisperers, on tiptoe, just as one ought todo. But, alas !
the envious wind freshened, and oh, we did not stop! I
was so disappointed. But as we wore round her, for
we took the Eastern passage, I saw long trains of camels,
asses, and horses, with scarlet housings, on the river banks,
and on the river four great boats full of worshippers,
crossing over to carry these offerings; and high upon the
island itself, a long procession of gaily-coloured robes,
moving to the Hypethral Temple. It was the worship
of Osiris restored. We had come up stairs into the old
world of 4000 years ago.
It was the Governor of Upper Egypt, transferred to
126 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
the government of Ethiopia, and on his way to Darfur,
his seat of government, who had stopped here to visit
Philos; and one moment sooner or later, and we should
not have seen this enchantment, charming back the old
worship. How ungrateful of me to be disappointed.
A mile further, and we came to a ruined church,
where my Padre Ryllo said his last mass on his way to
martyrdom in Abyssinia. Paolo knew him in Egypt.
Not Requiescat in pace; but let him work in glorious toil.
Success not rest be with him.
Nubia (the golden,—alas! now the stony and barren)
is everything as a contrast to Egypt; the river running
between two rocky steeps; the rim of verdure dimin-
ished to a thread. We have a pilot who has been up to
the Second Cataract four times this winter already.
A boat in sight! Jan. 11th, near Derr, capital of
Nubia.
LN A NS Se A i
Ipsamboul, Jan. 17. 1850.
My dearest people,
HERE we are arrived at the last and greatest point
of our voyage — greatest it is in all respects-~I can
fancy nothing greater. All that I have imagined has
fallen short of Ipsamboul (of the great temple of the
Osirides), and thank God that we have come here. IT
can conceive nothing in Thebes to equal this, and am
well satisfied to turn back now, for we are to go no
further. We arrived here on the 15th, about 9 o’clock,
and climbed the bank immediately to the lesser temple
TEMPLE OF ATHOR. 127
to see that first. There is no effect about the exterior
at all, you don’t know where the rock ends, and the
temple begins, the slanting lines of the face of the tem-
ple (none of them parallel) are ugly, and the six colossal
figures between the slants impossible to see, as the bank
slopes straight down from the temple door to the river.
Yet I have a love for the place; it is so innocent, so
childish, so simple, so like the Athor, “the Lady of
Aboccis” (the old name of Aboo Simbil) whom it re-
presents. Athor means the habitation of Horus, and
Horus means God; therefore Athor is nature, the world,
in which God dwells, and which reveals Him. Her
inscription calls her the “ nurse, who fills heaven and.
earth with her beneficent acts.” As such, she is identi-
cal with Isis. And her temple is so like nature, cheer-
ful and simple, and to me at least, not very interesting,
with her great broad innocent face and child-like ex-
pression, for it would not do if nature always kept us
in a state of excitement. She is the same as the Grecian
Aphrodite, yet how different — her simple, almost infan-
tine, beauty to the more intellectual, yet at the same
time more sensual, conscious beauty of the Greek Venus.
It is the difference between Aspasia and Desdemona.
She is also the goddess of joy, the lady of the dance
and mirth, a sort of joy like that of children playing at
daisy chains, not that of the feast of Epicurus. She
is a secondary goddess, and her connection with the
earth is more intimate than that of the real goddesses
—her expression shows none of their supernatural
serenity, but a simple enjoyment of her flowers and
creatures.
The temple is small, the first chamber hewn in the
128 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
rock and supported by six pillars, with the Athor head
upon each; then a vestibule or pro sekos; then the sekos
or sacred place, with her image in it. It was built by
the Great Rameses, of the ‘nineteenth dynasty, who
reigned thirteen centuries and a half before Christ.
The conqueror and Sesostris of the Greeks, and his
figure, with those of his two queens, both evidently
portraits, and one a most beautiful woman, are in “ in-
taglio rilevato,” all over the walls. Everywhere Ra-
meses’ queens occupy as conspicuous a place as him
self. One only of the representations interested me
much. It was the Great Rameses crowned by the good
and the evil principle on either side. What a deep
philosophy !— what theory of the world has ever gone
farther than this? The evil is not the opposer of the
good, but its collaboratewr —the left hand of God, as
the good is His right. I don’t think I ever saw any
thing which affected me much more than this (3000
years ago)-—-the king at his entrance into life is initiated
into the belief that what we call the evil was the giver
of life and power as well as the good. Later, when the
Egyptians fell off from their primitive philosophy, we
find Set or Ombte the evil spirit once Nubi the golden,
transformed into Typhon, the foe of the good, and care-
fully erased everywhere from the monuments.
But here he is in his right place as one of the powers
of God; and tell Aunt M. I thought of her when I
looked at him, and of all she had taught me, and re-
joiced to think how the same light dawns upon the wise
from the two ends of space and of time. In these early
temples the evil spirit is the brother, not the foe of
Osiris. Afterwards he is carefully scratched out wher-
EVIL THE SERVANT OF GOD. 129
ever he appears; but, in-the early times of our own
Bible, Satan was one of the servants of God, not His
enemy (as we have made him), and comes with the other
sons of God in Job, to give account of what he has been
about and to receive His commands. Like the Satan of
Job seems to me to have been the evil spirit of the
early Egyptians. Necessary to the system of Divine
Providence his influence was considered a benefit
Nothing was put into us in vain; but every thing in us
which we consider bad, was only an excess either of
reason, feeling. or conscience, and when properly ba-
lanced by the others would become good. That they
considered the evil as not separate, nor distinct from the
good, is evident from the union of the good and the
evil spirit, Ombte and Horus in one figure, as we some-
times see it; and in their united office of giving life and
purity to the king —where, though they appear as two,
they are occupied in the same end, working as one. Anax-
agoras seems to have taken this idea, when he says
that the good spirit was Intelligence, the evil one In-
finity, 7. e. Undefinedness. [should call the good spirit,
Truth, not as opposed to Falsehood, but as opposed to
Indefiniteness, 7. e. the good spirit is what is defined and
ordered, the balanced powers of the soul, and those of
nature; the evil spirit is the yet unordered passions of
the soul, and the irregular storms of nature, which yet
we could not do without.
In later times, whether the invasion of the Persians
made the Egyptians begin to think the spirit of evil,
unmitigated evil, or whether an advanced state of civi-
lisation is, as in Europe, always literal, and what had
been an abstract idea, began to be treated in a matter of
K
130 LETTERS FROM EGYPT:
fact positive way, as we treat things, I cannot tell;
but it seems like being in actual every-day intercourse
with the people to see the angry scratches which blot
out poor Ombte’s nose, they were so evidently done by
the people in a passion, not by artists in a systematic
way ; and some have made a mistake and left him alone.
But I must say it proves two things: one, that the
people did understand the meaning of the sculptures
before them; the other, that they acted without being
absolutely under the thumb of the priesthood, for this
is evidently done by no priestly order; and that they
took a keen interest in their own temples (unless it was
done afterwards. by the Christians, which seems most
unlikely, for they scractched every thing alike).
However that may be, the old Egyptians believed
that, out of good came forth evil, and out of evil came
forth good; or, as I should translate it, out of the well
ordered comes forth the inharmonious, the passionate ;
and out of disorder again order; and both are a benefit.
The Romans, who were a more literal people, and we
their descendants, never understood this, and have set
our faces against evil, like the later Egyptians, and
scratched his nose.
Some people have seen a portrait of Joseph in the
ass-headed god with square ears, Ombte. I myself in-
cline to this opinion, considering him under the later
idea; as I never could bear Joseph for making all the
free property of Egypt into king’s property, the fee
simple of all Egypt into leasehold, the cause of half the
evil at this present day.
But I am ina hurry to get on to the great temple,
the Temple of the Sun, as he stands side by side with
THE FOUR COLOSSI. 131
the modest little temple of his daughter, the mistress
of the West, the lady of evening, of the morning star
(Athor), who receives him every night at the end of his
course behind her mountain, when he sets into her
resting-place.
We clambered and slid through the avalanche of:
sand, which now separates the two temples. There
they sit, the four mighty colossi, seventy feet high,
facing the East, with the image of the sun between
them, the sand-hill sloping up to the chin of the north-
ern-most colossus.
Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty ;
intellect without effort, without suffering. I would not
call it intellectual either, it is so entirely opposed to that
of the Jupiter Capitolinus; it is more the beauty of the |
soul—not a feature is correct——but the whole effect is
more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I
could have imagined. It makes the impression upon
one that thousands of voices do, uniting In one unani-
mous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion,
which is said to overcome the strongest man. Yet the
figures are anything but beautiful; no anatomy, no
proportion ; it is a new language to learn, and we have
no language to express it. Here I have the advantage ;
for being equally ignorant of the language of any art,
I was as open to impression from them as from Greek
or any other art. The part of the rock smoothed for
the temple face, is about 100 feet to the highest row of
ornament. Over the door is the image of the sun, and
on either side an intaglio figure of the Great Rameses,
offering, not burnt sacrifices, not even flowers, nor fruit,
but a figure of Justice mn his right hand. * Sacrifices
K 2
132 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
and burnt offering thou hast not desired, else would I
give it.” “For what does the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly.”
What more refined idea of sacrifice could you have
than this? Yet inside I was still more struck by the
king offering justice to the God who gives him in return
life and purity in either hand.
The door which is about twenty feet high, does not
reach nearly up to the knee of the colossus. Alas! the
sand is now as high as three feet below the top of the
door, and into this magnificent temple you have to crawl
on all fours. But Iam not sure that the effect is not
increased by it. When you have slipped down an in-
clined plane of sand twenty feet high, which is like
entering into the bowels of the earth, you find yourself
in a gigantic hall, wrapped in eternal twilight, and you
see nothing but eight colossal figures of Osiris standing
against as many square pillars which support the rocky
roof, their arms crossed upon their breast, the shepherd’s
crook, and the flagellum in either hand, for he is here
in his character of judge of the dead, lord of Amenti,
or the lower world of departed souls; and truly it looks
like the lower world, the region of spirits; no light
irritates your eyes, no sound annoys your ear, no
breath of wind sets your teeth on edge; the atmosphere
is much warmer than the outer air; this atmosphere,
which is never stirred by anything but the beetle, the
only creature light enough to tread this sand without
being buried in it.
“Full of grace and truth,” as his inscription bears,
indeed he looks, I waited for him to speak; but he did
not. Through two other halls I passed, till at last I
THE CLOCK OF CENTURIES. 133
found myself in a chamber in the rock, where sat, in
the silence of an eternal night, four figures against the
further end. I could see nothing more; yet I did not
feel afraid as I did at Karnak, though I was quite alone
in these subterraneous halls; for the sublime expres-
sion of that judge of the dead had looked down upon
me, the incarnation of the goodness of the deity, as
Osiris is; and I thought how beautiful the idea which
placed him in the foremost hall, and then led the wor-
shipper gradually on to the more awful attributes of the
deity ; for here, as I could dimly see through the dark-
ness, sat the creative powers of the eternal mind, Neph,
“the intellect,” Amun the “concealed god,” Phthah, “the
creator of the visible world,” and Ra, ‘‘ the sustainer,” Ra,
“the sun,” to whom the temple is dedicated. The heat
was intense, it was as if this were the focus of the vivi-
fying power of those attributes; and before them stood
an altar, the first and last we shall see—the real old
altar upon which stood the sacred ark. As to having
had sacrifices here, it is physically impossible in any
part of the temple; the door of the Osiris hall is the
only outlet, and there is no possibility of any others. I
turned to go out, and saw at the further end the golden
sand glittering in the sun-shine outside the top of the
door; and the long sand-hill, sloping down from it to
the feet of the innermost Osirides, which are left quite
free, all but their pedestals, looked like the waves of
time, gradually flowing in and covering up these im-
perishable genii, who have seen three thousand years
pass over their heads, and heed them not. In the ho-
liest place, there where no sound ever reaches, it is
rae}
134 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
as if you felt the sensible progress of time, not by the
tick of a clock, as we measure time, but by some spi-
ritual pulse which marks to you its onward march, not
by its second, nor its minute, nor its hour-hand, but
by its century hand. I thought of the worshippers of
3000 years ago; how they by this time have reached
the goal of spiritual ambition, have brought all their
thoughts to serve God or the ideal of goodness ; how we
stand there with the same goal before us, only as dis-
tant as the star, which, a little later, I saw rising exactly
over that same sand-hill in the centre of the top of the
doorway, but as sure and fixed — how to them all other
thoughts are now as nothing, and the ideal we all
pursue of happiness is won; not because they have not
probably sufferings, like ours, but because they no
longer suggest any other thought but of doing God’s
will, which is happiness. I thought how, 3000 years
hence, we might perhaps have attained-—and others
would stand here, and still those old gods would be
sitting in the eternal twilight.—Silent they sat and
stern—and never moved; and IJ left them.
We shall never enjoy another place like Ipsamboul ;
the absolute solitude of it—the absence of a present, of
any of one’s fellow-creatures who contrast the past with
that horrible Egyptian present. You look abroad and
see no tokens of habitation; the power of leaving tue
boat and running up to the temple at any hour of the
day or night, without a whole escort at your heels; the
silence and stillness and freedom of it were what we
shall never have again. At Luxor the present was
such as to annihilate all picasure in anything; and at
THE GOD OF CALM, 13
Derr, where we stopped: on the 13th for an hour, the
cries and crowd were so insupportable that we saw the
temple as quickly as we could, and I have no more idea
of it at this moment than you have.
I came out of the Penetralia and looked again upon
the glorious colossi. I wish all my friends could see
them once in their lives, if only for a moment; or that
I could describe to any one the look of intense repose
in those faces. I think Europeans are perhaps better
able to judge of them than any others, to Europeans
they must be always more peculiarly affecting, the reve-
lation of an entirely new kind of life. To us toil and
excitement and restless anxiety are so familiar, that we
have even consecrated them in Christianity. To the
Greeks intellectual activity seemed the highest god they
could frame. To the Egyptians calm of soul was the
characteristic of a Divine Being. Their Osiris is never
represented (at least nowhere that I have seen him) as
sharing in the agitations of humanity, though he took
upon him their nature.
It is so touching to come thus to the “ashes of
their fathers and the temples of their gods,” and even
‘to the tender mother that dandled them to rest,” for
here is Rameses’ Queen —that beautiful tender face,—
to descend into the bowels of the earth and find this
revelation fresh and new, of a nation 3000 years past
away, that at first one is quite overwhelmed, and I as-
sure you one is surprised to find oneself thinking of
nothing at all, mechanically reading the names, which
are alas scrawled over every statue, or counting the
footsteps of the Scarabzous as he leaves his track upon
“4
136 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
the sand. It is like what one reads of people doing
under a great blow, counting the fringe on the rug, or
some such thing, instead of thinking of the event.
We went up to the top of the rock under which the
temple is quarried, to look up the Nile. It is separated
from the next cliff by a sand slip. I sighed for a walk
in the Alps, the tropical Alps, and I walked round the
valley and to the next mountain, and took a long last
look south into Abyssinia, for further we were not to
go. I saw nothing, met nothing, that had life, or
had had life, but the whitened bones of a poor camel.
And I reached the top of the next cliff. Oh, would
I could describe that my last real African view !-—
the golden sand, north, south, east, and west, except
where the blue Nile flowed, strewn with bright
purple granite stones, the black ridges of mountains,
east and west, volcanic rocks, gigantic jet-black wigwam-
looking hills. If you can imagine the largest glaciers
you ever saw, the Mer de Glace at Chamouni, with
all the avalanches golden sand, and all the ridges purple
granite, not one blade of green any where, except where
a sunk fence, for I can call it nothing else, bounds the
river, and is cultivated with lupins, that is Nubia. It
reminded me perpetually of the philosopher’s stone. The
people tried to make gold, and prayed to the Deity that
he would turn all their soil to gold, and this must be the
consequence. The banks of the rivers look like a beetle’s
back, green and gold, the rest of the country like one
vast vein of metal ore.
They sent our Nubian steersman after their “ wild
ass of the wilderness ;” but he found a nice bank of sand
in the sun, and lay down on his face to sleep. I thought
THE GOD OF WAR. 137
he had had an apoplectic stroke (for you can see figures
miles off, as large as life in this atmosphere), and haste-
ned to his assistance; whereupon he got up, and carried
‘me down the next sand avalanche like a child. They
help you so beautifully, these. Nubians, that your feet
hardly seem to touch the ground; the sand is so fine
and soft that you sink at every step almost to your
knees.
We came back to the Dahabieh for candles and went
all over the great temple. Every inch of it is covered
with sculptures, perfectly uninjured except the colouring,
which is gone, but the outlines are as sharp as ever. But
what is the good of attempting to describe that which
is now as sharply cut in my memory as in the stone,
but of which I shall give no idea to you? It seems to
me as if I had never seen sculpture before, as if the
Elgin marbles were tame beside them! as if I had now
begun to live in heroic times. The great Rameses
holds by the hair of the head eleven captives kneeling
before him, in the presence of the god Ra, who decrees
their destiny. Every thing is done here in the presence
of the gods. Rameses receives life and power from his
patron Ra (after whom he is named), dedicates to him
his victories, receives from him commands how his de-
feated nations are to be disposed of. It reminds one of
another nation and another leader, whose name only
differs by the omission of the first syllable from
Rameses. But the most curious part of the thing is
the sublime expression of this Rameses—I never saw
so beautiful a countenance. It is not a man murder-
ing other men; it is the type of power. The captives
too are not bound, but with their hands free, and
138 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
some even holding daggers, so that indeed every body
has seen in it only an allegory expressive of dominion
over the enemies of his country.
Three types of face in the captives are quite distinct ;
a negro, an Ethiopian and an Eastern, showing that,
at this early period of Rameses’ reign, his conquests
had extended into Asia and south Africa. If it is really
a portrait of Rameses, he must have been a noble crea-
ture. His name means “tried,” or “regenerated by
Ra,” as Thothmosis means “ regenerate by Thoth.” The
two last syllables MSS (for, in the old Egyptian, as in
Arabic and Hebrew, there are no vowels) immediately
recall another name—~and Moses does mean “ saved,”
“regenerate,” “ initiated” (initiated, 2. e. into the Egyp-
tian mysteries, where a baptism of fire and water was
one of the initiations), and “ saved by water” is a better
translation of that passage in Exodus, where his name
is given him, than “saved from water.” Indeed the
phonetic sign which stands for M, and which you see
in Rameses’ shield, ts dew, the symbol of baptism. Well,
be that as it may, the “tried by Ra,” is worthy of his
name. And, at the farther end of the Osiris’ hall (on
each side the door which goes in to the pronaos) there
is a representation of him entering the presence of a
trinity of gods, I think the sublimest ideal of prayer
that ever entered the mind of man to conceive—not
shrinking, not awe-struck, he is not even kneeling, not
supplicating for forgiveness in that mean and selfish
spirit which says, “ Hide thy face from my sins,” in-
stead of saying, “turn all the light of thy countenance
upon my sins, that in that light I may see them, and
THE FORCE OF PRAYER. 139
accepting their consequences, take those consequences
as the means to correct them; but, raising one hand a
little, he stands with face upturned and head uncovered,
reverentially offering a reasonable service. Happy the
man who has penetrated so deeply into the nature of
God as to be able to offer such a worship. He looks as
if no happiness could overpower him, being the natural
consequence of the love of the Father; no adversity
take him by surprise, being as desirable an effect of His
love, whose left hand is evil as His right hand good.
Would thatI could have understood all that that glorious,
yet perfectly human, countenance conveyed— the entire
trust, which no breath of hope or fear ever stirred
the strong hold on invisible things which makes them
seen and a substance—the something so much higher
than mere repentance, to which even the remembrance
of its sins is sacred (not bitter) for out of these too comes
the love of God working good—the mind, which does
not offer praise, tiresome praise to God, but says, after
its great prototype, “ I and my Father are one,” for his
Will is one with God, whatever may befall. He does
not even ask for anything, he is not such a fool as to
ask for what Wisdom Divine does not give. The Genie
Adorant (which is Adam adoring) is the beautiful por-
traiture of the sinless new-created being, awakening to a
knowledge of its Creator, with all its faculties, but un-
taught by any experience. The St. Jerome of Domeni-
chino is that of a man laden with all the sins and toils
and pains of the past, struggling into the presence of a
hard-won Deity. The Rameses is that of a perfect in-
tellectual and spiritual man, who feels his connection
140 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
with that God, whose first and last lesson through His
Christ has been, “ Be one with me,” not be my instru-
ment, nor my worshipper, nor my petitioner, but one
with me. I am glad to have seen that representation
of prayer, it has taught me more than all the sermons
IT ever read. _
The two long sides of the Osiris hall are taken up
(strange contrast with this!) by the battle scenes, which
make even a heroic age run round in a peaceful brain
like mine. Rameses in his chariot, hurried along by
his galloping horses, the reins twisted round his waist,
drawing his bow upon the foe, in full. career, preceded
by his constant lion. Rameses dismounted and killing
a chief, whom he holds by the arm, in the exact alti-
tude of the Petus and Arria, so that one would think
the artist of that must have seen this. Rameses in his
chariot commanding. These below, and a row of Rameses
in conference with different gods above, occupy all the
south wall, while the north is a series of small battle-~
chariots standing on their heads, on their tails, in every
possible position, while Rameses sitting is receiving a
deputation of conquered nations. One king dismounts
from his chariot and holds the reins with one hand,
while he makes an obeisance to Rameses with the other.
All this north wall relates to the first year of his reign ;
and the temple appears to have been finished early in
his reign, as an inscription relating to the thirty-fifth on
the south wall was evidently added afterwards. He
reigned B. C. 1388 to 1322, and Egypt is covered with
his monuments—the Augustan age of Egyptian art. All
these figures are in “ intaglio rilevato,” very like Flax-
man’s outlines; the Rameses aboui ten feet high. But
SUNRISE AT IPSAMBOUL. 141
spirited as they are, I, for one, am very soon tired of
them. I never made much hand of chivalry or Homer,
and I returned back to my beloved adytum, where sits
Neph, the supreme Intellect, the fashioner of the soul
of man, Amun the “ Concealed God,” Phthah the
framer of the visible universe, and Ra, its Sustainer, in
solitary and unapproachable holiness. In Ipsam-
boul you first know what solitude is. In England the
utmost solitude you can obtain, is surrounded by human
beings; but there in the depths of the rock, in eternal
darkness, where no sound ever reaches, solitude is no
longer a name, it is a presence. In the evening we
made a great fire upon the altar, and while our turbaned
crew fed it, we sat in the entrance on the top of our
hillock, and enjoyed the sight and feeling of the ancient
worship restored. But then I knew that I liked, yes,
and appreciated the Egyptian worship much more- now
in its desolate grandeur than then in its pomp and show.
I felt as if the temple was profaned, and the solitude of
the “ Unutterable God” broken in upon —and I was
glad when the blaze and glare were over.
Before sunrise the next day &. and I were sitting on
the soft warm fine sand, watching for the first rays of
his own bright Egyptian sun to illuminate that glorious
colossus. It was very cold; but oh! the luxury of that
soft warm bed, without creatures, without damp, with-
out dirt, which shakes off directly. When you are
cold you bury your feet in it, and it warms them ; when
you are tired, you lie down upon it; when your head
aches with staring, you sit and watch the scarabei with
their pretty tracks; no cries for “ Baksheesh,” and “ Ia
Hawagee” (you merchant) pester you, and you are as
142 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
happy as the day is long. But the day broke; the top
of the rock became golden—the golden rays crept down
—one colossus gave a radiant smile, as his own glorious
sun reached him—he was bathed ‘in living light — yes,
really living, for it made him live, while the other, still
gray, shadowy and stern as a ghost was unreached by
the “ Revealer of Life.” We watched him till he too
was lighted up, and then sat down over against the
temple doors and looked in.
The Maries could hardly have been more surprised
when they saw the angel whose countenance was bright
as snow, and knew that He whom they sought was risen,
than we were when we saw the resurrection which had
taken place there. One spot of golden light on the
third Osiris spread and spread till it lighted up the
cheek of the second and first. They smiled in their
solemn beauty, but did not speak —a flush came over
their faces for a moment—-it was an awful moment
—it was only a blast of sand stirring outside in the
golden sun-light, but the reflection had lighted them
up, and in this morning eastern light I could go over
all the sculptures in the temple, and see them quite
plain; but still my heart yearned to the solitary four in
the holy place, whom no light ever approaches. I was
surprised to find them still sitting there—they are so
living —-yet there they have sat for 3000 years, for
3000 years the Osiridz have seen the sun rise as they
saw it that morning, and will for thousands of years
more.
In the afternoon it was announced, to my unspeak-
able delight, that we were to stay another day at Aboo
Simbil, another sun to sec rise there, another evening
THE OLD MOON. 143
to watch the stars, the only thing we wanted was a
moonlight.
I climbed up into the lap of one of the colossi, the
southermost, who is quite uncovered, his knee is con-
siderably above the doorway top.
To please them, I measured his middle finger, four
feet. But to see my Hall of the Genii, my beloved
Temple of Ipsamboul, all upon paper, with rule and
line, brings it down to the level of Chatsworth in
my imagination; and I won’t give you the measure-
ments of one of the colossi, I am afraid of getting like
Dante. What does it matter whether Rameses’ ear
is two or three feet long? Champollion has dreadfully
spoilt one of the colossi by whitewashing its face. I
never look at that one. Imagine painting one of the
pinnacles of Westminster Abbey red. It is a dissight
from afar off. All that day I spent wandering about
within the temple, and in the evening the new moon,
like a silver boat, rested on the surface of the cliff for a
moment, and then set, leaving behind it the old moon,
plainly visible upon the top of the rock, after the silver
thread was gone, for some moments. I never saw that
sight before. |
The next morning we were there again at dawn, and
again saw the wonderful light, the resurrection of those
colossi, their own eastern sun saluting them. In what
their beauty consists it requires a wiser eye than mine
to tell you—their faces are rounded, their foreheads are
low, their lips thick, nothing which generally gives ex-
pression or saves from monotony, is there. The figures
are clumsy, the shoulders unmodelled, the hands resting
on knees like flounders, excessively short from thigh to
144 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
knee, the legs like posts. Yet no one would say that
those faces were expressionless, no one that has seen
them, but they will live in his memory as the sublimest
expression of spiritual and intellectual repose he has
ever seen.
The ceiling of the great Osiris hall came out in the
morning light —huge overshadowing wings crossed it
from side to side. He shall cover thee with his
feathers, and under the shadow of his wings shalt
thou trust.” I never understood the Bible till I
came to Egypt. “The Almighty shall overshadow
thee;” and, “as a mother will I nurture thee.” The
vulture, whose shadowy wings are here portrayed, is
the Egyptian symbol for a mother, and in this position,
as protectress of men, she becomes a sublime repre-
sentation. The king never goes out to battle, or “ runs”
into the presence of the gods, without this beautiful Ei-
lethyia hovering over his head to protect him (though
in a somewhat different form, with wings folded round
her, instead of outspread). When she is the protectress
of the country, Eilethyia spreads her glorious wings and
holds two ostrich feathers in her claws, as in this ceiling.
She is the beautiful head-dress of Rameses’ queen, whose
portrait is all over the temple, and who stands behind
him in the captive picture, the most lovely countenance,
her black hair gathered together with a golden fibula on
the side of her forehead, and then falling on her shoulders.
The second queen, a somewhat pug-nosed female, is of-
fering to Athor in her temple, where the first also ap-
pears. Everywhere she occupies the place which the
most advanced Christian civilisation gives to woman—
always the one wife, nowhere the face veiled, often the
THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE. 145
regent, the sovereign, or the co-ruler with a brother.
Woman may be quite satisfied with her Christian po-
sition in old Egypt. The tricolor border of red, blue,
and white runs round the ceiling, the sacred colours of
light, wisdom, and purity.
Egypt is beginning to speak a language to me, even
in the ugliest symbols of her gods; and I find there
such pleasant talk — philosophy for the curious, comfort
for the weary, amusement for the innocent.
But there is another representation over the doorways
of all the buildings, the good spirit (Agathodemon),
which bids you welcome as you enter in, and under
whose protection you are placed. It is the “ Sun of righ-
teousness with healing on his wings ;”
asps and outspread wings, uniting in a trinity the spirits
of Ra, the sun and nursing father of the world; Neph,
the supreme intellect, to whom the asp, emblem of wis-
a sun, with two
dom, was sacred (wise as serpents); and Maut, the
great mother, with her vulture’s wings. This good
genius, who is the same as Horus, the son of Osiris and
Isis, overshadows the doors of all the temples. The
Apollo Belvidere is the Greek impersonation of him.
The sovereign of Egypt really deserved to be a
sovereign; for he appears to have been chief in every
act, just as the superior of a religious order was, at first,
intended to be the superior only in every act of dif-
ficulty, self-denial, or active benevolence; the king
hardly ever appears carried by his fellow-men on an
ignoble throne, but driving his own chariot, fighting the
enemies of his country, or running full tilt on his own
fect into the presence of the assemblies of the gods.
This is how one oftenest sees hin.
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146 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
But a little representation of him there is on the side
of one of the great Osiris pillars in Ipsamboul, which
pleased me more than any. He is offering Truth to
Mau, the son of the sun, who expresses the insight,
light, or pure intellect of God, and sometimes the world,
the “ true image of God,” but always “ the highest pro-
perty of God in nature as well as man.” He is that
property, if we may so speak, “ which proves the
reality of God’s attributes by the truth,” or definiteness
of the manifestations he makes of himself in nature.
It is a beautiful idea—is it not?—this offering ‘Thmei
(Truth) to the god, but more peculiarly interesting to us
from its being the original of the “ Urim and Thum-
mim.” The Egyptian judges, who were all high priests,
wore a breast-plate with Ra and Thmei, both in the
dual (lights and truths), upon it; Ra in his double ca-
pacity of physical and intellectual light; Thmei per-
haps as subjective and objective truth—z. e. truth as it
appeared to the witness, and truth in an absolute sense.
Now Urim and Thummin mean light and truth, the
two lights and the two truths.
The judge gave judgment by touching one of the
litigants with the figure as a token of the justice of his
cause. I shall bring one home for Baron Rolfe. Dear
Judge Coltman is gone where truths are no longer two
(but all is one), and does not want it. |
The king is represented so often with truth (or jus-
tice) as a fit offering for the gods; because, said the old
Egyptians, this benefits your neighbours, while those
pitiful other three cardinal virtues, prudence, tempe-
rance, fortitude, benefit only yourself. They knew a
thing or two, those old Egyptians, don’t you think so?
THE DEAD IN EGYPT. 147:
When they spoke of a dead friend, they did not say, as
we do, the “ lost,” or the “ deceased,” which is not true,
as we all acknowledge in the Prayer Book, nor “ poor
so and so;” but the “justified” (matu); for the dead,
who were found worthy, bore on their heads the fea-
ther of Truth or Justice, and took her hieroglyph.
I wish I could tell one half their philosophic ways.
I must not forget the sacred boat in which people have
seen Noah and his Ark, the Arkite worship, and all sorts
of things, but which seems to be only a very natural em-
blem for a country which lived by its inundations,
whose god Neph “the Spirit of God which moved
upon the face of the waters,” was called “Lord of
the Inundations,” and was very likely, with the Egyp-
tian want of imagination, to do this in a boat.
There are eight little chambers hewn in the rock,
opening out of the Osiris hall, and covered with sculp-
tures of offerings; but as these must be gone through
with a candle, and it is impossible to enjoy anything in
that way, I do not describe them. Some of them are
left unfinished, as the workmen left them 3000 years
ago—the line drawn but not cut.
The temple of Ipsamboul is the only thing which
has ever made an impression upon me like that of St.
Peter’s, yet how different. We bade him adieu at
nine o’clock that morning. I never thought I should
have made a friend and a home for life of an Egyptian
temple, nor been so sorry to look for the last time on
that holiest place.
We bade him good bye, and turned our prow north-
wards, for we were to go no further. Our poor yard
had been already taken down, and laid along from end
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148 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
to end. Our proud Parthenope no longer floated in the
Nile breeze, and we, our eyes full of sand and tears
(which made mud), very hungry, very sorry, very tired,
watched from the deck the last of the colossi, which yet
make no effect at all from the river, and the temple is
positively ugly.
WELL, DEAREST PEOPLE, .
At last I have a letter from you (dated 22nd No-
vember), sent after me from Cairo, and tumbled into
our boat like one of Abraham’s messengers before the
door of his tent.
We went up to Jerf Hossayn with the whole village
at our heels: a splendid position it is; high in the
western rocks, and overlooking the whole wide Valley
of the Nile, from which the sunlight had just disap-
peared, and was kissing with its parting golden beam
the eastern side. In the solemn twilight we entered the
awful cave of Phthah, the God of Fire, the Creator.
The shekh of the village, with his descendants, walked
before us, carrying great serpents of fire to light up the
rude magnificence of this terrible place. The serpents
were thick twisted coils of palm fibre set on fire; but
they looked like Moses’ serpent set up in the wilder-
ness; and twisted and flamed before this fire shrine,
this God of the Hidden Fire, who has his dwelling in
the thick darkness. I never saw a wilder scene.
Hephaistos, the degenerate Vulcan of the Greeks, is a
corruption (his name evidently so) of Phthah. I should
THE WEAVENLY FIRE: 149
like to have seen this dwelling of the « Heavenly Fire ”
(who will some day welcome back the “ tired spirit” to
its ‘ accustomed home,” and refine away all but the
pure ore) in silence and stillness, for I can tell you very
little about the temple. With an Arab holding you
under each arm, for fear of your falling over the heaps
of stones, a dozen others with torches, the temple per-
fectly chuck full, the whole population being there to
look at you, and the din quite overpowering in that close
cave, the whole population being there to hoot at you —
it is impossible to have an idea under such circum-
stances—the very strangeness of the scene absorbs you.
And as to understanding the ideal of the sculptures,
with the flickering light illuminating them at one moment,
and the next leaving them in total darkness, you might
as well try to understand the poetry of the Bible, when
you were picking it out, for the first time, in Hebrew.
All I saw was (on either side) three figures of Osiris, so
gigantic, that they seemed to crowd you in; and you
could not get far enough from them to look up at their
faces. Their pedestals were perfect and uncovered,
which we had never before seen. The depth of the
square pillar against which they rested, so great that it
seemed a mass filling up the whole space: it was
wider, indeed, than the width of the aisle they fornied.
The figures weré so rude, the blocks.so enormous,
that the effect, though not so artistic as that of Aboo
Simbil, was infinitely wilder,—more awful. It was like
a Cyclopean cave, or a western forest, not like the art
of man. Beyond this great hall in the rock is another
chamber, supported by two thick, square pillars, and then
the holy place, with half-destroyed deities in the niche.
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150 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
This was the abode of Phthah, “ who created all things in
a perfect manner, not deceptively, but artificially, accord-
ing to, or together with, truth.” ‘ Of His own will be-
gat He us with the word of truth;” that is, he was not
the opifex, like the Greek Vulcan, who made only the
form, but he had the idea as well as the form — the es-
sence as wellas the manner. As a thing is not perfect
unless it has both the spirit and the “modus,” so he
created all things “perfectly,” not, like a ghost or
a shadow, which is changeable, not like a perspec-
tive picture, of which only the “ modus” is perfect,
but like a statue, which seen from every side gives
the same idea. I do not make myself intelligible, but
the Egyptian idea of the creation seems to me the reverse
of Berkeley’s idea,—where everything is only in dea,
only shadows; nothing “artificially ” (that is, artistically )
created — different again from the Greek idea, for
Phthah had both the “truth” and the art—the truth
of the essence and the art of the form; whereas Vulcan
was only a workman. He had only the art, and might
make a mistake, like a workman working after a
drawing, which he might do “ artistically,” yet miss the
idea (which would not be ‘according to truth”); e. g.,
make a carnivorous animal with the organs of a grami-
nivorous one. Berkeley’s God, you see, had not the term ;
and the Greek God had not the idea. The only paral-
lelism of a Creator is in our own “Father of lights,”—in
whom, as Mr. Bracebridge says, is no “apadXayi),” i. e.,
who makes a straight line (see the analogy with “in a
perfect manner”), and without a “ shadow of turning ;”
because there are two ways of spoiling the straight
line, either by making others parallel to it, thus ren-
EGYPT VERSUS BERKELEY. 151
dering it indistinct—or by making it to turn. To
strengthen this, St. James puts in, that He makes it with-
out even the “shadow” of a turn, 7. e., He makes it “in a
perfect manner, not deceptively,” ¢. ¢., not indistinctly.
St. James goes on, “ Of His own will begat He us with
the word of truth,” BovrgsvOeus, i. ¢., wishing, intending
to do it—not doing it by accident. The Egyptian theo-
Jogian seems to have wished to define three things in his
creator —z. ¢., well, idea, and form— viz., that he did it
intentionally, that he had the essence, and the manner.
How these Egyptian priests seem to have foreseen all
the errors that would arise, and to have defined their
creating god, so as to keep equally clear of the
god of Democritus, who had no will, whose world
came together by accident, by atoms, — the god of
Berkeley, who had no manner, whose world was
shadows, like Macbeth’s dagger,—and the god of the
Greeks, who had no essence. Those words, “ not decep-
tively,” seem to have agreed exactly with the God (in
whom there was no parallax) of St James, i. ¢., the God
who knew what he had to do, and did it; in whom the
thing appeared what it was. The appearance was the
same as the identity; not, as in parallax, where the
apparent place is different from the real place, and you
must allow for that difference.
The scarabzeus was sacred to Phthah, because it sig-
nified the world, and the frog also, because it was “ the
representative of man in embryo, who was the noblest pro-
duction of his hands.” See how close the analogy again
to our God—* Of His own will begat He us with the
word of truth, wishing us. to be an dapyy of His crea-
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2?
152 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
tures,” which we have chosen to translate “ first fruits ;”
2. &, we are the epitome of the creation as it were, as
the frog epitomised Phthah’s creation. As Owen tells
us that the brain of the human being goes through all
the stages of the inferior animals, and therefore encloses
all the other animals in itself, so we are the perfect
example, or the “ beginning” (dmapy7), of all the rest
of the creation.
I should like to have seen Phthah at work with the
perfect eyes of the Egyptian priests in his rocky temple.
Before it, is an area with broken columns and Osirides; »
what we should call a portico, four figures deep. But
how we appreciated here the perfect solitude of Ipsam-
boul, which we shall never have again! My dear
Thmei, the goddess of truth, was daughter of Phthah.
I should not wish for a greater contrast than the
four temples we have seen in two days— Dakkeh,
Gerf Hossayn, Kalabsheh, and Beit el Wellee: the phi-
losophical minutiz and analytic subtleties of Hermes
Trismejistus,—the rude and awful grandeur of Phthah’s
cave,—the upstart magnificence and vulgar showiness of
the terraces and buildings of Kalabsheh,—and the ex-
quisite little gem of art of Beit el Wellee! The first is
Kthiopean, the third Roman, and the second and fourth
of the great Rameses, though as distinct as possible.
The first stands upon a sandy plain, and looks out from
the top of its propylon (as philosophy, with her broad
view and distant glance, ought to do). The second,
with her savage, awful devotion, is a cavern in the
rock, The third has great stone Chatsworth terraces,
almost like gardens, down to the river. A wilder-
ness of hewn stones and elaborately carved capitals lies
COLOURED INTAGLIOS. 153 |
about, while the sacred place is unfinished. The fourth
is a perfect little specimen of painting and sculpture,
perched at the top of a rock.
We went to see it first. I never saw anything so
pretty: the colours are more perfect than any we have
seen; and it does not give one in the least the effect of
barbarism. Who calls the Loggie barbaric? It is not
at all more gay than those gems of Raphael’s art. It is
true that here these are intaglios, which are so coloured ;
but the distinction seems a fanciful one, — why should
not intaglios be coloured? The place is not at all darker
than Raphael’s Stanze. There are but two chambers in
the rock, the Prosekos and Adytum. Thenextis the Area
without. As we have the casts of the sculptures in the
latter in the British Museum, and as we mean, when we
come back, to take a small lodging for six months over
the greengrocer’s in Great Russell Street, for the sake
of studying these and others, I shall not trouble you
with describing them now. On one side is the Great
Rameses receiving eastern captives from a nation, the
Shorii, who rebelled during his father’s time, and
whom he reduced. Further on, he is beleaguering
a negro town, and holding a captive negro over the
town, whose legs dangle high above it, Rameses being
a great deal bigger than the fortifications. On the
other side he is receiving the prince of Cush (Kthio-
pia), who is bringing tribute; and further on himself,
in a chariot, and two lesser sons behind, in chariots with
charioteers; (I like this so much—the king always does
the most work, he never has a charioteer) he is pur-
suing the enemy into the woods of Lebanon, where a
wounded chief, leaning on his companions, is being taken
154 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
home. A child runs to tell his mother, who is uncon-
sciously cooking under a tree; another clings to its
father’s knees, and throws dust upon its head.
The triad, in the sacred place, is Amun Ra, Neph,
and Anouke. Rameses is offering to Amun Ra, who
is blue, to denote his heavenly nature. The cartouches
are on a gold ground, with Ra, the sun, Rameses’
own deity (a red disk), upon it; and his favourite Thmei,
white—very pretty. Neph, in the adytum, is giving
Rameses life and purity. But the jewel, the precious
thing of the whole, is behind the door of the sacred
place—Anouke, the Egyptian Vesta, and goddess of do-
mestic purity, whispering advice into the ear of Rameses.
With one hand (the most delicate, beautiful hand) she
takes him under the chin, like a child, holding up his
face. The other arm falls over his shoulder. She is
considerably bigger than he is; yet anything like the
perfect grace of the figure—the beautiful feminine grace,
I never saw. And the child-like attitude of the great
hero, as the goddess breathes her admonitions into his
ear; the simplicity and humility of the conqueror; the
youthful dignity of the virgin goddess—a more beautiful
ideal never entered the mind of man. And a fond and
a faithful husband it is evident he was; and in the next
compartment, to show how he attended to the words of
the goddess, his wife appears with him at sacrifice. They
were happy women, those Egyptians of olden times, to be
under the protection of such an admonitrix. We came
down from Beit el Wellee (the “house of the saint:” it
was a Mahometan hermit’s abode, Beit the same as the
Bible Beth house), as soon as it was dusk; not because
we had done with it, but because we really could not
ROMANISM IN EGYPT. 155
stay in the press and the din, and went to Kalabsheh,
which is just under the cliff, through a ruined town of
heaps of stones, out of which the few remaining huts
reared their low heads, as if by mistake ; sheep’s heads,
and cows’ heads, and human heads, were seen just stick-
ing out of the stones. One could not divine what they
were doing there,
Kalabsheh is the biggest temple in Nubia. I never
saw anything so magnificent nor so vulgar. It must
have been the work of some upstart nouveau riche, —a
Roman Hudson. The heaps of ruins have struck every-
body as something incredible — arch, portico, pronaos,
naos, adytum, all are full of enormous blocks of hewn
stone. How they came there is the wonder, or, if they
were ever put up, how they ever came down. You
climb up mountains of stone, and down again, which is
the only method of proceeding in this temple. One
enormous block, which had roofed the adytum, was
cracked (it must have been done by a tremendous
blow from above), and now bent like a rotten beam.
The ruins were like a stone builder’s yard. They did
not strike one with wonder or awe, but with a feeling
of dreary confusion and wasted expense. ‘The adytum
was unfinished; the gods were Roman soldiers, with
Egyptian animal heads on the top. Terrace upon ter-
race, and column upon column, lay in useless magni-
ficence and extravagance, and a miserable Arab mud
wall blocked up the entrance. 'T'wo of the crew dragged
me up and down the ruins (which looked as if they had
never been put up) in the moonlight; and we gladly
came back to the boat, where we lay at anchor an hour,
while Paolo bought a black sheep (who sits up on his
156 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
hind legs like a dog), milk, and eggs, and Mustafa
bought henna, with which he and two others of the
crew dyed their beautiful hands red. Mustafa is the
cook, and came in this morning to show his hands. I[
bargained for some of the women’s ornaments, but they
asked such an extravagant price that my mercantile
British spirit forbade. I could not help thinking, had a
third genus been by to have seen that deck full of Euro-
peans and Nubians —not more separated perhaps are
men and animals — with nothing to bridge over the im-
passable chasm between them, how melancholy it must
have seemed. :
After this moonlight fair, we made for the rapids
of Kalabsheh, which are nearly as dangerous as those
of the first cataract, and can only be passed when there
is absolutely no wind, as the slightest puff either way
would drive you on to the rocks, where the force
of the rushing waters is tremendous. The river here
is very narrow, and hemmed in on both sides with
great purple volcanic walls, and islands standing piled
up in the water, looking like great black monsters,
-—crocodiles with their mouths open, &c. — the wildest
scene [was everin. We saw Beit el Wellee and Kalab-
sheh very rapidly (as there was fear that the low Nile
might catch us), and set off in a broad bright moonlight.
The men were rowing vehemently, as it requires all
their skill to keep the boat straight. Mr. B. was in
the inner cabin, > and I sitting on the divan on deck,
watching the descent. We were floating down into a
deep, dark pool, where the moonlight lay in great masses
on the black waters, when we saw the whole crew
start up, fling down their oars, and begin to fight vio-
A ROW IN THE RAPIDS. 157
lently. A confused mass of arms and legs and African
blankets lay all together in the hold, howling, and
screaming, and kicking, the boat of course drifting down
upon the rocks meantime. In a moment, however, out
rushed Paolo with an ebony club,—which I had bought
from the Berber savages coming up the cataract, and
which hung in the cabin,—fell upon the mass of struggling
heads, and began to belabour them with all his might,
so that I thought he would have broken in their skulls.
He was alone against the eleven, but he did not seem to
think of it, though he was generally a great coward,
nor they either; and by sheer battering he parted.them,
and drove them back to their oars. It was all over in
a moment; but anything like the total inprévoyance,
the savage recklessness of their own lives, I could not
have conceived.
We found afterwards that one of the crew (the best
man among them) had accidently struck the rower be-
fore him with his oar; the Arabs are excessively fiery,
and the man chose to consider it an insult and returned
the blow. The offender was a rather lonely man whom
the crew disliked, and therefore the whole body except
one man (who stood by him manfully) took part against
him. The next day there was a great begging pardon,
plenty of bruises to be plaistered, and everybody friends
with everybody. It was the most savage scene mo-
rally and naturally I certainly shall ever see.
Kalabsheh is the ancient Salmis, Dakkeh the ancient
Pselcis ; and if I did my historical duty, I should tell you
of the wars which the Romans and Queen Candace, who
had but one eye, carried on here. But you know [like
‘a law any day better than a war. Even the wars of my
158 LETTERS FROM EGYFT.
beloved hero, the great Ram, I have not patience to tell,
though I hail his features wherever I see them. And
I have never so much as mentioned his temple at
Derr (the capital of Nubia), hewn in the rock,
where he appears with his faithful lion. But I really
don’t remember it; I only remember looking out
between the portico columns, and thinking that I
was in the capital of the Lapute, or of some other
of Gulliver’s countries—so strange, so little like the
dwellings of human beings did this capital look. A
sycamore by the river’s shore, which was the coffee-house,
was the only thing human—the white domes or bee
hives, the-mud walls without windows, which inclosed
a yard, in the corners of which were the lairs of families,
the nests of little naked children, squatting between two
stones (like nests of young foxes) —running away when
you looked at them, and then baying like jackals after
you, and looking so happy and so fat, their costume
combining lightness with elegance, a string of beads
round the neck, and another round the loins, small
bones, well covered and well made—things which looked
about four months old, climbing about like lizards, and
never so much as scratching their little feet, the mothers
carrying their babies across their hips, many with nose-
rings ;—whether I was Gulliver or Captain Cook, I don’t
know,—but certainly all this was as much out of our
common habits of thought as if I had been either.
Yesterday we left the tropics—oh, how sorry I was!
This morning I parted with my three pets the cham-
eleons, which I have had ever since we were in Nubia;
but I grandly sacrificed them, and would not tear them
from their beloved tropic, as I was torn; so set them
MY CHAMELEONS. 159
ashore this morning, instead of going to see a temple.
We bought them of some Arabs at Ipsamboul. Three
belonged to me, and one to the crew, who gave him to
me to take care of. Mine were very aristocratic, how-
ever, and tormented him so dreadfully that. he died:
they were all sadly quarrelsome. One was a capital
shot, and shot all the flies, for his own use, at the first
blow: he was slight and agile. The largest was very
stupid, and a bad shot besides. They were of a greenish
yellow, the colour of the mimosa leaves. I used to
sprinkle a mimosa bough with sugar, which brought the
flies, and then the chameleons came round and shot them
with their tongues. When they were angry they became:
bright yellow, and when afraid, brown, with purple
spots. Their use in the world is to free it from flies,
and they will kill fifteen in a quarter of an hour some-
times. They are three inches long as to the body, three
inches as to the tail, three inches as to the tongue.
They used to hang themselves up by their tail and pre-
tend to be dead, that the flies might come and settle
on them; and my three would do it in order to entice
the one belonging to the crew close up to them, and
then beat him. To-day we leave Nubia, where we have
been just a fortnight — to-night we shall be at Philee.
Jan. 28. 1850.
24° 5’ N. Lat.
GoopBYE, Philoee—iAn indeed to me ; Goodbye, dear
Philce, beautiful Philee, whose very name from this time
160 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
has a magic in it to our ears, to make sad moments joy-
ful—to people solitary moments—to make us young
again when we are old. Oh, Philce, whom I shall never
see again, may she be to many others what she has
been to us during the happy, happy week which we have
spent there; and may she live again some day herself,
when Egypt is a happier world. Fare thee very well,
my dear and holy Philce. I never loved a place so much
—never felt a place so homey: thank God for all we
have felt and thought there. Every moment of that
precious week, from before sunrise to long after moon-
light had begun, I spent upon the Sacred Island, most of
it in Osiris’ chamber. This morning we came away at
daybreak, rushed down the cataracts, and found our-
selves again in the nether world, after having been in a
place so curiously raised up and bounded in by nature,
that our three weeks in Nubia seem to us as if they had
been spent in another star. Sorry enough we were to
leave her, and to come down again: but there is a time
for everything, as Solomon says.
I cannot describe to you the feeling at Phile. The
myths of Osiris are so typical of our Saviour that it
seemed to me as if I were coming to a place where He
had lived — like going to Jerusalem ; and when I saw a
shadow in the moonlight in the temple court, I thought,
‘‘ perhaps I shall see him: now he is there.”
The chamber of Osiris was like the place where He
was buried; and after our little service on the Sunday
morning, I went and sat there, and thought J had never
sate in any place so sacred, nor ever could, except in
Syria.
The position of the island, high above the water (the
PHILG. 161
Greeks called it abaton), the calm, shadowy lake around
(which the Nile becomes there), the “Golden Moun-
tains” (the Hemaceutz), which hem it in, the stillness,
the tufts of wild palms, which grow out of the clefts of
the rocks all round the island, the solitude — for all its
Arab inhabitants have deserted it, — there can be nothing
like Philce in the world! The first moonlight night
that I sat on a broken colonnade in Phile, by the
temple of Isis, within the roar of the cataract, I kept
repeating those words to myself that I might believe
them, and felt how far the reality surpassed the words.
Excepting a solitary Sakia, which often goes the whole
night round, the Cataract’s roar is the only sound
which rocks the rest of him who sleeps in Philo, and
none disturb his sleep. The full moon hangs her lamp
over his solitary bier, but no other funeral lights are
there.
And, first of all, 1 must prepare you for the fact, that
everything in Philce is ugly. The Hypcethral temple is
hideous; the sculptures (after what we have been ac-
customed to in Nubia, of the times of the great Rameses)
would disgrace a child — ill drawn, ill cut, ill painted.
Not a building remains, excepting one pylon (the first),
in the temple of Isis, of a time earlier than that of the de-
generate Ptolemies, and every thing is in as bad taste as
all that the Ptolemies did. The Puritans—I mean the Per-
sians—have destroyed every vestige of theold part. There
is nothing left which the most enthusiastic lover of the
Egyptians could call beautiful ; but the spirit that reigns
over all is divine; and I think that this very failing effort
of the fading nation to embody their old spirit makes it
the more affecting. It is like the last leaping up of the
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162 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
light in the socket, which shows the dying face you
loved, of which the spirit is still beautiful, though the
body is disfigured and agonising — it is like the last
dying words, the farewell. I am not sure that I did not
love Philo better for her struggle to say one thing more
to our watching ears, to teach us the great truths she
felt so deeply with her last failing breath. Now rest in
peace, dear Philo. She has done her work, her mission
is accomplished ; — it is finished.
Many times the last night did I put my head out of
window, and saw by the full moon the palm trees wav-
ing over the temples, the tomb of Osiris, till I knew
every line by heart. Now our Passover is over, our
Passion Week is at an end; but I shall always think
of it as my Holy Week.
But I must come to “meaner things, my St. John.”
We found the there. He is making a series of
drawings of the temple of Isis, and is a picture himself;
he always wears the Turkish dress—-a blue gubbeh, white
kaftan, red turban, and a long white beard: his wife,
a nice little woman, young and pretty, always sits by
him. I like her, and she took me into the huts in Bidji,
the adjoining island, where she has friends. One night
in Phile we “dined out” in their princely tent at
Mahatta. A diner-en-ville in Nubia is charming.
Carrying our chairs with us, our carpet and cushions,
and having put on every thing we had in this world, we
went, about moonrise, in our little boat, threading our
way through the defiles of the Nile, piles of rocks tower-
ing over us in grotesque shapes on every side, and with
the current we floated down in about half an hour, till
we landed at a sandy place, and, preceded by our Arabs
DINING OUT IN NUBIA. 163
carrying the furniture, we scrambled along Brook Street, |
which was a bank of sand intermingled with very large
stones, from the top of which a lady, who wanted to sell
her silver bracelets, threw them down at us (which is the
method of traffic in Nubia). I bought those same brace-
lets for thee, my dear P ; they came from Darfur,
and are the only pretty things I have seen here.
Then we went through some palm gardens, by some
sleeping camels, and were announced at Mr. and Mrs.
’s by our Arab (with our two chairs on his back,
and our carpets wrapped round his head) crawling upon
his face under the ropes of the tent, and into the tent
upon his knees. Mr. came out, like a rather fine
gentleman as he is, and expanded himself in compli-
ments. He had got a young Englishman to meet us— he
was so happy — we were so kind, &c.; and Mrs. ;
S
Cairene woman, trowsered and veiled, stood like an
Oriental slave while we took off some of our blankets.
The tent was, however, bitterly cold; our Dahabieh is
more comfortable. I must tell you that the thermometer
varies here 90° in 24 hours, from 30° at night—for it has
actually frozen—to 120° in the sun; and this, in a country
where there is no possibility of protecting oneself arti-
ficially, excepting by clothes. When one is cold in
Egypt, one waits till the sun is hot.
The dinner was very much like a London dinner:
Mr. was fine and courteous; Mr. —— was stupid
and silent; Mrs. —-— was nice and naive. They
have just had their house in Cairo burnt. The Pasha
next door wanted the ground for his garden, and sent
a slave to burn it, the method of purchase in Egypt. No
drawings, however, luckily, were lost. His figures are
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164 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
beautiful — his buildings commonplace and literal. After
having drunk as much coffee as we could, we walked
down to the beach, in preparation for going home —
Mr. ——, shufiling first, in Turkish slippers, and losing
one among the sand; his Nubians following with our
chairs and carpet. We came home again by a counter
current in ten minutes, cutting in through the rocks by
the moonlight. But these late hours destroy one’s
health: we were not home till nine o’clock.
Another day I went with Mrs, to Bidji, the
neighbouring island, to see her little friend Zehnab, a
child of four years old, the daughter of a widow of six-
teen. Zehnab’s aunt, of ten, who is just married, and
who showed us her house with great pride, the nicest in
the island, swam over to see Mrs. at Mahatta this
morning: every body swims here. Bidji is almost
entirely peopled with one family, the original grandfather
and his posterity. We asked Zehnab’s mother how old
she was. ‘“ How could she tell? her mother knew.”
They all slept out of doors in the summer, in the winter
on the clay divan at the end of the hut. But every body
had their own hut; and Zehnab’s swimming aunt had
two cushions! ! There was no other article of furniture,
however, but the clay divan and the jars in hers or
in any other house; they were swept out very clean;
you could not stand upright in them; there was always,
however, one room for the family and another for the
chickens. But, alas! the chickens, and the eggs, and the
Doura bread are all kept for the men; and the women
live on the leaves of the bean, raw and boiled, and on
Doura cakes. They wanted Mrs. ’s wedding ring,
and listened with great attention to her story of our
THE BRIDE’S WEDDING VISIT. 165 —
marriage ceremony. Then they asked if her husband beat
her, and were astonished to hear he did not; next how
much he had “ given for her ”—as in Egypt the husband
gives the dowry, not the father ; and when she said thirty
shillings, they said “it was very cheap.” (The thirty
shillings was true, for she was obliged to be married
before the Cadi; and Mr. gave away thirty shil-
lings to the poor to satisfy the Cadi’s question.) That
one man should keep faithful to one woman his whole
life, and not send her back to her parents, and marry
another, is more unheard of among the poor than among
the rich, because the rich man maintains all his wives
by etiquette—the poor man just sends them back.
Zehnab had a little row of beads round her neck, and
another round her waist — nothing else. I tried to per-
suade Mrs. to take her and educate her, and send
her back to educate the island. The women never
pray; no Mahometan poor woman does, excepting the
haggs or pilgrims. On the island was a little heap of
stones, where a man mounted (the elder of the village)
to call to mosque on Fridays, in the open air. The
belief among the women in a future state seems to be
very small; if they express any feeling about it at all,
it is that they shall be servants there to the men.
I walked across the Island of Bidji, such a wild, but
not desolate walk, through a wilderness of rocks, to a
solitary burial ground (each grave marked only by a
little circle of stones), in a valley on the top of the
island, and down to a deep green pool or tarn left by
the Nile, on the other side, with a tuft of palm trees, a
hut or two, and a little oasis of green in the middle of
that chaos of piled rocks. Another day we walked
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166 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
along the eastern shore of the Nile to the ruined Chris-
tian church, where Padre Ryllo said his last mass. The
huts are not so sordid, and the population not so “ rub-
bishy” near Philce as elsewhere.
Mr. , to whom we had a letter, came the even-
ing before we left, with his Abyssinian daughter, the
child of an Abyssinian woman. I liked her much; a
really sensible nice girl—black. He is very learned
and. very queer.
On Monday morning we left our beloved mooring
place. I cannot tell you why Phile is so dear. It is
like a friend of whose face one does not think whether it
is ugly or beautiful—one does not know. So different,
too, from Ypsamboul, with its depths of stillness, which
I loved as much, in a different way. Phile is cheerful,
living, sunny, compared with Ypsamboul, and yet the
roar of the Cataracts is not like life; it is like eternity,
and every thing in Philos seems like another world.
If the going up the Cataracts was strange, it was
nothing to the coming down. We set off before sun-
rise, as it 1s necessary to have no breath of wind, with
the “bigs” and all their men on board. Our boat is
the largest that has ever been up the Cataracts, and we
came down a passage which is very rarely used, as the
tossing rapid would swamp a smaller boat. It was
widened for Ibrahim Pacha’s steamer. = went on shore,
but I stuck by the old boat, and truly it was a sight
worth seeing how she gradually accelerated her speed
as she approached the rapid, which, foaming and tossing,
with scarcely two feet on cither side our oars, seemed as
if no boat could live in it, then took the leap like a race-
COMING DOWN THE CATARACT. 167.
horse, so gallantly, and went riding down the torrent as if
she enjoyed it. Three times her bows dived under water
(I don’t mean that the waves broke over the boat,—that
they did all the time, and half filled her with water, and
all our biscuit, too, which was of more consequence), but
three times she dived under water up to the kitchen, and
rose again; twice she struck, but gallantly triumphed over
all her enemies, and long before I have written this one
line we were at the bottom, and swung round at the end
of the rapid—the first time this feat has been tried, as boats
are generally run ashore on the bank at the foot of the
Cataract, as the only alternative. Of course, everything
depends on the steering, and the oldest “ big” of all, the
“‘ Great Father,” mounted on the poop by his steers-
man, whence they did steer like masters. The boat
obeyed, and we verged not an inch to the right or the
left. =, who watched us from the shore, thought that
we could not be going down that place, that the boat
had not minded its rudder, and that they had run her
down there as the only resource. I suppose such a feat
of steering is without parallel in any other country. ‘Che
Cataract by which we came down runs into the main
stream at right angles, like water out of a cock ; we were
steered on the edge of the gush, on the left edge, so that
when we came to the bottom, by the motion of the rudder
and a vigorous pull of the oars on one side (our men
were rowing with their whole mights all through the
descent), the bows were got out of the current on the
left, which caught the stern, and the boat turned on her
centre like a pivot, and swung round into still water ; this
is a new feat. The N.’s boat, which came down after
us, was too short to try it, and she struck upon a rock,
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168 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
swinging to the right upon her stern; we are the
first to have done it. Mr. B——- and I sat on the
pantry, embracing our water jar, on the top of which
we received the congratulations of all the “ bigs” and of
all their men, who all shook hands with us, and cried
Salam! the moment it was over. There was but one more
little rapid to pass, and when we arrived at Syene, and
were quietly at breakfast, the great “big” came in, and
then the pilots, and solemnly applied my hand to his lips
and forehead, and kissed Mr. B on the top of his
head, and then asked for Baksheesh. The dignity with
which an Arab shakes hands with you and begs is
charming.
The old Sheich ended by presenting me with his
pillow, which I hope you will not mistake for a gi-
gantic brown beetle, with many legs. It was not,
though, for its curiosity that he gave it, but as a use-
ful piece of furniture —a wonderfully large piece of
hard wood, such as could not be found nearer than
Abyssinia.
But the fun of funs was to see us riding up to Mahatta
in the afternoon to pay a series of morning calls at the
Cataract. We came down the wildest of rocky passes,
walking (it was too steep for the donkeys, who followed),
and there lay the English fleet—six boats, in a little
creek of the Nile below the Cataracts; they had not been
up; it was exactly like a wood-cut in one of Captain
Cook’s voyages — the savage scene, the neat English
boats and flags in the little bay. So we scrambled
down, in company with three camels; while the men
of Mahatta pop out upon us, brandishing their spears
vight in our faces for fun, and making our asses to turn
ESCAPE FROM SYENE, 169
aside, but we insist upon going on, and so make our
calls,
We found Mr. Murray at Asouan, just arrived ; but
there was such a “ruck” of English boats there —all
the N . party, and a thousand others —and nothing
to eat, for they had devoured everything like locusts,
even all the rice and milk of Syene, that we turned
savage and sailed before sunrise. This animal (that’s
us) it is impossible to tame; it can never be domes-
ticated, but remains in its savage state in spite of all
the kindness (and constraint) that can be lavished upon it.
I was glad enough to get away from Syene, which I
cannot bear; and would not so much as go over again
to Elephantina.
I have seen the mirage once, and except that I knew
it was impossible that the Nile could have got into the
place where we saw it, should not have been much struck
with the sight.
I must not forget to record that we saw a few drops of
rain on the sand one day in Nubia, preserved by the
sand as a curiosity in its natural museum in little round
holes made for the purpose.
Sunday, Feb. 3. 1850.
My dearest Mother,— We have been a week coming from
Asouan to Thebes, owing to a strong north wind against
us, and bitter weather, such as Paolo, who has been up
the Nile twenty-five times, says he has never felt the like
of, The wind is like March, and the whirlwinds of sand
170 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
such that you feel like a hippopotamus in your skin, and
the air is nothing but a sand rain, and the river a sand
bank. We have been forty-eight hours at Esne, from
sheer inability to get on, scarcely going on shore because
of the blinding sand, though hardly able to keep ourselves
alive in the boat. Every thing in the boat looks as if it
had not been dusted for a month, and my paper is so
covered with sand that I am afraid you will hardly be
able to read this.
To-night the wind a little fell, and we immediately took
advantage of it, to pull all night, hoping to be at Thebes
to-morrow. |
We have had twenty-four days of this wind,—a thing
quite unprecedented in the annals of Egypt, where three
days’ wind is the calculation, and then calm.
We have seen, on our way, Kém Ombo, a stupid
temple, and the quarries of Hadjar Silsileh, the same
afternoon. ‘They are sandstone, like our own in Derby-
shire. It was a beautiful day, and a very pleasant
walk ; the next morning Edfoo, a Ptolemaic temple; the
people did not beg; the breed of cows, with heads like
antelopes, was the most beautiful I ever saw; and the
brown sheep, with large ruffs round their necks, holding
their heads erect, and with lively, intelligent manners,
like dogs, came to look at us and speak to us. A
donkey on the roof of the temple must have walked up-
stairs : the whole roof was crowded with huts, the scale of
the building magnificent, the propyleum 120 feet high ;
but we did not even attempt going up, the atmosphere
was in such a state with sand.
The next morning we rose up early, saddled our ass,
took our young men, and rode three miles into the desert
SOCIAL LIFE IN EGYPT. 171°
to Eilethyia, the oldest ruins in Egypt. The donkeys
had no bridles, but a cord round their necks. I could
choke my donkey, but I could not stop him. However,
they knew their business much better than we did. The
desert was not an ugly desert, but a beautiful valley with
isolated rocks standing up in it, and rocky sides ; no ver-
dure, of course; it was like the gigantic bed of a dried
up pre-Adamite river, not like a crumbling desolation.
In this vast valley we found a “ lodge in the wilderness,”
a little chapel built by Amunoph IIL, the last king but
one of the xviii. Dyn., B. C. 1638, with the colours of
the sculptures as fresh as if they had been just done.
Here the people must have come out from EHilethyia for
evening sacrifice; and it looked like a place of worship,
so still and holy, sitting on its little stone platform. It
is dedicated, of course, to Eilethyia, and on the door is a
little sculpture of the great Rameses, attended by his son,
a priest, in the office of fan-bearer. His fan is a feather
of the sort which Hilethyia, when she covers the roofs of
temples with her wings, bears in her claws, meaning
that with her fans she shall thoroughly purge her floor.
In the northern hills are the famous painted tombs
of Hilethyia, about one of which (that of the Ad-
miral of Amosis, the restorer of the empire after the
Shepherds, B. C. 1638), every one has heard. I
think they are very curious but very tiresome. They
give Sir Charles Grandison of old Egyptian life, and
it is such a bore going over all those details, that one
of them is quite enough, and that we had at Beni Has-
san. There is one comfort, however, to be drawn from
them, that the conventionalities of social life are the
same in the two ends of Time and Space-~-the master
172 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
and mistress sitting before dinner, with the company in
rows, the ladies smelling at their nosegays, and a little
music to amuse them, is exactly what 100 mistresses
of 100 country houses endure every day in an island the
Egyptians had never heard of, and at a time near 4000
years off.
The crude brick wall of the old town of Eilethyia,
which lies below its tombs, and at the mouth of its
valley, is gigantic. Imagine a square of about a third of
a mile to the side, with walls thirty-five feet thick (Mr.
B. measured them), and inclined planes twenty-five feet
more, leading to the top, as is the case-in the old Egyp-
tian towns: the square seemed thoroughly cleared out,
scarcely a vestige of a ruin in it; but these colossal
walls, the colour of them, the awful size, make one think
of a time before the Ichthyosauri.
On the top of an isolated rock farther up the valley,
which we passed, all the modern population of Eilethyia,
women and children, collect on their New Year’s Day,
and spend the whole day there, taking their food with
them, for prayer—those who can. Such a pleasant plan.
The next day we were at Esne, the centre of the
manufacturing interest, with a royal palace and gardens.
We were astonished when we went ashore to see blue
linen dyeing and hanging across the streets, so that the
passengers had to lift it up as they went along; shops,
and a market place: and, passing into the bazaar, we saw
— oh, what a moment! a bale of Manchester goods!
Here we burst into tears — no, we ought to have done
so, but didn’t: no emotion did the Manchester mart
produce in my mercantile soul. But stop, do not con-
demn me, it was Sunday,‘and my Sabbatical habits for-
THE GOVERNOR OF ESNE. 173
bade even to feel any thing at the sight of cotton on the
day of shop-shutting, I thought of the streets of Man-
chester on a Sunday, made a rigid face, and passed on.
We went to the Pashalik garden; mint its only pro-
duce; into the Pashalik palace. A sarsnet French
bed (of tawdry gilding mixed with dirty blue, not so
good as what you would see at a small theatre), its only
furniture. The guide showed Mr. B. what it was for,
and how to use it ! as we had, of course, never seen a bed
before! No other article of farniture was in the room,
but the wooden divan against the wall, with a heap of
cushions ; and I suspect the Pacha gets off his bed and
sleeps there. No Arab can lie exceptinaheap. There
was not a semblance, there was not even a possibility of
occupation all over the palace, except in the bath — the
“hama.” We went out upon the roof. It shook under
our feet. The guide showed us a factory from the roof,
and made a Lord Burleigh nod, which Mr. B. construed
to mean “ that it had been a flourishing manufactory
of the finest Malta web, but that the workmen had been
removed to Cairo, and the place closed.” The poor gar-
dener picked me a nosegay. I am glad to have seen a
royal palace.
This was the Esne, where, as we came up the river,
at the same time as Abbas Pacha, he, finding something
not to his liking in the preparations made for him,
ordered the governor 500 lashes, and displaced him.
Who the new governor was I cannot say, but yesterday
we saw him go on board his beautiful dahabieh for
Cairo. The wind was so strong that his Rais remon-
strated. He ordered the Rais to be bastinadoed, and
the boat to proceed; 500 yards further we saw him
174 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
run aground, and on the bank he beat about the whole
night; and we gladly endured the worst night we have
had for the pleasure of knowing that the same wind kept
him there, stuck for twenty-four hours. Little Beys
have great Beys upon their backs to beat them, and
great Beys have greater Beys; and so ad infinectum.
But I am not sure how long this praiseworthy spirit of
retribution would have kept us warm.
We went to the Temple. Mehemet Ali excavated
the portico, which is like a great well; the rubbish
cleared out was removed (apparently) into the interior
of the Temple itself. The consequence is that the
portico, which is gigantic, three rows of six columns, is
dark, dank, and damp (I don’t know if the Infernal
Regions have a portico, but if they have, this is surely
it,—Inever saw anything so Stygian). The earth in the
Temple looks ready to pour down upon you and over-
whelm you; you go down to the portico by a formidable
flight of narrow mud steps; the portico itself is black
as Erebus ; the ceiling is covered with infernal beasts.
We walked through this extraordinary centre of com-
merce and manufacture again to-day (the first town we
have seen since Osyoot), and felt shabby among genteel
Arabs. I saw a school — the first time we have ever
seen one — master, ushers, and children, sitting in the
dust in a yard; a tin plate their copy-book, a page out
of the Koran their reading-book. They would not
let us touch the sacred page, but were not uncivil. In
this great emporium we were actually able to buy
candles ; at Esne they burn lights; we had bought the
whole stock of the town of Osyoot (there were no more
in the place), and they had long since come to an end.
THE LORD LIEUTENANT, 175:
To-morrow, dear people, please God, we mean to
wake in Thebes, and to wake there every morning for a
fortnight (at least). Think of a fortnight in Thebes!
I am so glad I put my poor little chamelions on shore
in Nubia, they would have died in this cold.
The colour of Egypt strikes us so much after Nubia,
or rather, the no-colour ; the difference between the two
sands is that of a dusty, dirty floor, and gold dust.
The cultivation of Egypt looks like vast plains, after
the sunk fence of Nubia.
I have been quite glad of this delay from the winds,
and this week’s rest, to recover from the pleasure of
Philce, and prepare for that of Thebes.
Monday Noon, Feb. 4. 1850.
Tueses! Thebes! We are just arrived, at twelve
o'clock. We made no way in the night, owing to the
wind, and so I got my wish of coming in by daylight ;
but the Nile is so low that there was nothing to be
seen. |
Just as we were sending off a courier fifty miles, to
Kenneh, to get our letters, we were told that the “ Lord
Lieutenant” here had them, and we have spent this
afternoon at El-Karnac reading them, with a glorious
sunset to do honour to this noble plain — the first real
sunset we have seen for many weeks.
While we were waiting at El-Uksor for the letters,
with a crowd round us, who called us the Cabiri (the
Great), a woman passed by with a fish on her head nearly
as big as herself, which we stopped. Then the Lord
176 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Lieutenant, like a red flamingo, came out with the
letters, and we asked the Lord Lieutenant’s opinion
about the fish, which he said was a good fish, so we
bought it. Then he told us there was nothing to pay
for the letters, as he had made an Englishman, who
came for his that morning, pay for the whole batch at
once.
Behind the Lord Lieutenant’s door was a post, and to
the post was fixed a chain, and the chain went through
a door by a hole, to which hole Mr. B , applying his
face to see what the chain was going to do, saw that it
was fastened to the neck of a prisoner inside, who smiled,
and Mr. B—— smiled, to show that they were very
glad to see one another; the prisoner had four friends
to chat with him, who were seated on the ground round
him.
Thebes, Feb. 6. 1850.
WELL, dearest people, here is your daughter really in
Thebes, though I can scarcely believe it. How beauti-
ful it is, after the extreme ugliness of Egypt, and even
of our beloved Nubia! How pleasant it is to find oneself
in beautiful country once more, in this glorious plain,
all surrounded by those violet coloured hills, with rich
fields bordering the blue Nile, and groves of palm-trees
and acacias, and tamarisks (quite a new sight), over-
shadowing the ruins of a world. It is not the deathbed
of a city which you come to visit here, it is the death of
a world. And what a world! As we crossed the river
yesterday morning, and rode for the first time on the
THE LYBIAN SUBURB. 177
western bank, there she lay, the Lybian suburb—there
stood the two Colossi, her gigantic portal—there hung
the frowning, overhanging cliffs, which make the grand
western barrier between her two worlds —her world of
life and that of death. There is nothing melancholy
about this great plain of death (excepting that miserable
Luxor), as there is about the rest of Egypt; the people
pasture their flocks and herds, and the women walk,
spinning, at their heads; and it is more like the old life
in the Bible, than any very sordid life of poverty. As
we sat on the pedestals of the Colossi yesterday, they
came and surrounded us with great flocks of sheep and
goats, and a few camels and oxen, but they did not beg
or-howl; and I heard a baby in a tomb afterwards (most
of them live in the tombs), making a pretty little noise,
the only pretty noise I have ever heard a human being
make in Egypt.
There is nothing horrid in this deathbed of Thebes.
When I see the evening sun making golden the tips
of her violet crown—her amethyst diadem of hills, which
sits so royally upon her noble brow— the words per-
petually come into my head—
Her destiny’s accomplished,—her time of work is done,—
She dwelleth in the golden home, her faithful toil hath won.
And the pastoral life of the few Arabs here, looks
more like a new world which is beginning — an infant
world springing out of her ashes, than a dying and
helpless old age.
Well, we climbed up on the pedestals of the Colossi,
and copied a few Greek and Latin inscriptions, which
told how, in the times of this Emperor or that Ptolemy,
I“ Camillus,” or I HMOAQPOZ,” heard the Memnon
N
178 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
“once in the first hour.” But, as I am only writing my
real and individual impressions, I must confess that I
cannot understand people raving about these Colossi.
The faces are so utterly gone, that to talk about any
expression is absurd, and to compare them with the
Rameses Colossi at Aboo Simbil, is to compare the Torso
with the Apollo Belvidere; if size is the object, the
Aboo’Simbil Colossi are two feet the biggest; but I don’t
see how an ugly thing put into a solar microscope is
made handsome. At Thebes one can afford to be dis-
appointed in one thing—even in a great thing; other-
wise I should be mad with myself at having felt so little
about these Colossi. But they are such sightless, shape-
less ruins, they look like sightless Lear after the storm,
—as if the lightning of heaven had rested upon them, and
made them the awful ruins you see; as if Amunoph
had been the author of some fearful secret crime, and
this was the vengeance of God making all secret things
manifest, blighting them with some Macbeth’s doom.
However it may stand with poor Amunoph’s consci-
ence, his Colossi don’t look at all colossal; on the con-
trary, they look quite in keeping with every thing
about them, as if they were the natural size of man, and
we were dwarfs, not they giants. One of our Arabs
climbed up to the shoulder, to take up our tape, and
looked like a fly perched upon him —a Lilliputian upon
Gulliver. While we were pursuing these avocations,
a large circle of these grave Arabs collected, and sat
smoking their pipes at the bottom, while the women
brought their flocks to come and look at us, walking at
the heads of them with their distaffs, which Arab women
in Egypt are not much given to.
THE TOMBS. 179
From the Colossi we went up to the tombs of Shekh
Abd el Koorneh, and went into several. This is the
place for Fetichism, for visions of Domdaniel, of the
road to the Citts dolente, the gate of the gente per-
duta, the spot to see images of the dead rising up about
you — to see “the possessed” inhabiting the tombs ;
and verily some of these poor Arab children do look
like the possessed. When you have seen these places,
you no longer wonder that the Egyptian’s word for the
Western Region and Hades was the same, that he
believed these to be really doors into the next world.
I could believe it myself. The private tombs are
generally a transept for the entrance, and a long nar-
row chamber running far into the rock behind. The
tombs of the kings are passage after chamber, and
vaulted hall after chamber and passage; and then hall,
chamber, and passage over again, which we, who have
pored over Belzoni in our youth, can well imagine, but
which nobody who has not read Belzoni as a child can
conceive. But these vaulted halls, deep in the rocky
girdle of the earth, what are they like but the entrance to
another world? And the heat, the intense heat of them,
how unlike this —the stillness and heaviness.
But to return to the private tombs in Shekh Abd el
Koorneh. Every one of them is now inhabited; and
you see a wild pair of Arab eyes with the blue whites
peering out of the darkness at you. ‘“ Go not among the
tombs, there is a wild man there ;” while the transepts are
full of the victories of Thothmes ITI. over the Ethiopians,
of doura jars and dove cotes, these poor people’s only furni-
ture. You know I am no friend of these tiresome pro-
cessions and banqueting feasts, the Grandisonian life of
N ?
180 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
these tombs. A funeral procession here and there is
most interesting, but you have to look at most of them
with candles. Now you see a face, a sculptured
face, whose earnest expression of intense devotion —
startles you, as the torch glimmers by. It is a king,
perhaps, sacrificing, or a priest; or it is the dead man
of the tomb in life, with his wife’s arms thrown round
him. One tomb which has just been opened, and which
Mr. B. and I crawled into upon our hands and feet
(it has not yet been blackened with torches or cut by
names), looks as if it had been painted last week.
The white ground with the gilding and colours looks
like the most beautiful porcelain. It is too gay to be
pretty.
After the tombs we went up to Dayr el Bahree, the
last temple at the foot of the cliff (where it joins the
plain), and which even runs far into the cliff, and looked
down upon this glorious bier. There were the two co-
lossal ruins of Karnac and Dayr el Bahree, on either
side the solemn Nile, facing each other, probably con-
nected by a dromos of sphynxes the whole way, except
where the river divided it, — we saw traces of such an
avenue for a long distance; if so, it must have been up-
wards of three miles long. On the El Karnac bank, El
Uksur on its promontory, on our side, the Rameseum,
below us in the plain, the two Colossi; temples and
palaces as far as the eye could reach, and everywhere,
in every hill and mound, the square portals showing
that it was riddled with tombs within, the worlds of life
and death were here so near together.
Then we rode down again to the little temple of
Kasr e Rubahk near the river. The sculptures in its
THE ACACIA GROVES. 181
chambers are beautiful; but I was weary, and while
they went over it I sat down on the broken base of one
of the columns in the colonnade in front, and watched
the sun set. Never did I see so beautiful, so poetic a
scene, but no one could draw it, for when Martin or
Danby try, how hard it looks. The beauty of it was
all new to our Egyptian eyes. Imagine, looking abroad
through a grove of palm trees and acacias, and seeing
under them the temples of Luxor on their promontory,
brilliant with the setting sun (such a sun as only Egypt
can show), so clear with gems of living light; and be-
hind them those violet mountains (not purple), with a
little border of gold — the whole western sky looking like
a scene out of the Revelations, so bright with “ celestial
jewelry,” and the green plain, no longer hard and raw
with this background, already in the darkness of twi-
light. No symptoms of ruin were here, —Luxor looked
as she might have looked the day she was finished; in
that sunset light all signs of decay disappeared, and in
the stillness of that evening hour, with no sound but
that of the flocks and herds going home, I felt like a
Theban maiden sitting there in the colonnade of that
solitary temple, where she had come for the evening
benediction, and looking out upon the glories of her
native land, fair and fresh in the evening light, and yet
sublime at the same time; there she sat, looking up to the
attributes of the “ Unknown God,” as I too saw them
sculptured above me in the colonnade; and (it is as-
tonishing how like the human heart is in all periods and
climates—I see the same feelings we have in every sculp-
ture and tomb and temple here), thinking probably
very much like me, I felt quite friendly with her.
: Nn 3
182 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
We rode home; our asses took to the water without
difficulty, and landed us safely in the boat, which took
us to our own dahabieh. The guide here rides before
us on a horse with scarlet housings and high Turkish
saddle, carrying a spear. Now and then (all these
Arabs, even our cook whom I saw prancing about this
morning, ride like Centaurs) he takes, partly because a
wild fit seizes him, partly for our admiration, a gallop
in the plain, to the amazing discomfiture of our asses,
who mistake him for Balaam’s angel, and turn their
faces out of the way.
I wish I could give you the least idea of the situ-
ation of this city, unparalleled in the world, I should
think. Imagine a plain about ten miles diameter,
surrounded by these lovely hills, —ariver, at low
Nile, about twice as wide as the Thames at Westmin-
ster —the western mountains’ rocky cliffs, with deep
precipitous winding valleys, or rather ravines, between
them, shaded by overhanging rocks, and without even
the coloquintida, much less a blade of verdure among
them, fit only for efreets and ghoules to live in the clefts
of the rock,—they look like the circle of mountains, the
abode of the Jinn, which, we all know, surrounds the
earth,—and this within a mile of the city of temples and
palaces. In these they buried their kings—surely there -
never was such a spot, by nature fitted for an imperial
city. The “ Valley of the Kings !”-— what a scene that
name conjures up now in our minds of the great ones of
the earth, not lying at rest, but stirred up to meet
another at his coming. There we spent yesterday in the
tombs of Rameses IV., Rameses V., and the Queen
Faosiri. But what can I compare the plain of Thebes
THE PLAIN OF THEBES. 183
to? The situation of London has a river, but it has no
hills; and then there are so few grand landmarks in its
city, such as Karnac, Medinet Haboo, Luxor, and the
Rameseum make here. Rome is more like it for its plain
and for its great monuments; but then these monuments
are concealed from one another by the hills, while here
the folds are all gathered up in the girdle, and leave
the plain smooth and spread out, so that, if it were not
for the heaps of rubbish, almost every monument might
be seen from every other, and all at once from the hills.
It is this, I believe, which makes the especial grandeur
of the plain, that there is a place to stand from and see
it near, and that all is to be seen. No wind visits this
great bay,—the hills are not near enough to make a
draught, and high enough to shut it out, and from the
moment we came in here it was calm. }
The boat is going, which takes this letter. Farewell,
dear people.
Feb. 7. 1850.
Thebes, Feb. 10. 1850.
The Queen’s wedding day, I think—what a long
way I do seem from Victoria’s wedding day! Notri-
ari’s I feel much more at home with.
Dearest People,
We shall have been a week in Thebes to-morrow,
a week of absolute despair, for to come to Thebes for
a fortnight is what going to Rome for a fortnight
would be. We feel at the end of a week that we know
Ww 4
184 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
less about it than we did before we came; not that the
individual things of Thebes require so much time; for
(said in the lowest whisper) there is nothing here to com-
pare with Aboo Simbil. The Osiridz in the Rameseum
have not a head among them all, while our Osiride at
Aboo Simbil had each a head piece. The Colossi are
not to be named with the four Rameses, and the sculp-
tures on the outside of Medina Taboo are small and
confused. Karnac is such a mass that it perplexes me
with its gigantic fall; but at Thebes one feels that de-
tail matters little—it is the grave of a world that one
has come to see.
The Valley of the Kings seems, though within a mile
of Thebes, as if one had arrived at the mountains of Kaf,
beyond which are only “ creatures unknown to any
but God” —so deep are the ravines, so high and blue
the sky, so absolutely solitary and unearthly, so utterly
uninhabitable the place. One look at that valley would
give you more idea of the supernatural, the gate of
Hades, than all the descriptions, sacred or profane.
What a moment it is the entering that valley, where
in those rocky caverns, the vastness and the gloomy
darkness of which are equally awful, the kings of
the earth lie, each in his huge sarcophagus, with the
bodies of his chiefs, each in their chamber, about him;
and where, about this time, they are to return, to find
their bodies (where are they now?) and resume their
abode on earth, —if purified by their 3000 years of pro-
bation, in a higher and better state; if degraded, in a
lower. I thought I met them at every turn in those
long subterraneous galleries,—saw their shades rising
from their shattered sarcophagi, and advancing once
THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS. t85
more towards the light of day, which shone like a
star, so distant and so faint, at the end of that opening
—the dead were stirred up, the chief ones of the earth.
If their belief is true, they are now returning, but they
will find that they do not want their bodies (the de-
struction and ruin there will not be so terrible to them
as they would have thought it beforehand), for God
is able of these stones to raise up bodies for them.
Well, these Pharaohs are perhaps now here, again in
the body, their 3000 years having just elapsed to some of
them, —that is, if they have philosophised sincerely, or,
together with philosophy, have “loved beautiful forms ;”
if not, they are, as we saw one of them, in the form of an
animal. |
If they are but ordinary beings, I believe Plato thinks
that 10,000 years will be the time before they come
again. But at the end of every 1000 years, they will
be able to choose what life they will have next; and
upon this choice depends much of what they would be-
come, for if they choose a philosophically virtuous life
three times in succession, at the end of that time “ they
recover the use of their wings;” but the soul “ which
has never perceived the truth cannot pass into the hu-
man form.” And if I were a Pharaoh now, I would
choose the Arab form, and come back to help these poor
people; and I am going to-morrow to a tomb of a Ra-
meses, B. C. 1150, to meet him and tell him so.
In the tomb of Rameses V. (the second we went into)
we met one who had not been able to choose; he was re-
visiting the earth in the form of a pig, having lived a
sensual life, and extinguished within himself the spark
of eternal life. At one end of the wall he was slowly
186 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
mounting into the presence of Osiris; next, standing
before him, himself weighing his own deeds, and then
being “found wanting,” he was leaving the divine
presence, in the form of a wretched pig, driven by two
monkeys. There was nothing ridiculous in this re-
presentation of the natural effect of sensuality; you
could not laugh —you felt it as the inevitable necessity.
If a man has allowed all that is divine (or human) within
him to die out, how can it be otherwise? Poor pig! I
shall always think of it, if I ever see another pig, which
of course one does not here.
In the same tomb of Rameses V. (who was one of
the twentieth dynasty, but not quite late enough for my
purpose) there are the Hours, each with a star on her
head, to signify the hourly review the deceased king
ought to have taken of his life; and which if he did not
during his life, dedicating each hour to the deity, or
the occupation, of the hour—he must do when he came
to weigh his own deeds before Osiris. You never see
these deities in the temples, which shows that they were
not intended as divinities to be worshipped, but simply
that these Egyptians thought that each hour was worth
religiously consecrating to its object —each was a “ ge-
nius in itself,” ‘a fraction of the divine essence which
pervaded it.” The dead man makes an offering to
each in succession.
It is curious how entirely without effect the outsides
of these tombs are; they are simply doors cut in the
cliff, generally with an Isis and a Nephthys, the Begin-
ning and the End, cut on each side the cartouche, nothing
else. But indeed in all Egyptian buildings you are not
less struck by this,—they seem to have thought nothing
THE SCHOOLMASTER IN EGYPT. 187
' about effect; their buildingsare hardly meant to look at
from the outside.
The tomb of Rameses V. appears to go an interminable
length in the rock, passage after passage, till at last you
come to the strange vaulted chamber at the end, where,
gold and red and black, the ceiling is covered with astro-
nomical records, fresh as ever, bright as if just from
the alchemist’s hand, who seems to have made those
magical characters on the roof, in this the centre of the
earth, the farthest of Domdaniel’s caves.
In the tomb of Rameses IV. the ceiling is painted with
the goddess of heaven encircling the firmament with
her arms; the figure of a man is upholding her with
outstretched hands.
The sarcophagus stands in the middle, broken and
empty, but in this case not overthrown. In that of
Rameses V., it lies on its side broken to pieces, and the
fragments strewn about: how such a block could be
broken is the wonder.
All these tombs slope rapidly downwards «:s you go
in.
I have never seen in all these representations any
hint of a belief in repentance ; it does not at all follow
that it is not there,—this language is so new to us.
The pre-eminence of the schoolmaster, the spiritual and
intellectual teacher, and of his trade above all others, is
what recurs to one oftenest in these tombs; the king
himself was scarcely equal to the teacher. It is what
we have so often sighed for in England, when we have
said that, till the schoolmaster’s vocation was considered,
as it is, the highest after the statesman’s, instead of being,
188 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
as it is now with us, inconceivable as it sounds, almost -
infra dig., the training up the soul almost a lower pro-
fession than the curing of the body, education never
could prosper in England. Here, in Egypt, the spiritual
teachers were before every thing, and above every
thing; nay, the king must himself be admitted as one,
before he could be the rightful monarch; and in their
hands was evidently all the education in Egypt. It
was a fatal error to these poor Egyptians, but surely
it was a noble error,—surely they erred on the right
side, when they so ennobled their spiritual instructors,
instead of degrading them, and experience only could
teach how terrible would be the consequences.- Mean-
while, those consequences almost reconcile one to the
disrepute of the office of schoolmaster in the country
which calls itself the most civilised in the world.
We went into one other tomb, that of the last of the
nineteenth dynasty, which seemed to have held two kings
in succession,—for it had ¢wo vaulted halls (the last
unfinished) divided from. one another by long suites of
chambers. The first had a gallery round it, as most of
them have, divided by square pillars from the hall, the
walls covered with sculptures—walking serpents, serpents
in coils, covering a whole side, and now and then a
funereal subject, the most interesting.
All the furniture of the king was painted round this
one, which was much less to my taste.
After seeing three tombs, which was quite enough, we
rode over the rock, or rather climbed, for the asses fol-
lowed us, and down upon Thebes.
One day we spent in the Rameseum, where lies the
THE VALLEY OF THE QUEENS. 189
granite statue of Rameses II. broken and overthrown,
the wonder of the world, and the largest colossus even
in Egypt, larger than the Pair, larger than those at
Aboo Simbil; but here size has almost defeated itself,
for it is too large to take in the whole of any part at
one time, and so destroys its own effect.
The most extraordinary thing in these temples is the
union and representation, side by side, of the most vul-
gar warfare, and of the highest state of civilisation in
private and religious life. After the temple, we rode to
the Valley of the Tombs of the Queens. Itis, if possible,
more perfect, as a place set apart under the shadow of
death, than the Valley of the Kings; it is much smaller,
more compact, more shut in, so that you can take in the
whole at once with the eye, and see that there is no out-
let. It is a complete chasm, more than a valley, for
you do not enter by the mouth, but climb over the
sides. At the farthest end, a dark cleft in the rock looks
like an entrance into Hades; other outlet you can see
none. We were too tired to go into any of the tombs,
which I am sorry for now; but they are not worth
seeing, and the view of the valley is enough.
Thebes.
Do you want to know how we pass our days, dear people?
We rise up early in the morning, and are breakfasted
perhaps by eight o’clock. Then we cross the water in
the “sandal,” which is a small “ dingee,” to western
Thebes; the asses rush into the water to meet us, or the
190 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
crew carry us ashore; we mount the asses, and with a
great multitude —for in Egypt every attendant has his
ass, and every ass his attendant — we repair (preceded
by a tall man with a spear, his wild turban coming un-
done in the wind), like a small army, to a tomb; the
tomb instantly fills —we suffocate for two or three
hours, the guides having, besides, lighted fires and
torches therein. When nature can sustain no more, we
rush out, and goollehs, bread and dates are laid upon a
stone. Those who have strength then begin again, till
dark ; those who have not, lie on stones in the valley.
Then begins the delightful ride home, the quiet, the
silence (except that no Arab is ever silent — the donkey
men and the guides talk without one moment’s interrup-
tion, if it is ten miles or if itis one, the whole way home),
the sunset tints, the goats coming home, the women spin-
ning at the head, the gamous (the great Nile buffalo)
crossing the little branches of the Nile in large herds on
their way home, two little children perhaps riding on the
neck of the largest, a stray jackal coming out, and the
Pair looking golden in the western sunlight ; the evening
picture is all beautiful. Our asses enter the river and
slide us into the sandal, and home we come to the little
fleet of European boats moored under the colonnades of
Luxor, which really from the river are almost beautiful.
We dine, and after dinner, when we are all hung up by
the tails, like the chamelions, pretending to be dead, and
waiting for half-past seven, or at latest eight, to bury us,
lo! a dreadful plash of oars, or Paolo puts in his head,
with an abominable grin at our mute misery, and says,
“The Hungarian count!” or “ the German professor! ”
&e. &c. Mr. B ~~ immediately retires to his own
RIDING HOME BY 8UNSET. 191
room, whence he is generally heard to snore. 3 and I
unwillingly, but nobly, sacrifice ourselves to our duty,
sit up (in the brown Holland dressing gowns we are
sure to have on, having been much too tired to dress),
and talk; but we never give one drop of tea, which has
greatly limited these visitations, for, in our street, the
doors stand always open, and the people have nothing to
do but to spend their evenings on board each other’s
boat. One night, and one night only, we were got out.
Capt. , good-natured man, came himself in his
sandal, and positively carried us off; and one day the
’s dined with us, and with all the devotion of Arab
hospitality which distinguished us, we killed — was it not
beautiful of us? — no, not our horse, we had none, but
our dog, for dinner. I think I told you of our dog —a
turkey, “as big as donkey”, as Paolo said. Oh what a
loss was there; how he used to walk majestically up
and down the beach in front of the boat, which he
believed it his duty to guard, bastinadoing the chickens
when they made a noise. He killed two cocks the day
he died. No man could get him into a coop (the crew
were afraid to go near him), yet he never strayed. No
dog ever ventured near our boat while he lived; the
moment he was dead, the hungry Luxor dogs used to
come on board every night, till Mustafa, like Cuddie’s
lady, greeted them with boiling water; and after his
death, we never could keep a quail a single night, though
our numerous acquaintances kept us well in quails, for
our four cats had parties every night, and bared the
larder: and we killed him!
As soon as our guests were gone, sometimes before,
we went to bed. Don’t think us grown quite savage
192 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
and uncivilised. It is very hard to be all day by the
death-bed of the greatest of your race, and to come home
and talk about quails or London.
What do people come to Egypt for ?
Without the past, I conceive Egypt to be utterly un-
inhabitable. Oh, if you were to see the people! No
ideas that I had of polygamy come near the fact; and
my wonder is now, not that Sarah and Rachel were
so bad, but that they were not a great deal worse.
Polygamy strikes at the root of every thing in
woman — she is not a wife — she is not a mother; —
and in these oriental countries, what is a woman, if she
is not that? In all other countries she has something
else to fall back upon. ‘The Roman Catholic woman has
a religion — the Protestant has an intellect; in the
early Christian, in the old Egyptian time, women had a
vocation, a profession, provided for them in their reli-
gion, independent of their wifedom ; here, she is nothing
but the servant of a man. No, I do assure you, the
female elephant, the female eagle, has a higher idea of
what she was put into the world to do, than the human
female has here. I never knew of a religion, ancient or
modern, that I could not have some points of sympathy
with, — but with the Mahometan, how few.
As to the climate of Egypt, I don’t understand peo-
ple raving about it—the excessive change. Thermo-
meter dropping between 3 and 5 Pp. M., sometimes 33°—
in the twenty-four hours perhaps 70°; and the wind
never warm, though often hot.
I suppose you have some idea of Karnac—more at
least than I can ever give you — of the vast propylea,
looking towards the river; (') then the immense pro-
KARNAC. 193.
pyleum area, so vast that a moderate sized temple,
built by Rameses III. into one side, scarcely disturbs
the eye; then two propylea (**») ruined from top
to bottom, vast stone quarries ; then the Hall of Columns,
of which no one can speak —they are like him to
whom they are dedicated, “ineffable.” Then comes a
transept (‘), gone, all but one obelisk; the pair was.
placed there by Thothmes J. whose cartouche I saw
upon it, every line as clear as the day it wascut. This
part is much older than the Hall of Columns. Then comes
another transept (*), and another pair of obelisks (#)—
one is standing, raised by Queen Mephra (Amun neit
gori, wrongly called) to the memory of her father Thoth-
mes J. and mother Amense. Mephra reigned succes-
sively for her two brothers, Thothmes IJ. and IIL,
who were successively engaged in driving out the Hyk-
sos; the latter only finally expelled them from Egypt,
whence they went to Palestine, and were called Philis-
tines. On the prostrate obelisk I could read the names
of Mephra and her youngest brother T. III. (though it
lies in fragments): perhaps it was a memorial of her
gratitude for his success. She seems to have been a
gallant regent and a loving sister.
Then come the sanctuary (*) and ruins innumerable ;
behind the sanctuary, the oldest part of the temple (°),
built by Osirtasen I., of the old empire and the twelfth
dynasty, B, Cc. 2775, carefully preserved by the new
empire, and older by more than 1000 years than all
the rest of Karnak or Thebes. Then comes the co-
lumnar temple of Thothmes III. (*), the place where
his invaluable table of Karnac (now at Paris), which
gives the lists of kings, his ancestors, was found (*); and
O
194 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
pylons and accessory temples, enough to make one
desperate, extend beyond the ‘Temenos.
I suppose you know that on Karnac is the famous
sculpture (#) of Shishak, of the twenty-second dy-
nasty; opposite him, the god holding Rehoboam by a
string, among other prisoner kings. There could be
no doubt of it, I could read the letters on his cartouche
quite plain, loupa Meer, king of Judah. Oh, I was
so sick of it, people seemed to think it a holy pilgrimage,
like a visit to Jerusalem, to go and look at it. I sup-
pose I have been there fifty times with different people,
and we don’t know anything which makes Rehoboam
so very interesting to us. But people seemed to think
that Rehoboam was the only thing that was true, and
that all the rest of Karnac was the work of the Phookas,
or something worse,—the devil perhaps. At last I hated
Rehoboam, and vowed I would go no more; besides that
Egyptian history, art, religion, ceases to be interesting
long before Shishak the Bubastian’s time. So, enough
of Rehoboam.
I possess an antiquity though, which I really do value,
an official seal, of the time of Rameses the Great, my
hero, with his cartouche upon it. An undoubted re-
ality. Who will dare to open letters, sealed with the
great Rameses’ own seal ?
And now I must go to délasser myself at his Ra-
messeum, which, not so overpowering as Karnac, is yet
grand enough to be awful, beautiful enough to be plea-
sant, and large enough to hide one. How many hours
I have sat in that small hall of the eight columns, where
the sacred library of Hermes’ books was laid up, and
felt as much reverence as ever Egyptian did before those
THE GOOD ARI AND HER HERO. 195 -
treasures, which trained the men who trained Moses,
who trained the world ; those books, which taught us,—
us whom the Egyptians had never heard of, — the name
of God.
On the walls are four sacred boats or shrines, fa-
miliar to us through Moses’ imitation of them, in the
Ark and Tabernacle. The two foremost are the shrines
of Maut (mother), or Nature; and Khonso (Hercules),
or Strength; the two behind are of Rameses II. and
his beloved Nofri Ari (the good Ari), his wife. They
are all coming to do homage to Amun, the Unknown
God. (Amun, as you know, only means “Come,” as
Hecatzeus tells us, and is therefore a mere name of en-
treaty or love for the God whose real name was too sa-
cred to be pronounced, who was, as Manetho says, the
** Concealed God.”) The shrines are distinguished by
the heads of their respective masters at the prow, and
each is making a prayer.
Khonso says, “ We come towards thee to serve thee ;
grant a stable and pure life to thy son (Rameses) who
loves thee.” Having thus introduced the hero, Ra-
meses simply says, “ 1 come to my father.”
But his queen’s prayers for her hero are much longer,
the good Ari says, “ I come to do homage to my father ;
my heart is joyful with the love thou bearest me; I am
in joy when I consider thy benefits. O, thou who es-
tablishest the seat of thy power in the dwelling of thy
son (Rameses), grant him purity and stability.”
It is rare to see any but spiritual prayers on Egyptian
walls.
On the roof of the library is the celebrated astrono-
mical ceiling, which decides by the Sothis cycle, the helia-
Oo 2
196 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
cal rising of the dog star, the date of the death of Rameses,
B. C. 1322. I am not able to throw any increased light
on that question to an inquiring British public; having
immolated myself for your instruction, I will therefore
leave the broken fragments of my wretched neck on the
spot, and proceed to worship Thoth, my beloved Thoth,
to whom the Egyptians religiously ascribed all their dis-
coveries and all their writings, which the stupid vain-
glorious moderns have misinterpreted into worshipping
a god, Thoth, and believing that he wrote books.
Thoth was the Intellect of God, not as regards crea-
tion, but “the arbiter of the human heart and intel-
ligence.” As regards Ais intercourse with us, Amun
calls him, “ Soul of my Soul, sacred Intelligence of my
Intelligence.” How beautiful and how true then is the
attributing by the Egyptians of all their books to Thoth.
Socrates vowed a cock to Adsculapius at his death, to
explain to us that now he was wedl; and we have taken
it for a truckling to the spirit of the times. The Egyp-
tians called their writings the writings of Thoth, because
they would take no honour for them to themselves, and
we have accused them of the grossest idolatry.
What they meant precisely by their Triads and Incar-
nations, I suppose our age is not metaphysical enough to
find out; Champollion is too obscure about it, but I
believe he thinks that every attribute of the Deity,
as it manifested itself in different relations, or on
different objects, may be said to put on different
Incarnations; that thus every divine quality passed
through various “transformations.” Thoth, for in-
stance, was the last Incarnation of Hor-hat or Horus,
the Divine Wisdom. The first “ transformation ” was
TRIADS. ~ | 197.
Pait noufi (the “good hearted). This is very intelli-
gible to us, that the first manifestation of wisdom should
be goodness. Another was Mooi (thought or reason).
This may perhaps mean that the greatest work ad extra
of benevolent wisdom was our power of reasoning. The
last was Thoth, or the intercourse of the divine reason
with ours. This is beautiful, I think.’ So Osiris was
the Incarnation of Amun Ra, and Isis of Maut.
All this was embodied in the myth that Osiris and
Isis were sent to earth to civilise the human race, after
the “re-organization of the physical world,” i. ¢. the
fall. Thoth was to assist them—to “teach men the
way to return into the bosom of God.” He taught them
to speak, to write; he promised “to make them gentle,
to give mankind prudence, temperance, obedience, and
love of truth.” (Did he?) On the door of the Rameseum
library is written the famous title, ‘‘ Cure of the Soul.”
But more philosophical than with us, the myth does not
make Thoth’s business to draw mankind out of a “ fall, ”
but out of an ‘‘infancy.” I have called it a fall, but the
Egyptians believed the world not “fallen,” but infant.
Osiris, Isis, and Horus (or Thoth), were the represen-
tation of the Trinity in its connexion with the human
parts of the creation. But you will wonder how Isis
could be Maut and Neith too. Neith was the type of
moral power, as Thoth was of intellectual power. The
myth of her birth from Amun is, that before creation
began she was one with Amun; that then “ God smiled,
and nature was; for immediately from his voice (what a
beautiful idea! from the immaterial voice — the very
echo of God’s soul) proceeded a being perfectly beauti-
ful, Nature; and the Father of all things made her fruit -
o 3
198 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
ful.” Some think that Maut (mother) was no indivi-
dual goddess, but the title of all.
And now it is easy to understand Champollion’s idea
that all the triads were but links in a chain, These
triads had to explain all the phenomena of the moral,
intellectual, and physical worlds ; they were to embrace,
as it were, all that we perceive spiritually or naturally.
The third member of each triad was the result, phy-
sical or spiritual. The two first members were the
causes; the one the positive cause, the other the negative,
so tospeak, Of the different triads, one or two members
were often the same, because different attributes, work-
ing on the same negative substance, will produce differ-
ent results. Athor, the principle of beauty, is the
second of more than one triad. Thus all the gods were
but a circle of forms of Amun and Maut. These triads
were linked together by metaphysical alliances, the last
of one triad being often the first of the next, or the result
becoming a second cause ; and the temple of the place was
probably dedicated to that triad, or to those three dis-
tinct portions of the Divine Being which had had most
effect upon it individually. Osiris, Isis, and Horus, the
triad manifested on earth, was the last of the chain,
which then merges again into Amun, Maut, and Khonso.
Horus, the “support of the world” (or “heavenly
science”), seems to be the origin of the Greek Eros,
or love. With him the chain was completed, and Horus,
by the triad of Kalabsheh, of which he was the first,
becomes Amun again, fur Amun was the A and Q.
But where was I? sitting on a stone in the eight
columned hall of the Rameseum. There is a harmony
in the Rameseum, which you do not find any where
KINGS SLAVES OF LAW. 199
else in Thebes; it is so compact, so well proportioned,
so intelligible — it is the very image of grace in strength,
and strength in harmony: I thought perpetually there of
the ethical triad, the intellect acting on the will, and
the result being harmony. It is not that the intaglios
are particularly beautiful — they are not; but the whole
is so beautiful. At first you are rather disappointed —
is that all that people have talked so much about? But
every day you admire it more and more, while every
day you like Medinet Haboo less and less. It is just on
the edge of the desert, the tombs being immediately
behind,—taking up no superfluous ground, not trenching
on the cultivated land. Oh, bright Rameseum, how
like the spirit of thy builder thou art! He never spent
time in superfluous words, I am sure—the compact,
energetic, muscular-minded man; not an artist, like his
father ; a warrior, a devout spirit, and a philosopher,
but not a mystical one; not such good company as his
father, but a brave honest heart, and a learned head. I
feel more acquainted with him than I do with Sethos ;
and he was so fond of his wife, and his father, and his
grandfather, who no doubt deserved it well. He was
a bit of a littérateur, too, it is evident —as indeed all
the kings were, for they were obliged to be skilled in all
the wisdom of the priests (the most learned body of
the world of any age), before they could become kings ;
it being the maxim of the Egyptians, that the nation was
not made for the king, but the king for the nation. All
the occupations of the king were therefore laid down by
law. He was to rise early—to perform all the business of
the nation, from day-break till the third hour; then he
proceeded to the temple, and performed the sacrifice,
o 4
200 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
when the high priest read him a sermon on the duties of
kings, and so on. He was to have no servants about
him, but only such sons of the priests as had profited
the best by their education, that he might have none to
minister to his caprices: the law was to will for him,
and he was to have no power but by the law. He
was to drink no wine—his very diet was regulated
for him by law, and how long he was to sleep. Every
thing in Egypt, Diodorus says, was calculated and re-
gulated for the public good. A little too much calcu-
lated and regulated, and a good deal too much done
for them. However, it certainly was wonderful what
kings they turned out — at their deaths any man might
accuse them and deprive them of burial. As Diodorus
says, the state never could have lasted so long, defying
time and its usual regulations, if it had not been for these
laws. In Egypt the law was king, and the king was
only the first subject of the law.
Another digression from the Rameseum: before the
entrance into the Great Hall of Assembly sate the two
small (or “ young”) black granite statues, now over-
thrown, of Rameses (of which we have one head in the
British Museum). I marked his tail, and wished he had
his head again. The other head stands broken off upon
its chin. The wondrous Colossus, which sate before
the entrance into the inner propyleum, the great (or old)
granite statue, is nothing but a ruin. But how I have
sate and peopled and rebuilt those ruins. How beauti-
fully one evening the setting sun streamed in among
those columns, and the mound of Medina Taboo in the
west looked like an Acropolis, or anything but the dirty
ruined crowd of huts it is; and I saw Rameses descend-
THE KINGS RETURNING TO THEBES. 201. .
ing on the beams of his beloved Ra— now really the
“tried” and purified “of Ra,” to see what his temple
was doing after this long lapse of years.
Those three kings, the grandfather, father, and son,—
the poet, the artist, the philosopher,—are at last betttining
now; their thirty hundred years of trial done, how
altered they will find their Thebes — the Thebes they
loved and dressed with the most precious things they
had — the Thebes they worshipped with such true devo-
tion ; but with what various thoughts each will look upon
her desolation. ,
The poet will sit down at Karnac, before those two
long lines of propyleea, her outspread hands, and will say,
Behold her stretching out her arms for pity, which
there is none to give. Is there any desolation like unto
her desolation? Look at her, the queen of the earth,
the mother of philosophy, the mistress of learning; and
look at her children now, naked and whooping in their
brutal glee, and she, of mothers most forlorn and hope-
less, must see them destroying the wisdom they cannot
understand, stoning the mute teachers, which fain would
show them her lessons.
Oh, my Thebes, he will cry, thy glory is set, thy sun
of wisdom, which seemed too high ever to set, too bright
to be extinguished, too much thy own ever to fall out
of thy sky ; for it was not the glory of a few great men,
who lived by accident and died again; it was the glory
of a wisdom which had stood the test of ages, which had
civilised the world. The sun is setting now, but he will
rise again to-morrow ; but thy sun, when will he ever
rise again ?
202 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Thou art gone! thy sapphire crown of hills is still
here ; but where is the head it once encircled ?
Thou art no more! the voice of thy wise men is silent ;
and the nations they have educated, are they who lend
thee the falsest fables. I know thy face again, my
Thebes, even in death ; but thy eyes are closed, thy glori-
ous eyes, Karnac and Dayr el Bahree, never to open
more. Thy voice will be heard no more. My God!
why didst thou make aught so divine, so truly allied to
Thee, subject to time? ‘Thou takest away Thy own
glory, when Thou destroyest Thebes ; for did we not
ascribe allto Thee? The glory, philosophy, religion ‘of
Thy world, all in one, depart with her. Fair Thebes,
old in wisdom, but still ever young, canst thou have died?
thy beauty passed away, tothe dark long home? “Thou
shouldst have died hereafter.” Canst thou be, like thy
kings, gone to the valley of the silent tombs? The men
whom thou hast taught may pass away; but thou
shouldst never die. Oh! that I could have died for thee,
my Thebes, my beloved! We may die; but what hast
THOU to do with death? We were willing; we joyfully
bowed our heads, and were subject unto death; but thou,
thou shouldst have been eternal, thou glorious Thebes.
But no— to that destruction which sooner or later
overtakes all, never again to enlighten the world by thy
wisdom, never to see listening sages at thy feet again,
thy glory is gone. Thy temples shall be lighted no
more — thy words shall no more be read. The glory is
departed from thee. Bow thy head in the dust; for
dust doth cover thy most beautiful forms, and the can-
ker doth eat away thy wisdom. Look up no more,
while there is a sun in heaven to see thy shame, and
RAMESES THE PHILOSOPHER. 203,
light up thy nakedness ; for there is no pity can heal thy
sorrows, nor compassion for griefs like thine. . Tears do
but mock a death like thine; and there is no grave can
hide the corpse of a giant like thee.
The artist sat down before Thebes, and seeing her
still drest in her amethyst crown and golden diadem, in
her richest hues of even and her softest opal tints of
morn, and perceiving her temples to be more beau-
tiful far now in their ruins, when the sun-light streams
in among their columns, and the colours are softened by
time, than when all was enclosed in wall and roof, bare
unrelieved lengths of stone, unvaried except by sculp-
ture, letting in no golden sunbeam nor deep shadow,
he cried, Give me my Thebes as she is now —for she
is lovelier far in her desolation than ever she was in
her pomp and pride. Iam glad that I see thee again,
and that I see thee thus—my noble Thebes.
Last of all the three, returned Rameses, the philoso-
pher: he neither wept like the poet at the unparalleled
ruin before him—the death of a world; nor sate down
contented like the artist, with the sunset and the tints
of a land, which once had all wisdom and all know-
ledge—which spoke with the tongues of angels— which
understood all mysteries, and taught them to the uni-
verse; but he said:
Her work is done on earth—her task is over; her
heaven and her earth may pass away —the forms of her
gods and the stones of her temples—but her words, her
ideas, shall not pass away.
She is gone to a purer sphere, to perfect the ideas
she had here so well begun. She had gleaned all the
experience this earth could give-—she needed another;
204 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
she must be adding memory to memory now —she
must be gleaning from the storehouse of the future as
well as the past.
And as thou lookest down upon the children of men,
thy joy must be full, for thou seest Europe which knows
not thee, and countries which remember not thy name,
rich in the knowledge thou hast won for them, and
where thy very existence is forgotten, thy inheritance
still lives; thou seest of the travail of thy soul, and art
satisfied. 3
Joy for thee! The Deity which here thou didst re-
present under ugly forms, which, with all thy care,
were misunderstood, and thy religion perverted ;— He
now is present to thy soul without form, to thy thought
without word.
Who shall presume to pity thee, who hast so well
accomplished thy destiny? As well might we sit over
against the tomb of Calvary, and sigh, Pity He lived
not longer! Would that we could all say as truly as
thou, It is finished!
Farewell! I am glad that I have seen thee, my be-
loved, my Thebes. I am content, my God. I thank thee
for the law of change, by which, while the first idea,
the ideal of Divine goodness, knows no variableness nor
shadow of turning — the forms which manifest it know
no continuance, they perpetually put on new shape.
Would the eye perceive the ray, except by the constant
vibrations it causes on the air? Would the ideal be
understood, except by the various manifestations under
which it shows itself? Even so, Thebes is no more —
but her death is a step in progress. Would our old
father Nile make fruitful the earth — would he know
PRIESTCRAFT AND PROGRESS. 205
no stagnation, did he not flow on perpetually? Would
not man cease to perceive, did not the variety of phe-
nomena call forth his attention to the one idea? Lord,
I thank Thee that we are forgotten and Thou remainest ;
and, with Thee, every good and every perfect thing.
To Rameses I am sure Karnac is neither a heart-
rending thing of grief, nor a subject for an evening
sketch, but a deep initiation into the manner by which
the world progresses and learns. Probably Egypt will
never rise again — what matter? Her ideas live in the
meanest intellect for whom she has done her work in
Europe. Greece has carried on her work better than
she could have done it. Italy added her hand (in the
cinque cento). England gave another touch. Ger-
many is perfecting it. America will some day take up
the chisel. Egypt gave the philosophy — Greece, the
beauty — Italy, the imagination — England, the reason-
ing—Germany, the love of truth—to this matchless Pro-
methean statue, which America will one day animate
with Promethean fire. Do not let us regret the fall
of Egypt; she does not complain (the sun still shines
bright through her roofless wall) — why should we?
She has taught the world the finest lesson the world
could ever learn, that philosophy without a “res pub-
lica” was worth nothing; that the purest religion with
priestcraft would corrupt ; a lesson which: Plato’s genius
was not slow to learn, when he said that common sense
was the sense of the common interest; a lesson which
Moses had learnt before him, and which, long ere this,
the Egyptian priests, who were sincere (at least) in their
priestcraft, have acknow ledged.
One evening and one morning I have spent at that
206 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
exquisite little temple of Koorna, and each time more in
love with it. I cannot describe the beauty of its position,
with its crown of palm trees; its long low portico, with
lotus columns; with a few (not many, nor confused) of
those beautiful simple bas-reliefs, representing Sethos I.
pouring libations before the gods of the future state, in
honour, no doubt, of his father, or the great Rameses,
kneeling before the gods, his grandfather (“justified ”)
looking on at his reception among them: for this temple
was built by Sethos I. to his father Rameses I.’s
memory, and finished by fis son Rameses II., to his.
The names of Rameses II. and his father are lovingly
enclosed in the same asp-frame on the columns, which
I have never seen elsewhere; and the dedication says—
«The friend of truth, the tried of Ra, has executed
these works in honour of his father Amon Ra, and com-
pleted the palace of his father Sethos.” This palace
temple, or rather the Great Hall (nto which you enter
from the portico), supported by its six lotus columns,
served for popular purposes, as well as religious and
regal. Here the tribunals of justice sate —here the
Great Assemblies were held, the object of which is un-
known to us, but over which only the king could pre-
side (and President of which was his highest title on
earth); and here politics, the incarnation of religion, had
her discussions.
Upon the steps of that colonnade I have sate for hours,
moving with the shadow of the columns, as it turned
with the sun, and looking out upon that matchless view
under the different lights; the distance to the west over
the green corn fields —then the palm garden — then
PALM TREES AT KOORNA. 207
the eastern hills on the other side the river — then more
palms, and, between their stems, the great colonnade of
Luxor on its promontory, which becomes higher and
higher, as the Nile sinks rapidly, and which one night
was like a colonnade of chrysophrast shafts in the sun-
set; then more grove, and, under it, a tall black veiled
figure moving among the palms, with a vase upon her
head ; and here the birds sing — the first I have heard
in Egypt,—and there is water and sakias. ‘
This temple is the only place in Thebes I really
cared for—for it is impossible to love Thebes; one
stands in awe of her; one feels a wonder-stricken
reverence before this marble headless statue of the phi-
losopher of the world, but not a tender respect as for
Philoe and Ipsamboul. There is no place I wish to
linger in, there is nothing I can love, except perhaps this
little temple of Gourna.
We have been most unlucky in our weather at Thebes.
The sunsets I can reckon up— one the first night at
Karnac, one the second at Koorna, one at the Rame-
seum, one more at Karnac, and that is all in three weeks;
and for the ugliness of a sand storm give me the orang-
est fog in London, and I don’t think it is uglier.
We have been anchored for three weeks within a hun-
dred yards of Luxor; and I have been up to the temple
but once, it is such an odious place. We climbed into
the Adytum, which is like an oblong box set on end; and
into a number of dark chambers. All the old part is built
by that Amunoph III., the Memnon of the Colossi, the
great conqueror, who carried his arms into Mesopotamia,
during which time his mother Maut-m-Skoi was regent.
The prettiest feature in the temple is the infinity of
208 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
chambers dedicated to her, and the number of times she
occurs in the sculptures. Two figures of Nilus, one red
to indicate the inundation, one blue the subsided river,
present the infant Amunoph and the infant god Haska
(one of the minor protecting Triad of Thebes) to Amun,
the mother being present. Everything about the temple
seemed to speak of Amunoph’s devotion to nature, to the
principles of nature and natural affection. You seldom
see Nilus in so conspicuous a position — his immense
conquests seem to contradict this; but I believe Alexan-
der was a very similar character, or would have been, if
he had lived, like Amunoph, to be old. The sculptures
arenothing ; art had not yet reached its simplicity. Amu-
noph III. was only the great-grandson of Thothmes IIT.
The propyleea were added by the great Rameses, with
the two obelisks, and four colossal sitting statues of him-
self in front. One bas-relief of the enemy’s camp, and
him taking it, is curious; but those battle pieces are so
tiresome.
That the Egyptians believed, like the Jews, that they
were really building a habitation for the Lord in a
temple, is evident from the dedications, where the king
entreats the god to come and take up his abode in the
house he has prepared for him.
In that same chamber of Amunoph, you see Thoth
choosing his name for him, * Lord of Justice,” a mistake
as old as the world and as young as our time, to suppose
oneself called to a power one has not, to do a thing
which is not one’s business.
There is something in Karnac so expressive of him to
whom it was dedicated (Amun, the “Concealed God”),
KARNAC AND ST. PETER’S. 209
that one begins to think, as ‘I have often thought in St.
Peter’s, that architecture is the only way to speak of
Him — the best mode of religious expression. Hermes
Trismegistus says, “ It is difficult to thought to conceive
God, and to the tongue to speak of Him. One cannot
describe by material means an immaterial thing, and
what is eternal can be allied but with difficulty to what
is subject to time. The one passes, the other always
exists. The one is a perception of the spirit; the other,
which is known by the eyes and the senses, as visible
bodies, can be expressed by language. But what is in-
corporeal, invisible, immaterial, without form, God —I
understand that God is ineffable.” This is so true, yet
less “ineffable” by architecture than by any other mode
of expression. St. Peter’s and Karnac are the only two
worthy expressions of ‘‘ Him that is ineffable” which I
have ever seen—yet how different: Karnac, an expression
of His thought; St. Peter’s, of his action—Karnac, of the
philosophizing appreciation of the Deity; St. Peter’s, of
the moral-—Karnac leads to meditation, St. Peter’s to
emotion. Each so like its religion——Karnac, like the
thoughtful metaphysical Egyptian faith; St. Peter’s, like
the fervent Roman Catholic—in Karnac you think; in
St. Peter’s you feel. In that intricate hall of columns
you see how the Egyptian has thought out, through the
mazes and difficulties and intricacies with which the go-
vernment of the earth is full to our minds, the Deity who
would answer to the phenomena he saw, the attributes
which would explain those difficulties. In the long un-
interrupted space through which the worshipper of St.
Peter’s looks from the door to the altar, from the altar up
to heaven, you see how the feeling, unthinking, ardent
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210 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
heart has rushed at once to its Creator, careless of all
problems which it-has regarded as temptations to its
faith, and has left to a devil to solve. The Egyptian
loved his God with all his mind; the Roman Catholic,
with all his heart. The Egyptian would never have
made a missionary, I suspect ; the Roman Catholic has
never made a philosopher. The Egyptian mind, with its
satire and subtlety, reminds one of Pascal, and shows, as
he did, how truly earnestness may be allied with these.
How Karnac contradicts all the tales that have béen
fabricated by Greeks and Romans about Egypt. ‘‘ Oh,
Egypt, Egypt,” says Hermes (in the prophetic spirit
of Ezekiel), ‘“‘a time will come when in the stead of
a pure religion and a pure worship, thou shalt have
no longer aught but foolish fables, incredible to pos-
terity, and there shall remain to thee no more than
words graven on stone, the only monuments which shall
attest thy piety.” But they do attest her piety. The
very name of the king who built Karnac is unknown:
one reads it Sethos, another Osirei, a third Meneph-
thah ; what does it signify to him now? The ideas she has
left us are imperishable : on his monument alone remains,
uninjured and legible, that much denied truth, which he
has einbodied by causing himself to be represented with
the Good and Evil alike pouring life upon him.
I have never said anything about the private tombs.
They are vexation of spirit, for they have been
cruelly mauled. One in Shekh Abd-el-Koorneh had in-
terminable processions of tribute bearers, presenting
themselves to Thothmosis III., B.c. 1557, the King of
the Exodus, according to Bunsen. But, ‘*caro Tot-
EGYPTIAN RESURRECTION. 211
mose, che fate 14?” I do not know what business he has
there, as it is a private tomb, and I think the owner had
much better have been engaged in saying his prayers
than in thinking of his sovereign’s glories, and his work-
men and manufactories. But, as Lepsius says, what an
irresistible “ Trieb” these Egyptians seem to have had
to work for history, when they made their graves into a
book of trades !
I bring home some little figures found in the tombs.
Each carries a hoe in one hand and a bag of seed in the
other ; the arms are crossed on the breast, in imitation of
Osiris, whose name the dead took. The old Egyptian
idea of the resurrection of the body seems to have been
very like St. Paul’s. The body was the seed. The
hieroglyphs on the little mummied figure are, “ Let all
that the deceased has done be reckoned and told—how
he has dug the fields, sown the fields, watered from the
wells, and brought the grain of the West to the East.”
This is a quotation from Hermes Trismegistus, out of the
Book of the Dead, which gives the three parts of the
dead man’s course,—the first the poems, hymns, and
prayers. offered for the departed in the stage before
burial—the second, those offered by him in Hades, after
his soul’s separation from the body, when he endures
many trials and sufferings—the third after soul and body
are reunited in heaven. One of the prayers of the dead
is that his name may germinate in heaven by the divine
sun. In one of the kings’ tombs, Osiris is rising again
out of a heap of cornseed.
One of the last days of our Theban stay, Mr. B ——
and I rode round the whole of the Libyan suburb
— past Medina Tabou, past a little Ptolemaic temple
a’.
212 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
beyond, and all round the site of the immense ancient
lake, over which the dead were ferried, and which is now
only marked by the mounds, which were once thrown
up in its excavation. The distance was longer than we
thought. The sun set, there was no moon, and it
became dark; but just at twilight we came to the most
perfectly desolate spot I could have conceived —an
utterly arid mound of sand, strewed with whitened bones
of men—little depressions shewing in the sand where once
they had been buried. It looked like a cursed place; as
if no foot but a vulture’s claw had pressed it for thousands
of years, and the dew of heaven had never visited it.
These were the graves of those who had been refused
burial for some act of violence or treachery, some secret
crime which had been brought to light against them,
when the Forty-two sate in judgment by the shores of
the Sacred Lake. There they were thrown into the
ground, and there they seemed to have lain whitening
ever since. I am sure it never entered into the heart
of man to conceive of so desolate a place; and if there
their spirits were doomed to wander, it must have been
a weary tramp. One or two of their bones we could
not help bringing home.
Dayr el Bahree is the most beautiful position in
Thebes, and the strongest, backed by the Lybian cliff,
and overlooking from its heights the whole plain and
the river. It was built by Thothmes III., fifteen cen-
turies and a half before Christ, that Thothmes, who
finally drove the Hyksos from Egypt, and expelled
them from Avario, their stronghold (which was twice
as large as Aurelian Rome), out of which they marched
240,000 men into Syria, with all that they had. This
was the Thothmes too under whom the Israelites slaved
THE OFFERINGS OF THOTHMES. 213
and suffered. And curious similarities struck me at every
turn between the doctrines they afterwards professed and
his, if we are to judge from the small remains left of
his mighty temple,—the glory of God — God, a God
of hosts and battles, His object to slay and exter-
minate his enemies, — the only difference being that
Thothmes exterminated the invaders of Egypt, and the
Israelites were themselves the invaders. The great
and universal mistake about God seeking His own glory
seemed to me to have inspired that temple, set out,
as it were, upon a tray to make a show. The king’s
name, regenerate of Thoth, who was “ intellectual
streneth,” reminds one also of Khonso, who was the
representative of created things, of strength in general,
(and Thoth and Khonso were the same attributes); he
seems, indeed, to have been a worshipper of physical and
intellectual strength. In the old part of Karnac, next
door to the sanctuary, he represents himself offering to
the “unknown God,” the two obelisks, and all the ser-
vice of the temple, the number of each thing which he
gives written under each, — dishes 244, other ditto 300,
rings 214, vessels 94, with the sign of gold over the
gold ones, that the god might not mistake them for
plated, and the number, for fear he should not be able to
count. A ground plan of the temple which he dedicates
follows. Some of the vases are beautiful, quite classical.
One hardly knows whether to admire or to smile,—to
admire the richness of the gift dedicated by the king,
not to making himself but the god a palace (in those
days people built temples, not palaces; and I must say,
if it is a mistake, it is a much finer mistake to beautify
and magnify God’s house rather than your own), er to
P 3
214 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
smile at the anxiety of Thothmes, that the god should
understand and value his gift. Thy glory, O God, and
a little of my own too,—lo! a very little. I always think
how abundant must be the vanity of those people who
think God is so fond of His glory; but we all judge,
each, his own God, by himself, and think He likes what
we like ourselves.
The numbers I noted down on the spot for the oddity
of the thing.
In the sanctuary of Dayr el Bahree (the only part which
remains, because hewn in the living rock), Thothmes
is making an offering to his deceased ancestor Thoth-
mes J, Another similarity with the Jews, who are always
raving about their ancestors, the God of their ancestors ;
and indeed, before Christ, no nation seems to have
risen to the idea of a God of the whole world. Have
we now? Do we not still believe England to be His
chosen nation ?
Thothmes has surpassed all the Kings of Egypt in the
multitude of his temples.
One day we went through the huge fragments which
lie prostrate and half buried behind the Pair. There
are above eighteen Colossi whose enormous limbs lie
strewn about. In a direct line, some hundred yards
behind the two, are two gigantic stele, with their
faces to the earth, some thirty feet long, covered with
inscriptions, most delicately cut. Champollion says these
were probably the backs of the seats of other two Co-
lossi now buried under the earth, and that all these
enormous fragments belonged to a building called the
Amenophium, built by that Amunoph III. whose por-
trait the Pair represents. ‘These must have stood be-
fore the front Propyla as the four statues of Rameses IL.
THE PAIR, 215
before Ipsamboul. ‘The deposits of the inundations are
gradually immuring in muddy forgetfulness these con-
secrated fragments as effectually as ever nun was walled
up in convent wall. ,
By the space covered with these vast blocks the
Amenophium must have been at least as large as Karnac.
At the side of the Pair, in the same block, is the mother
of Amunoph, the same representation that you see in
the Temple of Luxor.
I wish you could see Lady M. A’s drawings,—she has
made a sketch of the Colossi by sunset, which is worthy
of Amunoph himself, it is quite heroic. I never saw
any thing finer than her daring dashes of gamboge and
vermilion ; her genius is really Homeric.
Feb. 12.
Ugly Medina Tabou —how I hated you, with your
gaudy colours, your squat columns, as round as they
were high—your coronation scenes, more vulgar than
Hayter’s, more profane than his “Communion of the
Queen,” —- your modern-looking three-storied palace, not
forming a part of the temple, as if it belonged to the
king to live there as minister of the gods, but stuck up
in front like an impudent Blenheim porter’s lodge, as if
to say no one comes in here but by paying ll. 5s., or
three enemies’ heads ; its very balconies made of captives’
heads, not like the work of the great Rameses, but that of
a common Pasha tyrant, his battle pieces represented in
the very area of the temple, not decently exiled to the
outer walls, as at Karnac; the king’s chariot, with
three prisoners tied under the axle —a piece of savage
p 4 ;
216 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
cruelty you never see elsewhere —degrading the very
sacred place.
If Karnac is the St. Peter’s of Egypt, Medina Tabou
is its Madeleine. It is just such a temple as Napoleon
would have built, and the apotheosis of that vulgar
tyrant in La Madeleine is not more indecent nor inap-
propriate than the battle and coronation scenes of Ra-
meses III. in Medina Tabou. It is the very sanctuary
of low oriental despotism, baseness, and pomp. It re-
minded me of Napoleon throughout, with his Josephine
and his Marie Louise, his notions of women, and his
coronation of his wife. You see Rameses surrounded
by his ladies (how unlike the loving Nofriari and her
hero at the Rameseum —-“ lovely in their lives, and in
their death they were not divided”); you see the queen
put out of the way, on a shelf, in the coronation scene,
like the miserable wife of a Louis Quatorze. The em-
pire was falling, and barbarism beginning, which could
produce a Medina Tabou.
The very shrines (in the sacred boats) at Medina
‘Tabou seemed to me degraded; the cherubim were still
the same, they could not be deprived of the crowns
of light and life in their hands; but instead of the
symbol of truth, they held that of power and dominion;
instead of the heavenly kingdom, which is truth, they
held the earthly kingdom.
A whole troop of gods were leading the king into the
presence of the Great Triad, as if in a multitude there
were safety; so unlike the simple group at Karnac of
Isis leading Sethos before Amn, i. e. the knowledge of
nature bringing a man to the calm intellect, the serene will
of the Deity, “Come,” we will call him by no
MEDINA TABOU. 217
other name, that mysterious but loving title of a god,
whose real name was too sacred to be ever spoken, and is
now unknown. Khonso, crowned with light, is waiting
behind to full-fill the patient, humble, but earnest learner
of the ways of God with strength and harmony of will and
crown him with grace and Eros. So I understood that
glorious procession. But here a crowd of second-rate
deities (he did not “desire earnestly the best gifts”),
three jackals, three hawks (use not vain repetitions), and
I don’t know what besides, are trooping in, with the king
among them, into the presence of the deity. I thought
he would say, ‘‘ What a crowd!” when they came in;
“and what a noise! My true worshippers come with
the still small voice.”
From the time of Rameses II]. (B. c. 1290) art and
power suddenly declined, and the glory of Egypt de-
parted for ever. It isno wonder; the connexion between
freedom and art, between purity of morals and religion,
and a high state of national prosperity, seems very
evident.
The ugly Gothic battlement of Medina Tabou is pe-
culiar to the reign of Rameses III., and the whole affair
looks more like the feudal castle of a savage chief than
a temple of the philosophical Egyptian.
If there is one thing that strikes you more than any
other, it is the what would be called “ Scriptural au-
thority” for everything in the temples of Egypt. One
seems to be positively reading the Old and some part of
the New Testament —viz., the Book of Revelations.
There is the tabernacle of the Jews carried by the priests
along the wall in the inner pronaos of the Rameseum,
only that there are four tabernacles; there are the che-
218 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
rubim of Ezekiel, with two wings stretched upward, and
two covering their bodies, sitting upon the sacred ark
at Medina Tabou; and as to the four Evangelists, the
Egyptian would find himself as much at home under
the dome of St. Peter’s, or in the Book of the Revela-
tions, as I do at Medina Tabou. There is the ox of
St. Luke, the lion of St. Mark, the eagle—no, not the
eagle, it is a vulture or a hawk, and the Egyptian might
as well march into St. Peter’s, and, seeing the gigantic
Evangelists under the dome, pronounce the Christians
guilty of the most dreadful idolatry, deifying four bio-
graphers under the symbols of beasts! as we utter the
same accusation against the worshippers of Medina
Tabou.
There is nothing to rival the gorgeousness of these
courts and colonnades, with their painted processions,
brighter than anything in Egypt, except Karnac.
It does not look like a place of worship however, it
is full of priests’ rooms and dark places; standing
against its finest procession is a handsome Christian
stone altar, as in a London church, which it reminded
me of, though deserted these 1200 years. But it is very
curious, very interesting to have seen, though never
a place to become bewitched with, to have favourite
corners to sit in, and ruminate, like St. Peter’s and
Ipsamboul, and my dear Philoe. Its magnificence
strikes one, not its devotion—its riches, not its re-
ligion. It is a place for kings and priests to worship
in, not for philosophers and simple-hearted people.
Rameses the Great was magnificent, but out of piety —
this man out of ostentation.
It was dedicated by Rameses III. (not the Great,
THE EGYPTIAN LEVITICUS, 219
‘not my Rameses— how different was the spirit of |
his places of worship), the second king of the twentieth
dynasty, upon his return from his immense Eastern
conquests in Asia over nations whose names we
scarcely know. He was the son of that Proteus or
Nilus (the contemporary of Menelaus and the Tro-
Jan war) who gave a refuge to Helen, and lived about
B. C. 1290. There is an enormous hieroglyphic in-
scription (not yet decyphered, I believe) relating to
the conquests of the seventh year of his reign. Art
was evidently already beginning to decline; though
the sharpness of execution and the vigour of the draw-
ing are still as great as ever, yet the composition is
more laboured, the gods more pedantic—unlike the
time of the great Rameses already. The coronation pro-
cession is curious for its magnificence, not interesting
from any feeling it betrays. Thoth, the god of letters,
and Horus, binding up the king’s throne with water
plants, is one of the prettiest representations, showing
that he considered an intellectual support to his throne
necessary as well as that of terrestrial prosperity; and
a number of spirits of the earth leading him into the
presence of the great Triad of Thebes, is interesting.
If it were not for one’s familiarity from one’s youth
(thanks to the Books of Leviticus and Chronicles)
with every line and utensil of those processions, they
would be tiresome beyond measure. But there is the
tabernacle I used to fancy when I was a child; there are
the merey-seat and cherubim, some crowned with Truth,
and others with Light, the feather and the disc, (and
there is much that is beautiful in this, the spirits of
light and the spirits of truth;) some kneel by the ark,
220 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
some stand with protecting wings; one kneels without
with outstretched wings, “ truth as a frontlet,” and life in
her spread hands. A little figure of the king ministers
before the sacred shrine; emblems of goodness form the
pillars on either side.
The battle scenes I suppose are splendid — the tri-
umph afterwards, the appearance lastly of the king
before the gods, presenting to them his conquests and
his captives as a tribute. How many tributes equally
unacceptable have been offered from times immemorial
(and will be offered till the world grows wiser) in all
sincerity and singleness of heart to God, like this of
Rameses! He has not, however, the expression of his
great ancestor while doing this. In one battle piece, he
sits after the heat of battle on the back of his car, while
his chiefs lay at his feet thousands of hands. His four
sons, who all succeeded him and reigned, successive
Rameses, attend him, and carry him in the coronation
procession,-— this is rather pretty, his children the sup-
port of his throne. Here, too, the good and evil spirit
alike pour life and purity over him—the evil spirit
being more carefully obliterated than I have ever seen
it, and with those war scenes opposite I do not so much
wonder ai his exciting abhorrence.
The columns of this court, which is the inner vesti-
bulum or propyleaum, are gorgeous, eight square co-
lumns from which the Osirides are gone, on either side,
and five round pillars at the two ends. On the north
side is a splendid, or what Sir G. W. calls “an
elegant portico, in which the circumference of the co-
lumns is 23 feet, and the height 24 feet,” covered too
with painting.
NILE STEAM. 221
From Medina Tabou you-can see the whole circum-
ference of the vast lake across which the bodies were
formerly ferried on their way to burial, the judgment
being previously held even in the case of a king,
whether he was fit to pass over; many were “ found
wanting,” even kings; and the desolate tombs are still
visible, where, on the shore of despair, the other side
the lake, across which there was no more passage no
more entrance, the miserable men were buried.
Medina is Arabic for city, and Tabou the old word
for Thebes; so that Medeenet Haboo, as it is wrongly
written, only means the “ city of Thebes.”
It is not a temple one cares to go back to. The beau-
tiful little temple of Goorneh, old and untouched, I long
to see again; but the sacred place here is built up and
covered up with the ruins of a deserted crude brick
village. What sacred place shall we ever see again
though like Ipsamboul?
I am writing in the greatest possible haste for a
steamer (!) which has just brought Mr. Murray, and is
going on to Cairo. I would not go in a steamer on
the Nile, if I were never to see the Nile without it.
Thebes, Feb. 1850.
One temple I have never mentioned, because it was
only Ptolemaic—though it deserves to be of my beloved
Rameses: it is called Dayr-el-Medeeneh, and belongs
to Isis. It is built just under the western cliff, which
is supported by a wall of layers of crude brick in wavy
lines, and has a little hidden nook of its own among the
222 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
rocks, The way to it leads up behind what was the
Amenophium. It is very small, has only a little area,
a pronaos, and the sekos, with side adyta, the one to
the right consecrated to Athor, and the one to the left
to Thmei; the principle of beauty thus identified with
that of truth —a new idea in this worship—to make the
artist one with the philosopher —a most rare conjunc-
tion, — for he who pursues truth generally despises
beauty, and the ordinary followers of beauty find truth
dry and ugly. But here Thmei appears a second form
of Athor. Truth is herself beauty.
In Athor’s sanctuary, the king is offering to two figures
of Isis or Athor at once, the one as an animal (a cow’s
head), the other as a woman. If this means animal and
intellectual nature, the sense is very beautiful. How, in
Europe, we have dwarfed instead of educated our animal
nature —and through it, perhaps, crippled our intel-
lectual! The European has seldom fancied any other
course of discipline for his body but that of indulging or
tormenting it, poor thing!
Thmei’s sanctuary is, of course, devoted to her func-
tions in Amenti. And, as the doctrine of the future
state was the foundation of all doctrines and all know-
ledge in Egypt, she revealed it to the ear of the wise
and the eye of the foolish on every possible occasion.
Why is the ear so much more noble and immaterial a sense
than the eye? Why is the eye so much more liable to
misunderstand and pervert what it perceives? The ear
is not our leader, our misleader, to idolatry—it is the
eye. So, in this ancient Egypt, where the difficulty of
her tremendous alphabet and the absence of printing
made reading and writing accessible to few, as in all
THE IDOLATRY OF THE EYR. 223.
ancient nations, the teachers-endeavoured to represent
to every eye, and send home to every heart, in visible
symbols and dramatic scenes, the master-truth of eternal
life, and above all, of consequences, which they could do in
no other way. And we have accused them of teaching
Idolatry. Alas! Idolatry followed in spite of them.
But we might as well accuse the apostles of the abuses
in the Sedia Apostolica.
In Thmei’s sanctuary sits Osiris in the preetorium of
Amenti; before him the lotus, the emblem of the ma-
terial world, and, standing on it, the four Genii of Amenti,
who were also the genii of the four cardinal points.
Cerberus stands behind them, whose Egyptian name
signifies “the Devourer.” And then comes Harpocrates,
sitting on his father’s crook, and holding in his hands
the flagellum, and a kind of instrument (of which I bring
home a bronze specimen): he sits there to show that the
human being must pass through a Regeneration before
he can see God or the Divine Goodness (Osiris). Be-
hind him is Thoth, the “lord of the divine words,” the
‘‘ colonel of the pure spirits,” noting down the result of
the moral life of the tried. Then come the scales, in
one of which is the feather of truth; in the other the
heart of the dead man. Anubis and Horus watch the
scales. The two Truths, or Truth and Justice (over
Justice being written “ Thmei, who dwells in Amenti,
where she weighs hearts in the balance; none of the
wicked escape her!”), appear behind, leading the
dead man himself, in prayer, pressing the feather of
Truth to his bosom, as if to say that whether she con-
demned him or not, Truth was what he henceforth de-
sired. Over him is written—*“ Arrival of a soul in
224 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Amenti!” and in two rows above the heads of these
sit the forty-two assessors—a figure of the dead man
kneeling before each row. Over each assessor is
written his name; but to figure them to the minds of
those who could not read, they were necessarily repre-
sented with different heads, the heads of animals, to
characterise to the eye of the foolish the different sins.
Diodorus Siculus says that in the Rameseum the judg-
ment of the hero Rameses is represented, and the appear-
ance of his soul before these forty-two judges. I should
like to have seen that. Alas! it is gone; but it shows
how faithfully kings and citizens were alike brought to
give this account of the motives of their actions. Thmei,
too, was the directress of the royal power, which thus
invoked truth to preside, and the greatest title of the
kings on their obelisks was ‘* Friend of Truth.” She
was the prctectress of Egypt—the first born of Ra
(light)— and she was the President of Amenti, because
there temporal appearances vanish and give place to
eternal truths. In Egyptian the same word signified
truth and justice, because to know truly and to act justly
were, in their ideas, one.
In this way the most metaphysical ideas of the
Egyptians were made popular —the soul of the dead
entered into Amenti, that is to say, into truth—the
presence of truth; he examines the motives of his own
actions; they are then weighed ; Thoth (wisdom) writes
the moral result. Osiris (the Goodness of God) calls the
purified being into a higher vocation, and the same Good-
ness sends back the impure, to be purified under a
new form, till it can present itself before him cleansed
from every lower feeling. And what is our own idea of
METAPHYSICS MADE POPULAR, 225 |
the separation of the sheep and the goats, of the different
places assigned to the good and the bad, but another
popularization of the same idea ?
In that dialogue of Hermes Trismegistus between
Pimander and Thoth, he says what truth is. The soul
went through several mystic regions before it began
again the course of its transformations—those transforma-
tions, which only meant the trials, the stages which the
divine emanation has to go through before arriving at
perfection.
One of Osiris’ names is “ Lord of Life, Eternal Media-
or.” Thoth (divine wisdom) is said to have come to earth
with him when he put on flesh to civilize the world;
and, in the same myth, never to have abandoned him—
even when he took up his abode in Amenti as judge of
souls. How beautiful is this idea; wisdom always attends
the divine goodness, whether in judging or in mediating.
“The body dies,” says Hermes Trismegistus, “ be-
cause it can no longer carry the being. What you call
death is only the dissolution of the senses. The soul,
the being, does not die.” Truth is what is eternal and
unchangeable; truth cannot be on the earth, though
God may have given to some the faculty of thinking
upon truth; but nothing is truth upon earth, because
all is subject to change, to new combinations. Man is
not truth, because only that is true which remains what
it is. What changes so much that it cannot be re-
cognised, how can that be truth? Truth is, then, what
is immaterial, eternal. The earth is only corruption
and generation; all generation proceeds out of corrup-
tion; the things of the earth are only appearances and
imitations of truth, what painting is to reality.”
Q
226 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Thoth goes on—he hears “the voice of the Light” —
and “ THE WorD came forth from this voice of the Light.”
“ And the surface of the earth was covered with water, and
the word of the spirit was borne upon the face of the water.”
And Pimander (z. e. the “ Thought of the Divine Power”)
said, “I am the seed of Thought, the shining Word, the
Son of God. Think that what hears and sees in thee is
thought, which is God the Father, and their union, that is
life.” Is not that wonderful? ‘God created, with
His Worp, or doyos, a third intelligence; and He is
the Spirit of God.” (What is this but “ Who proceedeth
from the Father and the Son” ?)
In this conversation, Thoth, goes on to say that there
are seven agents, whose action is called destiny. That
“the Father of all, who is the light and the life, created
man after His likeness, and received him as His son, and
being pleased with man in His own image, gave him
power over His works.”
(And God saw everything that he had made, and be-
hold, it was very good; and He gave man to have do-
minion over the fish of the sea, &c. &c.)
Man then “falls into slavery,” God warning him
“that the love of the earthly part of himself shall be
the cause of his death.”
*‘ He then who knows himself, wins the good superior
to himself;” and, he who lets himself be deceived by
the love of the body, is thrown into the shadow of death.”
‘God, who is wisdom, wills that every man, who has
part in His wisdom, should know himself.” ,
At the end, Pimander returns among the divine
Powers; and I (Thoth) apply myself to counsel men
to seek knowledge and piety, “O, men! why will you
THE SAME TRUTH IN MANY TIMES. 227
hasten after death, when you are capable of life?”
&e. &e.
How like to one ae are the highest beliefs of all
spiritualised nations; and how much I find in Hermes
Trismegistus of what used to say to me!
To return to Athor at Dayr el Medeeneh, whom I
had forgotten. At Edfoo, she appears in the triad
of Horus or Hor-hat, 2 e. divine light (Hor-hat was
but the first form of Thoth, the Pimander who speaks
in the dialogue), and the child of Hor-hat and Athor
(which is but the same name reversed) is Hor-sened-
to, literally “ Horus, the support of the world,” or
* Eros.” How beautiful this is, that the divine light,
shining on beauty, makes us love; “ out of the perfection
of beauty God hath shined,” in other words, that divine
light showing us beauty (the beauty of God and nature),
we cannot but love it. Hor-hat being here represented
under the form of the sun, proves, when compared
with that prayer of the dead that the sun will cause
his name to “ germinate” in heaven, how little there
was of astronomical, how much of symbolical in the
Egyptian representations of the sun.
At Esne, Neph, the “soul of the world,” the “ vital
principle of divine essences,” the “ Spirit, creator of all
the worlds,” so he is called in his hieroglyphs, is the
chief of the triad—— with Neith — moral and physical
power ;* and with their child Hake, ¢. ¢. a form of Horus;
who is perhaps the most interesting of all the divine
incarnations, as being the most nearly connected with
man.
* Athena was also the goddess of wisdom (moral) and war (phy-
sical) power.
Q 2
228 - - LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
At Dakkeh is another illustration, shewing how
Osiris, Isis, and Horus embrace the whole of the triads
in themselves. In the temple there, which is nomi-
nally dedicated to Thoth, or Hermes, all his different
transfigurations are put together in a series of bas-reliefs.
His primeval form is Hor-hat, “ the great Hermes Tris-
megistus,” “ divine light,” or “ wisdom,” the “ heavenly
Hermes;” then, he becomes Paitnoffi “ the good-hearted,”
as the first manifestation to us of the Divine wisdom
is in its goodness; in fact, we can hardly separate the
two ideas. If we observe our thoughts, we shall find that
we form no conception of what is perfectly wise but
that of perfect goodness ; we always think of Satan as
having committed a great folly. ‘The third incarnation
is “ Arihos Nofri” (the sweet singer). Pythagoras and
Plato both learnt from the Egyptians to consider music
of the greatest importance; and the music of Egypt was
regulated by law, as being one great means of educating
the youth, and as being also as great a leader to harm
as to good. Musicians, as well as politicians, in Egypt,
were priests; Plato even says that his famous plan of
education was borrowed from the Egyptians, in which
his discipline is to teach the youth by beautiful forms
and fine music, and having settled what those forms
and what that music should be, to allow none other by
law, the importance of such things being unspeakable
in “rectifying the perverseness of nature.” He goes
on to say, that the Egyptians were so right in this, that
it must have been the work of the Deity, and that to be
able to consider such things, so as to reduce them to law,
was in the true spirit of policy ; and, in fact, he says, they
ascribe the music they use, and the poetry likewise, to Isis.
MUSIC PART OF TRUE EDUCATION. 229
So, you see, we have Plato’s authority for not considering
Arihos Nofri as a trivial incarnation, and the Greeks, in
imitation, made their Mercury the inventor of the lyre.
The fourth incarnation is Mooi, thought or reason, which
may perhaps mean that, as the first work of benevolent
wisdom is directed to our emotions, which are the
first things developed in the youth both of nations and
of men,.so its second work is directed to our power
of reasoning. The last incarnation is Thoth, or the in-
tercourse of the Divine reason with ours. Having given
us intellect, He does not leave it without inspiration,
without communion with Himself. Thus, Osiris, Isis,
and Thoth are the forms of Amn, Maut, and Khonso
in their relation with man. The ark, or sacred boat of
Thoth is precisely similar to that of Khonso, proving
him to be but a secondary form of Khonso. *
These five transfigurations are represented in the
bas-reliefs of Dakkeh, to show how Thoth, in his dif-
ferent forms, accomplished the organization of human
society, teaching man writing, “sacred things,” and
then writing for him. In the triad, of which he is the
head, a goddess accompanies him (Nehimeou), whose
name means the “ preservation of seeds.” How wise,
for writing is evidently the great preserver of the germs
thrown out by human reason. She seems to be the
same as the “Lady of Letters” very often seen at
Phils: with Thoth. :
I am afraid you must find my triads and my tem-
ples tiresome, dear people; one comfort is, they are
* A hawk’s head, crowned with the disk and crescent, surmounts
the prow of each.
Q 3
230 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
all coming to an end, and you will not be troubled
with them long.
I bring home nothing pretty or curious for you. I
thought in England one had nothing to do but walk
into the tombs and dig out the newest jewellery !
whereas there never was a place like Thebes for the
impossibility of getting anything,—unless one brings
away the base of the young Memnon to unite it to the
head we have. But I hope you have not found Thebes
quite “ flat, stale, dull, and unprofitable.” I am afraid
you have an “idiot’s tale;” you do not know how
difficult it is to write anything about such a subject,
it is like getting a genie into a bottle; and when }
have succeeded in getting him in, I could sit down and
cry to see what I have made of him. It is not because
I have failed that I cry, but because I have profaned
Thebes, and I would so gladly do something to show
you what a land you have sent me to,*what recollec-
tions you have secured for my whole life. I have seen
no book which has been worthy of Thebes—the pri-
mieval, the pre-Adamite world! How little idea I had
of her— how little I have given you!
KARNAGQ 231.
Karnac, Feb. 1850.
Karnac is the history of a race, the greatest race,
perhaps, that ever existed —a race of giants, who illus-
trated themselves in their successive generations in
this temple palace—it is the political, ethical, and reli-
gious manifestation of the “ Unknown God” —it was
the residence of his vice-gerents the kings —the sanc-
tuary of his wise men the priests—the place of jus-
tice. In Egypt, where religion was the basis of every
thing; where politics were but one incarnation of it,
science another; where the king really believed him-
self God’s vice-gerent, and submitted to have his very
time and occupations laid out for him by what was con-
ceived to be divine law—¥in the actual fazth that he was
a servant and not a master--where we know that these
things really entered into the very belief of men’s minds,
that they felt as well as knew them, there is nothing re-
pulsive in finding the temples consecrated to every form
in which God manifests himself.
From the twelfth dynasty, nearly 3000 years before
Christ, to the Ptolemies, 300 years before Christ, you
find in Karnac illustrations of the race.
Those in the Great Hall, the hall of assembly, of the
time of Sethos, are the most beautiful in Egypt, — quite
equal to those of Ipsamboul itself.
On the wall of the Propylon (*), to the left, entering
from the first area, is Sethos, kneeling, and offering him-
self in the form of a little figure, which is eagerly
a4
232 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
bending forward on its knees, Immediately beyond
this, as if in answer to this devoting of himself, the
Good and Evil Spirit are pouring over him life — as
if to say, Give me thyself, my son, and thou shalt
learn to draw life out of evil as well as good—out of
all experience—“ all things work together for good to
them that love God.” The Agathodemon or Trinity
hovers over head, not as usual with wings outspread,
but a little depressed, as if to “cover him with its
feathers.” The whole conception is beautiful. In the
upper compartment his father Rameses I. is rushing
into the presence of Amn, quite different in his expres-
sion and character; and even without the cartouche,
which always gives the name of the man, you could not
mistake the different kings, so different is the character
of their devotions.
Beyond, is a bas relief in the second row, which quite
puzzled me. Sethos is standing before Amun Khem,
the union of the Wisdom and creative power of the
Deity; between them is a sceptre standing erect, and
leaning against it, two other sceptres, with little figures
climbing up, some with two feathers, some with one on
their heads. Whether this meant that the God gave
the king undivided sovereignty, and that the little fel-
lows were climbing up and trying to take it, or whether
they were aspiring sons or what, I cannot find out.
Farther on Sethos is sitting at the feet of Amun (with
his back almost leaning against his knees) who is bless-
ing him. Thoth stands in front recording. In the pre-
vious compartment Thoth and Atmoo are leading in the
eager Sethos, perhaps meaning that he has conupleted
some business wisely, whom you sec in the next, com-
PURITY NOT ASCETICISM. 233 |
fortably ensconced at the feet of the God. Succession
was a great element in the Egyptian pictures.
_ Alas! that all this is being corroded rapidly by
the natron, with which the soil is filled, which is
heaped half way up the wall. 100. would clear this
magnificent hall, in this country, where the people
in the manufactories work for 30 paras (# of a piastre,
24d.) a-day, but the Pasha spends his money in bribes
at Constantinople and in the lowest sensuality. The
monuments of Egypt are going fast,—all that can
go. One head of Sethos is just above the heaped-
up soil on that Propylon wall (*); the rubbish reaches
to the chin, and soon will cover it entirely; and it is
not here as in the other monuments, where the sand is
a preserver, this natron soil is a corroder: this head is
the most wonderful ideal of sublime serenity and child-
like trust and confidence I ever saw. 2% weht back to
look at it, that last day, again and again. I tried to
compare it with Guido’s Speranza; but itis too different
from the Christian ideal, though one can hardly tell in
what —there is a purity in these heathen (?) expressions
which is not in the Christian; in the heathen, it is the
first fruits of a spirit soaring to God, in the Christian it
is the returning spirit. There is that absence of the
doctrine of repentance which has struck me so much in
these records of a nation’s religion. The Christian ideal
has sinned and suffered——there has been struggle, asce-
ticism, the cheek is pale with vigils, the eye stained
with tears-—it is resignation, not serenity —meckness,
not trust,—composure rather than happiness — the spirit
has weaned itself after long effort and weary suffering
from the love of sin and earth, and placed its joy alone
234 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
in the beyond, in the far away, in the future. The
heathen ideal is quite different. It is purity, in oppo-
sition to repentance. There is always something of the
Magdalen in Christian representations, there is always
something of the Virgin in the heathen. It is the sin-
less soul, which has never left the bosom of its God,
which finds him, the Omnipresent, as near in one spot
of his creation as in another, which does not wait for
another world to enjoy His presence. The Christian
looks for comfort in His society hereafter—the Egyptian
for happiness in it here. ‘There is no asceticism in the
Egyptian ideal, —all the gifts of its Father it will accept
from that. Father’s hand —there is no struggle, the soul
has never loved anything better than its God—there is
no hope, it is all trust, trust that the present is as much
its Father’s blessing, its Father’s gift, as the future can
be — there is no resignation, for where evil is to give life
as well as good, it is absurd to talk of resigning oneself
to a benefit. Then it is love, not resignation.
I do not mean to say that the doctrine of Repentance,
in the sense of Change of Will, werdvova, found no place
in the Egyptian Theology. It is evident from their
doctrine of transformations, stages of purification, that it
did. I only mean that the Ideal of their sculptures was
Purity, not Remorse — that Repentance, with them, did
not signify pain—and that, instead of looking upon God
almost solely as we do as a moral Deity, they looked
upon him as an intellectual, moral, and natural Deity—
as the God of Wisdom, as well as of Ethics — as the
God of Politics, as well as of Religion — as the God of
animals, as well as of man, And query whether we do
not do much harm by looking upon him so exclusively
SACRED BOAT. 235
as a moral God ? If the intellectual man considered him
as the God with whom he could commune about philo-
sophy, as the God who inspired him with those philoso-
phical thoughts, as well as a God of moral requirements,
he would not feel so inclined to think of Him as calling
him away from philosophy to do something else, as one
who did not care about his discoveries, but only about
his moralities. Of course we cannot conceive of God
without his moral nature, it enters into all his attributes,
and, therefore, man, to become “ one with Him,” must
always cultivate all parts of himself together ; but I do
think it a fatal mistake in Christianity (certainly not to
be found among the Pgyptane) to approach God only
morally.
But I must go on to the side wall (°) of the Great
Hall of Assembly (on the N. E.). Here Sethos is kneel-
ing before all the different deities, making the offering
to each which to each will be acceptable. This sounds
monotonous. But it is not. There is the greatest
variety of attitude and expression—-sometimes eager —
sometimes devoted — sometimes submissive. To the
lioness-headed Goddess Bubastis, he is offering a little
Typhon. I cannot guess the meaning of this. Farther
on, enter Sethos kneeling; he is evidently advancing ©
upon his knees, and very fast; this is before Horus. I
don’t know what he is in such a hurry about.
I saw on this wall a very perfect sacred Boat (*) with
the shrine in it—so perfect that I could write down every
part, which I did for the curiosity of it. Over the shrine
or “mercy seat,” was the Agathodzmon or Trinity (the
globe, asp, and wings). Then came a hand pointing
the way, a Thmei and the symbol of life, “J am the
236. LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
way, and the truth, and the life;” then the three emblems
of stability, purity, light, and a hand giving the sign of
Set, the Evil.
Below these were two cherubim kneeling, crowned
with Light, and holding Life in their hands, with their
wings (one stretching upwards, and one covering their
bodies, like Ezekiel’s cherubim) protecting a Horus,
also crowned with Light and holding Truth. Upon the
prow of the boat were Neph (the spirit), the two figures
of Truth and Light —a sphynx, or the union of physi-
cal and intellectual power, offering the hieroglyph of
“ chosen”—i. e. its most chosen offerings—and the king
kneeling.
The rubbish being heaped up to nearly the top of the
wall, allowed me to examine this boat, and help my
eyes with my fingers; but it was so very plain that
there was hardly any need. I was very glad to see it
so distinctly, because it explains many things in the
Bible—* truth as his frontlet,” and “life in his hands”
— “righteousness” or truth ‘ upon him for a garment,”
&c. The form matters little, the shape of the shrine,
it was these curious emblems which made it so in-
teresting.
The whole of the 134 columns, which support this
hall, are covered with bas-reliefs, either simple intaglios
or alto rilievos, as the light required, the effect being
given, % said, by the varying depth of the cutting.
They are by very different hands ; it seemed to me that
all those in relief were very inferior to the intaglios.
One group of Amun-Khem and Tamun (the female
Amun, a form of Neith, as peculiar protectrix of Thebes),
I remember, which was quite beautiful — you know
HALL OF COLUMNS. 237
they are as simple as possible —a mere outline, like
Flaxman, very stiff, but what expression in that mere
outline !
The ruin of these columns is something supernatural
— here and there it seems as if one of the millstones, of
which they are formed, had been twisted out of its place
by a Ginn, while the one above and the one below it
have not been disturbed, so that the parts of the figure
no longer fit. In others, the whole column has fallen
bodily, and leans against the next architrave, which yet
it has not disturbed, dragging its own architrave with it.
We climbed upon the roof, and walked along the lines of
architraves, most of which still remain in their places,
looking down upon the forest of columns below. The
construction of all the Temple roofs is the same. The
middle aisle of columns is nearly twice the height of the
others: the two nearest aisles are raised by blocks to the
same height, and the stone beams laid across, so that the
roof of the three middle aisles is level; and cleristory
windows are left, which lighted the Hall. The blocks
of stone are sometimes enormous, but measurements
never give one any definite idea. On the roof are the
remains of what must have been another story, perhaps
two, as no one could have carried the stones up there
for purposes of warfare. | ;
The architraves which are fallen give the oppor-
tunity of studying the cartouches: there is as much
variety in the execution of these as of anything else ; and
though, in a cartouche, there does not seem much room for
the imagination of the artist, yet there 7s variety— some
seem to have taken the Gods literally — others poetically
—others artistically—-some set to work with earnest
238 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
belief, and you see their good faith in every line —
others did not believe much in the Gods, but made them
as pretty as possible. We crawled under one huge
block, to study the Evil Spirit (Set), in Sethos’ car-
touche, after whom, of course, he was called. Some-
times it is drawn with life in its hands, sometimes with a
shepherd’s crook; the expression of its ugly face is as
various as possible. In one place Thoth is writing
Sethos’ cartouche. I must say Thoth made a good choice
there.
Of this Sethos I., Lepsius thinks that Joseph was the
Premier. Bunsen puts him a great deal farther back
in the old empire (twelfth dynasty). I had rather it
should be Sethos, because I feel so much more familiar
with him than with the Osirtasens, and I like to think of
Joseph walking in the Great Hall of Karnac.
The south-west wall (*) of the Great Hall, and
propylon towers (°), are so ruined, and the rubbish
so high, that one cannot see much; but they belong
to the reign of Rameses II, who completed his father’s
hall, and as they are very inferior in point of art, it
does not signify much. I was very glad, however, to
find an old representation (of the time of Rameses II.)
of what I had seen at Esne, (but did not care about, as
that is only Roman, and therefore it was no proof)
of the “fishers of men.” Here, Horus, Rameses IL.,
and Neph, were drawing a net, in which were enclosed
a number of birds, “ pure spirits.” Thoth stood behind
with a pair of scales upon his shoulders. At Esne, the
net contained jish as well as birds.
Everywhere in Karnac you can see old sculptured
stones built into new walls by successive generations.
THE COMITIA. 239
But how useless it is to try with words to give any
idea of the ruins of that hundred-gated Karnac. 1
cannot even count its approaches. By one of the
secondary entrances, but which I liked the best, to the
left of the great avenue from Luxor, you approach
through a dromos of sphynxes, and four great pairs of
propyla, one after the other, three of which are standing,
all with colossi sitting before their gates, each of them a
moderate sized temple. Then round all the plain, at
every step you stumble over a half-buried sphynx, or a
granite colossus, or the substructions of some subsidiary
pylon, or mount your ass upon a broken hand, gigantic
enough to make a step. The view by this approach
through the three pyla of the palms beyond, which now
fill up the avenue of sphynxes, is beautiful. .
Am I to tell of the two sacred lakes, their shores lined
with quays and ruins, and their waters reflecting propyla
and towers ?—of the great entrance from Luxor, which
leads to the mightiest pylon of all; this has a temple of its
own, and a large one too, built by Rameses VIII. and
Bocchoris, which you hardly notice as you approach the
Temple Karnac itself. From the first propylon (') of the
Temple, which overlooks all the plain, you have a glorious
view of the whole of the entrance from the river, of the
plan of the ruins, of the pyla for miles round. You look
across the river, and on the highest summit of the Libyan
ridge beyond, you see the comitia being held for the
election of the king, the God invoked under his blue
canopy of heaven (they were always held in the open
air), and then the whole train descending the steep cliff,
winding its way by temple and palace, terraces and
gardens, perhaps down the dromos, which led from the
240 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Temple of Dayr el Bahree to the river, never ‘rest-
ing till it had crossed the river, ascended the dromos on
the other side, and consecrated the king in the temple
palace of the Unknown God. The train passes under the
propylon on which you are standing, and fills the im-
mense area within. I thought I heard their shouts, the
triumphal march. I looked: alas! what do you think it
was? Anarmy of Arabs harnessed to an enormous stone,
and dragging it away to build the house of the governor.
So is Egypt losing her ruins day by day—her temples,
the only thing she has left. And Mohammed Ali
cleared out the two Roman temples of Esne and Den-
dera, and left Karnac to destruction.
The Temple of Karnac is entirely enclosed by a
temenos wall (*). Near the sacred lake, where a little
temple of Sabaco once stood, I had a glorious view of
the Great Hall, with the light shining in between the
seventeen aisles of columns and showing their shadows,
and not looking down too much upon their tops. The
whole of the outer walls of the Great Hall is covered
with battle scenes out of the life of Sethos on one side (?),
and of Rameses II. on the other (*), tiresome beyond
measure, I thought. And now I have ridden all round
the Temple, and wish I could have taken you with me.
I see the rich plain round the belts of palms, the narrower
strip of cultivation, but very green, on the Libyan side.
The Nile could never have come up higher on that side
than it does now, asthe tombs begin immediately behind
the now cultivated line; and the Egyptians wasted no
ground ; besides which, they never allowed their tombs
to get wet. I see the sun setting behind the mud
village, which, before his glory, itself looks glorious, and
DENDERA, 241
seems to send up a cloud of incense to heaven in its
evening smoke. I see the violet hills. But how can I
make you see them? as I did on that last night, our
farewell to Karnac.
Dendera, Feb. 25. 1850.
DENDERA is a vulgar, upstart temple, covered with
acres of bas-reliefs which one has no desire to examine;
built without faith or purpose; but cleaned out by the
Pasha to the bottom, so that one can walk about it but
too well, The only impression one brings away from it
is, that the people who built it thought that there must
be gods, and that the god of the Egyptians would do as
well as any other —it did not signify — take him into
the Pantheon. So, without really believing much in any
god, Dendera was built; and the consequence is, one
never wishes to see it again; and while there, one has
no wish to examine the miles of sculpture; one does
not want to become better acquainted with them or with
it. It is the very sanctuary of priestcraft, a wonder of
holy artifice; the walls so thick that no sound can go
through them — the Sekos, and its two auxiliaries, en-
tirely surrounded by a broad passage; beyond that a
hedge of priests’ apartments, and, finally, the whole
outer wall, hollowed like a honey-comb, with secret
passages, riddled with staircases, and one or perhaps two
stories deep provided for beneath, in the substructions.
Into these passages you crawl through a hole, which just
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242 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
admits your horizontal body. We found three such in
the priests’ apartments ; they could evidently be made up
with a stone from within, so that no external trace should
remain. We saw other stones, which had been insufli-
ciently put in, betraying other holes. These passages
were wide enough and high enough to walk comfortably
in, and led from story to story by staircases, and the
whole was lined every inch of it with bas-reliefs. They
had probably served for initiations, mysteries, &c. They
must have been rather stuffy. Besides these, there are
all sorts of wider processional passages, from roof to
floor and from floor to roof. The portico of Dendera,
as you know, is magnificent. I think we found the
columns to measure twice (in diameter) those of Philee.
Dendera is, of course, Roman. The earliest name which
you find there is of that vile Cleopatra.
The only room which interested me was one in the
roof, It was while I was there that I heard the most
supernatural noise, like the sighing of spirits in hell,
rising from one place, and spreading over the whole
temple; evidently some effect produced (and provided
for) by the wind in the secret passages.
In this chamber there was a poor imitation of Philce ;
an Osiris half raised on his bier, Horus giving him life,
and the soul, a human-headed bird, sitting on a tree at
the head.
There was, too, an idea copied from the older monu-
ments — all the gods, with Amn at their head (Thoth,
&c. inclusive), making offerings to Osiris—a beautiful
idea, that all the attributes of God are but the servants
or ministers of His goodness, which animates them all.
Horus, piercing the serpent, and all the usual represen-
ASTRONOMICAL HISTORY. 243
tations were there. One new to me was of boats, with
a radiating sun at the prow: but a mere list of these
would not interest you, and I have no inspiration about
Dendera. Outside was a frieze of kings’ souls, the sun
between each two, with three beams coming down to
earth in the form of lotus buds, to show his fertilising
power, I suppose.
There is also a little temple to Athor there, peripteral,
with rather a pretty frieze on the inner side; Horus on
a lotus between Typho and Mors. We rode into the
sacred place —a process one does not feel a profa-
nation there, but which is an abomination to me in
general, that we, upon our asses’ feet, should be tread-
ing the place too sacred in their eyes for any but the
high priest, cleansed and purified, to enter — the place of
all their aspirations and all their love.
The ride to Dendera through long halfeh grass and
doum palms is very pretty. To the astronomer
Dendera is dear, for upon its portico is the famous
Zodiac, and in the Zodiac the sign of the Lion comes
first, showing that the summer solstice was then in that
sign, instead of, as now, in Cancer, for the summer sol-
stice began the Zodiacal year with the Egyptians, which
we begin with the vernal equinox. In the Zodiac at
Esne the sign of Virgo comes first, instead of Leo, show-
ing that then the summer solstice was in Virgo. Now
this proves that, in Egypt, the precession of the equinoxes
was already known, and it may prove more. But as
both Esne and Dendera are only Roman, all that is
certain is, that the Egyptian astronomers wished to re-
present in those two Zodiacs two successive states of the
heavens—that in which the summer solstice was in Leo,
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244 ‘LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
and consequently the vernal equinox in Taurus, in-
stead of Aries —and that in which the summer solstice
was in Virgo, and consequently the vernal equinox in
Gemini. Now we know that it was before the date of
Dendera that the summer solstice passed into Cancer,
and the vernal equinox into Aries; therefore it was not,
at all events, the actual state of the heavens which the
astronomer wished to represent, but a recorded state ;
and if, as Champollion thinks, both Dendera and Esne
are copies of much more ancient monuments, of which the
present were simply restorations, and that this proves
that Egyptian astronomers were acquainted with the pre-
cession of the equinoxes at the time those monuments
were made, to what a period does it not bring back that
knowledge? .We know that 2160 years is the time
necessary for the passing of the equinoctial point from
one sign into another, and therefore this brings us back to
more than 2160 years before the last déménagement of
the sun, which was before the Christian era, years we
thus find written in this Esne Zodiac. It may be, how-
ever, that the Egyptian astronomers were only composing
states of the heavens, according to the law known to
them, as you may compose eclipses in the past as well
as the future. Doctors disagree.
One does long in Egypt to know more of this
wonderful race of men, the Egyptian priesthood. That
promotion and power was held from the civil authority
by it, as well as by the English hierarchy, and that
theirs, as ours, was endowed by the state, is evident ;
but the duties they had to perform in return were
enormous in comparison with ours,
Once a year every priest had to go to the metropolis,
SCIENCE, RELIGION IN EGYPT. 245
whether it was Thebes, Memphis, or Alexandria. -Per-
haps Moses took his idea of assembling his whole nation
at Jerusalem from this,—‘ And ye shall be ping of
priests.”
But the enormous power of the Egyptian priesthood
was evidently given them by the spirit of the people, to
whom religion was everything. All their insurrections
(even in Roman times) arose from insults made to
their gods, and the nation invoked the gods upon every
possible occasion, public and private. The priests being
a caste, of course all the offices and all the lands were
hereditary. |
But the great difference between their priesthood and
ours, and the way to define it, seems to be, not that
the priesthood had got hold of all the offices political,
legal, religious, scientific, and administrative, but that,
all knowledge and science being holy, the profession of
any science made the priest. It was a national state of
mind, of which wecan have hardly any idea. Religion and
law were its two characteristics. It was not as if a great
and ambitious body had by degrees worked itself into all
the power and influence in the country; it was as if
the power and influence of knowledge, being sacred, made
their possessors sacred. It was a part of religion as much
to take care of your health as to go and sacrifice in the
temple, therefore the doctor was as much a priest, or a
‘sacred character, as the Hierophant or the Sacrificer.
The priest was not the doctor or the lawyer, but the
doctor or the lawyer was a priest.
Medicine was a subject of daw, and it was not legal to
study more than one species of disease; the number of
doctors for each was regulated. But how this omni-
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246 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
presence of law had its origin in the physical nature of
Egypt, and how differently it would work here from
what it would in our northern countries, it is impos-
sible for an European to conceive. God seems to have
created Egypt as the personification of law — a country
without rain, without variations of climate —its food
annually provided for it by an annual phenomenon, with-
out example in the world for its regularity, beginning
and ending on a certain fixed day. It makes the charac-
ter of an Egyptian so different from that of the self-
dependent, liberty-secking European, that it seems as if
Egypt was the very land for the observation of cause and
effect; so much more certain must the noting down of
consequences be here. Disease, weather, returns of every
kind, from the public health to the causes of crime, might
be here so much more easily calculated than anywhere
else, that the things which seem to us most variable,
most precarious, and least fit to find a place in any
almanac we can construct, may in Egypt be actually
(by studying the law, which is easily discoverable)
made the subjects of law. To find, therefore, every
individual thing in Egypt a measure of police, every-
thing provided for by law, does not seem extraordi-
nary ; while in Europe this would be impossible, with our
present ignorance — with our future wisdom, not desir-
able. On the other hand, the effect became again a
cause, and, no doubt, owing to the severity of police and of
regulations in general, the public health and everything
else in Egypt was much more regular than we can con-
ceive possible. Then every year the same phenomena
recurring enabled the college of priests to study again,
as our books say of Ireland, “Its Evils, their Causes
EGYPT THE INCARNATION OF LAW. 247
-and their Remedies;” and thus the wonderful Jill for
mummying all animals, and the other administrative mea-
sures of her religion, cease to be wonders. In Egypt,
Science deserved to be religious, she was so practical.
On the propyla of the temple astronomy seems to have
been studied. In Egypt our week of seven days had its
origin — in a mistake no doubt (viz. in believing that
there were but seven planets, of which the sun and the
moon were two), still a most useful invention. All our
calendar we have from Egypt. Chemistry took its name
from Khemi, the old name of Egypt. Astronomers and
philosophers then were priests, and also, alas! astrolo-
gers; these Greece never inherited with Egypt’s other
legacies. But in Egypt’s early times, astrology meant
only the study of the stars and of their influences upon
natural phenomena, upon the changes of the weather
and the seasons, which in Egypt were peculiarly cer-
tain, and might be catalogued.
Greece, where religion played so small a part, where
there was so poor an idea of a priesthood, and where the
service of the temples was its only occupation, can give us
no true account of the real feeling which surrounded
the Egyptian priesthood ; so that we are almost in igno-
rance about it. But you find the priestly caste in every
office, disdaining none, extending from the king, who
was often a high priest, down to the porters of the
palaces. Always with the head shaved, and the linen
tunic, you recognise them in the monuments, from the
scribe, with his pen behind his ear (there is a pre-
cedent 4000 years old), to the panther-skinned priest
of Osiris.
The women, too, had offices and vocations in the
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248 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
church —as in every church except ours — the wives
of the priests, the daughters of the kings were so em-
ployed. In the very tombs of the Queens you read
some title of the kind.
What the education of the highest order of priests was
we see by that of Moses, who was prophet, legislator,
general, politician, and philosopher, all that was neces-
sary to make a king, as the Egyptians said; and we
see how he beat the Egyptian wise men at their own
weapons. Clement of Alexandria says that he studied
in the colleges of priests, and particularly the hiero-
glyphic and symbolic art.
How entirely we have mistaken the character of the
institution of the priests in Egypt is wonderful, though
after all it is not wonderful, for how can we conceive a
nation who wrote its religion upon its public monuments
(fancy the statue of the Duke of York inscribed all over
with the belief in a future state), to whom religion was
what politics, what railroads are to us? There is some-
thing very beautiful in all knowledge being so religious
that the very professing of it consecrated a man. To the
Egyptians Sir Isaac Newton would have been as holy as
St. Augustine; the one kind of knowledge was as much
inspiration as the other. In this kind of priesthood
there is nothing repulsive, though its later degeneracy
has taught us what seeds of danger there were in it, and
how to avoid them (by having none at all)—has taught
us that priesthood but too easily becomes priestcraft —
and we have reversed the lesson, and said that priestcraft
is priesthood.
Champollion says that he has measured 50,000 square
feet of sculptures on one Temenos wall. I suppose there
MONUMENTAL HISTORY: 249
is no parallel to this in any land, and in Egypt every
monument is its own interpreter; it bears its own date,
its own history, its own faith engraved upon itself,
There is no occasion to go, as in Greek and Roman his-
tory, to a number of traditions, all of which we know
to be false, and uncertainly to grope for the truth only
by comparing the false. Would we but study the lan-
guage, here we have the contemporaneous history of
every monument written upon its own self. Who
will come and read it? For the philosophy of history,
what country stretches out its hands to press such facili-
ties upon us as Egypt? In every other one gets one’s
knowledge out of books— here, even we, in our igno-
rance, feel we have read what we know from the monu-
ments themselves.
There is, too, this certainty, that though the Roman
and Ptolemaic monuments are often disgusting from
their style of art, yet Champollion says he is convinced
that the ancient gods of Egypt were still reigning the day
their temples were closed by Christianity; that the
inscriptions of the Roman and Ptolemaic buildings are
exact copies of the Pharaonic, as is proved by all the
many cases where the blocks of the pre-existing building
were used for and built up in the restored one. The
Triads never changed. On the site of the Roman
temple of Kalabsheh, which I was so disgusted with,
there was a previous Ptolemaic one, and another before
that, of Amunoph II.—the creed the same in all, as
proved by the inscriptions of the old blocks.
Homer, like Pythagoras and Plato, studied in Egypt,
_— the things he revealed. in his poetry to Greece he did
not learn there — he found them here. As Champollion
250 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
says, how feelingly he puts in Ulysses’ mouth “ It is not
a good thing, the government of many, let there be but
one chief, one king.” Having had the opportunity of
comparing the prosperity, philosophy, and religion of
monarchical Egypt with the rivalities and ambitions of
Greece, — having seen in Egypt one faith, one hope of a
future state —kings bowing their heads before it and
their religion —law ensuring order throughout a vast
empire — the highest classes submitting to it, and the
rest following,— monuments which no work of man has
equalled,—writing, i. ¢. the Demotic, in general use,—
no wonder Homer was captivated with Egypt: — he
spoke avec connaissance de cause, when he made compa-
risons in his own mind, odious, of course, at that time.
How (Diospolis Parva), Feb. 27.
‘WE breakfasted in haste, mounted our bridleless asses,
and were off before eight o’clock, to see a tomb at How,
about a mile inland, which has a Judgment Scene. It
was a most interesting ride: an immense plain, with cul-
tivation about a mile in depth, then, without warning or
apparent difference of level, or tongues of sand encroach-
ing, but only divided by a sharp straight line, began de-
sert, which reached to the foot of the square of mountains
or rather cliffs; the whole of this desert under our feet
being evidently but the lid of a subterraneous city of
tombs. > and I sat down on the sand, and were sur-
rounded by the Shekh and all the elders of a neighbour-
EGYPTIAN ELDERS. 251
ing village, draped and coloured like Guercinos, — red,
blue and brown, —(that heap of brown drapery they
wear upon the shoulder is so like his pictures) — the
Shekh looking like a St. Peter, with crimson turban
and white beard: they seemed a well-to-do village,
and did not cry Baksheesh; and there was nothing of
the usual sordid look about them. But conceive our
desperation when we found the tomb we came to see
positively carried away bodily, — the stones, the painted
stones, gone to make a sugar-factory at How, where Mr.
B saw them afterwards:—not a public enterprise,
but a private speculation of ason of Ibrahim Pasha.
This sugar factory employs 200 people, who are paid
thirty paras a day (1d.). It goes day and night; an
Englishman directs it.
How is very pretty, when the sugar chimneys are out
of sight —acanthus and sycamore round it, and wells
for the passer by.
Girgeh, with its seven minarets, looks almost like an
European town from the opposite shore. The Modeeh’s
boat anchored there at the same time as ours, he having
arrived on business — that business being, I suppose, to
make the miserable villages pay twice over; there can
be no other here. We went to the Latin church, which,
to judge from its size, must have a congregation; but
the Latin father was gone to Osyoot. But with what
joy I entered a Christian church again!—really my
heart leaped within me! The mass-book was in Coptic
and Arabic.
Girgeh is the second town in Upper Egypt; and we
saw a school with six scholars, who wrote on a tin plate
very tolerably.
252 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
There were no candles to be had in all the town of
Girgeh, and the Coptic clerk of the above church pro-
mised to manufacture some for Paolo, his particular
friend. In about eight hours they arrived, — pure wax
with the honey in it they certainly were; but, unless
appearances are very deceptive, they were stolen out of
the church’s store; and we are now burning the ecclesi-
astical candle. I hope our friendis filling up the gap,
and now manufacturing for the church. Fancy us going
to the second town of Egypt to feed, like David, on
the shew-bread. There was no path up from the river
to the town; and all day long the unfortunate water-
carriers were coming down a perpendicular steep bank,
with their skins to fill, and climbing up again with a
stick. But Girgeh itself is crumbling into the river bit
by bit. Here I saw four-storied houses, every window
walled up with unburnt bricks, and every appearance of
being uninhabited, — save by a woman on the roof, or a
blue veiled face sticking out of a hole in the third story.
Anything so forlorn as the brown mud walls which make
the streets of Egyptian towns, without windows, without
any openings but the door, is impossible to conceive. One
thing I must say for the poor women one meets walking
alone in the streets, they never peep, they never try to
show their faces, but are always most conscientiously
covered; you never see anything but the oldest most
withered hag unveiled.
A ruined mosque in Girgeh is the most desolate thing
I almost ever saw.
We left Girgeh at night, but, when we had gone three
miles, were obliged to put back for the wind. The next
day we struggled on to Ekhmim, the ancient Chemmis,
MUSTAFA’S ** WOMANS.” 253
‘and modern (z. e. Roman) Panopolis, but there is nothing
left but enormous mounds, dividing the wretched village
into three.
Osyoot, March 9. 1850. _
WE have been just a fortnight coming from Thebes to
Osyoot, owing to the north wind blowing like a tempest ;
whereas the whole distance from Thebes to Cairo is
generally done in eight days. This would be very
ageravating, as all the time that we have been lying at
different places we might have spent at Thebes, and
been just as forward on our voyage, and what would
not another week at Thebes have been worth to us!), but
that we have been living at Thebes all this fortnight,
and ever since we left her. Arrived at Osyoot, we
went straight up to Lycopolis. ‘The view and the place
were as interesting as ever, but our grand eyes rather
disdained the more-than-three-quarters effaced sculp-
tures, and the cartouches, which did not determine their
age. However, my noble mind was bent not upon
tombs, but upon hareems, upon Mustafa’s (our cook’s)
“womans.” I do not care adoit about seeing Abbas
Pacha’s hareem, one never gets further than the
sweetmeats and the fine clothes; but I do want to see
the common hareems. So, armed with needles and pins,
we went to Mustafa’s house, nominally to thank for
some bread they had presented us with on our way up
the river. Oh! what a curious sight it was — the incon-
254 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
gruities !|—the principal lady, the married sister, dressed
like an oriental queen, but without a shift or anything
which could be washed, next her skin, and sitting upon the
mud floor —no furniture, but a slave — and the square
holes for windows stuffed with mats. The second wife,
in a blue shirt, stood on the threshold. The mother was
baking down stairs; and two slave wives peeped in at
the door. I never saw anything so beautiful, so really
beautiful, as the woman’s dress — of course it was her only
one:—Cachemire trousers, of a delicate small pattern,
—a “ yelek,” with hanging sleeves, of an exquisite Brusa
silk, crimson and white, trimmed with gold binding, — a
‘tob,” with immense sleeves, of lilac silk, — and over it
(for the Arab never wears her gayest clothes outside) a
purple gauze drapery embroidered with silver, and veil
of the same colour, embroidered in silks; and, withal, she
had the carriage of an empress, as she pointed to the
carpet she had spread for us, and invited us to eat. The
kitchen, where she had been baking, was a mere tent,
screened off from the yard by mats and poles, and there
was no other furniture but a few pots and pans, and one
very old clasp knife, made (apparently) by Tubal Cain,
which was given us to eat with. The house was a large
one for an Arab, and the room we sat in was up-stairs
—room it was not, but a shed. Of course the woman’s
dress was not a fair specimen, as Mustafa, having asked
us to go, had been up and in the town since daybreak
preparing for us, and was himself so fine we did not
know him. But there was not the slightest fuss or vul-
garity in their way of receiving us when we did come.
You never see an Oriental in a fuss) When a Shekh
asks you for a baksheesh, he does it like an emperor.
THE BUFFALO AND IBIS. 255
In Egyptian “ Mai” means “ the beloved.” ' Rameses
was Amn Mai, the beloved of Amn. I have so often
thought of our Mai when I read the inscriptions. You
see I had an Egyptian prescience in my childhood.
I saw the prettiest sight I think it is possible to see,
riding up to Osyoot; a rough black buffalo bending down
his great hairy head to be caressed by a delicate snow
white ibis, which was stretching up its exquisite swan-
like neck to reach his face. It was the most beautiful
epitome of God’s creation, of the most spiritual and
most refined helping the coarsest.
Gizeh, March 18. 1850.
You are dear good people. I have found here no end
of letters from you. All good news.
We arrived here on Saturday morning, 16th, and
Mr. B. said we would send into Cairo for the letters,
and we would go up the Pyramids, because then, if
anything had happened, we should at all events have
secured them. This, though said in joke, I believe pretty
much expressed the feelings of all, viz., that it was a
very good thing to have the Pyramids to occupy our
attention while waiting for the letters. However, a
greater than Mr. B. decided—the Khamsin — and it
made its decision with so loud a voice, that to the Pyra-
mids we could not go. So Mr. B. and I mounted our
asses and rode into Cairo for the letters, which we found
after a world of trouble, and after frequently hearing
there werenone. Many and thick and happy ones, thank
256 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
God; you are very good people. Nothing, however,
decisive as to whether it is possible for us to go to
Greece; so we came back again for =, and wandered
about old Cairo in the afternoon.
Sunday we went in to church upon our asses; and
meeting the Murrays, just landed, went in to luncheon,
and then to call upon the L r
You have no idea how strange it is to come back again
into the world of life, and civilized wants and customs,
after having been for three months and a half in the
land of graves— amidst death and a world of spirits.
But the spirits of the old Egyptians are such good com-
pany, and preach such nice cheerful sermons upon
death and a hereafter.
I never shall forget the strange feeling, as we sailed
up to Cairo on Saturday, of hearing a band of military
music in the distance — we who have heard nothing but
the music of the stars, or the still small voice of the dead,
for a whole winter.
This morning we set finally and resolutely out for the
Pyramids; but we had not reached the shore before it
became invisible for the sand clouds; the wind
covered us with water —it was hopeless. We said to
the asses, wait — a welcome word to the Egyptian, who
will wait for twenty-four hours without moving, if you
tell him — and came back, and at this moment I can
hardly write, and cannot even see Rhoda. We are
keeping on the boat, till we have accomplished these
unaccomplishable Pyramids, and are lying off Gizeh, as
it is too far to go from Cairo,
And now for Memphis—beautiful, poetic, melancholy
Memphis. No one had prepared us for its beauty. We
BEAUTIFUL MEMPHIS. 257
plishable Pyramids, and are lying off Gizeh, as it is too
far to go from Cairo.
And now for Memphis—beautiful, poetic, melancholy
Memphis. No one had prepared us for its beauty.
We thought of it as a thing to be done; tiresome
after Thebes. We had three fair days of sailing from
Minieh, and had not been ashore. The last night a storm
arose, and we were obliged to anchor; but rain —three
drops!— fell, and the wind was so terrified that it
fainted away. By dint of tacking we got on the next
day to Bedreshayn, but took the little boat to get
there. Paolo went up to the village for asses, we
starving and shivering meanwhile in the boat; and
shortly we saw Gad return, driving before him a troop
of asses, about thirty or forty (Gad, if I mistake not,
means “a troop”). After some delay we mounted (no
ass having a bridle), and rode along a causeway till we
came to the most beautiful spot you can imagine. I
have seen nothing like it except im my dreams, cer-
tainly not in Egypt; a palm forest, the old palms spring-
ing out of the freshest grass ; the ground covered with a
little pink flower (of which I have tried in vain to pre-
serve a plant for you), and the most delicate little lilac
dwarf iris. Here and there a glassy pool and a flock of
goats and kids, the long sun-light streaks and shadows
falling among the trees. It looked as if nature had spread
her loveliest coverlid, had grown her freshest flowers
to deck the pall, and throw on the grave of Memphis.
I have seen nothing like this palm forest in the Hast.
And in the middle, in a grassy hollow, by the side of
a bright pool of water, lies a statue of the great
Rameses, the most beautiful sculpture we have yet seen.
S
258 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
I must even confess that there is nothing at Ipsamboul
to compare with it. I never felt so much the power-
lessness of words. There he lies upon his face, as if
he had just lain down weary; you speak low that you
may not wake him to see the desolation of his land, yet
there is nothing dreary, but all is still. It is the most
beautiful tomb-stone for the grave of a nation I ever saw.
I felt as if God had placed it there himself, and said —
« Very dear to me thou wert, my land of Memphis, and
thou shalt have a fitting monument — the sweet green
grass above thee spread, and one of the most glorious
statues fn the world to mark the place.” I could have
cried when I heard them talk of turning it round
upon its back,—as if God had placed it there, and it
should not be touched by man. ‘This statue was given
to the English. It is well indeed we did not take it.
We went down into the hollow to see the features ;
they are composed, serene, purified beyond anything
I ever saw; with such a smile on the mouth, and such
an intellect in the brow. I had rather look upon that
face again than upon anything in Egypt. The art
is so perfect that the stone has all the softness of flesh :
you are really afraid to touch those colossal stone fea-
tures, the high blood nostril, the short upper lip, the
moulded brow, for fear of insulting him; and he lies so
calmly upon his pillow — the pillow of his mother earth.
Nothing is broken but the legs. In either hand is a papy-
rus, with his cartouche upon it. Though the eyes are
open, there is the most perfect appearance of repose. But
I am ashamed to speak about the art, when such an ex-
pression is there—the spiritualized, transfigured expres-
sion, not indeed of a Christ in his transfiguration, but of
MOSES UNDER THE PALMS. 259
an Eschylean creation, a Prometheus, or an Abdiel of
Milton. This was the colossal standing statue, which
perhaps stood before the great temple of Phthah.
At some hundred yards distance is a cluster of three
mounds, about a mile round, with walls of crude brick,
varying from twelve to twenty-four feet thick. This
we fixed upon in our own minds as the site of the
temple of Phthah, that wonder of ancient times. I
~ brought away (for the school) a crude brick, full of
straw, which mayhap the Israelites may have made.
At all events, it is part of no Arab building, but of a
real old Egyptian one; but I felt as if I had lived so in-
timately with Moses and Rameses for the last three
months, that I did not care much about their bricks,
when I had themselves.
To-day I walked with Moses, under the palms; through
the desert, where he killed the Egyptian—about the
palace, where he lived as the grandson of the king—
round the temple, where he derived his ideas of a pure
worship, and (sifting the chaff from the wheat) thought
how he could retain the spirit of the religion, while
getting rid of the worship of animals. I forget whether
it is Manetho or Strabo, who says that ‘“ Moyses ”
was a priest of Heliopolis, who wished to change
the worship of brutes in Egypt ; and I have often thought
he may have tried the Egyptians first, and failing, gone
to the Hebrews. I looked at the line of hills and of
Pyramids which he had looked at, and thought that
probably the hills were more altered than the Pyra-—
mids. How grieved he must have beer to leave Mem-
phis,—guilty of ingratitude, as he must have seemed,
towards his princess-mother, who had so tenderly and
s 3
260 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
wisely reared him, and given him the means of learning
all he valued so much, as the way of raising his
brethren — that great, that single instance in history
as far as I know, of a learned man, a philosopher, and a
gentleman, forming the plan of himself educating
savages, and devoting himself to it. It was like Sir Isaac
Newton keeping school among the Nubians — Charles
James Fox turning missionary. There was more of the
Roman Catholic, of the Jesuit, in Moses, than of the Pro-
testant. We should have said, what a waste! to squan-
der such talents among miserable slaves, who won’t un-
derstand you; keep in your own sphere; you will do
much more good among educated men like yourself. I
do not know any man in all history with whom | sympa-
thize so much as with Moses—his romantic devotion—
his disappointments — his aspirations, so much higher
than anything he was able to accomplish, always striv-
ing to give the Hebrews a religion they could not un-
derstand.
Well, we rode on through palm-groves and corn-fields,
and by asmall lake where once the famous sacred lake
of Memphis was, over which the dead were ferried, to
the edge of the desert, where once was the Necropolis
of Memphis, and which we call the Desert of Sakhara ;
a desert covered with whitened bones, mummy cloths,
and fragments, and full of pits ; not here and there; not in
one place and then in another, but strewed like a battle-
field, so as really to look like the burial place of the
world. Of all that mighty world not one living man
has remained to us, only this valley of their bones.
Here Ezekiel might have seen his vision of the dry bones,
and passed by them round about; for there were very
THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES, 261
many in the open valley, and lo! they were very dry.
Here the Pyramids lost their vulgarity—their come,
look-at-me appearance, and melted away into a fitting
part and portion of this vast Necropolis, subdued by the
genius of the place. Hardly anything can be imagined
more vulgar, more uninteresting than a Pyramid in itself,
Set up upon a tray, like a clipt yew in a public-house
garden; it represents no idea; it appeals to no feeling ;
it tries to-call forth no part of you, but the vulgarest
part—astonishment at its size—at the expense. Surely
size is avery vulgar element of the sublime,—duration,
you will say, is a better, that is true; but this is the
only idea it presents—a form without beauty, without
ideal, devised only to resist time, to last the longest;
and age is an idea one is so familiar with in Egypt, that
if a thing has nothing but age to recommend it, you soon
learn to pass by it to the children of Savak and Athor,
of Time and of Beauty. No, the Pyramids are a fit em-
blem of the abominable race they represented and over-
threw. Have they a thought in them ? it is a thought of
tyranny. And what earthly good they ever did to any
human being, but upsetting the wretches who built them,
I never could find out,—except determining, by the ma-
thematical accuracy of their position that, in 6000 years
the axis of the earth has not changed an iota of its direc-
tion. Asamonument of time, then, the earth is as good
as the Pyramids. Well, I had been very loth to see
the Pyramids; but here we stood at the bottom of the
oldest monument of man in the known world, the large
Pyramid of Sakhara, which is now believed to have been
the family tomb of the first of the third dynasty, Sesor-
chris I., 3500 years before Christ. There is nothing left
8 3
262 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
to testify of man’s existence before this. It is not above
300 feet high, and has a chamber excavated beneath it
in the rock 100 feet deep, into which you descend by a
well. I should like to have seen this mysterious cave,
but it was impossible. This Pyramid, unlike the others,
is made of five great steps.
Tran up a mound near it, from which I could see the
whole of this Necropolis of the world. Sprinkled about
the church-yard stood the nine Pyramids of Sakhara.
On my left, to the south, the two of Daschur, of which
the nearest is almost as large (by thirty feet) as the
Great Pyramid of Gizeh—both these are supposed to be
of the third dynasty—near them the two brick pyra-
mids —-mere ruins. On my right, to the north, the
three Pyramids of Abousir, of the three last kings of
the third dynasty, and beyond them, but seeming quite
near, the two Giants of Gizeh, with the smaller one of the
Holy Mycerinus (all of the fourth dynasty, B. Cc. 3229).
Above my head was the great Pyramid of Sakhara, B.c.
3453. But their ugliness was softened away by the
shadow of death, which reigned over the place —as
moonlight makes everything look beautiful.—And, as
tombs but a little larger than the rest, sprinkled over
this burial place of the earth—as voices but a little
louder than the chorus in this great elegy, I felt they
were quite in keeping with the place. But how different
was the Egyptian elegy from those of modern days—
“‘ He is made one with nature,” sing we; the Egyptian
puts his dead beyond nature—out of the reach of nature
(you may say,in an unnatural world); alone, where God
only can come—beyond the reach of all that is under the
sun—beyond the arm of all protection save that of God
THE DESERT NECROPOLIS. 263
alone—where only the wind can blow and the sand
heap arise, the Egyptian sows his dead. And well has
the seed come up, and well has God kept His trust for
him. It was a sublime idea, confiding his dead to the
desert of Sakhara; the ocean itself could not make a
more eloquent, a grander tomb. I could have wandered
about that desert and those tombs for hours, but fatigue
and those screeching Arabs, the two great Egyptian
evils, drove us away. We stopped as we went at the
tomb of Psammeticus II., a modern of 600 years before
Christ, the predecessor of the Pharaoh Hophra of the
Bible—who was the predecessor of Amasis, the patron
of Pythagoras and Solon, and friend of Polycrates, of
the twenty-sixth dynasty. This wasa series of chambers,
excavated in the ground, to which you descended by
a pit. The chambers were vaulted, and had pits in
them. The hieroglyphs were clear, they were of the de-
cadence.
A granite sarcophagus here, an ibis pit there, stopped
us, as we rode away from the Arabs, and back to Mem-
phis, by the long palm grove and village of Sakhara.
Again we stopped, and had a long look at our Rameses,
whom we found still sleeping on the turf of the valley.
I never saw anything which affected meso much. I
do not believe there is anything like it in the world,
except the Santa Cecilia decollata in Trastevere at Rome.
We clambered over the mounds, and thought we made
out two gigantic clusters of what must have been
temples. Here and there we found an Athor capital, a
granite figure of an official, bearing on his shoulders one
of those staves with king’s heads, which were carried in
processions. Otherwise the city of three thousand six
s 4
264 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
hundred and odd years before Christ, founded by
Menes himself, lay asleep under the green sod and the
palm-trees— At her head a green grass turf, at her
feet a stone.”
The difficulty of writing about Egypt is, that one
feels ashamed of talking about one’s own impressions at
such a death-bed as this; and yet, to describe the place
itself, — one cannot — there are no words big enough.
Memphis has wound itself round my heart—made itself
a place in my imagination. I have walked there with
Moses and Rameses, and with them I shall always return
there.
But now I must go on. I told you how Saturday
morning Mr. B and I rode into the town from old
Cairo, about two miles (I always feel so proud when
mounted like a caliph on my ass); how he deposited me
with Madame Francois, my friend and hotel keeper; how
I walked up and down the dreary sandy large high
room, with no furniture, but mosquito curtains, and
getting impatient looked out of window into the white
unwindowed street; how one solitary individual came
down the street, who, looking up at the same moment
that I was looking out, turned out to be the mad Count
we met on the Nile, who gave us birds and books, but
whose name we never knew; how I was very near
jumping out of window, but remembering I should have
to give back the books, refrained ; how Mr. B. came back
with only one letter—how Mr. Legros followed with a
new pair of primrose-coloured gloves, put on for us, in
which he looked like a dear old bear in satin shoes ;
how he fell about our necks—how he wanted me to go
and see the hippopotamus—how I, getting uneasy about
FOSTAT. 265
2, wished to go back—how he mounted us on our
asses; how Mr. B., at the door of our consulate, remem-
bered he must go to the Greek merchant; how I rode
into the consulate, ass and all, taking her with me as
a sufficient chaperone, and a quite maternal protector,
even though she could not speak; how at this moment
two handfuls of letters arrived—how I snatched—how
Mr. Legros said, “ Wont you get off to read your
letters?” —how I did it, but remembering in the house
the gross impropriety I had been guilty of in leaving
my ass, and coming in without her, implored to go into
the garden; how I climbed up upon a white wall to
be modest and retiring, and read my letters; how
shocked I was when wine and biscuits arrived, and
were deposited by a dumb Arab in beautiful trousers
before me (if it had been coffee I might have had fewer
scruples); how I crawled down again, and remounting
our asses, for Mr. B. had by this time come back, we
embraced Mr. Legros, and ambled away to old Cairo at
a pace caliphs might have envied.
Well, we fetched = and spent the afternoon in Fostat
(old Cairo), very interesting, though differing from
Memphis. First, we went through narrow, narrow
streets, with threads, not gleams, of sun through them,
where the Moorish balconies not only met, but over-
lapped, overhead, to a Coptish church in the Roman
fortress, where a Coptic funeral was going on — women
couchant on the floor and howling — the coffin a mere
shallow tray with the body in it, covered by a pink
gauze—a priest chanting; and when he had done, the
finery torn off the corpse, which galloped away, followed
by the women howling.
266 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Below the church we went down into a grotto or
crypt, supported by four slips of columns on either side,
making three aisles, very small and low, about eight
paces by seven, certainly the oldest Christian place of
worship I ever was in, without excepting the catacombs
of Rome. Mr. B. thought it older than any church at
Jerusalem. Here, it is said, a serpent was worshipped
by the Egyptians, till the Virgin and Child made it
their abode, when it disappeared. Certain it is that all
sects, however inimical, Copt, Catholic, Greek, Maronite,
believe in the tradition, and each says mass there. I
cannot help, like Robertson, believing in tradition, with
one’s own reservations. It is astonishing how much
more difficulty we have in believing in an antiquity one
thousand eight hundred years old than in one of six
thousand. We have lately been so intimate with build-
ings of thousands of years, and cannot now believe in
one of hundreds.
But however that may be, it is certain that many
martyrs suffered here—that it served as a Roman
dungeon in Diocletian’s time. It is within the Roman
camp of Fostat, and near the gate where the Preetorium
was. It is certain that Mary was in Old Cairo, and I
shall believe that it was here she lived till further notice.
—-— says it could not be, because it is so near the Pre-
torium; but it was much more likely that Mary should
put herself under the protection of the Romans, who
cared for no religion (till the Christians persecuted
them), than under the enthusiastic bigoted Egyptians,
who, like us, hated and despised every nation but their
own. The insignificant Mary could be of no importance
SAINT ONOFRIO AND OSIRIS. 267
to the Romans, except as’a Roman subject; for what
were they likely to know of Herod’s quarrels ?
From hence we went to a Coptic convent, still on the
site of the Roman fortress, of which the church is of the
third century, full of beautiful Moorish screens and ivory
work, with saints which work all sorts of miracles—one
a “patriarch Abraham,” who with the help of a believing
shoemaker saved the Christians’ lives by making a moun-
tain move, to convince a hardly believing caliph, They
showed us his and the shoemaker’s picture, and the mark
on the pillar where he rested his head when he prayed.
Is it not curious? evidently some mixture of the visit of
Abraham to Memphis, with “ Christians” substituted in
the tradition; also a picture of the Virgin and Child by St.
Mark, and a St. Onofrio, whose shrine was covered with
bits of hair nailed under his picture, by believing tooth-
aches, who, having done this, are cured. There cannot
be a doubt that Onofrio is the same name as ** Unnofre”
(revealer or opener of good), the name of Osiris, and
that this refers to Osiris, as the manifestion of the good-
ness of God. We went to the rooms at the top of the
convent, where sick Copts (among others, Dr. Abbott’s
wife) come to get well, and the Roman Catholic odours
savoured sweet in my nostrils. But I never remember
so strange a feeling as looking through a chink in the
convent wall (in a great state of rapture at finding my-
self really again in something like Catholic precincts)
and seeing the pyramids as large as life in the plain.
Strange incongruity !
After alternating Osiriolatry and Mariolatry (on my
part), we took a third dose in the form of Amrov’s
Mosque, which he built, when he took the Roman
268 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
fortress sixteen years after the Hegira for the Caliph
Omar, calling the place Fostat, from his leather tent.
He was seven months taking the place: he made it
the royal city. Now, his mosque stands among mounds
and ruins, desolate to see. But oh! what a beautiful
thing it is; an immense open quadrangle, with the
octagonal well and water “de rigueur” in the middle;
at the further end a colonnade of seven aisles, so light
and airy, that they look as if they were there for their
amusement, and were dancing with their shadows, not
at all burthened by a sense of their responsibilities,
but laughing merrily with the sunbeams. The adjoining
side has rows of columns, three deep; the other two one.
You never saw anything so pretty, or so gay. The
pulpit and reading place, the niche towards Mecca, and
Amrou’s unhonoured tomb in the corner, are still there.
But it looks to me like the place of worship of the
Cluricaunes, or where Titania’s mischievous elves
make their devotions; not at all where a reasonable
Mahometan, like myself, could do so. We rode home
over those desolate mounds-—the ancient Rameses of the
Egyptians, where the Pharaonic palace stood, only a
little more to the south, in which Moses met Pharaoh—
the Babylon of the Persians (who christened the re-built
city after the Babylon of the East), whence Peter wrote
his first epistle (there seems no doubt that this is the
Babylon he mentions at the end, and that he came here
with Mark, whose stay at Alexandria every one believes)
—the Fostat of Amrou, who built his city at the
northern end of the vast Babylon. Then came Salah-e-
dien, my old friend Saladin, 500 years later, and moved
the city still farther to the north, to Masr-el-Kahirah
SUCCESSION OF MEMORIES. 269
(the victorious Masr), which we have degraded into
Cairo, and upon the citadel are his ruins still seen.
All this story the mounds tell, besides the Roman one;
for all the convents we saw are within the Roman for-
tress, which now contains a Christian village; and five
steps away is the Jewish synagogue, which you can only
go into on a Saturday, where the oldest copy of the law
is found, and which is called the synagogue where
Jeremiah was when in Egypt. I think it matters little
to the spirit of the thing to verify the exact spot, whether
five feet to the right or left, where these men walked
and talked. If I can believe that here Jeremiah sighed
over the miseries of his fatherland—that here Moses, a
stronger character, planned the founding of his— that
here the infant eyes opened, which first looked beyond
the ideas of * father-land,” and of “ the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob,” and planned the restoration of the
world and the worship of the God of the whole earth, is
not that all one wants? There is no want of interest,
you see, in Cairo, even after Thebes.
And now, my dearest people, I must put up—very
much more comfortable in my mind, I can assure you,
since I have had my letters. Ifyou can read this—it is
in spite of the Khamsin—at this instant the floor of the
cabin is a quarter of an inch deep in sand—our faces
are covered like the hippopotamus, and I could write
much more easily on the table with my finger than on
the paper with my pen. It is almost dark, and to sit in
the sitting cabin, which is the outer one, is impossible.
Let an European wait till he has seen the Nile in a
Khamsin before he speaks uncivilly of a London fog.
We are come over to the island of Rhoda for shelter —
270 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
where the cradle of Moses stuck—but have not been on
shore yet.
As to our plans, Zirinia, the great Greek merchant,
says there is no difficulty in going to Greece.
In three weeks everything at Athens must be settled
between the fleet and Otho, and this dreadful wind
over, which will most likely last now all through the
equinox.
However, all this is “en l’air,” or rather, “en sable,”
at present. And if you were to see the “sable” on the
paper, you would think it asandy foundation. And the
moon has just become visible, all covered with sand.
She wants her face washed. We lie here because we are
in mortal fear of a party to the Pyramids. People in
Cairo are always making parties thither. All the boats
from Thebes are coming in. There was such a shaking
and bowing after church yesterday, and at Shepherd’s
Hotel.
Cairo, Hotel d’Orient,
March 23. 1850.
GREEK affairs go ill. I cannot very well tell what
we shall do. No one can know like the B how
entirely right Lord Palmerston is in the principle,
though people may differ about the manner and time
of the thing. But here for four years has that ob-
stinate knave of an Otho gone on resisting these Just
PARTING WITH OUR CREW. 271.
claims; it is not as if they had only now arisen, but he
has been dunned for payment these four years and
never has paid, though we have a right by the treaty
to put in a receiver at the Pirseus and pay ourselves by
the customs. But European politics are disgusting, dis-
heartening, or distressing —here there are no politics at
all, only hareem intrigues, and deep, grinding, brutal-
izing misery. Let no one live in the East, who can
find a corner in the ugliest, coldest hole in Europe.
Give me Edinburgh wynds rather than Cairo Arabian
Nights. And yet they are such an attaching race, the
poor Arabs, wide the tears of our crew at parting with
us, their round merry faces a mile long, sobbing out-
side the door, and all for what ?— merely for not having
been maltreated. I am sure | could not have imagined
what real sorrow it was to part from them. If I had
not been crying myself, I should have said what a
pretty picture it was yesterday. When they all came
up to the hotel to bid us goodbye a second time, they
begged to see me, else I should not have done it again,
and when J went in they were ranged in two semi-
circles, all their shoes left outside, one black face leaning
against the white drapery of the bed, even the stupid
old Rais cried, and my particular friend Abool Ali, ar~
rayed in a beautiful new brown zaaboot and clean white
turban, was spoiling all his new clothes with wiping his
eyes. Then they all pressed forward to salute us, Arab
fashion, which kisses your hand and presses it to the
heart and to the head, and then they would do it all
over again, and after that we parted, and shall never see
one another more. In the evening three of them, who
272 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
had done us particular services, came by appointment for
a particular conversation. And Abool Ali who is very
anxious to marry, but cannot have the 150 piastres neces-
sary to buy a “ tob” or garment for the lady,—a sauce-
pan, a mat, and two tin dishes, which is all the father, or
any father requires,—agreed with me that he would really
save 75 piastres within a year, if I would leave the other
75 piastres with the Consul for him. He further promised
he would not beat his wife, which he said he should not
have occasion to do, as she was not a Cairene, but of the
country, and very steady, and that he would not put
her away when he was tired of her ; he was not profuse
of words, and I believed him; and then he swore,
not by my request, but by Allah and his two eyes,
another hand-kissing followed, and so we parted. A
crew of more native gentlemen never existed; they
never showed any curiosity——never peeped into our
cabins, and though not only always kind, but em-
pressés, they yet never intruded themselves. The only
thing that disconcerted them was that Mr. B. some-
times left us with strange gentlemen at Thebes, and
kept them with him, instead of sending them to mount
guard over us.
But I ought to begin my story in order. I must kill
a few of these flies, though unlike Sir Isaac, before I
begin. Iam getting just as bad as the Egyptians, and let
them settle all over my face in black clusters, resigning
myself to the will of Allah and the flies,
Well, I have disturbed the flies; but now you must
wait another moment while I check the saltatory exer-
cises of a few dozen of fleas; but it is of no use, I
THE PYRAMIDS. 273
might as well devote myself to the pleasure of the chase
at once and for ever.
On Tuesday it was still Khamsin, but there was so
little, that all of a sudden, at eight o’clock, we made up
our minds to go to the Pyramids of Gizeh; we were
tired of playing hide and seek with all our acquaintance
at Cairo, who wanted to make a party there; tired, too,
of having the boat off Gizeh. Paolo was too ill to go
with us, but we thought we could manage with two
of our excellent crew. The road from Gizeh is very
pretty (though not equal to Memphis), with fields of
corn, and acres of that exquisite little dwarf lilac Iris.
We went along a causeway between an avenue of tama-
risk,—the remains of the old causeway are quite per-
ceptible in it, built to convey the stone, which cases the
inside of the Pyramid, from Toora, the “ Troici lapidis
Mons,” the ancient “ Troja;” the outside is built from
the Libyan quarries (refer to your Herodotus). Pre-
sently those forms of perfect ugliness loomed upon our
view, through a grey fog or sand, not unbecoming how-
ever. Presently we reached the Desert,—as usual with-
out the slightest warning, and, an Egyptian donkey’s
wont, my ass immediately lay down to roll,—an opera-
tion he frequently repeated. In an hour and a half we
were at the foot of the Great Pyramid, leaving the Sphynx
to our left; but no feeling of awe, not even of wonder,
much less of admiration, saluted us: there is nothing to
compare the Pyramid with; you remain from first to last
insensible of its great size, which, as it is its only quality,
is unfortunate. As it was now calm, and the wind
might rise, we immediately began to goup. As to the
difficulty, people exaggerate it tremendously ; — there
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274 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
is none, the Arabs are so strong, so quick, and I will say
so gentlemanly ; they drag you in step, giving the signal,
so that you are not pulled up piecemeal. The only part
of the plan I did not savour was the stopping every
time you are warm for a chill on a cold stone, so that I
came to the top long before the others. Arrived here,
I walked about, trying to call up a sentiment: the
stones certainly were remarkably large—the view was
remarkably large—the European names cut there were
remarkably large. Here are three sentiments, which
will you have?
I do not know why the Desert of Gizeh is so much
less striking than that of Sakhara. One can, in Egypt,
seldom render an account to oneself of any impres-
sion. Perhaps it is that Sakhara looks like the burial-
place of the world, it is so grand and desolate and lone,
and so riddled with graves. Gizeh looks like what it is,
the burial-place of a family of kings and their courtiers ;
the remains of buildings, too, about the place, give it
the look of habitation, make one think of porters and
sextons, and men and women; the wtter loneliness of
Sakhara, away from all that one is accustomed to see
under the sun, makes one think of souls, not men, — of
another planet set apart to be the churchyard of this
which is the dwelling place.
It was not at all cold or windy at the top, and we
did not hurry ourselves; then we came down again, but
no spirit of Rameses or of Moses helped me down the
steps; only the spirit of Cheops gave me his arm, and
very bad company I found him. About half way is a
grotto, formed by a very few stones having been taken
out; and this does give one some idea of size. You stop
RATS IN THE PYRAMID. 275
a few courses short of the bottom, under the wonderful
pointed doorway, which makes the entrance to the in-
side; every body knows it by picture. It is made of
four huge blocks. Here, clad in brown holland and flannel
(one comfort is that the Arabs look upon this last with
very different eyes from the English, as it is a festive
or state garment, and two of our crew, to whom I gave
flannel waistcoats, always wore them outside their man-
tles or zaaboots), having taken off your shoes, you
are dragged by two Arabs (before you had three) down
one granite drain, up another limestone one, hoisted up
a place, where they broke a passage (how they ever
found the real one is a miracle); you creep along a
ledge, and at last find yourself in the lofty groove, I
can call it nothing else, up which you ascend to the
king’s chamber. This is the most striking part of the
whole; you look up to what seems an immeasurable
height, for your light does not approach the roof; only
the overlappings in the sides, which gradually approach
one another as they come nearer the top, give you any
measure, and you see nothing but black stone blocks,
blocks you should not call them, but surface, for you
can barely perceive the joints. Except this, I think
the imagination can very well supply your place in
the Pyramid. After you have crawled, ramped, and
scrambled for two hours in black granite sheaths, with-
out an inscription, without a picture of any kind, but the
Arabs fighting for the candle, “the mind,” I assure you,
‘¢ig satisfied.” As to the difficulty, here again, there is
none: people talk of heat, the Theban tombs are much
hotter; of suffocation, I did not even feel the thirst,
which in Egypt is no joke; of the slipperiness, it is
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276 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
impossible to fall with those Arabs. The only danger
you can possibly run is that of catching an awful cold
in your bones, this is unavoidable.
But I suppose, as we have got so far, I must go through
with you, though very unwillingly. When I was a rat
then, not in Pythagoras’ time, but on March 29. 1850,
which I can but too well remember, I arrived, after run-
ning in my usual manner down one drain and up two
others—large airy drains they were for me — to a sort of
black thing like a tank with a flat roof, and a lesser
granite tank in it without a cover, where they say a very
bad rat indeed, and the grandson of a worse, Shafra
Chabryes, laid his bones; and he made the rats work so
hard to heap up this mound which the Big Rat, his grand-
father, had begun, that they would have no more kings of
that family. There is a very curious way of getting out
of the grandson rat’s chamber; it seems the architects
thought to stop it up for ever by granite portcullises,
which you can still see with their grooves on the four
sides of the entrance drain, and to climb out themselves
either over the portcullis, or by a passage which, some
say, came out under the chin of the great sphynx,
shutting up the drain as they came along. But the
portcullises are broken through, and I, for my part, got
under very well; some of the native rats with me
spitting continually to moisten the stone for our pats.
In the great granite tank are outlets to the outside of
the rat hill, such as ants practise in their anthills, to let
in air. I was very curious about these portcullises,
which I thought surprising to have been made by my
forefather rats 5000 years ago, and went over them
again and again, but could not make out how they
CONSTANTINOPOLITAN FEMALES, Bag
were managed; then I ran through a very easy drain
without a fall in it, to a room with a gabled roof,
just under the middle of the mound. After this, we
wanted to run down the lowest drain which burrows
almost to the centre of the earth, in the living rock un-
derneath; but the rubbish has filled it up so entirely
that even we rats are worsted, and it requires a mole;
so we were obliged to give it up, as you know we abhor
the infidel race of moles. The drains are so much like
one another, that a travelled rat like me, who has seen
one, has seen all. The other rats were very good-
natured in hauling me down the broken drain, and
then we ran out above ground; I, for my part, thinking
that the rat who made all this might as well never
have lived at all.
As I was leisurely crawling up the last passage, my
two Arabs having been left fighting for an end of
candle, Abool Ali ran down from the outside, seized
my hand, and dragged me up triumphantly to the top
with the usual Hel-e-hel, with which they haul up the
yard or pole the boat off a sand-bank. With this appro-
priate introduction, I emerged (oh, could any one but
have seen that scene!) to find a harem from Constanti-
nople; about fifty women, all looking like feather beds in
their huge “ habarahs,” veiled up to the eyes, and three
grave Turks, their happy possessors, all sitting over the
door of the Pyramid, like a semicircle of vultures, wait-
ing to see me come out (and drinking coffee in that happy
prospect), bonnetless, shoeless, in my flannel and brown
holland. If I had had “ an umbrella in case of fire, it
would have been something :” but = was my good angel;
she had not been in, and, though she could not speak for
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278 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
laughing, she pounced upon me, wrapped me in a shawl,
and stuck on my bonnet. The Turks never moved a
muscle ; they probably thought me some description of
Sheytan, which are very common, as well as Efreets, in
Egypt.
Well, my dears, I expect you will murder me; I
could almost murder myself: all I can say for myself is,
that I have faithfully rendered in blue ink what im-
pressions the Pyramid makes.
And now, what will become of me ?’ That I can never
revisit my native country, an outcast from my hearth and
home, is certain ; and—the smallest evil resulting from
an ill-timed sincerity—a victim to truth I must remain.
In England, where Egypt is considered as a tray for
pyramids and little else, where not to have prostrated
oneself at the foot of the Pyramid is not to have admired
Egypt, where Egypt=Pyr. and Pyr.=Egy., because
things which are=the same thing are = oneanother, which
is out of Euclid; it is mathematically proved that either
I have not been in Egypt, or Iam no fit inhabitant of
the land of England: Q. E. D. Goodbye. You will
never see me more. One thing is a comfort, neither will
the Pyramids.
But before I sink, a victim to persecution, I
will endeavour to atone for my errors by riding round
the other Pyramids. The second, built by the first
Cheops, B.C. 3229 (abominable man!), is the most per-
fect in its exterior casing; but we did not go in. The
great one is built by the second Cheops, and finished
by his grandson, the last of the fourth dynasty.
It is no doubt a marvel of mathematical accuracy —
the four sides lying to the four points of the com-
THE EGYPTIAN CINDERELLA. 279
pass—no easy matter with that size of building ;
height : base :: 5: 8; 4 base : perpend. height :: in-
clined height : base, &c., &c. All that is very fine,
but does not make an impression.
Next we rode round the third and small pyramid,
where Mycerinus the Holy, who still lives in songs and
hymns, was laid by a grateful people: he was the third of
that unlucky dynasty. We have his body and the cover
of his sarcophagus in England: there is a beautiful prayer
on our lid. Beyond this are three little pyramids, half
ruined, where the second Mycerinus and his wife and
daughter were laid. Nitocris, the heroine of all the
romance of Egypt, finished the third pyramid, in which
she lies. She is the original of “ Cinderella,” of Herodotus’
story of “ Rhodopis,” the “rosy-cheeked,” of Strabo’s fable
of “ Naucratis,”’—her name means Neith the Victorious.
She is still seen by the Arabs, a beautiful shade, wander-
ing round her Pyramid. She maintained the throne six
years in the name of her murdered husband (8.c. 2973,
sixth dynasty), finished her Pyramid, invited the mur-
derers to the consecration, when she avenged her hus-
band and then perished by her own hand. But her
sarcophagus has disappeared. Here you can see plainly
the two causeways which led from the Pyramids to
the river, a rounded head of rock forming one side of
something like a great entrance, and near it the Sphynx.
People ought to have some conscience; as to the ex~
pression of the Sphynx, you might as well talk about
the expression of our High Tor. You can make out
much more perfect faces there. Well, some people have
imaginations, and some have not. Goto. I hope when
my portrait is exposed in the same condition as this of
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280 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Thothmes IV. of blessed memory, people will discover
as many marks of profound intellect, great sweetness and
propriety of conduct, united with perfection of feature.
A wonderful gift is “ Einbildungskraft” certainly. Maya
«portion for seven, and also for eight” thereof be mine be-
fore I visit the Sphynx again. It is the more abominable,
because Thothmes IV., being so late as B.c. 1509, has no
right to be so defaced. I cannot help it. He is said to lie
inside ; but some say the Sphynx only contained the outlet
for the workmen, who closed the entrance to the great
Pyramid. Well, let them all rest in peace, and let me
rest too. As we rode away we saw the tombs hewn in
the rock, and another causeway, leading to the Libyan
hills. We found our boat, stretching out its motherly
arms to us, off the Nilometer at Roda, and dropped down
directly to the lower end of the island (where we lay the
Jirst night we went on board). There we found Mr. A
who came on board directly with his charming daughter,
a black, and a great friend of mine; and the only pretty
picture I had had in my mind all day,she gave me. Years
ago she used to sit with her father and his gun in the
moonlight on the side of the Pyramid, a few courses up,
watching the jackals and wolves run by. Fancy the
old white-headed man, the little black dab of a child (the
ugliness of the scene softened by the moonlight), watch-
ing the troop of jackals whistling by like a rushing wind
in the deep shadow.
DISPARAGED THE PYRAMIDS! 281
Palm Sunday, 1850,
I am afraid to think of what I’ve done: look on it
again, Idare not. What? disparaged the Great Pyramid?
But, after all, would any Christian lady or gentleman of
my acquaintance feel much interested by crawling in
drains, of which the only observable trait is “ granite?”
or “limestone?” “limestone?” or “granite?” for more
than twelve or fourteen hours, the time varying accord-
Ing to the taste and pursuits of thecrawler. That can-
not be so very interesting which nobody but an explorer
wants to go to twice. Egypt is like a vast library, the
finest, the Alexandrian library of the world. You read,
and look, and study ; and read, and look, and study again ;
and if it is so interesting to me, you say, who can only
read one word in a page, what must it be to him who can
read two? At last you come to a huge folio, which, the
librarian tells you, is the oldest and biggest book in the
world, You run up the ladder, and turn over one blank
page after another: you soon get tired of that work,
and you will never run up those steps to look at that
book again. And I do not call any book worth reading
which is not worth returning to many times.
Mr. Harris discovered some names of the Shepherd
Kings in the tombs about the Pyramids, which may
lead to something.
On the twentieth we rode up into Cairo to find some
rooms, where I am sitting at this moment with open
windows, six o’clock in the morning, three minarets and
a pal visible above the trees of the Ezbekeiyeh; the
beloved Nubian old friend of a Sakia going under the
282 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
windows, and all kinds of Eastern groups under the
trees. We have returned to what we call civilised
habits—but how much less really savage was the dinner
of our poor Arabs, which took ten minutes preparing,
ten minutes eating, when they all jumped up, and
thought no more about it, than the mortal hour and a
half we spend every day here, out of the twenty-four
God has given us, at a table-d’héte of Indians, one chef
and two assistants at the least to prepare it, that is thirty-
six hours of time to get it ready, and if we are thirty at
dinner, that is forty-five hours to eat it.
After taking our rooms, we returned to the boat, to
pack up in a Khamsin; and between our feelings and
the Khamsin, a camel would have pitied us. ‘Towards
sunset we took our last walk on Roda; but the sun went
down, that Khamsin day, in a glare of red sand, and we
came back, without waiting for sunset. This was our
last night in the Parthenope; the next morning we
dropped down at sunrise to Boulak, intending to go to
Shoobra, but the north wind was so high we could get no
further, so we were dug out of the boat, as it were, joint
by joint, and forced into the little Sandal, where
six of our men rowed us down in a nor-wester to Shoo-
bra, mounted us on asses, had a great hand-kissing,
and launched us on the wide world again. I had had my
head out of window all night to enjoy my last night on
board the quiet boat, the sweet Parthenope. She has
done us good service; and now she is looking dirty
and desolate, no one to clean her out and make her
look pretty ; I dare say by this time she is full of fleas
and hareems, and not my Parthenope any more: and
she was so sorry to part with us. J have another Par-
HELIOPOLIS. 283
thenope, but she will never have any one to value her
as we did.
We left the dear old boat wringing her hands, while
we irrigated the ground with our tears all the way to
Heliopolis; but we had a glorious day there, to let
us down easy at parting; we could not have adjourned
to the noisy, dusty, bustling inn and Indian table-d’héte
at once. I had always made a sort of saint’s day to
myself of the day I should spend at Heliopolis, where
Plato walked and Moses prayed, where Pythagoras,
and Solon, and Thales learnt all their wisdom; the nurse
of Athens, the Alma Mater of Egypt, and, through her,
of the world; that small city which had so great an in-
fluence, where the priests of the Sun dwelt, who were
celebrated all over the world “for learning and medi-
tation.” It shall be my Sunday, I thought, not even
Thebes is so sacred as this—and oh, how Nature has
respected it.
We reached it through rich fields of corn. The
mounds are small. and I stayed at home the rest of Palm Sunday: it is
very interesting to see in the old Egyptian sculptures
the custom of strewing palms in the way.
Cairo is overflowing with Franks; but we have
hitherto refused all invitations, we were too tired.
To-day we have been to the bazaar; but you have no
idea how difficult it is to find anything in Caiio'you like
unless you buy the house and window — that would be a
present. I never saw such a picture as the end of the
288 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
silk bazaar, with a Moorish arch at the farthest corner,
and two others on either side, where it is fastened up
by a chain, and you can look about without danger of
being borne down by a string of camels. And then the
groups you see! I did buy a scribe’s ink-horn, such as
they wear stuck in their girdles in the sculptures, like
Ezekiel’s man, “ which had the writer’s ink-horn by his
side.” They sell all goldsmith’s things by weight,
and, as government manages everything, we had to
go to the government scales to have it weighed, for
which we had to pay. In the little goldsmith’s shop,
which is nothing but a square box or. shed, open upon
the street, sate, on the front, a woman wrapped in her
black silk habarah, all but one eye, which was a very
pretty one, who had brought all her diamonds and pretty
things, and even her silver Goolleh tops for sale— she
was probably separated from her husband. She asked no
questions, showed no interest, but sat, the picture of
meekness, and despair, and resignation, while her things
were offered to us by the goldsmith. But the bazaars
are so queer, there is no choice, no stock, but people
walk up and down the shady street, roofed in at the top,
with their bracelets and things in their hands, which, if
you catch a sight of, you may buy, if not, not.
Alas! we have now done with Egypt — Cairo is not
Egyptian, it is Arabian. The day we sailed into Cairo
we were at the place, a little south of Old Cairo, where
Moses, after going to the Pharoah at Rameses, and re-
turning to the people several times, led them away at
last. The Arabs have a tradition marking the spot
where he sat and counted them passing by. “ Goshen”
FAREWELL TO EGYPT. 289 :
took in Old Cairo and Heliopolis, and extended north-
ward along all the right (eastern) bank of the Nile.
The only thing which now remains to us of Egypt is
the Pyramids, which stand there, looking as if they
would wear out the air, boring holes in it all day long,
I am sure that no European can at all imagine the
entirely different feeling with which one lives in Egypt
compared to anywhere else, nor describe it. It is
perfectly distinct from that in any of our living coun-
tries. It is like going into the Sun, and finding there
not one living being left; but strewed about, as if they
had been just used, all the work, books, furniture, all
the learning, poetry, religion of the race, all the marks
fitted to give one an idea of their mind, heart, soul and
imagination, to make one feel perfectly acquainted with
their thoughts, feelings and ideas, much more so than
with those of many of one’s own kin. You open the
journal left lying on the table, and feel almost ashamed
of prying into its secrets; you see the place where they
have been praying; you walk about, expecting every
moment the people to come in, but not a living being—
all, all are gone, and not one “escaped alone to tell thee.”
But it is not necessary for any one to tell the tale, you
read it written everywhere; but still, the Star is a de-
serted one, it had a race, of which not one remains,
for, besides that Egypt to an European is all but un-
inhabited, the present race no more disturbs this impres-
sion than would a race of lizards, scrambling over the
broken monuments of such a star. You would not call
them inhabitants, no more do you these.
So farewell, dear, beautiful, noble, dead Egypt, the
country which brought forth a race of giants—giants in
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290 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
war, art, science and philosophy. Farewell, without
regret, without pain (except a merely personal sorrow),
for there is nothing mournful in the remains of a country
which, like its own old Nile, has overflowed and ferti-
lized the world, and to which you can so plainly hear
its Maker saying, “ Well done.”
Good-bye, dear people: I am afraid you are tired of
Egypt; but I have mercy now upon people for writing
such stupid things upon her, it is impossible to write
anything else.
Cairo, March, 1850.
I KNEW so little about the Mahomedan religion, and
it interested me so little, that I felt quite strange in the
mosques of Cairo. In Karnac I felt that their God
was my God. In Ipsambul I felt more at home, per-
haps, than in any place of worship I ever was in. But
Egyptian Mahomedanism I never could understand,
never could feel any interest in, never could look upon
as a religion at all. However, I must say that Ara-
bian Mahomedanism is very different, and that the
mosques of Cairo are quite as wonderful, quite as poetic
an incarnation of the intercourse of man with God as
anything in Thebes or Nubia itself. When one goes
into any church, be it the temple of Karnac, be it
St. Peter’s, be it the Mosque El Azhar, be it St.
James’s, one always feels, ere is the foot of Jacob’s
ladder, and angels are ascending and descending upon it
—this is the gate of heaven. But in London, the room
THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO. 291
that they can spare to plant the foot of Jacob's ladder is
so small, twenty-six inches to each person, is it not?
they fulfil so literally the word that strait is the gate,
that sometimes the ‘angels of God” have not room to
spread their wings, and decline coming; and, at best, we
cannot call it the poetic incarnation, ¢. e. the incarnation
of the spirit of the thing, but the matter of business in-
carnation, 7. e. man must go to church, therefore take
as little room, and get as much for your money as pos-
sible. What does man want room to think for ?—think-
ing does not pay.
In Karnac it is, above all, the philosophical incarna-
tion. In Cairo—what shall I callit? If you would look
for a contrast striking and glaring in every respect, small
and great, it is between the Arabian and the Egyptian.
In Thebes you never see two lines parallel, two sides
alike, two columns the same size. In the Moorish
architecture every pattern grows out of a mathe-
matical figure — give the key note, and you can finish
the air for yourself. But there are deeper differences
than these.
The mosques of Cairo are the most beautiful, the
most gorgeous, the fairest in the world — those of
Constantinople are barns in comparison, they say.
Even the Moorish part of Spain cannot vie with the
Moorish part of Cairo, which is one great Alham-
bra. But it is impossible to describe, and the great
drawback is that, as you must have a firman and a
Pacha’s janissary, and pistols, and whips, and I don’t
know what besides, to visit them, you must not loiter,
you cannot go again, and they remain in one’s mind,
quite ineffaceable, but still one great dream of confused
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292 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
magnificence. It is more like a dream than anything
else to me, now that I have been in Cairo, though I must
say it surpasses everything that the names of Bagdad,
and Damascus, and Haroun El Rascheed ever did
conjure up in those childhood days of dreams.
We spent many days among the tombs of the
Memlook Sultans in the desert, and I wish we had
spent as many weeks. So wild, so dreary, so beau-
tiful,so deadly fair, as they raise their spirit-like heads
in the desert, you become an Efreet yourself wan-
dering among them; yet there is nothing in them
hideous, like the Pyramids, which become more utterly
repulsive the longer you look back upon them; for
here the mosque and the ‘ Foundation” are always the
principal feature, the tomb is merely supplemental
— the place for fellow-creatures to worship God, the
school for them to learn God, is the main thought; the
human element is always the uppermost, while in the
Pyramids it is only the selfish.
Still, though it is against all truth to feel melancholy
among images of decay or change, I must confess that
those Memlook tombs are the most profoundly melan-
choly places ever was in.
There sit the Pyramids on the other side the river
(I knew they were there, though I did not choose to
look), utterly repulsive, but defying time, though they
have been the quarry for half Cairo,—here lie the most
beautiful creations of man’s hand, crumbling away; in a
very few centuries they will be quite gone — and one
asks, are beauty and decay the same thing? Can ugli-
ness and selfishness only be compatible with duration ?
If it is God’s thought, there can be nothing melanchol y
SENSUOUS UNITARIANISM. 293
init. But what ¢s God’s thought about it? It cannot
be a law that only perishable forms have beauty.
I wish I could describe these mosques and tombs,
There were three to which we always managed to go —
El Berkook, El Ashraf, and Kait Bey. You know the
general plan or plans of them; there are but two; one
after the original pattern of Asur (the first built after the
Hegira), viz., a square hypethral court, with the tank
in the middle, and porticoes all round ; the portico oppo-
site the entrance being the deepest, five to seven ranges
of columns, and out of this, under its little dome, the
tomb of the founder. Under this portico is the pulpit,
and the niche towards Mecca. ‘Turn thy face to Mecca,
I soon found myself saying; but these wonderful places of
worship, what idea do they incarnate? I cannot call it any
thing but sensual Unitarianism, I do not feel that I under-
stand it the least, and I doubt whether it is possible for an
European really to seize the mixture of sensuous enthusi-
asm and severe unity and purity of idea in these extraordi-
nary places — thrice extraordinary to those coming out
of old Egypt. Where is the Holy Place? you say, Where
is the Secret Sanctuary ? You walk round an open court,
you look up to a cloudless sky, down into a pure cistern,
nothing but air, earth, and water is here. Where shall
I hide myself? was my first fecling —are there no mys-
teries, no initiations, no ceremonies in this religion for the
poor human mind, striving after images, to lay hold of?
None. But here is silence, here is space, here is room
for thought in these vast colonnades; turn in here, walk
up and down among those columns, no one will disturb
you but those prostrate men, with their faces to the
ground, as silent as yourself; are you tired of your
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294 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
daily work and the busy city, here are places where
every one may have rest and thought. And so it is.
Oh! if the poor women had but been there, I could have
said, this is the very thing I have so often sighed for in
London, where there are tens of thousands who never,
from their first to their seventieth year, never have one
moment alone, one place in which to pray, to think.
And here, in this noisy and infidel Cairo, they have
spared these magnificent spaces, always open, and open
to all.
But what am I to think about? is the next question.
Are there no images, no deeds of God. or of God’s saints
to speak to my eye, to excite my thought? None; there
is not a single image. A sentence of the Koran is the
frieze, the ornament. The most rigid Unitarianism is
the first thing which strikes you, and the last. Nothing
is to alter the purity of the idea of the one God.
Even the very domes catch the sentiment. At St.
Peter’s I observed the bridge of rays was three, which
entered through the windows at the rising sun, to remind
us of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. At Sul-
tan Hasan, the dome which after St. Peter’s has struck
me the most, two rays bridged the vast mysterious soli-
tary space; for there is but one God, and Mahommed
his prophet.
But it is not the Western Unitarian who has built
this; though here is severity in doctrine, there must be
enthusiasm in practice. And I cannot tell you how
touching it is to see (among these “ infidel dogs ”) man
giving all his best to God, the fairest that he has, the
most precious, the most costly, instead of keeping it for
himself—-it is literally lavishing his best. Ceiliny, wall,
ENTHUSIASTIC UNITARIANISM. 295
and floor are inlaid with the most delicate mathematical
patterns; those of the ceiling made of mother-o’-pearl and
different-coloured woods; those of the walls of mother-
o’-pearl, lapis lazuli, and precious marbles; those of the
floor of pietra dura, more beautiful than anything I
have seen in Rome. Here there is nothing held back :
God was to have all, all the best. It was not, How can
I choose’ that which will make most show, at least cost,
but, What is most beautiful, most costly ?— that must be
for the house of God. And yet there is nothing of the
pomp of wealth here. On the contrary, upon the first
coming in, nothing strikes your eye, you are only pleased
by the perfect harmony of the whole, by the wonder- |
ful and subdued richness. After a time you discover
that you are in the midst of gold, and precious stones,
and mother-o’-pearl. Certainly, as Jacob said, ‘this is
none other but the house of God.”
Then they could find no other frieze worthy of it but
what they believed to be the word of God; in all, round
the springing of the dome, runs, in gigantic gold letters,
upon a sober blue ground or yellow, a sentence from the
Koran, sometimes outside as well asin. And, certainly,
no more poetic frieze could have been invented; per-
haps it is this that has kept the Arabic character so
beautiful, while all others have become so prosaic. In
the Mecca niche the name of God, no image of Him, no
glory round it, generally holds its solitary place.
You never go into a mosque and find it empty.
But what go ye out for to see? What are the wor-
shippers of this most dreamy, yet most sensuous Unita-
rianism assembled for there every day and every hour
of the day? Is it for a daily sacrifice, either actual or
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296 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
commemorative ? — for a sacrament, like the Jewish, the
Roman Catholic, and the Protestant ?— for a mysterious
charm, which wins the Divine presence down upon
earth, like the S.S. Sacramento? The God of the Mus-
lims. has no sacrifices, no mysteries, no charms; the only
incantation by which the Muslim invokes his presence,
is his own devout spirit; the only place where he seeks
and hopes to find Him is in himself. This is, after all,
the most enthusiastic faith, which, disregarding the help |
of ceremonies, disdaining the use of images, sets itself
to finding God in the heart, in its own solitary heart,
unaided by communion with others, by the infection of
enthusiasm (except occasionally, as in the Darweesh
dance). It is impossible not to be touched with ad-
miration and sympathy at the sight of a Mussulman
at his prayers, of his perfect abstraction and his entire
simplicity.
I think a Cairo mosque gives you a better insight
into the Oriental mind than any thing else can. It is
the religion of the Arabian Nights, of Solomon’s Song,
of Genii. It is the most dreamy, the most fantastic, the
most airy, and yet sensuous religion. It is the religion
of Undine before she had a soul. But it is not the
religion of men — not of rugged, crooked, hard-necked
man, but of spirits. It will never lead a man to mo-
rality, to inflexible unswerving duty, to the spirit of
sacrifice, excepting in as far as with his sense of beauty,
and his dreamy enthusiasm, he loves to give all to God,
The Egyptian is to me the philosophical view of religion,
the Protestant is the moral (nothing else), the Roman
Catholic the spiritual, which makes self-sacrifice an
enthusiastic pleasure, and goes merrily to its martyr-
MOORISH v. GOTTIIC, 297
dom; the Moorish is the imaginative —I had almost
thought the fanciful view of religion.
I am afraid I can give you no idea of these mosques
and tombs, the purest of Moorish architecture. I con-
fess, to me the lines are far more beautiful than the
Gothic. In the Gothic arch, diminishing and diminishing
and diminishing, line within line, and again within line,
I am troubled and provoked; and it seems to me to see
the hand of man diminishing the thought of God, and
adding precept within precept, till he has twaddled it
all away with his nineteenthly and his twentiethly. But
in those airy caves, which fill the top of the Moorish
arch, in those delicate stalactites overhead, I seem to
look up into an ocean cave, to see the hand of man
simply applying the thought of God, to see almost a
work of God himself. In beauty, nothing surely can
come near the Moorish architecture.
In the Memlook tembs, we always went first to that
of Sultan Berkook (E’ Zaher Berkook). You know his
history — how he was first a Circassian slave — then
regent for the last of the Bahree Memlook Sultans, and
deposing him, in 1382, how he founded the dynasty of
the Circassian Memlook Sultans, to whom Egypt and
Syria remained subject for a century and a half. Ber-
kook twice repulsed the Tartars under Tamerlane.
Round that solitary mosque are evident traces of a
learned Foundation, and of “ riwaks” or apartments, for
the students, where now the jackals dwell—I mean the
Egyptians. I like those first words of the Creed, “I
believe in God,” so much, I want no others. I have so
often said them to myself in Egypt. Those four words
run in one’s head perpetually here. I believe in God—
298 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
Him who knows all, who can all, who loves all, and
therefore no one can ever be lost — and therefore Egypt
will be saved—and therefore one can believe, even of
these creatures, that “it is good for them to be here” —I
believe in God, and therefore Egypt is not hell, as one
would otherwise believe.
But I have left El Berkook and his two minarets,
which I think are the most beautiful in Cairo ; not rising
in steps, one story above the other, nor yet like a Chinese
cap, but each exquisite little balcony bowing down to
meet the one below it. : .
After El Berkook we go to the tomb of El Ashraf,
a Sultan of the same Circassian dynasty, and per-
haps the gem of them all. It is on the other plan
—no hypethral court-—an oblong mosque, with co-
loured glass windows, and roof inlaid, and leading out
of it the tomb, a double cube, including the dome,
with dado, niche and floor, all rich with marbles and
mother-o’-pearl. A new pattern you discover every
time you go, or a new figure, forming itself out of an
old one; and yet —though the longer you look the
more you see, a cross here, another figure there—there
is no confusion, the eye is not displeased by the intricacy.
The colours are very few, generally red, black and
white, with a little blue. Here a little girl, who I
believe was a mother, held my paper with one hand and
her baby with the other, while I was tracing, and did
not ask for backsheesh—a fact which I record. Our
third tomb was El Kait Bey (near the end of the same
dynasty), during whose reign Grenada was lost by the
Moors, 1492. This is the most magnificent of them all ;
you have the square mosque, with the horse-shoe arch on
THE PLAIN OF THE EXODUS. 299
the four sides, opening on every side to a raised divan or
recess, the floors of which were strewed with palms, and
the ceilings rich with the sober colouring of the most
beautiful and precious inlaying —the Koran frieze —
the tomb within, double cube, with the beautiful wood-
work screen round the grave. Mahommed left his
sacred foot-print here — one of the few fanatics I never
could feel any respect for—it was easy to manage men in
his way. The beautiful entrance to the mosque has a
little school opening out of one side, where the master,
with his little establishment of a few beads, a few leaves
of the Koran, and a few bits of tin for the boys to write
upon, welcomed us rather unusually.
After our second day at the tombs we rode back, past
Kait Bey and the citadel wall, and stopped at the spot
where Mary, on her way to old Cairo, must have looked
down. From this point six cities of the dead and one
city of the living lay before us—all the vast southern
cemetery, which we had not yet visited—all the plain,
through which Moses once led out the Israelites, on the
morning of the Exodus, and beyond, on the other side
of the river, the whole line of the Pyramids, Dashoor,
Sakkara, Abouseer, and Gizeh-—I never saw a more
extraordinary view. We rode on through the tombs,
and in at another gate, Bab el Karafeh, within which
lies the great square of the Rumeyleh, surrounded by its
splendid mosques, and overtopped by the citadel.
From the Rumeyleh you pass down a narrow street,
with a beautiful black wooden house with meshre-
beeyehs on one side, and on the other, high, high above
your heads, the gorgeous arch of the porch of the mosque
of Sultan Hasan--- to my mind, the most beautiful thing
300 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
in Cairo. This gentleman belongs to the dynasty of the
Bahree Memlooks, the one preceding the Circassians,
and his mosque was built about 1356, two years after
his death. (I have such difficulty in not putting the
B.C. to my dates). When Salah-ed-Deen and his suc-
cessurs ruled over Egypt, they strengthened themselves
by buying Turcoman Memlooks, or white slaves, and
bringing them up as military slaves on the island of
Roda, wherefore they were called the Bahree Mem-
looks, or Memlooks of the river—Bahr is river. One
of these white female slaves, the “tree of pearls,”
Sheger-ed-Durr, was married by one of the Sultans
descended of Saladin, and she began the dynasty of the
Bahree Memlooks, putting to death her step-son for
this purpose. This was in the time of St. Louis, at
Damietta. Sultan Hasan was later by a century.
Oh, the glory of that mosque! You enter from the
top of a flight of steps by this towering arch, with its
little caves at the top, into a dark porch, surrounded
by four arches, and with an inlaid wall in the front,
and turn to the left, where men bring you straw canoes,
and fit them on over your shoes. Then you cross the
sacred threshold, and find yourself in such a court !—
hypethral, as large as any of the mosques; instead of
being enclosed on each side by rows of colonnades, vast
arches span the whole space (like the Temple of Peace).
The eastern, the largest and loftiest of them all, seemed
to me like one of those dreams which one has when one
is a child, when the bed scems to rise and rise over
your head, and to expand at last into something un-
known in magnitude. I felt as if I had seen Sultan
Hasan before. His eastern arched vault is like West-
SULTAN HASAN, 301
minster Hall in grandeur; it rises free and clear to
its summit; only a gigantic sentence of the Koran on
an arabesque ground runs round it. Behind is the
mysterious vastness of the tomb, as you look into it
from this arch, with, perhaps, one solitary figure, in his
flowing scarlet robes, entering it—the dome rising
to one knows not where, and the corners for the dome —
filled with those woodwork caves! How I should have
liked to have gone there alone, and again and again!
The next day we went to the mosque of Sultan Tey-
loon, which is very curious as a “monument of archi-
tectural history ;” its pointed arches prove that they
existed in Saracenic architecture three centuries before
they are found in ours; and that we borrowed them from
the Saracens. Ibri Teyloon lived in 883, and was the
man who first, like Mehemet Ali, declined allegiance to
the Khaleefehs of Bagdad, saying, “I will reign in your
stead, not only in Egypt but in Syria.” Butas he was
a Turkish slave, he could not be Khaleefeh:, or descen-
dant of the Prophet, therefore the Khaleefeh, as head of
the church, was still prayed for —there were farces then
as well as now. The Arab name for the place, “Kalat el
Kebsh,” recording the tradition, that this was the place
where Abraham sacrificed the ram, interested me more.
We went along the ruined roof and up the minaret; the
decay of the mosque, which is crumbling away, arches
and all, is cruel, ard it is dangerous walking there. In
the large ruinous court grow trees about the tank, and
while the party walked round, & and I sate and medi-
tated, and wished there were such places set apart for
solitude in other crowded cities.
From Sultan Teyloon we came out by another
302 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
gate into a narrow little strect, so rich with wood-
work, meshrebeeyehs, and carved doorways, that this
must have been the place of the Arabian nobility.
Then we rode through the town, and stopping at the
small city-gate, got off and went into a little street,
where we could not ride—such a picture of oriental
life. In the tiniest meshrebeeyehs we saw blue bundles,
showing that the women had got in, body and all—I
wonder they did not break down. We peeped into
shady courts, and then we rode out across the southern
country of tombs, which we had seen yesterday, to a
mosque in the side of the Mokattam. Even the Mokat-
tim is riddled with old Egyptian tombs, like Lycopolis,
and in its yellow rock this modern mosque, the tomb of
a Sultan, nestles itself: we wound up the cliff to it—
such a view!—and in a gay little dressing-room, laid
out upon a tray, and with an open window, through
which he is looking out at that wonderful view, lies his
Vizier — such a nice way to be buried!
I crawled into some curious little cells; I do not know
what they were. Then we came down into a modern
Turkish family tomb, so clean and dressed with flowers,
such a nice homey place. But I did not stay in it, for
there was a mysterious, gloomy, lurid sunset behind the
Pyramids — the first and only time I have ever seen
them look well—like the fall of Babylon; they looked
unmensely large and spectral. The ground descended,
from where we stood, in a series of vast sweeps, all de-
serts, to the river. It was like the Last Day—that
sunset among the tombs—as we rode home through
them in the gathering darkness, for it was already twi-
light. The tombs all looked wan and spectral as we
EL HAKIM. 303.
passed them— there was still that lurid glare in the West,
and the graves of nations seemed to lie about us. We
rode in through the great Place of the Rumeyleh, and
passed Sultan Hasan with his towering arch in the twi-
light —he too, looked like a spectre, but a friendly one.
Aimé, how little I can tell about our field-day among
the mosques! We enjoyed at last the privilege of going
out like princes, and, furnished with a firman, we sct
forth. First rode the Pacha’s janissary, armed, and
~carrying besides a whip; then the consul’s cawass,
entirely arrayed in white, and also armed, then onr janis-
sary, and finally we. But oh, if you knew how difficult
it is to bring away a single impression, hurried through
them with a party !—The consul calling to us, and very
properly, to keep close, and not to loiter, the Pacha’s
cawass driving back the people — as well might you try
to see Rome in a day. We went first to El Hakim, a
ruined mosque, of enormous size, through which a
thoroughfare now runs. It is close to Bab el Mur, and
was founded in 1012 by that man—TI don’t know
whether he was a true man or an impostor — who founded
the Druses —the Khaleefeh El Hakim, of that race of
Fatimeh which, at first, ruled only over Northern Africa
(over the real Moorish race), having made themselves
independent of Haroon E] Rascheed in 800. They
then thought proper to possess themselves of Egypt,
and founded El Kahireh, and called themselves Kha-
leefehs. After it we went to the mosque of Sultan
Kalaoon. He was the founder of that dynasty of Bah-
ree Memlooks to which Sultan Hasan belonged, and this
mosque was built in 1284. In Kalaoon’s tomb, a little
quiet place, we found a man praying; he moved when
304 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
we disturbed him, and began again, so intently, so in-
tensely, yet so quietly, you would hardly have thought
he was yet in the body. But the mosques are all mixed
up in my head, and miserable has been my account to
you of them. However, it could not be helped, so I
will just say that Sultan Kalaoon stands by the Mo-
rostain, the madhouse, which he founded, in the most
beautiful of all the streets of Cairo. We were so hustled
at the corner, where we got off our asses, by the angry
people, that we could not stop a moment; but we would-
not submit to drive in a carriage, as some of our party
did. We made a vow, and kept it “strong,” that we
would not get into a carriage all the while we were in
Cairo. You can see nothing of the best streets, if you
do, it is brutal, and it is unsafe.
One of these tombs, KH] Mu-eiyad, I think, is exactly
like the Alhambra. Over the grave is the dome (the tomb
is not separated, as in the rest, from the mosque), sup-
ported by four horse-shoe arches, and the whole, arches,
windows, everything, covered with that exquisite white
fret- work, that delicate tracery of the Alhambra. The
effect of this, looking into it from the dark mosque
beyond, fairy-like; the mosque is the richest we had
seen, all, even to the bolé of the door, the ceiling, the
niche, the pulpit, the walls, the doors, being inlaid with
inother-o’-pearl, rare woods and precious stones ; yet
all subdued to the most lovely harmony — in “sober
livery” clad; the effect of the fret-work tomb was like
that of a moonlight night, the colouring of the mosque
like a gorgeous sunset, when it is beginning to grow dark ;
I have sometimes seen the effect in nature, never
before in a building, and I cannot conceive anything so
beautiful.
CAIRO UNIVERSITY. 305
I bethink me I have not told you about El Jama
el Azhar, “the splendid mosque,” certainly the most
curious mosque in Cairo. After passing the usual
winding porch and passage, you find yourself in the
large square hypzthral court, crowded with people,
sitting, standing, praying, talking, and making, so
unlike the silence of the other mosques, a most tre-
mendous noise. The whole court is surrounded with
buildings, and at the farther end is the deep, deep
portico, eight columns deep, divided in this case from the
court by partitions between the front row. It was all
matted or carpeted, the walls and ceiling quite plain ;
and here there was the most profound silence; only,
leaning against a pillar, here and there stood a Shekh
or Imam, and at his feet sate a circle of men, either
intently listening, or writing, or learning by heart —
grown up men —~ none of them boys — and the Muslims
put us to shame by the care with which they learn their
religion, with which they study the Koran, and listen
to commentaries. It is said that in Cairo the Muslims
are generally much better instructed in their reli-
gion than the average of Christians ever are in theirs
— how these grown-up nen can find the time is the
wonder.
That was the most Oriental sight I ever saw—those lec-
turing Ulama, those silent circles sitting on the ground:
no need of desks or benches; each had his little plate to
write on upon his knee, his ink-horn, like Ezekiel, in
his girdle, each sate cross-legged on the mat. It car-
ried one back into the Temple of Jerusalem, where the
boy Christ sate down in like manner among a similar
circle — into the days of Arabic learning, when Bagh-
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306 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
dad and Damascus were the Universities of the world.
You cannot conceive what a picture it was — the robed
and turbaned professor —the Oriental dignity of the
listeners. We went into a side chapel, called the
Chapel of the Blind, where 300 blind students are main-
tained upon a foundation. One was sitting with his
back to the wall, chuckling at having got his lesson
well.
We could not stay, for the people were getting irri-
tated at the presence of the Christian female dogs in this
sacred mosque, and the cawass was obliged to protect
our departure, not with his sword, but with his whip,
which he carried on purpose, beating back the people.
Our departure was very like the way in which one
backs out of a field where there are angry cows. As to
the Mussulman horror of us, I never could feel anything
but the deepest sympathy for it, the deepest humiliation
at exciting it. When you think that a woman, who
goes with her face uncovered is, with them, more inde-
cent than a woman who should go without clothes among
us— that it is here the stamp of a disgraced character—
it is exactly as if a dancer were to come, in her dis-
graceful dress, into Salisbury Cathedral, during the
time of service. Would not the vergers put her out?
I only wonder at the tolerance with which we are treated
here, not at the contrary — but it makes an European
woman’s life in the East a misery.
The Azhar is the university of the East, for it is the
university of Cairo, and Cairo is the only city which
keeps up its reputation as a school of Arabic literature.
The riwaks or apartments for the students still sur-
round three sides of the court, each country or pro-
MEHEMET ALI, PATRON OF LETTERS, 307
vince having its foundation. All the instruction js
gratis, and formerly the students, who are mostly poor
men, were fed; but that man, Mahommed Ali, that
great prince, who has such a reputation for advancing
civilization, took possession of allthe lands of the
Azhar (among the other mosques), and consequently
of all the salaries of the Ulama, or learned men, so
that they now receive nothing, but are obliged to main-
tain themselves by private lessons, &c. There is
some credit in being a professor in the Azhar now, and
giving away learning gratis. To do so, permission
must be obtained from the Shekh of the mosque-—I
should like to see our Cambridge men asking permission
to teach gratis. The poor students must also get their
living as they can, and the Imams of mosques are gene-
rally chosen from among them; but since this great
confiscation, their number has, of course, diminished ;
and what between Mohammed Ali and the French inva-
sion, the learning of the Azhar has altogether deterio-
rated, which, no doubt, that good and wise man was
glad to see.
From the Azhar, we went to the Hasaneyn, the most
sacred of all the mosques. The Sheykh at the door read
our firman over twice before he would believe that we
were to come in, and then an Imam ran to shut the silver
doors of the place where the head of the martyr El Hoseyn
is buried, the grandson of Mahomet, the son of his daugh-
ter. Ihad got off from my ass first, and might have run
forward too, but I was ashamed to give them pain in a
place where we were only upon sufferance at all. In the
Hasaneyn there is nothing to see any more than in El
Azhar. There is no hypzthral court; it is simply a
x 2
308 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
portico carpeted and supported by many columns. But
the silence and twilight of the place are very striking.
One solitary professor leaned against a column, with a
circle of, I suppose, eighty men at his feet.
We rode home past my favourite Sebeel, one of those
public fountains which there are in almost every street in
Cairo—the most beautiful specimens of Moorish archi-
tecture and Moorish hospitality. It has a semicircular
front, jutting out into the street, with three grated win-
dows; behind each window a trough of water and achained
mug—you put your hand through the grating and drink.
A deep wooden coping, carved and coloured, overhangs
the windows, generally with all the beauty of Moorish
fret-work ; and above, or beside, is a school-room, open
(except by pillars), to the street. But Mohammed Ali
seized upon the funds of all the Sebeels, which were
generally the gift of private individuals, and they are
fast going to decay. When there is not a Sebeel, there
is a Hod at every corner of the streets—a trough under a
little arched recess. But the commonest thing is to see
a sackiha, or one of the old water-carriers, with a goat-
skin of water at his back, giving to drink out of his
spout to every one who passes by, having been paid to
do so by somebody, either for the sake of a dead friend
or of some Welee, whose festival is being kept—or if the
person has been simply making a visit toa tomb. The
sackihas chant while they are doing this, offering a
charity in the name of God. It is very pretty; and you
are supposed to implore a blessing, if you drink, for the
person who is gone. .
That riding through the streets of Cairo is endless
in its delight, though how you ever get through you know
-
not; the ass manages it. It is true your ass-driver keeps
up an incessant “ shemalak, shemAlak,” thy left, thy left;
“ riglak, riglak,” thy foot, thy foot; “hét, hdt,” attention,
attention : though whether this is addressed to the ass or
the passengers, I never could make out, for, in spite of
hot, shemalak, and riglak, nobody stirs; and the 20,000
asses which are said to “perambulate the district”
every day—for in Cairo no one but the slave and the
beggar walks—tread on to the tune of squashed babbies.
April, 1850.
WELL, dearest people, I suppose you are waiting for a
description of Cairo, but you will not get it, I am sorry
to say. You might as well try to record 2 dream: and
I do not know whether the waking dream of the living
city within, or the silent vision of the dead city with-
out, is the most unreal. I am sorry we have not
seen the Darweeshes dance, to which I had looked for-
ward much; but it so happened that Good Friday and
Easter Sunday were their only days; and we did not like
to go galloping off the instant after that service was over.
Did you think of me on Easter Sunday at the Sacra-
ment? And on the full moon of Holy Thursday, as I
looked out upon that vast city, which did not know its
right hand from its left—which did not know, perhaps
not fifty of them, perhaps not five, what they were put
into this world for, as the night-cry from the mina-
rets fell on the still air, and told how they were really
seeking God, I thought how Christ, if he had been there,
x3 |
310 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
would have felt ; how he would have yearned over Cairo,
and how he would have been straitened till his task was
accomplished. Behold that great city—how would he
have set about her deliverance ?
I never told you about our day to the Petrified
Forest. It had been a long settled thing that we should
have a day in the desert—that Mr. Murray should send
out a tent for us to spend the heat of the day in, &c.
This party swelled to inordinate dimensions — Lord
Lincoln and the Northamptons, &c., made part of it.
We were all to go out separately at whatever hour we
pleased. We set out late, as we do not mind the heat,
and had a great deal to do that morning.
It was not till noon that we issued forth, Mr. Bb.
and the German Professor on dromedaries, and we on
asses,
So we rode through the desert—Shekh Bisharee
with us. We rodea long way, and could see no traces
of the tent, till we met one of the Bedawee, who offered
to show us the way, and we found it at last in a little
valley, under the ridge of Gebel Attaka, the Valley of
the Deliverauce, believed to be the line by which Moses
led the Israelites. The Petrified Forest is a very curious
deposit of immense palms, bamboos, and many trees not
belonging to Egypt ; evidently left by the subsiding of some
mighty stream. The desert for miles is strewed by them,
and we measured some of vast size. I believe the thing is
quite unique in geology. From the top of a ridge, we
saw a wonderful view of the Pyramids, which look larger
and larger the farther you get from them. The encamp-
ment looked very pretty as we rode up, with all the
white Arabian horses and dromedaries picquetted about,
LAST DAY IN CAIRO. 311
and the Arab servants. But the hills and valleys of |
that wild desert, which Moses, so strong of purpose,
actually persuaded the infirm of will to pass through,
when within the very sight of the flesh-pots of Egypt,
are not places for the flesh-pots of picknicking,
We left Cairo a week earlier than we intended, which
is the reason why we have seen so little of the Arabian
city; we idled atfirst, being tired, and then afterwards
found no place for repentance.
Easter Monday was our last day. We went before
breakfast to Dr. Abbott’s museum, to look at his funeral
papyrus, which we could now understand a little about.
The different transformations of the dead, different
trials, and subduings of successive vices under the form of
beasts, like the labours of Hercules, are all there. Then
we went to Schranz’s, to get you some photographs;
and long we stood in his little narrow str >t, in the Copt
quarter, where the meshrebeeyehs not only met, but
folded in over head, fitting in and dovetailed into one ano-
ther; and friendly walls, tottering to one another, sup-
ported each other by a horizontal prop between them.
Every story projects a little farther than the lower one,
till the top all but meets. A solitary old water-carrier,
or blue veiled woman, sauntered occasionally along. On
a sunny day the effect is too spotty for beauty; the
streaks of light and the deep shadows are too zebra-
like, too chequered; but on a cloudy day, the light and
shade is beautiful—in a glaring sun, you would not
believe it (in an accurate drawing), nor admire it, if
you did.
Easter Tuesday we left Cairo—the Transit driving us
down to Boulak in thorough English style, to our great
x 4
312 LETTERS FROM EGYPT.
disgust, with an English coachman, and an omnibus
and four. On board the boat for Atfeh we found my
dear Madame Rossetti, the Tuscan Consul’s wife, all the
Zizinias, Count Benczik the Hungarian, a sick French-
woman, and the reverend Mother of the Good Shep-
herdesses at Cairo, — all her sisters clinging round
her as she was bidding them adieu to return to France
upon a mission. We were a day and night on
our way to Alexandria — and what a curious day and
night it was! There was the mother of the Zizinias,
an old Smyrniote, her beautiful hair, at sixty years
of age, dressed round a red tarboosh, with a blue
gauze cockade —a sort of cross between an Indian
Begum and Lady Holland— putting every body to
rights who sate where it did not please her, and looking
like the head wife of a pasha. What curious contrasts
there were that night, between this fierce, undisciplined,
clever old Smyrniote, with her fine beetling brow and
brutal mouth, and the severely disciplined and repressed
and chastened white nun, with every passion in order,
and every feeling checked, except that which belonged
to her vocation. She was a German of high family,
(and gave me a letter to her sister, at Munster), had
gone through the cholera and every disease at Cairo,
where she bad had her sisterhood thrice renewed from
Europe during her five years’ superiorship, for the sake
of establishing the first sisterhood that ever has been
there; and having utterly failed, and, as she said her-
self, wasted life for nothing (alas! she ought to have all
Cairo in her Refuge), was undertaking this journey to
the Maison Mere, at Angers, for the sake of having the
Refuge re-organized upon a different systein. So suffer
THE WHITE-ROBED PIONEER. 313
those who pioneer a new road—so fall those who throw
their bodies in the breach ; but they bridge the way for
others to tread upon them. Yet the woman was as
serene, and simple, and cheerful as if she were a child
gathering daisies, instead of a prophet gathering souls,
Another contrast was between the weak, wicked, gam-
bling, dying Frenchwoman, who dragged herself in the
middle of the night into the gentlemen’s cabin to play
cards, though dying of a hideous complaint, and the
devoted, genial, fervent Madame Rossetti, who sate
wherever no one else would sit, slept where no one else
would lie, subdued even the fierce old Smyrniote to help
her in making poor people’s clothes, nursed the sick
woman, and melted all these different raw ores under
her sunshine; not disciplined, like the white nun, but
denying herself out of the very fervour of her benevo-
lence, and as anxious to get us into a Hareem as she was
to perform her Easter retraite, and to read a good book to
the boat with an inflammation of the windpipe, working
the whole time at her poor’s clothes.
It was a curious night.