rently soft as velvet, and had a freshness that not all the paint and powder of the French toilet can imitate.
A pleasant smile played constantly around the mouth and eyes and seemed to run from the one to the other, the luxuriant hair decked with golden ornaments fell in copious folds around the plump and well-formed lin women in lesser jars that contain from four to six gallons. It is brought to the table in bottles holding a quart or more, and whenever and wherever you call for water it is served in these bottles and never in a pitcher.
The filtering jars and the drinking bottles come from Keneh, or rather the most of them do, and the large jars come from Balias, a town a few miles above. They are made of a peculiar clay which is mixed with the ashes of halfa grass and turned on an ordinary potter’s wheel. They are dried in the sun, and when complete require a little soaking to remove the taste of the earth. They are very porous, water passes easily through them, and when placed in the open air the transformation and constant evaporation that follows keep the contents very cool.
We met many rafts of these ballasee on their way down the river, and some large ones were tied to the bank at Keneh. The men in charge of the rafts are obliged to remove the water from the half immersed jars every few hours to prevent their absorption of enough to sink them. The same kind of drinking bottle can be found in Spain and in Mexico, and also in some of the South American countries. They are used all through Egypt, and their manufacture employs a considerable number of persons. The man who introduces them in the Mississippi valley will confer a boon upon the inhabitants of that region.
An hour’s ride from the river on the side opposite Keneh is the temple of Denderah.
Compared with the other temples of Egypt, this one is modern as it was built less than two thousand years ago, at the time the Romans held possession of the country. Egyptian sculpture had long been on the decline and the figures are far less graceful than those of a much older period, but the architecture retained its grandeur, and one cannot admire too much the magnificent proportions of the halls and columns of Denderah, especially in the grand portico and in some of the inner apartments.
The temple is the best preserved that has yet been discovered; its walls and columns are all in place and the roof is almost entire, so that it presents the best specimen of a complete temple. It contains a zodiac which was the subject of much controversy on account of its supposed antiquity, but a careful reading of some of the surrounding inscriptions has exploded the theory that the ancient Egyptians were the authors of the zodiac.
On the side wall of the temple is a portrait of Cleopatra, which is interesting for the reason that it is cotemporaneous with the existence of that estimable but warm blooded lady, whose habits were not such as to make her a model for the guidance of young women of the present day. We looked at the portrait for the beauty for which she was renowned but could not find it though we all admitted that her face was not unhandsome. Her figure does not possess the grace of her Greek portraits, and altogether the picture was a disappointment.
On several places on the walls of the temple there are sculptures representing the asp, the serpent which was once worshipped as a divinity. Asp-headed gods were frequent among the Egyptian sculptures, and their worship extended over a long period. And it was by one of these serpents that Cleopatra, of whom we have just been speaking, was stung to death. The event is recorded in a pathetic poem which begins thus:
“She took a nasty, pison snake,
And hid it in her gown,
It gave its little tail a shake
And did its job up brown.
She went into her little bed,
In dreadful agony;
Then tore her chignon from her head,
And followed Antony.”
Denderah was a big thing for the Professor as he was able to buy there an abundance of coins. He bought a lot of them, about a quart altogether, for a couple of francs; they were covered with rust, mould, and verdigris, but they were coins and he paid little more than what they were worth as old copper. He was a good deal of a coin-sharp and understood their value, and when he looked them over on the boat he was so happy that he wanted to go back again to buy more. He said he wouldn’t take five hundred, no, not a thousand francs for the lot, and he was ready to dance with joy. And I add this by way of foot note, that when we returned to Cairo he had the coins cleaned and examined by a numismatist. Every coin was pronounced genuine and some were of silver. Most of them were of a kind
that is abundant and consequently they had not much value, but there were several very rare specimens. One in particular was so rare that only one like it was known to exist in Egypt, and it was worth any sum of money that a seller would ask and a buyer would give.
He was sure they were genuine, and he scouted the notion that they were fabrications for the reason that he had paid less than it would cost to fabricate them. These coins were found around Denderah, and we saw the natives digging in the rubbish in several places in search of them. Occasionally a native makes a good find, but he never knows its value, and will sell his prize cheaply. A coin collector who knows his business would do well to make the voyage of the Nile.
We had half a day’s steaming from Keneh to Luxor, and turned some pretty bends in the river where the scenery was quite picturesque. We passed several dahabeeahs on their way up stream and greeted them with our steam whistle and by dipping our flag to which they responded by dipping theirs. Every dahabeeah carries a flag showing the nationality of the parties on board; this is an inflexible rule, and a very good one, and often leads to friendly acquaintance among persons of similar nationalties. The steamboat saluted every dahabeeahs; she was not proud because she was a steamboat, and we were glad to perceive that the others were not proud because they were dahabeeahs.
In this part of the river we observed a great number of pigeons flying around; these birds abound all along the Nile but are specially numerous in this locality. The pigeon houses are built over the dwellings and are two or three stories high; they have a likeness to the battlements of old castles, as they are narrower at top than at bottom, and the entrances for the birds have a strong resemblance to port holes. Branches of trees are put near the holes to assist the birds in alighting, and they give rather a curious appearance to the houses. Hundreds of these pigeons can be seen in the air at once, and sometimes the flocks are very large. The birds are kept for the sake of their manure; pigeon dung is the only kind of manure used on the fields in Egypt, and it is quite an article of commerce.
In Cairo a great many pigeons are kept on the roofs of houses; they fly around and pick up their food where they can find it, and their owners make a very fair revenue from the sale of the manure as well as from that of the birds. Mohammedans do not eat them but the large number of Christians in Egypt ensures a good market. The hotels have them very often in their bills of fare.
It was about noon when we reached Luxor and tied up to the bank in front of the American Consulate. There was a crowd of donkey-boys, guides, and miscellaneous citizens to meet us, and as soon as we were on shore they surrounded us at once.
The Professor was happy as he found plenty of old coins, but he did not find them as cheap as at Denderah. The most numerous speculators were the dealers in antiquities, such as fragments of mummies, pieces of coffins, scarabées, and bits of marble and other stones cut into the shape of ancient statues.
They have an odd way of offering their stuff to you; without saying a word they come up and hold out the thing they have for sale, and sometimes if it is a skull they hold it disagreeably near to your face. Ask the price and then make an offer, and be sure to make the offer small enough. They refuse and turn away; in a few minutes they come up again with the same thing and offer it in the same manner as if they do not know you have seen it before Refuse and refuse again; they depart, or at all events put their things in their pockets at each refusal, but they return again in a few minutes.
There was one man with a string of scarabees and another with a miniature bust of one of the old kings that I think offered their wares as often as once in five minutes during all the time I was accessible to them. They do not talk under such circumstances unless you talk first; they glide silently in front of you, and then hold up what they have to sell, as though endeavoring to secure your admiration.
The articles mostly dealt in are scarabee,—those imitations in hard stone of the Egyptian beetle that are found in many of the mummy coffins. Some of them make pretty finger rings, and I have one that makes a capital seal, as it bears the signet of one of the kings of the XIXth Dynasty. They are of all sizes, from the small stones placed on the finger of a mummy or strung into necklaces, up to some as large as a goose egg, and even much larger. Some of these large ones are simply marvellous. They are of very hard stone,—porphyry, feldspar, basalt, serpentine, carnelian, and the like, and are covered on the under side with finely cut hieroglyphics, generally passages from the Ritual of the Dead.
There is one in the museum at Cairo that I would walk twenty-three miles to own. It is about as large over as a two-cent piece, and the back is cut as neatly as that of the beetle it imitated, while the under side is covered with fine hieroglyphics. And the stone is green feldspar, one of the hardest things in the world for cutting, and how they managed to finish it so beautifully is a mystery.
The Arabs at Luxor have a liberal supply of these scarabees but they are nearly all modern imitations. They have some genuine ones for which they ask a high price, but it sometimes happens that a really good one is sold for a trifle. They declare that every-thing they have is “antika” and ask proportionate prices, but you are not expected to offer anywhere near the sum demanded.
When a man exhibited something that I thought I would buy, I asked his price. If he said two pounds, I might offer sixpence, and very often they would come down to one or two shillings for something that they originally asked two pounds for. I bought a scarabee for a franc that was offered to me for thirty francs, and one of my friends paid two francs for something for which one hundred and fifty francs was the first price.
In other countries an article is supposed to be worth somewhere near the price put upon it, but any such rule is erroneous in Egypt. I have no hesitation in offering a silver piastre, (five cents,) for a scarabee whose holder demands two pounds; in New York or London a similar offer would be an insult, but in Luxor it is not so regarded.
A great many people are foolish enough to buy these antiquities at the prices demanded, and the Arabs in this business are able to make a good living. They are reputed to make many of the articles, and I was told that others are made in Cairo, and others in Birmingham—like the famous Waterloo relics. One fellow was pointed out as the owner of a fabrique d’ antiquities and we asked him to show us his shop. He denied having any factory, and then we offered him five francs, ten francs, a napoleon if he would show us through it. He finally grew indignant and said:
“No, no, no; not for ten napoleons will I let you see it.”
The fabrications are very skillful, and even the experts are sometimes deceived by them. The safest parties to deal with are the Consuls; they are all merchants of antiquities, but even they are not always to be relied upon, as they have families to support and human nature is weak. What wonder if a consul who has to maintain dignity and an office, should take advantage of circumstances and drive a sharp transaction whenever he finds a rich flat.
Luxor on the Site of Ancient Thebes—A City with a Hundred Gates—Enjoying a Consul’s Hospitality—An American Citizen of African Descent—A Dignified Rhinoceros—Karnak—A City of Wonders—Promenading in an Avenue of Sphinxes—A Gigantic Temple—Monster Obelisks—A Story in Stone—A Statue Weighing Nine Hundred Tons—The Sitting Colossi—A Singing Statue—Mysteries of Priestcraft—Lunching in the Tomb of Rameses—A Wonderful Treasure—How They Made Mummies—A Curious Process—The “Doubter” and the Mummy Sellers—The Judge Comes to Grief.
LUXOR is now an insignificant town of four thousand inhabitants, occupying the site, or a small portion of it, of the ancient city of Thebes, from whose hundred gates twenty thousand armed chariots could be sent to the battle-field. What a’ melancholy decline from the days of Thotmes and Rameses to the present!
A crowd of dirty Arabs, and a collection of hovels, with here and there a house having some pretence of respectability and comfort are the Thebes of to-day. Were it not for the ruins that lie around us we should have only to write “Thebes was,” and the story of to-day would be complete. But the city which fills bright pages in the history of Egypt was too great and glorious in her time, and the monuments she built were too stupendous to be easily removed. So grand were her temples that the work of destruction was an enormous one, what then must have been the labors of erection! In the present town of Luxor there is little to be seen beyond the temple which is now greatly fallen and of which much of the sculptures lie buried. There is no effort made to remove the rubbish that lies around the walls and upon all the floors; in one part the English Consul has his office, and in others the Arabs have built their mud hovels among the columns and against the sculptured walls. The magnificence around them has not served in any way to elevate the thoughts of these natives; they live in a superabundance of dirt, and the contemplation of the works of art ever in their sight has been no more to them than to their chickens or donkeys. They regard the ruins solely as a source of profit, and they persistently beg from strangers who come to visit Thebes. Most of the Arabs believe that the strangers who come here are pagans, and that they make pilgrimages to Thebes, Denderah, and Esneh, just as good Moslems make pilgrimages to Mecca.
We devoted an hour to calling on the consul, where we were treated to pipes and to coffee, and were seated on the divans that filled part of the official rooms. The American Consul is of a dark hue, something more than a mulatto, and one of our party whose notions were formerly in sympathy with slaveholding, was rather disinclined to accept the hospitality of a gentleman of African descent. But we pacified him by the information that we were in Africa and approaching the region where white men were at a discount, and with this view of the case he subsided and smoked his pipe in silence.
The “Doubter” was rude as he always was when among gentlemanly natives, and as he had not the vice of smoking he wondered what we were staying for. The Judge reproved him for his incivility, and for a minute or two there was a fair prospect that the consul would be able to collect a fee for suppressing a row in his own office. During the turmoil the Professor and I slipped out and called upon the German Consul, who was as dignified as a rhinoceros in a menagerie. He speaks hardly anything but Arabic, and knows of only one man—Bismarck—in Germany and of only one city—Berlin. The Professor passed as a resident of Berlin and a relative of Bismarck, and with this view of the case he was most cordially received. The American
Consul speaks English quite fairly. The vice-consulate was formerly held by Mustapha Agar, who is also English Vice-Consul, and his removal has soured him somewhat so that he is not over-polite to Americans. He is the oldest consul at Luxor, and one of the oldest residents, and has grown wealthy in the service of other countries than his own. He has been so often petted by travellers and praised by authors who have been here, that he has become spoiled, and has the pomposity of a turkey-cock. He deals in scarabees, mummies, coins—everything that you like,—and he showed us as did the other consuls, quite a collection of antiquities. They can furnish you with the head of a king or the foot of a princess at short order, and as for old coins the Professor found enough at Luxor to set up a museum of numismatics.
We hired donkeys and went to Karnak—something more than a mile from Luxor—and we went not only once but three times.
Karnak is more than marvellous; to do justice to it one requires to have a dozen or so superlative words specially invented for the place. You remain silent in contemplating it as you find that you have no word to express your feelings; you are sensible that to speak of it in ordinary terms would be like the cockney’s expression of “neat” applied to Niagara, and though I am intending to make the attempt I am satisfied that I shall fall far short of portraying the full grandeur of the scene to the reader.
As you approach the temple you enter an avenue of ramheaded sphinxes (huge fellows carved in stone), on opposite sides of the avenue. Formerly this street extended all the way to Luxor—six thousand feet away. What a splendid promenade it must have been! Only a few of the sphinxes are here now, and of those every one has been more or less mutilated. Passing the avenue you reach a pronaos, or pylon,—a gateway with two enormous towers large enough of themselves to make a temple. There were no less than six of these entrances. Just to give an idea of their size I will give the dimensions of one of the peristyles. Its total length is three hundred and seventy feet, its depth is fifty feet, and its height one hundred and forty feet. The temple faces the river, and the towers can be seen from a long distance. One of these fronting the river is partly fallen, but the other is nearly perfect. A detailed description of the temple at Karnak would be dry reading, and I will simply state that from end to end the length is eleven hundred and eighty feet, and that it is about six hundred feet in breadth. The whole was surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet thick and from sixty to a hundred feet high. All this space inclosed by the wall is filled with ruins of an architecture of the most magnificent character. In one place there are the fragments of a fallen obelisk, and close by it is a standing obelisk ninety-two feet high and eight feet square at the base, the largest obelisk now known. There is another, seventy-five feet high, a little from it, and there is another obelisk standing at Luxor, the mate of it having been removed to Paris. The French government removed the Luxor obelisk only after many attempts and failures. The obelisk at Karnak—the great one—was given to the English government, but they never attempted to take it away.
How did the Egyptians manage to move these masses of stone from the quarries at Assouan, and to put them in place? I give it up.
Do you know where is the most stupendous hall in the world? It is in the temple at Karnak. It is three hundred and twenty-nine feet long and one hundred and seventy feet broad; it has down its centre, twelve columns, each sixty feet high (without counting capital and pedestal), and twelve feet in diameter. Then besides these there are one hundred and twenty-two other columns (arranged in fourteen rows, seven on each side of the central rows), forty-two feet high and nine feet in diameter. Thus there are one hundred and thirty-four columns in this great hall, and all of them are covered with sculptures. There was once a roof over the hall, but it is mostly gone now, and some of the columns have fallen. Seven of us, with our outstretched hands touching each other, were just able to encircle one of the great columns. Compared with this hall of the temple, the Parthenon at Athens becomes of dwarfish size. All around are stones of great size that once formed parts of the temple; everything around is so great that the stones do not appear large till you stand close beside them, and then you realize their extent and your littleness. As at Abydos and Denderah the walls of the temple, the faces of the pylons, the columns, the pillars, the sides of the encircling wall, everything and everywhere, were covered with sculptures. The most of the sculptures were battle scenes, but there were many that represented offerings to the deities. In the historical pictures the campaigns of the kings were represented, and one who has time and patience to study them can read the story of a campaign. Here the king is marching out with his army, and next he is attacking a fortress; next he is routing the enemy and driving them across a river; next he is returning in triumph, and there is a long series of the cities he passes through on his return.
On the front wall of a tower of a pylon, the king is represented striking off the heads of a group of captives, and these representations are so frequent as to make it pretty certain that the Egyptians were accustomed to offer human sacrifices. The hands, and sometimes other portions of the bodies of the slain enemies, are cut off and piled before the king; and some of the pictures are of a kind that could hardly be reproduced in a family album of the present time. The king is nearly always represented of much greater stature than those that surround him, and the Egyptians were generally so doubtful of the faces of their rulers reaching posterity, that they were careful to engrave their names on most of the pictures and to detail the incidents described.
This temple was not the work of one but of several kings, and there is a chronological difference of two hundred and fifty years between the earliest and latest sculptures. There is much dispute as to the antiquity of the edifice, but it is generally conceded to have been completed not less than fifteen centuries before the Christian era.
One of our visits was made by moonlight, and the effect of light and shade, especially in the great hall, was beautiful beyond description, and therefore I forbear attempting to describe it We disturbed several jackals and bats, the only occupants of the ruins.
There is an Arab village close to the temple, but it does not extend into the great structure. The water of the Nile enters the ruins at the time of the inundation, and is eating away the base of the columns, so that several have fallen from its effects. The Egyptian architects, while producing magnificent superstructures, were curiously negligent of the foundations.
On the west bank of the Nile are several temples, the most prominent of them being the Memnonium or Rameseum, and Med in et Aboo.
Both were on the same general plan of Egyptian temples, and second only to Karnak in greatness; there are other temples around here—half a dozen or more—and each has its peculiar historical and religious sculptures covering the walls.
In the court yard of the Rameseum is an overturned and broken statue of Rameses III, the builder of the temple. It was destroyed by the Persians at the time of the invasion of Egypt, but they did not succeed in obliterating it. The figure was a sitting one like many of the statues of Egypt. The throne and legs were reduced to comparatively small fragments, but the upper part, broken at the waist, lies comparatively perfect and enables us to judge of the great size of the figure. It is not sufficient to say that it was the largest statue ever hewn from a single block and transported two or three hundred miles. It is calculated to have weighed (when entire) not far from nine hundred tons. It was nearly twenty feet across the shoulders of the statue, and the foot of the figure was eleven feet from toe to heel. From the shoulder to the elbow was nearly five yards, and the other measurements were in proportion.
On the plain toward the river and quite a distance in front of the Rameseum are the sitting Colossi. They were made to represent one of the Kings, and one at least was cut from a single block. The height of the figures is about fifty feet, and they originally had pedestals ten feet high. The soil has risen considerably since their erection and is now about seven feet above their base.
There they sit as they have sat for centuries looking out upon the plain of Thebes and across the Nile to Luxor. What stories they might tell were they possessed of memory and the power of articulation; more than thirty centuries of the world’s history rest behind those stony lips; more than three thousand years have come and gone since first these forms were fashioned.
History and tradition say that sounds issued from it when the rays of the rising sun fell upon its face; one authority says these sounds were musical, and others that they resembled the snapping of a bow-string or a blow upon a piece of metal. The statue was very fastidious in its youth, and many times when distinguished persons came hands of man and placed where we find them to-day. The city they once adorned has crumbled to dust and disappeared, and they sit alone and uncared for, save when some passing stranger drawn by curiosity comes and gazes irreverently upon them and glances at the ground they have watched and guarded so long.
One of these statues is the famous Vocal Memnon which orators and poets have frequently drawn upon for illustrations and from distant lands to see it, not a sound could be heard from it. Sometimes when Grand Moguls like the Emperor Hadrian and other heavy swells came along it was more complaisant, and ventured to let itself out, and on a few occasions it even sounded twice, a circumstance which ought to have been regarded with more suspicion than the absence of a date to Mr. Pickwick’s note announcing his non-return to dinner.
There can be but little doubt that the sound was a trick of the priests, as there is a stone in the lap of the statue and behind it is a niche where a person could be completely concealed from the view of the crowd below.
We hired an Arab to climb up and strike the stone, and we had the performance not only once but half a dozen times, all for half a franc for the entire party, or less than a third of a cent each. Some things are dearer now than in the olden time, but the Memnon business is cheaper. Two thousand years ago you had to be there at sunrise and sometimes you had to go two or three days in succession, before you heard the sound, as the priest who struck the stone would happen to be off on a drunk or neglecting his business. But now a little “backsheesh” will settle the matter at any hour of the day and it would keep on a week if you were willing to pay for the fun.
We spent a day among the tombs of the Kings, which are in a valley four or five miles back from the river; there are lots of tombs there, fifty or more, some of them being the burial places of the kings, and others those of queens, of priests, of common people, and even of cats, dogs, ibises, crocodiles, and other beasts, birds, and reptiles.
I have said fifty, I might better have said there are four times that number as nobody seems to know how many tombs there are in the hills back of Thebes, and every one admits they are very extensive.
The most interesting are the tombs of the Kings, and also those of the priests; we entered half a dozen of the first and one of the latter and made as thorough an investigation as was possible. Some were discovered by Bruce and some by Belzoni, and some by more modern explorers. Every few years a fresh tomb is opened and important revelations are made. Any person who wishes to dig among these tombs can obtain the permission of the proper authorities and an officer will be sent to superintend his work and see that he gives a proper account of the treasures he finds. Most of the tombs that have been opened have been stripped of their contents and nothing remains except the mural sculptures and paintings. Some of these are of a most exquisite character and show that the Egyptians were well advanced in the art of drawing. The tombs consist of long passages cut into the rock, some of them horizontal; some descending and some with one, two, or it may be half a dozen lateral chambers and apartments. Passages, halls, and chambers are all decorated with the same profusion as are the temples, and in some of them the colors are laid on with great care. Egyptian life and its manners and customs, the arms and implements in use, the employments of the people, their religious belief, the ceremonies of burial, and many other things can be learned by a study of these tombs, and they have probably been more useful in this respect than have the temples, which are generally devoted to religious subjects and incidents in the life of the King whom they commemorate.
We lighted them up with candles and magnesium wire; we wandered through the halls and chambers, and we took lunch one day in the entrance of a tomb which was once the post-mortem house of Rameses III. Did the old fellow ever suspect that a party of travellers would in the present century devour cold chicken and ham sandwiches, and smoke cigars and pipes and cigarettes at his door?
Most of the tombs that have been opened have been found rifled of their valuables, and the modern explorer has to be contented with the granite coffins, and is very fortunate if he can find a royal mummy. M. Mariette discovered and opened in 1859 the coffin of Queen Aah Hotep, which contained a remarkable collection of jewelry.
She is thought to have been one of the Queens of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and to have lived about thirty-five hundred years ago. There were bracelets and other ornaments of lapis lazuli, carnelian, feldspar, and turquoise set in gold, and there was a gold chain nearly a yard long and framed of fine wire intricately woven. The collection was in the Paris exhibition of ‘67, where it took the prize. The French jewellers said it would be difficult for them with all their skill to mend this chain if it were broken, and they admitted that the goldsmith’s art in the days of Queen Aah Hotep was little inferior to that of to-day.
The body of an Egyptian was prepared for burial by the removal of the brains, intestines, and viscera generally; it was then soaked in nitre for seventy days, and afterwards filled with salt and aromatic herbs. It was then carefully bandaged, every finger and toe being separately wrapped, and there is not a bandage known to modern surgery with which the Egyptians were not familiar. The bandages were soaked in preservative gums and the body thus carefully prepared was placed in a wooden coffin, shaped to the body, and covered with hieroglyphics, which were generally passages from the Book of the Dead. Then this was placed in a stone coffin, this again in a larger one, and sometimes the whole was enclosed in another. The number of the coffins and the care of preparations depended upon the rank and wealth of the deceased very much as do the funeral ceremonies of today. The jewels of the deceased were enclosed with him, and this practice has led to the opening of so many tombs since the decline of the ancient Empire.
You can buy whole mummies, or parts of them, of the Arabs, around Thebes, but they are all the remains of common people. The supply of Kings was limited from the outset and has long been exhausted. The demand is far greater than the supply. I asked repeatedly for a king or for a live mummy, but in every instance was told that I could not be gratified I would give a good deal for a genuine monarch, and was in the market for one all the time I was at Luxor, but in vain.
All the way back to the river the Arabs kept near us trying to sell antiquities, but we were not inclined to purchase. One fellow had a mummy head that had a remarkably fresh look, and I was told by the dragoman that when the supply of mummies runs short, the natives dig up the skulls and arms from their own cemeteries and offer them for sale. I accused this merchant of endeavoring to dispose of the head of his grandfather, but he denied the imputation, and said it was a real mummy. I promised him a piastre if he would walk by the side of the “Doubter” and continue to offer the head to him all the way back to the river, and to assist the offer by holding the skull in front of the old fellow’s face.
He earned his money, and the “Doubter” afterward said that he never saw an Arab so persistent as that one. I was sorry that we could not hire the native to go along with us and keep his bone-yard ever in view of our crusty and penurious companion.
The road from the tombs to the river winds among the limestone hills, and in the middle of the day the heat is great. Rain falls here very rarely, but there are indications of great torrents through these ravines at some remote day.
Rain was evidently not unknown to the ancients, as the temples of Denderah and other places were supplied with water spouts to carry off the showers that evidently fell there.
We crossed the river in a small boat. The water is shallow at the shore on the western bank and we had to be carried to and from the boat. The Arabs transported us with ease, and were rewarded very fairly for their work, but of course they wanted more. Some of them handled their burdens very carefully, and others tumbled them in with little ceremony. The Judge came in over the side much like a sack of wheat, and went into a lump at the bottom of the boat. He was rather disconcerted at the performance as it rended his already dilapidated garments and caused him to seek the seclusion of his own room as soon as we were on board the steamer. Another of the party was dropped into the water but was saved without any worse mishap than a good wetting and a provocation to profanity.
A Visit to a Harem—Among the Daughters of the Nile—How they Looked and What was Done—Painted Eyelids—The Use of Henna—A Minute Inspection of Garments—Mustapha Agar “At Home”—Arab Astonishment—A Dinner a l’Arabe—Fingers vs. Forks—An Array of Queer Dishes—Novel Refreshment—Dancing Girls—Truck and Decker at Luxor—More “Ghawazee,” Pipes and Coffee—“A Love of a Donkey”—Song of Arabs—Arab Cruelty—A Nation of Stoics—Endurance of Pain—Among the Nubians—Ostriches, Arrows and Battle Axes—A Nubian Dress—A Very Small Dressmaker’s Bill—A Scanty Wardrobe.
THE ladies of the party did not accompany us to the Tombs of the Kings, as the day was hot and the ride a long one. Besides, they had what was more attractive to them, an invitation to visit the harem of the English Consul.
I volunteered to accompany them, but my escort was declined, for the reason that gentlemen were not admitted any more than they were to the studios of some of the fortune-tellers of New York. When we returned to the boat, they were in great glee, and it was not long before we had all the details, or at any rate, all that they chose to give us. We hardly recognized them, as their eyelids had been stained with henna, after the Arabic manner, giving a great prominence and lustre to the eye. The result is the same as that obtained by actresses and others, who apply red paint around the eyes and not upon the lids.
I will try to give the story as nearly as possible, in the words of One of the Fair Visitors. I Endeavored to Induce Her To Write It out for Me, But She Shrunk from The Effort As Something Herculean, and All My Prayers Were of No Avail.
“We went to the consulate,” said the narrator, “and there we found Mustapha Agar waiting for us. We walked from there to his house, which is quite pretty when you get inside, and has a sort of garden on a balcony, and from this balcony we went into the harem. The consul staid outside with Mr. ————— (the husband of one of the visitors), and we were shown in by one of the slaves. The consul’s son, who speaks English, went in for a few moments and interpreted, but for the rest of the time we had to talk by signs, as the women spoke nothing but Arabic, There were half a dozen women, some the wives of the consul, and some the wives of his son, but we didn’t know which were which.
“They saluted us in Arabic as we entered, and asked us to sit down on the carpet with them, and we squatted as best we could. There were divans at the side of the room, and a rich carpet in the centre, and we sat on the carpet more than on the divans. The women wore the loose dress of the Arabs and had no veils on their faces; one of them, a young girl of fifteen or about, had a very richly-embroidered dress, much better than that of any other, and I thought she must be the favorite of either the j consul or his son. They began at once to examine us, to look at our faces, our boots, our clothing, and everything, and we returned the compliment by examining them. What most excited their curiosity was Mrs.———‘s hair. They pinched it and looked at it in all sorts of ways, took it down, and were not easy till they had satisfied themselves that it was natural, and even then they kept examining it and feeling it in their fingers every few minutes until we came away.”
I remark by way of explanation that the lady referred to was English, and her hair was of the pure blonde type. It was of a golden hue, rich and glossy, and was no doubt the first of its kind that these Arab women had ever seen. I do not wonder that their curiosity was aroused.
“Before we knew what they were about, they had our heads in their laps and were staining our eyelids; they wanted to stain our finger-nails and tattoo our chins, but we declined. Several times they renewed the request, but we thought it was enough to have our eyelids stained in this way. They had their hair loose, with the exception of bands around their heads; the young girl had a rich head-dress, with a great many pieces of gold attached to it, and her hair was of a jet black. They served us pipes and coffee, and were much surprised that we didn’t smoke. We drank the coffee, and they made us take a few whiffs from the narghileh, and were much amused when Mrs. ————— swallowed some of the smoke and began to cough.
“We staid there about half an hour. When we came away they embraced us, but did not kiss us, and they didn’t let us off until they had taken another pinch at Mrs. —————‘s hair. They followed us to the door and intimated by signs that they would like to go to see us on the boat.”
The next evening a party went to dine a l’Arabe at the Engglish consulate, but as a part of them were masculine they were not admitted to the harem. The party was seated on the carpet, and the table was about two feet high, just high enough to be comfortably reached from the seat on the floor. Hands were washed before and after the meal, and sometimes between the courses, the water being brought by a servant and poured upon the hands after the Eastern manner.
There were about twenty courses in all,—soup, meats, and pates of various kinds,—and all were eaten with the hands except the soup, for which spoons were supplied. The consul presided at the table, and his sons supervised the service, which was quite rapid. The bones were piled on the table in front of each guest, and were afterward removed. Some of the viands were so hot that one or two of the guests found their hands somewhat burned. There was an abundant supply, enough for a party four times as large, and the cooking was said to be very good. The most prominent article was a turkey which was brought on whole, and from which each person tore off what he wanted. There were no knives or forks at the table, and some of the visitors made rather awkward work getting along without them.
All ate from the same soup-dish without hesitation, and luckily they did not have time to continue at it long. The etiquette was to take only a few mouthfulls of each dish, and whether good or bad, the dishes were not allowed to stay. Roasts, entrees, pâtés, pilaufs, succeeded each other rapidly, and before the party was aware that the end had come, the host gave the signal by rising and the table was removed.
After the disappearance of the festive board, there was an Oriental dance. Four gliawazee with their musicians were brought into the parlor, and the dance began at once. Pipes and coffee had been served the instant the table disappeared, and the party took its position on the divans where they could look on with complaisance.
The Orientals understand dancing in its true sense, and cannot comprehend why we should caper through a waltz or a cotillion, when we can hire somebody to do it for us.
“Why don’t you make your servants do this?” was the wondering inquiry of a Chinese official, when invited to a ball given by some of the English residents of Hong Kong.
The day at length arrived for our departure from Thebes, and as the boat steamed away from the landing the crowd on shore sung a farewell chorus, the consuls fired guns and pistols, and the whole town in fact seemed bent on making as much noise as possible.
The market for antiquities declined rapidly before our departure, and articles were offered at less than half the figures that ruled on the day of our arrival.
We tied up as usual during the night, and next morning about breakfast time we were at Esneh, a town of six or seven thousand inhabitants and containing a temple of which only a small portion has been cleared out. The remainder is quite covered by the houses of the modern town, and is thought to be quite extensive. The portico, the only portion visible, is reached by a stairway which we descended to the floor. The columns are well preserved but the sculptures are injured somewhat, and in places are hardly legible.
Most of the features of the gods are broken, and this is the case in a large number of the temples of Upper Egypt. The injury is attributed to the Persians, but a large portion of it is due to the early Christians, who sought in their religious zeal to destroy the evidences of pagan worship. In some temples they plastered over the sculptures, and thus unintentionally preserved them. The plaster has been removed in modern times, and the sculptures are found in excellent condition.
Esneh is famous, like Keneh, for its dancing girls, and there is quite a colony of them at the southern side of the town. We visited their quarter in the evening, and were beset by the young ladies with appeals for “backsheesh” and invitations to visit their households and witness a dance.
There are several cafés on the bank just above the river, and we found quite a collection of Arabs in them. They were smoking their pipes, sipping coffee, and singing and looking very dignified and disinclined to move. The Arab song may be best described as a monotonous chant, consisting of about four measures and a chorus like a prolonged “ah-ah”. They sing everywhere, but more especially when at work together. Men engaged in rowing or pulling a boat are constantly singing; one sings the measure and the whole join in the chorus. The song may be on any subject, like popular airs everywhere, and frequently are extemporized by the singers. I was much struck with their resemblance to the songs of the negro deck hands on the Mississippi steamers, and also to those of the Canadian voyageurs on the St. Lawrence and its tributary rivers. The boatmen of the Volga and the Dwina have also similar songs while rowing or pulling their craft.
One of the prettiest things I saw at Esneh was, not a girl, but a donkey. He was a beauty, and I would have given more for his photograph than for that of any human being I saw there. His color was white, but according to the Arab custom his hair was closely shaven. He was plump, round, and large; his ears were perfectly erect, and his trappings were rich and evidently selected with taste. He belonged to the governor, who was pleased at the admiration bestowed upon his property, and stood approvingly by while one of the artists of our party took a sketch of the animal. I ventured to ask how much such a donkey would be worth.
“I paid twenty pounds for him,” replied the governor, “when he was a year old. I have since refused a hundred pounds, and I should refuse two hundred if anybody should offer it.”
Above Esneh there are several places containing the ruins of temples, of which the most interesting is that of Edfou. Only since 1864 has it been visible; up to that time it was covered by rubbish and the houses of the modern village so that only the propylon tombs were visible.