Cairo to Kisumu

This is the third time that I have made lengthy visits to the Pyramids of Egypt. On my first trip I rode to them on a donkey. The next time I came out from Cairo in a comfortable carriage, and to-day I passed over the same route on an electric trolley, paying seven and a half cents for the trip. The street cars to the Pyramids start at the end of the bridge, opposite Cairo, and pass along the side of the wide avenue shaded by acacia trees. The cars are open so that one can look out over the Nile valley as he goes. We whizzed by caravans of donkeys, loaded with all sorts of farm products, and by camels, ridden by gowned men, bobbing up and down in the saddles as they went. There were men, women, and children on foot, and veiled women on donkeys.

The cars were filled with Egyptians. Two dark-faced men in black gowns and white turbans sat on the seat beside me. In front was a yellow-skinned Arab dandy in a red fez and long gown, while just behind me sat a woman with a black veil fastened to her head-dress by a brass spool. As we neared the Pyramids we stopped at a café where American drinks were sold, and a little farther on was a great modern hotel with telephones and electric lights.

When I previously visited Egypt, the sands about the Pyramids were almost as smooth as those of the seashore. I galloped on my donkey over them and had no idea that I was tramping down innumerable graves.

But now—what changes the excavators and archæologists have made! I n walking over the same ground to-day I had to pick my way in and out through a vast network of half-broken-down tombs, from which the sands had been shovelled, and climb across piles of sun-dried brick which were made by the Egyptians at the time old King Cheops reigned. In one place I saw a gang of half-naked, brown-skinned fellaheen shovelling the earth into the cars in which it is carried far out in the desert. When the work is in full play an endless chain of cars of sand moves across this cemetery. There is a double track with turntables at the ends, and the arrangements are such that the sand can be taken out at the rate of half a ton per minute. For a long time seventy-two men were employed, and the result is that some most interesting historical material has been collected.

Some of the most important archæological work now going on in Egypt is in the hands of the Americans. Our scientists are making explorations in Nubia, away up the Nile, and are opening up temples and tombs in the desert near Luxor. They have already discovered the burial places of several kings who reigned over four thousand years ago, and unearthed the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, whose sarcophagus is now on view in the museum at Cairo.

Right here two American institutions have a large force of natives at work and have uncovered a cemetery under the shadow of the Pyramids of the time when the greatest of them was built. This cemetery includes the tombs not only of the rich, but also of the poor, and the relics, statues, and other things found in it enable one to reconstruct the lives of those who were buried here forty centuries ago.

The excavations which are being made near the Great Pyramid are in the interest of Harvard College and the Boston Museum. They furnish the money and Dr. George Reisner, one of the most efficient archæologists of the day, has charge of the work. Dr. Reisner came to Egypt as the head of the Hearst Expedition. He worked for it several years, making valuable explorations far up the Nile. He discovered there the flint-working camps of the people of the prehistoric period, and he explored the quarries which date back to the time of the Ptolemies. He also unearthed the site of a large town which was in existence fifteen hundred years before Christ and excavated a mass of valuable material therefrom. He then came nearer Cairo and uncovered cemeteries of ancient times, which give us a new view of Egyptian civilization.

It was in connection with the Boston Museum that he began his work at the Pyramids. As it is now carried on, of the share which falls to the United States the museum gets the art discoveries, while Harvard receives everything found bearing upon history and ethnology. One half of all that is unearthed goes to the Egyptian government and the other half to the United States.

The story of the allotment of the archæological territory about the Pyramids is interesting. The Egyptian government was anxious to have the country excavated, and there were three nations ready to do the work. The three were Germany, Italy, and the United States. Archæologists came here as representatives from each of these countries and the whole of the Gizeh Pyramid field was turned over to them with the understanding that Egypt was to have half of the discoveries. Then the question came up as to how the site should be divided. As it was then, it was a great area of sand not far from the banks of the Nile with the big Pyramid of Cheops and the smaller ones of Khefren and Mycerinus rising out of it, each being quite a distance apart from the others. Each nation wished to do independent work; so the archæologists finally agreed to divide the territory into three sections and cast lots for them. I am told that Mrs. Reisner held the straws. In the drawing, the United States got the tract just north of the Great Pyramid and Germany and Italy the tracts to the south of it. Our area was thought to be the best of all and Uncle Sam’s luck has been nowhere better evidenced than right here. We are making more finds than both the other nations put together and are bringing new life to the pages of history.

I went out to the Pyramids to-day and called upon the chief of the American excavation works. I find he has built himself a home under the shadow of old Cheops. He is beyond the greatest of the Pyramids, with the sands reaching out for miles away on the north, south, and west of him. His house is built of stones which probably came from these ancient monuments. It is a long, one-story structure, not over twelve feet in height, but large enough to contain a laboratory, a photographic establishment, and the necessary equipment of an archæologist.

One part of it is the living quarters of Dr. Reisner and his family. He has his wife and baby with him, and as we chatted together his little daughter, a bright-eyed infant not more than a year or so old, played about our feet. The baby was born here on the edge of the Libyan Desert, and her youth and the age of old Cheops, that great tomb of more than four thousand years ago, were striking in their contrast. As I looked at the little one I thought of the tombs of the babies which her father is now excavating.

During my stay we examined some photographs of the recent discoveries. One represented three statues of a well-to-do couple who lived here in those bygone ages. They were Teti and his wife. The faces were life-like and I doubt not that Mr. and Mrs. Teti sat for them.

There were other photographs of objects found in the cemetery of the rich, as well as of some found in the cemetery of the poor. The higher classes of that time were buried nearer the Pyramids, while beyond them, farther up the desert, were the burial places of the poor. Each poor person had a little coffin-like hole in the ground built round with stones. These holes were close together, making a great series of stone boxes that remind one of the compartments of an egg crate.

I took a donkey for my ride to the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and went clear around the huge mass, climbing again up the stones. As I sat on the top I could see the work going on in the sands below me, and I repeopled them with the men now being dug up under the superintendence of our Americans. In my mind’s eye I could see them as they toiled. I could see them dragging the great blocks over the road of polished stone, which had been made for the purpose, and observe the sweat rolling down their dusty faces in this blazing sun of Egypt as, under the lashes of their taskmasters, the great pile grew.

Most of the great stone blocks of which the Pyramid was built weigh at least two tons, while some of the larger ones which cover the King’s Chamber inside the structure weigh sixty tons. It is estimated that the Great Pyramid contains nearly ninety million cubic feet of limestone. This is so much that if it could be split into flags four inches thick, it would furnish enough to make a pavement two feet wide reaching over sea and land clear around the globe.

When Cheops completed this great structure he faced the exterior with limestone and granite slabs. The sides were as smooth as glass and met in a point at the top. The length of each side was eighteen feet greater than it is now. Indeed, as the bright sun played upon its polished surface the Pyramid must have formed a magnificent sight.

As it is to-day, when one views it from afar, the Great Pyramid still looks like one smooth block of stone. It is only when he comes closer that he sees it is made of many blocks. The Pyramid is built of yellow limestone and conglomerate. The stones are piled one on the other in regular layers. There is no cement between them, but they are chinked with a rough mortar which has withstood the weather for all these ages. I dug at some of this mortar with my knife, but could not loosen it, and went from block to block along the great structure on the side facing the western desert, finding the mortar everywhere solid.

And this huge pile was built over forty centuries ago. It seems a long time, but when you figure out how many lives it means it is not so old after all. Every one of us knows one hundred men who have reached forty years. Their aggregate lives, if patched together, would go back to the beginning of this monument. In other words, if a man at forty should have a child and that child should live to be forty and then have a child, and the programme of life should so continue, it would take only one hundred such generations to reach to the days when the breath from the garlic and onions eaten by those one hundred thousand men polluted this desert air.

Indeed, the world is not old, and it is not hard to realize that those people of the past had the same troubles, the same worries, and the same tastes as we have. I can take you through tombs not far from Cairo upon the walls of which are portrayed the life work of the men of ancient Egypt. You may see them using the same farm tools that the fellaheen use now. They plough, they reap, and thresh. They drink wine and gorge themselves with food. In one of the tombs I saw the picture of a woman milking a cow while her daughter held the calf back by the knees to prevent it from sucking. In another painting I saw the method of cooking, and in another observed those old Egyptians stuffing live geese with food to enlarge their livers. They were making pâté de foie gras, just as the Germans stuff geese for the same purpose to-day.

Leaving the Pyramid of Cheops, I crossed over to take a look at the other two which form the rest of the great trio of Gizeh, and I have since been up to the site of old Memphis, where are the Pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. Along this plateau, running up the Nile, are to be found the remains of a large number of Pyramids. There are also some in the Faiyum, and others far up the river in ancient Ethiopia. The latter are taller in proportion to their bases than the Egyptian Pyramids, and they generally have a hall with sculptures facing the east to commemorate the dead.

Most of the stones of the Pyramids here came from the plateau upon which they stand or from the Mokattam hills about twelve miles away on the other side of the Nile. There was an inclined plane leading to the river, on which are still to be seen the ruts in the stone road cut out by the runners of the sledges carrying these great blocks. There are pictures on some of the monuments which show how the stones were drawn on sledges by oxen and men. In one of the pictures a man is pouring oil on the roadbed. On the Island of Madeira, where the natives drag sleds by hand up and down the hills, they grease their sled runners, but the ancient Egyptians greased not only the runners but the roads as well.

I was much interested in the interior of the Great Pyramid. The mighty structure is supposed to be solid, with the exception of three chambers, connected with the outside by passageways and ventilated by air-shafts. These chambers undoubtedly once contained great treasures of gold and silver, but they were robbed in the first instance over three thousand years ago and it is known that the Persians, the Romans, and the Arabs all tried to dig into them to find the valuables they were supposed to hold.

It was with three half-naked Bedouins that I climbed up to the entrance which leads into old Cheops. There is a hole about forty-five feet above the desert on the north side. Going in here, we came into a narrow stone passage so low that I had to crawl on my hands and knees. The passage first sloped downward and then up, and finally, pushed and pulled by my dark guides, I got into a great narrow hall. After passing through this, I entered again the room where old Cheops, the king, rested undisturbed for a thousand years or so before the looters came.

By going back through the hall one reaches another passageway which slopes downward to the Queen’s Chamber. Below this, reached by another passage connecting with that I first entered, there is a subterranean chamber far under the base of the Pyramid itself. The whole structure is intensely interesting, and if it could be explored by diamond drills or in some other way, other chambers might possibly be found in the parts now looked upon as solid.