A journey to Central Africa

Two days in the tombs of the Kings and the temples of the Remesides and the Osirei exhausted us more thoroughly than a week of hard labor. In addition to the natural and exciting emotion, with which we contemplated those remains, and which we would not have repressed, if we could, we puzzled ourselves with the secrets of Egyptian architecture and the mysteries of Egyptian faith. Those pregnant days were followed by sleepless nights, and we reached Luxor at sunset with a certain dread of the morrow. Our mental nerves were too tensely strung, and we felt severely the want of some relaxation of an opposite character. The course which we adopted to freshen our minds for Karnak may strike a novice as singular, but it was most effectual, and can be explained on the truest philosophical principles.

In the afternoon Achmet had informed us that two of the celebrated Almehs, or dancing-women of the East, who had been banished to Esneh, were in Luxor, and recommended us to witness their performance. This was a welcome proposition, and the matter was soon arranged. Our raïs procured a large room, had it cleared, engaged the performers and musicians, and took the cushions of our cabin to make us a stately seat. If one should engage Castle Garden, and hire a company of ballet-dancers to perform for his special amusement, the fact would shake the pillars of New-York society, and as it was, I can think of some very good friends who will condemn our proceeding as indiscreet, and unworthy the serious aims of travel. As I have no apology to make to myself, I need make none to them, except to suggest that the first end of travel is instruction, and that the traveller is fully justified in pursuing this end, so long as he neither injures himself nor others.

About eight o’clock, accompanied by Achmet, our Theban guide, the raïs of our vessel, and our favorite sailor, Ali, we set out for the rendezvous. Ali was the most gentleman-like Fellah I ever saw. His appearance was always neat and orderly, but on this particular evening his white turban was sprucer than ever, and his blue mantle hung as gracefully on his shoulders as the cloak of a Spanish grandee. He followed behind us, rejoicingly bearing the shebooks, as we walked under the moonlit columns of Luxor. We passed around the corner of the temple and ascended a flight of stone steps, to one of the upper chambers. It was a room about thirty feet long by fifteen wide, with a roof of palm-logs, covered with thatch. The floor rested on the ceiling of the ancient sanctuary. Our boat-lanterns of oiled paper were already suspended from the roof, and a few candles, stuck in empty bottles, completed the illumination.

We were politely received and conducted to the divan, formed impromptu of a large cafass, or hen-coop, covered with a carpet and cushions. We seated ourselves upon it, with legs crossed Moslem-wise, while our attendants ranged themselves on the floor on the left, and Ali stood on the right, ready to replenish the pipes. Opposite to us sat the two Almehs, with four attendant dancers, and three female singers, and beside them the music, consisting of two drums, a tambourine, and a squeaking Arab violin. Our crew, shining in white turbans, were ranged near the door, with a number of invited guests, so that the whole company amounted to upwards of forty persons. On our entrance the Almehs rose, came forward and greeted us, touching our hands to the lips and forehead. They then sat down, drank each a small glass of arakee, and while the drum thumped and the violin drawled a monotonous prelude to the dance, we had leisure to scrutinize their dress and features.

The two famed danseuses bore Arabic names, which were translated to us as the Orange-Blossom and the Apple-Blossom. The first was of medium size, with an olive complexion, and regular, though not handsome features. She wore a white dress, fitting like a vest from the shoulders to the hips, with short, flowing sleeves, under which a fine blue gauze, confined at the wrist with bracelets, hung like a mist about her arms. Her head-dress was a small red cap, with a coronet of gold coins, under which her black hair escaped in two shining braids. The Apple-Blossom, who could not have been more than fifteen years old, was small and slightly formed, dark-skinned, and might have been called beautiful, but for a defect in one of her eyes. Her dress was of dark crimson silk, with trowsers and armlets of white gauze, and a red cap, so covered with coins that it nearly resembled a helmet of golden scales, with a fringe falling on each side of her face. Three of the other assistants were dressed in white, with shawls of brilliant patterns bound around the waist. The fourth was a Nubian slave, named Zakhfara, whose shining black face looked wonderfully picturesque under the scarlet mantle which enveloped it like a turban, and fell in long folds almost to her feet. Among the singers was one named Bemba, who was almost the only really beautiful Egyptian woman I ever saw. Her features were large, but perfectly regular; and her long, thick, silky hair hung loose nearly to her shoulders before its gleaming mass was gathered into braids. Her teeth were even, and white as pearls, and the lids of her large black eyes were stained with kohl, which gave them a languishing, melancholy expression. She was a most consummate actress; for she no sooner saw that we noticed her face than she assumed the most indifferent air in the world and did not look at us again. But during the whole evening every movement was studied. The shawl was disposed in more graceful folds about her head; the hair was tossed back from her shoulders; the hand, tinged with henna, held the jasmine tube of her pipe in a hundred different attitudes, and only on leaving did she lift her eyes as if first aware of our presence and wish us “buona sera”—the only Italian words she knew—with the most musical accent of which an Arab voice is capable.

Meanwhile, the voices of the women mingled with the shrill, barbaric tones of the violin, and the prelude passed into a measured song of long, unvarying cadences, which the drums and tambourine accompanied with rapid beats. The Orange-Blossom and one of her companions took the floor, after drinking another glass of arakee and tightening the shawls around their hips. The dance commenced with a slow movement, both hands being lifted above the head, while the jingling bits of metal on their shawls and two miniature cymbals of brass, fastened to the thumb and middle finger, kept time to the music. As the dancers became animated, their motions were more rapid and violent, and the measure was marked, not in pirouettes and flying bounds, as on the boards of Frank theatres, but by a most wonderful command over the muscles of the chest and limbs. Their frames vibrated with the music like the strings of the violin, and as the song grew wild and stormy towards its close, the movements, had they not accorded with it, would have resembled those of a person seized with some violent nervous spasm. After this had continued for an incredible length of time, and I expected to see the Almehs fall exhausted to the earth, the music ceased, and they stood before us calm and cold, with their breathing not perceptibly hurried. The dance had a second part, of very different character. Still with their lifted hands striking the little cymbals, they marked a circle of springing bounds, in which their figures occasionally reminded me of the dancing nymphs of Greek sculpture. The instant before touching the floor, as they hung in the air with the head bent forward, one foot thrown behind, and both arms extended above the head, they were drawn on the background of the dark hall, like forms taken from the frieze of a temple to Bacchus or Pan.

Eastern politeness did not require us to cry “brava!” or “encore!” so we merely handed our pipes to Ali, to be filled a second time. Old Achmet Gourgàr, our Theban guide, however, was so enraptured that he several times ejaculated; “taïb keteer!” (very good indeed!) and Raïs Hassan’s dark face beamed all over with delight. The circle of white turbaned heads in the rear looked on complacently, and our guard, who stood in the moonlight before the open door, almost forgot his duty in his enjoyment of the spectacle. I shall never forget the wild, fantastic picture we saw that night in the ruins of Luxor.

The Apple-Blossom, who followed in a dance with one named Bakhita, pleased me far better. She added a thousand graceful embellishments to the monotonous soul of the music; and her dance, if barbaric, was as poetic as her native palm-tree. She was lithe as a serpent, and agile as a young panther, and some of her movements were most extraordinary, in the nerve and daring required to execute them, and to introduce them without neglecting the rhythm of the dance. More than once she sank slowly back, bending her knees forward, till her head and shoulders touched the floor, and then, quick as a flash, shot flying into the air, her foot alighting in exact time with the thump of the drum. She had the power of moving her body from side to side, so that it curved like a snake from the hips to the shoulders, and once I thought that, like Lamia, she was about to resume her ancient shape, and slip out of sight through some hole in the ruined walls. One of the dances was a sort of pantomime, which she and Bakhita accompanied with their voices—clear, shrill, ringing tones, which never faltered for a moment, or varied a hair’s breadth from the melody, while every muscle was agitated with the exertion of her movements. The song was pervaded with a strange, passionate tremolo, unlike any thing I ever heard before. The burden was: “I am alone; my family and my friends are all dead; the plague has destroyed them. Come, then, to me, and be my beloved, for I have no other to love me.” Her gestures exhibited a singular mixture of the abandonment of grief, and the longing of love. While her body swayed to and fro with the wild, sad rhythm of the words, she raised both arms before her till the long sleeves fell back and covered her face: then opening them in wistful entreaty, sang the last line of the chorus, and bringing her hands to her forehead, relapsed into grief again. Apparently the prayer is answered, for the concluding movement expressed a delirious joy.

We listened to the music and looked on the dances for more than two hours, but at length the twanging of the violin and the never-ending drum-thumps began to set our teeth on edge, and we unfolded our cramped legs and got down from the divan. The lantern was unswung, the candle-ends taken from the empty bottles, the Almehs received their fees and went off rejoicing, and we left the chambers of Luxor to the night-wind and the moon.

The guide of the Eastern bank, a wiry young Bedouin, was in attendance next morning, and a crowd of horses and asses awaited us on the shore. I chose a brown mare, with a small, slender head and keen eye, and soon accustomed myself to the Turkish saddle and broad shovel-stirrups. The temple of Luxor is imbedded in the modern village, and only the front of the pylon, facing towards Karnak, and part of the grand central colonnade, is free from its vile excrescences. For this reason its effect is less agreeable than that of the Memnonium, although of much grander proportions. Its plan is easily traced, nevertheless, and having been built by only two monarchs, Remeses the Great and Amunoph III.—or, to use their more familiar titles, Sesostris and Memnon—it is less bewildering, in a historical point of view, to the unstudied tourist, than most of the other temples of Egypt. The sanctuary, which stands nearest the Nile, is still protected by the ancient stone quay, though the river has made rapid advances, and threatens finally to undermine Luxor as it has already undermined the temples of Antæopolis and Antinoë. I rode into what were once the sacred chambers, but the pillars and sculptures were covered with filth, and the Arabs had built in, around and upon them, like the clay nests of the cliff-sparrow. The peristyle of majestic Osiride pillars, in front of the portico, as well as the portico itself, are buried to half their depth, and so surrounded by hovels, that to get an idea of their arrangement you must make the tour of a number of hen-houses and asses’ stalls. The pillars are now employed as drying-posts for the buffalo dung which the Arabs use as fuel.

Proceeding towards the entrance, the next court, which is tolerably free from incumbrances, contains a colonnade of two rows of lotus-crowned columns, twenty-eight feet in circumference. They still uphold their architraves of giant blocks of sandstone, and rising high above the miserable dwellings of the village, are visible from every part of the plain of Thebes. The English Vice-Consul, Mustapha Agha, occupies a house between two of these pillars. We returned the visit he had paid us on our arrival, and were regaled with the everlasting coffee and shebook, than which there is no more grateful refreshment. He gave us the agreeable news that Mr. Murray was endeavoring to persuade the Pasha to have Karnak cleared of its rubbish and preserved from further spoliation. If I possessed despotic power—and I then wished it for the first time—I should certainly make despotic use of it, in tearing down some dozens of villages and setting some thousands of Copts and Fellahs at work in exhuming what their ancestors have mutilated and buried. The world cannot spare these remains. Tear down Roman ruins if you will; level Cyclopean walls; build bridges with the stones of Gothic abbeys and feudal fortresses; but lay no hand on the glory and grandeur of Egypt.

In order to ascend the great pylon of the temple, we were obliged to pass through a school, in which thirty or forty little Luxorians were conning their scraps of the Koran. They immediately surrounded us, holding up their tin slates, scribbled with Arabic characters, for our inspection, and demanded backsheesh for their proficiency. The gray-bearded pedagogue tried to quiet them, but could not prevent several from following us. The victories of Remeses are sculptured on the face of the towers of the pylon, but his colossi, solid figures of granite, which sit on either side of the entrance, have been much defaced. The lonely obelisk, which stands a little in advance, on the left hand, is more perfect than its Parisian mate. From this stately entrance, an avenue of colossal sphinxes once extended to the Ptolemaic pylon of Karnak, a distance of a mile and a half. The sphinxes have disappeared, but the modern Arab road leads over its site, through fields of waste grass.

And now we galloped forward, through a long procession of camels, donkeys, and Desert Arabs armed with spears, towards Karnak, the greatest ruin in the world, the crowning triumph of Egyptian power and Egyptian art. Except a broken stone here and there protruding through the soil, the plain is as desolate as if it had never been conscious of a human dwelling, and only on reaching the vicinity of the mud hamlet of Karnak, can the traveller realize that he is in Thebes. Here the camel-path drops into a broad excavated avenue, lined with fragments of sphinxes and shaded by starveling acacias. As you advance, the sphinxes are better preserved and remain seated on their pedestals, but they have all been decapitated. Though of colossal proportions, they are seated so close to each other, that it must have required nearly two thousand to form the double row to Luxor. The avenue finally reaches a single pylon, of majestic proportions, built by one of the Ptolemies, and covered with profuse hieroglyphics. Passing through this, the sphinxes lead you to another pylon, followed by a pillared court and a temple built by the later Remesides. This, I thought, while my friend was measuring the girth of the pillars, is a good beginning for Karnak, but it is certainly much less than I expect. “Tāāl min hennee!” (come this way!) called the guide, as if reading my mind, and led me up the heaps of rubbish to the roof and pointed to the north.

Ah, there was Karnak! Had I been blind up to this time, or had the earth suddenly heaved out of her breast the remains of the glorious temple? From all parts of the plain of Thebes I had seen it in the distance—a huge propylon, a shattered portico, and an obelisk, rising above the palms. Whence this wilderness of ruins, spreading so far as to seem a city rather than a temple—pylon after pylon, tumbling into enormous cubes of stone, long colonnades, supporting fragments of Titanic roofs, obelisks of red granite, and endless walls and avenues, branching out to isolated portals? Yet they stood as silently amid the accumulated rubbish of nearly four thousand years, and the sunshine threw its yellow lustre as serenely over the despoiled sanctuaries, as if it had never been otherwise, since the world began. Figures are of no use, in describing a place like this, but since I must use them, I may say that the length of the ruins before us, from west to east, was twelve hundred feet, and that the total circumference of Karnak, including its numerous pylæ, or gateways, is a mile and a half.

We mounted and rode with fast-beating hearts to the western or main entrance, facing the Nile. The two towers of the propylon—pyramidal masses of solid stone—are three hundred and twenty-nine feet in length, and the one which is least ruined, is nearly one hundred feet in height. On each side of the sculptured portal connecting them, is a tablet left by the French army, recording the geographical position of the principal Egyptian temples. We passed through and entered an open court, more than three hundred feet square, with a corridor of immense pillars on each side, connecting it with the towers of a second pylon, nearly as gigantic as the first. A colonnade of lofty shafts, leading through the centre of the court, once united the two entrances, but they have all been hurled down and lay as they fell, in long lines of disjointed blocks, except one, which holds its solitary lotus-bell against the sky. Two mutilated colossi of red granite still guard the doorway, whose lintel-stones are forty feet in length. Climbing over the huge fragments which have fallen from above and almost blocked up the passage, we looked down into the grand hall of the temple.

I knew the dimensions of this hall, beforehand; I knew the number and size of the pillars, but I was no more prepared for the reality than those will be, who may read this account of it and afterwards visit Karnak for themselves. It is the great good-luck of travel that many things must be seen to be known. Nothing could have compensated for the loss of that overwhelming confusion of awe, astonishment, and delight, which came upon me like a flood. I looked down an avenue of twelve pillars—six on each side—each of which was thirty-six feet in circumference and nearly eighty feet in height. Crushing as were these ponderous masses of sculptured stone, the spreading bell of the lotus-blossoms which crowned them, clothed them with an atmosphere of lightness and grace. In front, over the top of another pile of colossal blocks, two obelisks rose sharp and clear, with every emblem legible on their polished sides. On each side of the main aisle are seven other rows of columns—one hundred and twenty-two, in all—each of which is about fifty feet high and twenty-seven in circumference. They have the Osiride form, without capitals, and do not range with the central shafts. In the efforts of the conquerors to overthrow them, two have been hurled from their places and thrown against the neighboring ones, where they still lean, as if weary with holding up the roof of massive sandstone. I walked alone through this hall, trying to bear the weight of its unutterable majesty and beauty. That I had been so oppressed by Dendera, seemed a weakness which I was resolved to conquer, and I finally succeeded in looking on Karnak with a calmness more commensurate with its sublime repose—but not by daylight.

My ride back to Luxor, towards evening, was the next best thing after Karnak. The little animal I rode had become excited by jumping over stones and sliding down sand-heaps; our guide began to show his Bedouin blood by dashing at full gallop toward the pylons and reining in his horse at a bound; and, to conclude, I became infected with a lawless spirit that could not easily be laid. The guide’s eyes sparkled when I proposed a race. We left my friend and the water-carriers, bounded across the avenue of sphinxes, and took a smooth path leading toward the Desert. My mare needed but a word and a jog of the iron stirrup. Away we flew, our animals stretching themselves for a long heat, crashing the dry dourra-stalks, clearing the water-ditches, and scattering on all sides the Arab laborers we met. After a glorious gallop of two or three miles my antagonist was fairly distanced; but one race would not content him, so we had a second, and finally a third, on the beach of Luxor. The horses belonged to him, and it was a matter of indifference which was the swiftest; he raced merely for the delight of it, and so did I.

The same gallant mare was ready for me at night. It was precisely full moon, and I had determined on visiting Karnak again before leaving. There was no one but the guide and I, he armed with his long spear, and I with my pistols in my belt. There was a wan haze in the air, and a pale halo around the moon, on each side of which appeared two faint mock-moons. It was a ghostly light, and the fresh north-wind, coming up the Nile, rustled solemnly in the palm-trees. We trotted silently to Karnak, and leaped our horses over the fragments until we reached the foot of the first obelisk. Here we dismounted and entered the grand hall of pillars. There was no sound in all the temple, and the guide, who seemed to comprehend my wish, moved behind me as softly as a shadow, and spoke not a word. It needs this illumination to comprehend Karnak. The unsightly rubbish has disappeared: the rents in the roof are atoned for by the moonlight they admit; the fragments shivered from the lips of the mighty capitals are only the crumpled edges of the flower: a maze of shadows hides the desolation of the courts, but every pillar and obelisk, pylon and propylon is glorified by the moonlight. The soul of Karnak is soothed and tranquillized. Its halls look upon you no longer with an aspect of pain and humiliation. Every stone seems to say: “I am not fallen, for I have defied the ages. I am a part of that grandeur which has never seen its peer, and I shall endure for ever, for the world has need of me.”

I climbed to the roof, and sat looking down into the hushed and awful colonnades, till I was thoroughly penetrated with their august and sublime expression. I should probably have remained all night, an amateur colossus, with my hands on my knees, had not the silence been disturbed by two arrivals of romantic tourists—an Englishman and two Frenchmen. We exchanged salutations, and I mounted the restless mare again, touched her side with the stirrup, and sped back to Luxor. The guide galloped beside me, occasionally hurling his spear into the air and catching it as it fell, delighted with my readiness to indulge his desert whims. I found the captain and sailors all ready and my friend smoking his pipe on deck. In half an hour we had left Thebes.