My Winter on the Nile

It was almost a relief to have an unpleasant day to talk about. The forenoon was like a mixed fall and spring day in New England, strong wind, flying clouds, but the air full of sand instead of snow; there was even a drop of rain, and we heard a peal or two of feeble thunder—evidently an article not readily manufactured in this country; but the afternoon settled back into the old pleasantness.

Of the objects of interest at Eilethyas I will mention only two, the famous grottoes, and a small temple of Amunoph III., not often visited. It stands between two and three miles from the river, in a desolate valley, down which the Bisharee Arabs used to come on marauding excursions. What freak placed it in this remote solitude? It contains only one room, a few paces square, and is, in fact, only a chapel, but it is full of capital pieces of sculptures of a good period of art. The architect will find here four pillars, which clearly suggest the Doric style. They are fourteen-sided, but one of the planes is broader than the others and has a raised tablet of sculptures which terminate above in a face, said to be that of Lucina, to whom the temple is dedicated, but resembling the cow-headed Isis. These pillars, with the sculptures on one side finished at the top with a head, may have suggested the Osiride pillars.

The grottoes are tombs in the sandstone mountain, of the time of the eighteenth dynasty, which began some thirty-five hundred years ago. Two of them have remarkable sculptures, the coloring of which is still fresh; and I wish to speak of them a little, because it is from them (and some of the same character) that Egyptologists have largely reconstructed for us the common life of the ancient Egyptians. Although the work is somewhat rude, it has a certain veracity of execution which is pleasing.

We assume this tomb to have been that of a man of wealth. This is the ante-chamber; the mummy was deposited in a pit let into a small excavation in the rear. On one wall are sculptured agricultural scenes: plowing, sowing, reaping wheat and pulling doora (the color indicates the kind of grain), hatcheling the latter, while oxen are treading out the wheat, and the song of the threshers encouraging the oxen is written in hieroglyphics above; the winnowing and storing of the grain; in a line under these, the various domestic animals of the deceased are brought forward to a scribe, who enumerates them and notes the numbers on a roll of papyrus. There are river-scenes:—grain is loaded into freight-boats; pleasure-dahabeëhs are on the stream, gaily painted, with one square sail amidship, rowers along the sides, and windows in the cabin; one has a horse and chariot on board, the reïs stands at the bow, the overseer, kurbash in hand, is threatening the crew, a sailor is falling overboard. Men are gathering grapes, and treading out the wine with their feet; others are catching fish and birds in nets, and dressing and curing them. At the end of this wall, offerings are made to Osiris. In one compartment a man is seated holding a boy on his lap.

On the opposite wall are two large figures, supposed to be the occupant of the tomb and his wife, seated on a fauteuil; men and women, in two separate lines, facing the large figures, are seated, one leg bent under them, each smelling a lotus flower. In the rear, men are killing and cutting up animals as if preparing for a feast. To the leg of the fauteuil is tied a monkey; and Mr. Wilkinson says that it was customary at entertainments for the hosts to have a “favorite monkey” tied to the leg of the chair. Notwithstanding the appearance of the monkey here in that position, I do not suppose that he would say that an ordinary entertainment is represented here. For, although there are preparations for a feast, there is a priest standing between the friends and the principal personages, making offerings, and the monkey may be present in his character of emblem of Thoth. It seems to be a funeral and not a festive representation. The pictures apparently tell the story of the life of the deceased and his occupations, and represent the mourning at his tomb. In other grottoes, where the married pair are seated as here, the arm of the woman on the shoulder of the man, and the “favorite monkey” tied to the chair, friends are present in the act of mourning, throwing dust on their heads, and accompanied by musicians; and the mummy is drawn on a sledge to the tomb, a priest standing on the front, and a person pouring oil on the ground that the runners may slip easily.

The setting sun strikes into these chambers, so carefully prepared for people of rank of whom not a pinch of dust now remains, and lights them up with a certain cheer and hope. We cannot make anything melancholy out of a tomb so high and with such a lovely prospect from its front door. The former occupants are unknown, but not more unknown than the peasants we see on the fields below, still at the tasks depicted in these sculptures. Thirty-five hundred years is not so very long ago! Slowly we pick our way down the hill and regain our floating home; and, bidding farewell forever to El Kab, drift down in the twilight. In the morning we are at Esneh.

In Esneh the sound of the grinding is never low. The town is full of primitive ox-power mills in which the wheat is ground, and there are always dahabeëhs staying here for the crew to bake their bread. Having already had one day of Esneh we are tired of it, for it is exactly like all other Egyptian towns of its size: we know all the possible combinations of mud-hovels, crooked lanes, stifling dust, nakedness, squalor. We are so accustomed to picking our way in the street amid women and children sprawling in the dirt, that the scene has lost its strangeness; it is even difficult to remember that in other countries women usually keep indoors and sit on chairs.

The town is not without liveliness It is half Copt, and beggars demand backsheesh on the ground that they are Christians, and have a common interest with us. We wander through the bazaars where there is nothing to buy and into the market-place, always the most interesting study in an unknown city. The same wheat lies on the ground in heaps; the same roots and short stalks of the doora are tied in bundles and sold for fuel, and cakes of dried manure for the like use; people are lying about in the sun in all picturesque attitudes, some curled up and some on their backs fast asleep; more are squating before little heaps of corn or beans or some wilted “greens,” or dried tobacco-leaves and pipe-bowls; children swarm and tumble about everywhere; donkeys and camels pick their way through the groups.

I spent half an hour in teaching a handsome young Copt how to pronounce English words in his Arabic-English primer. He was very eager to learn and very grateful for assistance. We had a large and admiring crowd about us, who laughed at every successful and still more at every unsuccessful attempt on the part of the pupil, and repeated the English words themselves when they could catch the sound,—an exceedingly good-natured lot of idlers. We found the people altogether pleasant, some in the ingrained habit of begging, quick to take a joke and easily excited. While I had my scholar, a fantasia of music on two tambourines was performed for the amusement of my comrade, which had also its ring of spectators watching the effect of the monotonous thumping, upon the grave howadji; he was seated upon the mastabah of a shop, with all formality, and enjoyed all the honors of the entertainment, as was proper, since he bore the entire expense alone,—about five cents.

The coffee-shops of Esneh are many, some respectable and others decidedly otherwise. The former are the least attractive, being merely long and dingy mud-apartments, in which the visitors usually sit on the floor and play at draughts. The coffee-houses near the river have porticoes and pleasant terraces in front, and look not unlike some picturesque Swiss or Italian wine-shops. The attraction there seems to be the Ghawazees or dancing-girls, of whom there is a large colony here, the colony consisting of a tribe. All the family act as procurers for the young women, who are usually married. Their dress is an extraordinary combination of stripes and colors, red and yellow being favorites, which harmonize well with their dark, often black, skins, and eyes heavily shaded with kohl. I suppose it must be admitted, in spite of their total want of any womanly charm of modesty, that they are the finest-looking women in Egypt, though many of them are ugly; they certainly are of a different type from the Egyptians, though not of a pure type; they boast that they have preserved themselves without admixture with other peoples or tribes from a very remote period; one thing is certain, their profession is as old as history and their antiquity may entitle them to be considered an aristocracy of vice. They say that their race is allied in origin to that of the people called gypsies, with whom many of their customs are common. The men are tinkers, blacksmiths, or musicians, and the women are the ruling element in the band; the husband is subject to the wife. But whatever their origin, it is admitted that their dance is the same as that with which the dancing-women amused the Pharaohs, the same that the Phoenicians carried to Gades and which Juvenal describes, and, Mr. Lane thinks, the same by which the daughter of Herodias danced off the head of John the Baptist. Modified here and there, it is the immemorial dance of the Orient.

Esneh has other attractions for the sailors of the Nile; there are the mahsheshehs, or shops where hasheesh is smoked; an attendant brings the “hubble-bubble” to the guests who are lolling on the mastabah; they inhale their portion, and then lie down in a stupor, which is at every experiment one remove nearer idiocy.

Still drifting, giving us an opportunity to be on shore all the morning. We visit the sugar establishment at Mutâneh, and walk along the high bank under the shade of the acacias for a couple of miles below it. Nothing could be lovelier in this sparkling morning—the silver-grey range of mountains across the river and the level smiling land on our left. This is one of the Viceroy’s possessions, bought of one of his relations at a price fixed by his highness. There are ten thousand acres of arable land, of which some fifteen hundred is in sugar-cane, and the rest in grain. The whole is watered by a steam-pump, which sends a vast stream of water inland, giving life to the broad fields and the extensive groves, as well as to a village the minaret of which we can see. It is a noble estate. Near the factory are a palace and garden, somewhat in decay, as is usual in this country, but able to offer us roses and lemons.

The works are large, modern, with improved machinery for crushing and boiling, and apparently well managed; there is said to be one of the sixteen sugar-factories of the Khedive which pays expenses; perhaps this is the one. A great quantity of rum is distilled from the refuse. The vast field in the rear, enclosed by a whitewashed wall, presented a lively appearance, with camels bringing in the cane and unloading it and arranging it upon the endless trough for the crushers. In the factory, the workmen wear little clothing and are driven to their task; all the overseers march among them kurbash in hand; the sight of the black fellows treading about in the crystallized sugar, while putting it up in sacks, would decide a fastidious person to take her tea unsweetened.

The next morning we pass Erment without calling, satisfied to take the word of others that you may see there a portrait of Cleopatra; and by noon come to our old mooring-place at Luxor, and add ours to the painted dalabeëhs lounging in this idle and gay resort.

During the day we enjoyed only one novel sensation. We ate of the ripe fruit ot the dôm-palm. It tastes and smells like stale gingerbread, made of sawdust instead of flour.

I do not know how long one could stay contentedly at Thebes; certainly a winter, if only to breathe the inspiring air, to bask in the sun, to gaze, never sated, upon plains and soft mountains which climate and association clothe with hues of beauty and romance, to yield for once to a leisure that is here rebuked by no person and by no urgency of affairs; perhaps for years, if one seriously attempted a study of antiquities.

The habit of leisure is at least two thousand years old here; at any rate, we fell into it without the least desire to resist its spell. This is one of the eddies of the world in which the modern hurry is unfelt. If it were not for the coughing steamboats and the occasional glimpse one has of a whisking file of Cook’s tourists, Thebes would be entirely serene, and an admirable place of retirement.

It has a reputation, however, for a dubious sort of industry. All along the river from Geezeh to Assouan, whenever a spurious scarabæus or a bogus image turned up, we would hear, “Yes, make ‘em in Luxor.” As we drew near to this great mart of antiquities, the specification became more personal—“Can’t tell edzacly whether that make by Mr. Smith or by that Moslem in Goorneh, over the other side.”

The person named is well known to all Nile voyagers as Antiquity Smith, and he has, though I cannot say that he enjoys, the reputation hinted at above. How much of it is due to the enmity of rival dealers in relics of the dead, I do not know; but it must be evident to anyone that the very clever forgeries of antiquities, which one sees, could only be produced by skillful and practiced workmen. We had some curiosity to see a man who has made the American name so familiar the length of the Nile, for Mr. Smith is a citizen of the United States. For seventeen years he has been a voluntary exile here, and most of the time the only foreigner resident in the place; long enough to give him a good title to the occupation of any grotto he may choose.

In appearance Mr. Smith is somewhat like a superannuated agent of the tract society, of the long, thin, shrewd, learned Yankee type. Few men have enjoyed his advantages for sharpening the wits. Born in Connecticut, reared in New Jersey, trained for seventeen years among the Arabs and antiquity-mongers of this region, the sharpest in the Orient, he ought to have not only the learning attached to the best-wrapped mummy, but to be able to read the hieroglyphics on the most inscrutable human face among the living.

Mr. Smith lives on the outskirts of the village, in a house, surrounded by a garden, which is a kind of museum of the property, not to say the bones, of the early Egyptians.

“You seem to be retired from society here Mr. Smith,” we ventured to say.

“Yes, for eight months of the year, I see nobody, literally nobody. It is only during the winter that strangers come here.”

“Isn’t it lonesome?”

“A little, but you get used to it.”

“What do you do during the hottest months?”

“As near nothing as possible.”

“How hot is it?”

“Sometimes the thermometer goes to 120° Fahrenheit. It stays a long time at 100°. The worst of it is that the nights are almost as hot as the days.”

“How do you exist?”

“I keep very quiet, don’t write, don’t read anything that requires the least thought. Seldom go out, never in the daytime. In the early morning I sit a while on the verandah, and about ten o’clock get into a big bath-tub, which I have on the ground-floor, and stay in it nearly all day, reading some very mild novel, and smoking the weakest tobacco. In the evening I find it rather cooler outside the house than in. A white man can’t do anything here in the summer.”

I did not say it to Mr. Smith, but I should scarcely like to live in a country where one is obliged to be in water half the year, like a pelican. We can have, however, from his experience some idea what this basin must have been in summer, when its area was a crowded city, upon which the sun, reverberated from the incandescent limestone hills, beat in unceasing fervor.