My Winter on the Nile

CHAPTER XXXI.—LOITERING BY THE WAY

WE ARE at home again. Our little world, which has been somewhat disturbed by the gaiety of Thebes, and is already as weary of tombs as of temples and of the whole incubus of Egyptian civilization, readjusts itself and settles into its usual placid enjoyment.

We have now two gazelles on board, and a most disagreeable lizard, nearly three feet long; I dislike the way his legs are set on his sides; I dislike his tail, which is a fat continuation of his body; and the “feel” of his cold, creeping flesh is worse than his appearance; he is exceedingly active, darting rapidly about in every direction to the end of his rope. The gazelles chase each other about the deck, frolicking in the sun, and their eyes express as much tenderness and affection as any eyes can, set like theirs. If they were mounted in a woman’s head, and properly shaded with long lashes, she would be the most dangerous being in existence.

Somehow there is a little change in the atmosphere of the dahabeëh. The jester of the crew, who kept them alternately laughing and grumbling, singing and quarreling, turbulent with hasheesh or sulky for want of it, was left in jail at Assouan. The reïs has never recovered the injury to his dignity inflicted by his brief incarceration, and gives us no more a cheerful good-morning. The steersman smiles still, with the fixed look of enjoyment that his face assumed when it first came into the world, but he is listless; I think he has struck a section of the river in which there is a dearth of his wives; he has complained that his feet were cold in the fresh mornings, but the stockings we gave him he does not wear, and probably is reserving for a dress occasion. Abd-el-Atti meditates seriously upon a misunderstanding with one of his old friends at Luxor; he likes to tell us about the diplomatic and sarcastic letter he addressed him on leaving; “I wrote it,” he says, “very grammatick, the meaning of him very deep; I think he feel it.” There is no language like the Arabic for the delivery of courtly sarcasm, in soft words, at which no offence can be taken,—for administering a smart slap in the face, so to say, with a feather.

It is a ravishing sort of day, a slight haze, warm but life-giving air, and we row a little and sail a little down the broadening river, by the palms, and the wheat-fields growing yellow, and the soft chain of Libyan hills,—the very dolce far niente of life. Other dahabeëhs accompany us, and we hear the choruses of their crews responding to ours. From the shore comes the hum of labor and of idleness, men at the shadoofs, women at the shore for water; there are flocks of white herons and spoonbills on the sandbars; we glide past villages with picturesque pigeon-houses; a ferry-boat ever and anon puts across, a low black scow, its sides banked up with clay, a sail all patches and tatters, and crowded in it three or four donkeys and a group of shawled women and turbaned men, silent and sombre. The country through which we walk, towards night, is a vast plain of wheat, irrigated by canals, with villages in all directions; the peasants are shabbily dressed, as if taxes ate up all their labor, but they do not beg.

The city of Keneh, to which we come next morning, is the nearest point of the Nile to the Red Sea, the desert route to Kosseir being only one hundred and twenty miles; it is the Neapolis of which Herodotus speaks, near which was the great city of Chemmis, that had a temple dedicated to Perseus. The Chemmitæ declared that this demi-god often appeared to them on earth, and that he was descended from citizens of their country who had sailed into Greece; there if no doubt that Perseus came here when he made the expedition into Libya to bring the Gorgon’s head.

Keneh is now a thriving city, full of evidences of wealth, and of well-dressed people, and there are handsome houses and bazaars like those of Cairo. From time immemorial it has been famous for its koollehs, which are made of a fine clay found only in this vicinity, of which ware is manufactured almost as thin as paper. The process of making them has not changed since the potters of the Pharaohs’ time. The potters of to-day are very skillful at the wheel. A small mass of moistened clay, mixed with sifted ashes of halfeh-grass and kneaded like bread, is placed upon a round plate of wood which whirls by a treadle. As it revolves the workman with his hands fashions the clay into vessels of all shapes, graceful and delicate, with a sleight of hand that is wonderful. He makes a koolleh, or a drinking-cup, or a vase with a slender neck, in a few seconds, fashioning it as truly as if it were cast in a mould. It was like magic to see the fragile forms grow in his hands. We sat for a long time in one of the cool rooms where two or three potters were at work, shaded from the sun by palm-branches, which let the light flicker upon the earth-floor, upon the freshly made vessels and the spinning wheels of the turbaned workmen, whose deft fingers wrought out unceasingly these beautiful shapes from the revolving clay.

At the house of the English consul we have coffee; he afterwards lunches with us and insists, but in vain, that we stay and be entertained by a Ghawazee dance in the evening. It is a kind of amusement of which a very little satisfies one. At his house, Prince Arthur and his suite were also calling; a slender, pleasant appearing young gentleman, not noticeable anywhere and with a face of no special force, but bearing the family likeness. As we have had occasion to remark more than once, Princes are so plenty on the Nile this year as to be a burden to the officials,—especially German princes, who, however, do not count any more. The private, unostentatious traveler, who asks no favor of the Khedive, is becoming almost a rarity. I hear the natives complain that almost all the Englishmen of rank who come to Egypt, beg, or shall we say accept? substantial favors of the Khedive. The nobility appear to have a new rendering of noblesse oblige. This is rather humiliating to us Americans, who are, after all, almost blood-relations of the English; and besides, we are often taken for Inglese, in villages where few strangers go. It cannot be said that all Americans are modest, unassuming travelers; but we are glad to record a point or two in their favor:—they pay their way, and they do not appear to cut and paint their names upon the ruins in such numbers as travelers from other countries; the French are the greatest offenders in this respect, and the Germans next.

We cross the river in the afternoon and ride to the temple of Athor or Venus at Denderah. This temple, although of late construction, is considered one of the most important in Egypt. But it is incomplete, smaller, and less satisfactory than that at Edfoo. The architecture of the portico and succeeding hall is on the whole noble, but the columns are thick and ungraceful, and the sculptures are clumsy and unartistic. The myth of the Egyptian Avenues is worked out everywhere with the elaboration of a later Greek temple. On the ceiling of several rooms her gigantic figure is bent round three sides, and from a globe in her lap rays proceed in the vivifying influence of which trees are made to grow.

Everywhere in the temple are subterranean and intramural passages, entrance to which is only had by a narrow aperture, once closed by a stone. For what were these perfectly dark alleys intended? Processions could not move in them, and if they were merely used for concealing valuables, why should their inner sides have been covered with such elaborate sculptures?

The most interesting thing at Denderah is the small temple of Osiris, which is called the “lying-in temple,” the subjects of sculptures being the mystical conception, birth, and babyhood of Osiris. You might think from the pictures on the walls, of babes at nurse and babes in arms, that you had obtruded into one of the institutions of charity called a Day Nursery. We are glad to find here, carved in large, the image of the four-headed ugly little creature we have been calling Typhon, the spirit of evil; and to learn that it is not Typhon but is the god Bes, a jolly promoter of merriment and dancing. His appearance is very much against him.

Mariette Bey makes the great mystery of the adytum of the large temple, which the king alone could enter, the golden sistrum which was kept there. The sistrum was the mysterious emblem of Venus; it is sculptured everywhere in this building—although it is one of the sacred symbols found in all temples. This sacred instrument par excellence of the Egyptians played as important a part in their worship, says Mr. Wilkinson, as the tinkling bell in Roman Catholic services. The great privilege of holding it was accorded to queens, and ladies of rank who were devoted to the service of the deity. The sistrum is a strip of gold, or bronze, bent in a long loop, and the ends, coming together, are fastened in an ornamented handle. Through the loop bars are run upon which are rings, and when the instrument is shaken the rings move to and fro. Upon the sides of the handle were sometimes carved the faces of Isis and of Nephthys, the sister goddesses, representing the beginning and the end.

It is a little startling to find, when we get at the inner secret of the Egyptian religion, that it is a rattle! But it is the symbol of eternal agitation, without which there is no life. And the Egyptians profoundly knew this great secret of the universe.

We pass next day, quietly, to the exhibition of a religious devotion which is trying to get on without any sistrum or any agitation whatever. Towards sunset, below How, we come to a place where a holy man, called Sheykh Saleem, roosts forever on a sloping bank, with a rich country behind him; beyond, on the plain, hundreds of men and boys are at work throwing up an embankment against the next inundation; but he does not heed them. The holy man is stark naked and sits upon his haunches, his head, a shock of yellow hair, upon his knees. He is of that sickly, whitey-black color which such holy skin as his gets by long exposure. Before him on the bank is a row of large water-jars; behind him is a little kennel of mud, into which he can crawl if it ever occurs to him to go to bed.

About him, seated on the ground, is a group of his admirers. Boys run after us along the bank begging backsheesh for Sheykh Saleem. A crowd of hangers-on, we are told, always surround him, and live on the charity that his piety evokes from the faithful. His own wants are few. He spend his life in this attitude principally, contemplating the sand between his knees. He has sat here for forty years.

People pass and repass, camels swing by him, the sun shines, a breeze as of summer moves the wheat behind him and our great barque, with its gay flags and a dozen rowers rowing in time, sweeps before him, but he does not raise his head. Perhaps he has found the secret of perfect happiness. But his example cannot be widely imitated. There are not many climates in the world in which a man can enjoy such a religion out of doors at all seasons of the year.

We row on and by sundown are opposite Farshoot and its sugar-factories; the river broadens into a lake, shut in to the north by limestone hills rosy in this light, and it is perfectly still at this hour. But for the palms against the sky, and the cries of men at the shadoofs, and the clumsy native boats with their freight of immobile figures, this might be a glassy lake in the remote Adirondack forest, especially when the light has so much diminished that the mountains no longer appear naked.

The next morning as we were loitering along, wishing for a breeze to take us quickly to Bellianeh, that we might spend the day in visiting old Abydus, a beautiful wind suddenly arose according to our desire.

“You always have good fortune,” says the dragoman.

“I thought you didn’t believe in luck?”

“Not to call him luck. You think the wind to blow ‘thout the Lord know it?”

We approach Bellianeh under such fine headway that we fall almost into the opposite murmuring, that this helpful breeze should come just when we were obliged to stop and lose the benefit. We half incline to go on, and leave Abydus in its ashes, but the absurdity of making a journey of seven thousand miles and then passing near to, but unseen, the spot most sacred to the old Egyptians, flashes upon us, and we meekly land. But our inclination to go on was not so absurd as it seems; the mind is so constituted that it can contain only a certain amount of old ruins, and we were getting a mental indigestion of them. Loathing is perhaps too strong a word to use in regard to a piece of sculpture, but I think that a sight at this time, of Rameses II. in his favorite attitude of slicing off the heads of a lot of small captives, would have made us sick.

By eleven o’clock we were mounted for the ride of eight miles, and it may give some idea of the speed of the donkey under compulsion, to say that we made the distance in an hour and forty minutes. The sun was hot, the wind fresh, the dust considerable,—a fine sandy powder that, before night, penetrated clothes and skin. Nevertheless, the ride was charming. The way lay through a plain extending for many miles in every direction, every foot of it green with barley (of which here and there a spot was ripening), with clover, with the rank, dark Egyptian bean. The air was sweet, and filled with songs of the birds that glanced over the fields or poised in air on even wing like the lark. Through the vast, unfenced fields were narrow well-beaten roads in all directions, upon which men women, and children, usually poorly and scantily clad, donkeys and camels, were coming and going. There was the hum of voices everywhere, the occasional agonized blast of the donkey and the caravan bleat of the camel. It often seems to us that the more rich and broad the fields and the more abundant the life, the more squalor among the people.

We had noticed, at little distances apart in the plain, mounds of dirt five or six feet high. Upon each of these stood a solitary figure, usually a naked boy—a bronze image set up above the green.

“What are these?” we ask.

“What you call scarecrows, to frighten the birds; see that chile throw dirt at ‘em!”

“They look like sentries; do the people here steal?”

“Everybody help himself, if nobody watch him.”

At length we reach the dust-swept village of Arâbat, on the edge of the desert, near the ruins of the ancient Thinis (or Abvdus), the so-called cradle of the Egyptian monarchy. They have recently been excavated. I cannot think that this ancient and most important city was originally so far from the Nile; in the day of its glory the river must have run near it. Here was the seat of the first Egyptian dynasty, five thousand and four years before Christ, according to the chronology of Mariette Bey. I find no difficulty in accepting the five thousand but I am puzzled about the four years. It makes Menes four years older than he is generally supposed to have been. It is the accuracy of the date that sets one pondering. Menes, the first-known Egyptian king, and the founder of Memphis, was born here. If he established his dynasty here six thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine years ago, he must have been born some time before that date; and to be a ruler he must have been of noble parents, and no doubt received a good education. I should like to know what sort of a place, as to art, say, and literature, and architecture, Thinis was seven thousand and four years ago. It is chiefly sand-heaps now.

Not only was Menes born here, in the grey dawn of history, but Osiris, the manifestation of Light on earth, was buried here in the greyer dawn of a mythic period. His tomb was venerated by the Pharaonic worshippers as the Holy Sepulchre is by Christians, and for many ages. It was the last desire of the rich and noble Egyptians to be buried at Thinis, in order that they might lie in the same grave with Osiris; and bodies were brought here from all parts of Egypt to rest in the sacred earth. Their tombs were heaped up one above another, about the grave of the god. There are thousands of mounds here, clustering thickly about a larger mound; and, by digging, M. Mariette hopes to find the reputed tomb of Osiris. An enclosure of crude brick marks the supposed site of this supposed most ancient city of Egypt.

From these prehistoric ashes, it is like going from Rome to Peoria, to pass to a temple built so late as the time of Sethi I., only about thirty-three hundred years ago. It has been nearly all excavated and it is worth a long ride to see it. Its plan differs from that of all other temples, and its varied sculpture ranks with the best of temple carving; nowhere else have we found more life and grace of action in the figures and more expressive features; in number of singular emblems and devices, and in their careful and beautiful cutting, and brilliant coloring, the temple is unsurpassed. The non-stereotyped plan of the temple beguiled us into a hearty enjoyment of it. Its numerous columns are pure Egyptian of the best style—lotus capitals; and it contains some excellent specimens of the Doric column, or of its original, rather. The famous original tablet of kings, seventy-six, from Menes to Sethi, a partial copy of which is in the British Museum, has been re-covered with sand for its preservation. This must have been one of the finest of the old temples. We find here the novelty of vaulted roofs, formed by a singular method. The roof stones are not laid flat, as elsewhere, but on edge, and the roof, thus having sufficient thickness, is hollowed out on the under side, and the arch is decorated with stars and other devices. Of course, there is a temple of Rameses II., next door to this one, but it exists now only in its magnificent foundations.

We rode back through the village of Arâbat in a whirlwind of dust, amid cries of “backsheesh,” hailed from every door and pursued by yelling children. One boy, clad in the loose gown that passes for a wardrobe in these parts, in order to earn his money, threw a summersault before us, and, in a flash, turned completely out of his clothes, like a new-made Adam! Nothing was ever more neatly done; except it may have been a feat of my donkey a moment afterwards, executed perhaps in rivalry of the boy. Pretending to stumble, he went on his head, and threw a summersault also. When I went back to look for him, his head was doubled under his body so that he had to be helped up.

When we returned we found six other dahabeëhs moored near ours. Out of the seven, six carried the American flag—one of them in union with the German—and the seventh was English. The American flags largely outnumber all others on the Nile this year; in fact Americans and various kinds of Princes appear to be monopolizing this stream. A German, who shares a boat with Americans, drops in for a talk. It is wonderful how much more space in the world every German needs, now that there is a Germany. Our visitor expresses the belief that the Germans and the Americans are to share the dominion of the world between them. I suppose that this means that we are to be permitted to dwell on our present possessions in peace, if we don’t make faces; but one cannot contemplate the extinction of all the other powers without regret.

Of course we have outstayed the south wind; the next morning we are slowly drifting against the north wind. As I look from the window before breakfast, a Nubian trader floats past, and on the bow deck is crouched a handsome young lion, honest of face and free of glance, little dreaming of the miserable menagerie life before him. There are two lions and a leopard, and a cargo of cinnamon, senna, elephants’ tusks, and ostrich-feathers, on board; all Central Africa seems to float beside us, and the coal-black crew do not lessen the barbaric impression.

It is after dark when we reach Girgeh, and are guided to our moorage by the lights of other dahabeëhs. All that we see of this decayed but once capital town, are four minarets, two of them surrounding picturesque ruins and some slender columns of a mosque, the remainder of the building having been washed into the river. As we land, a muezzin sings the evening call to prayer in a sweet, high tenor voice; and it sounds like a welcome.

Decayed, did we say of Girgeh? What is not decayed, or decaying, or shifting, on this aggressive river? How age laps back on age and one religion shuffles another out of sight. In the hazy morning we are passing Menshéëh, the site of an old town that once was not inferior to Memphis; and then we come to Ekhmeem—ancient Panopolis. You never heard of it? A Roman visitor called it the oldest city of all Egypt; it was in fact founded by Ekhmeem, the son of Misraim, the offspring of Cush, the son of Ham. There you are, almost personally present at the Deluge. Below here are two Coptic convents, probably later than the time of the Empress Helena. On the shore are walking some Coptic Christians, but they are in no way superior in appearance to other natives; a woman, whom we hail, makes the sign of the cross, and then demands backsheesh.

We had some curiosity to visit a town of such honorable foundation. We found in it fine mosques and elegant minarets, of a good Saracenic epoch. Upon the lofty stone top of one sat an eagle, who looked down upon us unscared; the mosque was ruinous and the door closed, but through the windows we could see the gaily decorated ceiling; the whole was in the sort of decay that the traveler learns to think Moslemism itself.

We made a pretence of searching for the remains of a temple of Pan,—though we probably care less for Pan than we do for Rameses. Making known our wants, several polite gentlemen in turbans, offered to show us the way—the gentlemen in these towns seem to have no other occupation than to sit on the ground and smoke the chibook—and we were attended by a procession, beyond the walls, to the cemetery. There, in a hollow, we saw a few large stones, some of them showing marks of cutting. This was the temple spoken of in the hand-book. Our hosts then insisted upon dragging us half a mile further through the dust of the cemetery mounds, in the glare of the sun, and showed us a stone half buried, with a few hieroglyphics on one end. Never were people so polite. A grave man here joined us, and proposed to show us some quei-is antéeka (“beautiful antiquities”); and we followed this obliging person half over town; and finally, in the court of a private house, he pointed to the torso of a blue granite statue. All this was done out of pure hospitality; the people could not have been more attentive if they had had something really worth seeing. The town has handsome, spacious coffee-houses and shops, and an appearance of Oriental luxury.