03.22. In Egypt - The Pyramids

Chapter 22 In Egypt – The Pyramids. The Valley of the Nile -- Historic Egypt -- The Donkey-Boy -- Oriental Scenes and Attitudes -- The Pyramids -- The Desert of Sahara -- Occurrences on the Summit of Cheops -- The Sphinx -- A Cruel Scene Interrupted Cairo, with a population of four hundred thousand souls, is about one hundred miles up the river Nile. The desert that stretches away east to Palestine touches it on one side while the yellow lip of the Great Desert is drawn back to the west fully eight miles. These two deserts are remarkable for their bluffs. They do not melt away into the shore or plain line of the Nile valley, but draw themselves up, as if saying, in conscious majesty, "I am the wild, unconfined Desert that laughs defiance at all the labors and implements of man to change and bring me into subjection."

There was a time, doubtless when these two ghastly lips met, and there was nothing but death and sterility over this spot. But God trained the waters from the mountains, and brought them in a winding course until the channel was made, and a valley was formed to support a mighty nation, and, indeed, become the granary of distant peoples. He also did this to show, even nature, how He can bring life out death, and to reveal to us in figure how, out of earthly Saharas, He will cause a paradise yet to bloom. The valley varies in width. It is so fertile that I think it can grow anything and everything. As some one wrote, "Tickle it with a hoe and it smiles with a harvest."

Some one says that Cairo is one of the most favorable points for studying Oriental life. I suppose this is so, because almost every nationality is here represented. Egyptians, Arabians, Turks, Greeks Nubians flow together on the streets in one common throng, but easily discerned by their different costumes, as well as strongly-marked faces. "Dwellers from every nation under heaven" are here, we say scripturally, and then cry out in heart for the large upper room and the descending Holy Ghost.

I am duly appreciative of my historic surroundings. This is the land of puzzling dynasties, and a chronology that goes back farther than Adam, according to the wild figuring of some people.

Here flourished the Ptolemies, and the fair descendant of their family, Cleopatra. Here Caesar fought and swam, and like to have drowned. Here Mark Antony made another celebrated speech that he really did not make. Certainly there never was a man whose fame as an orator was as cheaply made as that of Antony. Speakers of today, by revising and revamping printed proof-sheets of their orations, make themselves great orators: but Antony’s great speech had not been delivered until he had been dead fifteen hundred years; and the other speech at death appears nearly two thousand years after in poetical form, beginning, "I am dying, Egypt, dying." Now I call attention to the absurdity of addressing a female after this manner because she happens to live on the Nile.

What would be thought of man saying in death to an English woman whom he loved, "I am dying, Great Britain, dying"? Certainly she would be justified in saying, "Farewell, America." How deeply affecting all this would be! The Pyramids are eight miles west of Cairo. A beautiful avenue of acacia trees line the road the entire way, with the exception of one or two short spaces. I went out with a dragoman, two donkeys and a donkey-boy. The donkey is the gondola of Cairo and the donkey-boy is the gondolier. The lad carries a rod about four feet in length, by which he steers the living craft, and also generates steam.

It was a sight worth seeing to watch that donkey-boy go in a swinging trot for miles. With his arms slightly bent and his form inclined forward, he moves over the ground like a bird in its skimming flight. I was troubled about him, and offered to relieve him in various ways, but his reply was an additional thwack upon the animal and an increased gait, which spoke louder than words.

About sunrise I left Cairo in the distance, with Hassan, my dragoman, and Mustapha, the donkey-boy, while the donkeys may doubtless have flourished under the names of Mohammed and Ali. I never saw such a country for high-sounding names as the East. As we entered the avenue of acacia trees, and for miles beyond, I beheld a scene equal to any pictured in the "Arabian Nights." At this early hour people were streaming into the city. There were men in white, red, and black turbans; and in white, black, blue, and brown robes. There were women in blue and black, some veiled to the eyes, and some veiled all over, and some few not veiled at all. There were strings of donkeys, and lines of camels, some loaded, some ridden, and some driven. Hundreds of people were scattered along the road under the trees, where they evidently keep house. Turkish soldiers went by rapidly on horses, and donkey-boys, clothed in a long, blue garment and white turban, kept pace with the galloping animals by their sides. It was a scene animated, variegated, and deeply interesting in its Oriental character throughout.

It was along this road that I was more impressed than ever with the grace and dignity of Oriental attitudes. I never saw any but what were striking. A group of men looked like an assembly of patriarchs; when two met it seemed that Abraham and Melchisedek had come together; when one sat alone by the wayside, it was Eli thinking of the ark of God, or Jacob waiting to bless his sons. When I saw one, with white robe and red turban, sitting on a camel or donkey, it seemed that he ruled Egypt from the mouth of the Nile to the far limits of Nubia. I saw veiled women with waterpots on their heads, and with white or olive-tinted arms revealed in their upward position, and it was the picture of grace. I saw other females clothed and veiled in black, so that only the dark eyes could be seen, sitting alone under a spreading tree by the wayside; and a picture was immediately beheld that had charmed me long before and as vividly painted in the word of God. The meditative, lonely, and even forsaken attitudes, brought most powerfully to my mind four women mentioned in the Bible -- three in the Old and one in the New Testament.

There is a repose of manner and a dignity about the men of the East that is rarely seen in the Western Hemisphere. You never see an Oriental tilt back his chair on two legs, or sit on three at once, as does the American. Mr. Dickens says he saw one of our countrymen occupy five chairs at the same time; he sat in one, his feet resting in two others, and the backs of two others under his armpits. We see nothing of this kind in the East. A walk through the bazaars will convince the skeptical here. The very manner of address or salutation, as the hand is raised first to the head and then laid upon the heart, is impressive. But here we are at the Pyramids. Although I had read much of these monster masses of stone, I was surprised a number of times before I left them. First, at their rough and jagged appearance, produced by the removal of the outer casing. Next, I was surprised at the steepness of the ascent. So sharp is the angle from base to summit, that to look down when half-way up, is anything but pleasant. Still another unexpected experience was that I had to rest five times before reaching the top, although I had two men assisting me. But the view repays one for all the weariness undergone. The winding Nile; the fertile valley here and there covered with silver belts and sheets of the overflowing river; the city of Cairo on the horizon in the east, and the pyramids of Memphis on the horizon in the north; while westward stretched forth the vast expanse of the Desert of Sahara. This desert rises suddenly from the valley of the Nile in a bluff forty or fifty feet high, and then spreads out as far as the eye can see as a vast, yellow field fall of slopes and hillocks. The Nile valley reaches out its emerald fingers as if timidly to touch it, but the desert refuses to be tamed. Like a great, tawny monster, it stretches itself unto its full height of fifty feet, looks out of its yellow eyes over the plain, and spying a traveler or caravan, springs with a sudden bound and roar upon them, shakes over them its brown mane, strangles them in its embrace, and then leaves their bones to bleach in the sun as a silent evidence of its power. But aside from this figure into which I have been betrayed, what a benefactor it really is to Europe. Men talk of turning the Mediterranean Sea into it, and making it a great inland ocean. Nothing would be more disastrous, I am confident. The Great African desert is the furnace of the continent that lies to its north. The ripening fruit, the mellowing grain, and comparative mildness of winter in Europe depends on the heat generated or reflected by this desert, and then spread or fanned northward by the winds that blow in that direction. This warm, desert air touches the frozen fields of snow on the mountain side and turns them into brooks and fountains; breathes upon the hard fruits of the land until they blush under its whispers and grow tender under its caresses; and, besides, making the more northern latitudes of Europe tolerable for human habitation; gives to Spain and Italy, in especial, the rich landscapes, the luscious fruits, the beautiful skies, and the soft and delightful climate for which they are famous. Poet and statesman, lover of beauty and political economist alike say let the Great Desert remain as it is, uncovered by the waves of the Mediterranean.

Looking about me after arriving at the top of the pyramid, I found that I had an Arabian escort to the number of five. I had only bargained for two, but in midsummer travelers are few, and the pyramid vultures swooped down on the unexpected carcass. Before leaving the place I had ten or twelve about me. Consider my situation. Here I was, four hundred and seventy feet high in the air, standing upon a monument over four thousand years old, trying to give myself up to historic and moral reflections, and utterly unable so to do because of a chattering crowd of Mohammedans about me. Each one was intent and bent on doing me some service, giving me some piece of information, holding an umbrella over my head, offering me a drink of water from an earthen jug, in order to reap a backshish from my hand.

"Yonder," I would say to myself, "is Heliopolis, where Moses was trained in all the wisdom --" when suddenly a swarthy face would be thrust before mine, with some unintelligible jargon, half English and half Arabic. Again I rallied. "Doubtless," I said, "Joseph visited this place --" when a dark hand would thrust before my eyes some battered, ancient coin, with request to buy.

I had fully intended to have some fine moral cogitations on the pyramid, shading off into history -- the great battle of Napoleon, etc. -- but it was useless to try. So I finally turned to consider my crowd of attendants, and see what I was to learn from them. One was beseeching me to let him run down the side of the great pyramid and up the other in so many minutes. That he did it for Mark Twain -- that all Americans got him to do it. And he was, in a sense, chafing the bit to be off for me. I stood firm for ten minutes, and finally, for the sake of peace, and in order to get rid of the man, whose life is made up indeed of "ups and downs," I bade him be off, but to go slow stealing up the rocks. Another one of my voluntary attendants came near to me and began, in a most discordant voice, to sing the first verse of "Yankee Doodle." Upon his finishing it I made no remark, whereupon he sung it over, and as I still maintained a strict silence he said that some Americans liked "Yankee Doodle" and some did not. I told him I was among the last named number. That I had for it neither love nor admiration. One gun sent off and another one spiked! A third turned upon me with the request not to fail to give them backshish, that the Sheik at the foot of the pyramid got all the money, and they, the guides, did all the work. This third man was a kind of "medicine man," and called himself the "Doctor." In coming up and going down he would say to the other guide, who was younger and stronger, "Don’t get ahead of the Doctor." The longer I was with this interesting individual the firmer I was persuaded that "to get ahead of the Doctor" was an impossible thing. He informed me on the pyramid that he had two wives, one old and one young. I asked him which he liked best, and he replied, very promptly, the young one. But he added that he had some trouble with them, that not infrequently they quarreled and fought. "What do you do with them at such times," I asked. "I whip them," he replied. Looking him steadily in the eye, I said, "Who whips you?" Here straightway, of the top of Cheops, the great pyramid, an observer could have noticed a profound Mohammedan silence and a calm Christian triumph.

I descended from my airy perch to hear Hassan, the dragoman, yelling and hallooing, in the shadow of these great stone antiquities and mysteries, for Mustapha, the donkey-boy, as irreverently as a man would call a colored boy in a cornfield. A hot, fatiguing time was spent in reaching the king’s chamber, which occupies the very center of the pyramid, measured up or down or from any side. The sight beheld, after the tramp, was an imposing sarcophagus in which there was nothing; a spectacle seen even until this day in America and elsewhere. Moreover, the result of that toil in the steep, dark galleries was strikingly like the reward given by the world to those who toil after its honors -- a rich coffin, and then darkness, emptiness, loneliness, and by and by, forgetfulness. Then there was an echo. The guide shouted, and the distant passages and tomb-chambers caught it up. I could hear the sound reverberating in remote galleries, and after awhile all was still. Yes there was an echo and them came silence. So is it still in life.

I looked upon the Sphinx. A woman’s head and a lion’s body makes a sphinx in Africa, but a lion’s head and a woman’s body will make a sphinx anywhere. I rode all around it, climbed on one of its huge paws, stood near and far off, and looked into the solemn eyes about which I had read so much. Yes; it is solemnly impressive. How much of this effect is due to the centuries that fall like shadowy veils upon it, or how much is due to the visible embodiment of that idea of repose that pervades all Egyptian sculpture I cannot tell. I had always supposed from letters of travel that the face of the Sphinx was turned toward the great desert, and that its stony eyes ever rested upon that great expanse; but it is just the contrary. The back is toward the desert, the face fronts the east, and gazes upon the valley of the Nile, and the remoter line of the Desert of Shur that stretches away to Palestine. In the temple of the Sphinx near by I had a piece of alabaster chipped off a great column as a paper-weight for one of our bishops. It is an appropriate gift, for if anybody needs to appear solemn and mysterious, and do a great deal of steady looking, and be silent at the same time (I won’t say for four thousand years), that person is a Bishop.

I little thought in starting out on my morning trip that I would be instrumental in stopping two Mohammedan fights before I returned to Cairo, but so it proved. The first was in the shadow of the pyramids. The second was on the acclaimed avenue to Cairo. The cries of a woman under terrific blows from a cudgel by a man made me look up, and demanded prompt action. Calling on my dragoman to do what he could to stop the brutality, we charged on our donkeys right into the crowd. It was "the Charge of the Light Brigade." The dragoman harangued in Arabic, and I protested in Anglo Saxon; and with one or two natives, stopped the sickening spectacle. It seemed that the woman’s offense was that she had not cleaned away the dust sufficiently under the trees where they lived. The normal state of the dust was four inches, and she had left about an inch in depth unremoved, whereupon the man beat her for untidy housekeeping. Here was a nabob indeed, an exquisite of the Nile, whose refined nature and cultivated habits rebelled when dust reached the depth or height of one inch. The male nature could stand no more, so he called on the female nature to suffer. A number of natives witnessed the scene in perfect indifference; some did not even look up to see what was going on. My own sudden arrival and irruption [forcible entrance] produced far more curiosity and interest. That surrounding unconcern spoke volumes: it showed that they were accustomed to such scenes. I called the woman to me. O how she sobbed! Great welts ran over her hands and arms where the brute had struck her. The agony of her face I shall never forget, as she wailed out in language I could not understand. But I pitied her, and she understood that. I took her brown hand in mine, and, looking up, pointed her to heaven. I meant that to God she must look now, and that He, after awhile, would give her deliverance and rest. I then laid some money in her hand and rode off, getting from the man a scowl that was like a storm-cloud at midnight.

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