Kitabı oku: «Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 710», sayfa 3

THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

The past lends to Egypt a charm more entrancing than its cloudless skies and delicious climate. Go where you will, antiquity meets you at every turn. Around you lie the ruins of cities whose very names have been obliterated in the silent march of the ages. Before you flows the sacred river upon whose waves floated centuries ago the little ark of the outcast Hebrew infant, and the golden barge of the gorgeous daughter of the Ptolemies. Time was when this old Nile was the highway down which many successive nations rushed to conquest: for the Ethiopian, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Roman, and the Saracen have all lorded it in turn in this ancient realm of the Pharaohs. Now vexed no longer with the fleets of rival monarchs, the mighty river rocks with slumberous swell the lotus lilies on its tranquil breast; and on its lonely banks, which have rung so often in days gone by to the shrill pæans of triumph, the palms in the sultry noontide throw their long shadows athwart ruined temples and colossal statues, grand in execution and faultless in detail, which reveal in every outline the perfection to which the arts of architecture and sculpture were carried in this their earliest cradle. The soil is strewed with fragments of broken columns and defaced colossi. Buried beneath the drifting sand of the Desert lie the glorious and yet grotesque masterpieces of the Egyptian chisel. Serene, grave, majestic, inundated with a flood of harmonious light, the calm features of the once inscrutable Sphinx look down upon us, as many centuries ago they looked down in their grand repose upon the wondering Father of History. Time has pressed lightly on these Titanic temples and vast tomb palaces, but from their shadowy portals the worshippers have gone for ever. Desolate and state-fallen, they open now only to admit the curious stranger.

In A Thousand Miles up the Nile, by Miss Edwards, we have a lively gossiping description of the Egypt of to-day with its wasted temples and ruined palaces. Cairo – where Miss Edwards tells us she arrived in the end of November 1873, with a party of friends in pursuit of dry weather – is a picturesque city. Seen from a distance embowered in gardens of the richest green, it looks like a forest of minarets and domes intermingled with palm-trees and acacia groves. The streets, as is always the case in eastern cities, are narrow and intricate; but their gloom is enlivened by a series of gorgeous bazaars, where the little pigeon-holes of shops are bright with many-hued carpets, and gay with delicately tinted silks, and glittering tissues of gold and silver. Here you can buy precious stones of varied value, and bracelets and collars of intricate and complex designs, such as were the fashion thousands of years ago at the court of the Pharaohs; or invest, if you choose, in a variety of warlike weapons, inlaid with gold and silver, and damascened with exquisite arabesque patterns.

The busy crowd passing and repassing the while, presents to the stranger a series of intensely interesting tableaux vivants. There, with ample turban and flowing beard and long robes of striped silk, stalks the stately Turk, followed by a scantily clad Fellahin. Next comes some Light of the Harem, some Fatima or Emineh, mounted on a carefully painted donkey led by an armed slave. On the street this fair enchantress is but a shroud-like mass of drapery, through which the curious gazer can sometimes discern the outline of a delicately oval face and the flash of a black liquid eye. Behind her, in thin clinging robes of dark but vivid blue, with graceful form and carelessly veiled melancholy face, a Niobe in bronze, glides an Abyssinian slave-girl. By her side a swarthy Bedouin sheik reins in an Arab steed, whose prancings and curvetings somewhat disturb the gravity of the tiny donkey upon which that Englishman is mounted; while over all streams the sunshine of an Egyptian noon, flooding with light the unfamiliar draperies, the strange Saracenic architecture, and the varying features and costumes of each commingling race.

While conducting the important operation of bargaining for a dahabeeyah (a Nile-boat), Miss Edwards and her party went to interview the Great Pyramid. She had fancied that the Pyramids looked small and unimpressive when she first caught a glimpse of them from the railway carriage; but once at the base of this gigantic tomb, she realised, with a sense of awe and wonder, how mighty it was. As she lingered, loath to leave the scene, the sun set in crimson glory behind the sands of the Libyan Desert, and the shadow flung by this immense mass of masonry stretched full three-quarters of a mile over the plain below. 'It was,' she says, 'with a thrill of something like awe that I remembered that this self-same shadow had gone on registering not only the height of the most stupendous gnomon ever set up by human hands, but the slow passage, day by day, of more than sixty centuries of the world's history.'

Before starting up the Nile, Miss Edwards witnessed two of the characteristic sights of Cairo – a performance of howling dervishes, and the departure of a caravan of pilgrims for Mecca. She found the convent of the howling dervishes situated in a picturesque nook beyond the walls. The gateway and courtyard beyond were shaded by a great sycamore tree, through whose branches the glowing sunshine broke in vivid flecks and bars of gold. About seventy dervishes were present; and with the aid of eight musicians, and to the chant of 'Allah! Allah!' they danced round in a circle until they had worked themselves up into a state of convulsive frenzy. Gradually their dance became a series of mad leaps, performed with incredible rapidity, their chant swelled into a hoarse scream, and at last one of the devotees fell writhing and shrieking to the ground. This ended the first performance; and the English ladies did not wait for a second.

Having made choice of a dahabeeyah yclept the Philæ, Miss Edwards and her party started with a fair breeze for their voyage up the Nile. This once sacred historic river is, as every one knows, all in all to the Egyptian. His harvests depend upon its beneficent inundations, its waves form his highway to the sea, he eats of its fish, he drinks of its waters, and finds them still, as his ancestors found them of old, delicious as the nectar of the gods. Egypt, baked and shrivelled by the glowing sun into one immense brick, annually sinks beneath the waters of the life-giving river, and emerges from the flood, fresh, radiant, shining, like an emerald, flower-crowned like Ceres of old, and holding in her full hands an ample promise of fruit and sheaf. A Nile voyage in favourable weather is about the pleasantest of all pleasant things. The large sails of the dahabeeyah swell out to the breeze like the wide snowy wings of a sea-bird, and fleet as that bird, she cleaves her way past water-palaces and suburban gardens. The minarets and domes of Cairo are left behind; the Pyramids, towering over the groves of palm, stand clearly out against the cloudless sky; and the distant ridges of the Arabian hills glow with softened shades of tawny purple. As evening falls, every charm of the landscape is subdued into a more tender repose; the night-breeze balmy and cool sweeps up the river; darkness follows, and your boat is moored for the night at Bedreshayn.

Morning on the Nile is inexpressibly fresh and beautiful. At the first faint streak of dawn the light mist clears away, and Aurora spreads for the sun a rosy chariot of clouds, into which he steps at once, flushing the stately palm-groves, and the gleaming river, and the picturesque water-wheels, and the swarthy crew, with a flood of golden radiance. There was, however, little time for sentimental feeling, our author's whole attention being claimed by a horrible clamour which arose outside, caused by the arrival of a regiment of donkeys attended by a phalanx of men and boys.

Mounted upon eight of these asinine martyrs, Miss Edwards and her party proceeded to Sakkarah and Memphis, riding through a country which would have been monotonous but for the subtle beauty of its colouring. Tender tints of rose, and warm tones of russet gold, pale opalescent blues and grays and dusky purples, were all blended by Nature's cunning brush, shading into the nearer green of the dusky palm forests, until they formed one inimitable whole. Sakkarah is a vast necropolis, whose more distinguished tombs are pyramids. The soil around is full of fragments of broken pottery, mummy gods, bones, shreds of linen, and lumps of a strange brown substance like dried sponge. Tread lightly, O Northern stranger! around you are the mighty dead; that brown spongy mass was once warm human flesh, instinct with power and passion; that skull perchance once held the scheming brain of a Pharaoh, who reared for himself one of these vast sepulchres, little dreaming of this all too ignoble resurrection. Of Memphis, the ancient city of the Egyptian kings, only a few mounds remain embowered in vast palm-forests, through whose fan-like foliage the brilliant sunshine falls aslant upon a muddy pool, where, face downwards, lies the far-famed Colossus of Rameses the Great, which, like Cleopatra's Needle, belongs to the British nation. This, with a few battered sphinxes, is all that is left of one of the earliest cities of the world.

On their way to Minieh, a Moslem saint of peculiar sanctity, yclept holy St Cotton, swam out to them, and having hallowed by a touch the tiller-ropes and yards of the Philæ, dropped into the water again, and swam back to the shore. It happened to be market-day when they arrived at Minieh, and having stores to buy, they proceeded to it, and found almost everything exceedingly cheap. How it would rejoice the heart of a thrifty housewife here at home to be able to buy a hundred eggs for fourteenpence, or a couple of chickens for tenpence, not to speak of fine geese at two shillings a head! Large and very good turkeys may be bought for three-and-sixpence, a lamb for seven shillings, and a sheep for sixteen shillings or a pound, fruit and vegetables being proportionably moderate.

In Egypt, little children have very hard lines of it. It makes one's heart ache to read of the disease and suffering induced by the barbarous ignorance of their parents. Miss Edwards says: 'To brush away the flies that beset the eyes of young children is impious; hence ophthalmia and various kinds of blindness. I have seen infants lying in their mother's arms with six or eight flies in each eye; I have seen the little helpless hands put down reprovingly if they approached the seat of annoyance. I have seen children of four or five years old with the surface of one or both eyes eaten away, and others with a large fleshy lump growing out where the pupil had been destroyed.'

As a consequence of this horrible cruelty three children out of every five die in Egypt; and in certain districts every twentieth person is either wholly or partially blind.

On Christmas-day Miss Edwards entertained some friends, who were in a dahabeeyah behind them, to dinner. The guests consisted of a bride and bridegroom and a painter. The scene around their floating dining-room was lovely; the placid river flowed tranquilly through broad green savannahs, and breezes redolent of perfume fanned the lotus lilies beneath their prow. It required all the conventional sentiment which attaches to a blazing plum-pudding to convince them that it was really Christmas.

At Siout, the capital of Middle Egypt, they inspected the celebrated Stabl d'Antar. It is a splendid tomb temple hewn out of the rock. The roofs of its lofty chambers are painted in fresh and vivid colours, and the walls are covered with bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics.

En route to Denderah, at a part of the river where the banks were flat and bare, they saw on the western shore what seemed to be a large grizzled ape perched upon a dust-heap, and learned with intense surprise that it was Sheik Seleem, a sort of Moslem St Simon Stylites. There he sat in the gathering night, as he had sat for fifty years from darkness to dawn, and from dawn to darkness, amid inconceivable filth and squalor, not even moving to feed himself. The sailors shouted to him as they passed, loudly imploring his blessing; but he made no sign of response. Motionless as a huge frog, he squatted on his dust-throne, inflated with spiritual pride or madness, or both.

About ten miles below Denderah thousands of Fellahin were at enforced work on the embankment of a new canal. These canals are the life of Egypt; by them the supply of the precious water is regulated and its outlay economised. Without canals and the ever-recurring water-wheels, the fresh green beauty of the river-plains would soon disappear, and famine, gaunt and hollow-eyed, stalk upon the scene, with disease and death in its train.

At Denderah, among other interesting remains, they found a splendid temple in an almost perfect condition, with a finely executed bas-relief of Cleopatra. This queen of beauty, whose slaves were the masters of the world, is fair enough in this mask of stone to recall to Miss Edwards something of that loveliness which conquered Cæsar. 'Mannerism apart,' she says, 'the face wants for neither individuality nor beauty. Cover the mouth, and you have an almost faultless profile. The chin and throat are also quite lovely; while the whole face, suggestive of cruelty, subtlety, and voluptuousness, carries with it an indefinable expression, not only of portraiture but of likeness.'

On the third day after leaving Denderah, they saw in the faint light of the early morning the gigantic propylons of Karnak towering vast and gray against the horizon. The warm flush of the dawn bathed with rosy light the range of precipitous hills, which are honeycombed with the tombs of the kings, and kissed into tender beauty the time-worn columns of Luxor, the ancient Woolwich of the Pharaohs. At Karnak, the ruins are stupendous; the eye loses itself in a waste of giant propylons, columns towering to the clouds, colossal figures in black granite, partially buried in the sand; and a little apart, in solitary grandeur, an immense obelisk, seventy-five feet high, covered with hieroglyphics and bas-reliefs, depicting scenes in the life of Rameses the Great. In the temple at Karnak, the great hall of pillars, roofless and vast, presents to the eye of the curious gazer forests of colonnades, aisles of pillars, huge pylons, towering like giants to the sky, half-hiding, half-revealing weird fantastic bas-reliefs of the gods, who glare, superb in ruin, over their desolated shrines. The sunlight streaming through the open portal shines on avenues of sphinxes, battered colossi, vast lengths of splendid bas-reliefs, glowing with a depth and freshness of colour which Time has had no power to fade; labyrinths of headless statues, prostrate obelisks, shattered images, all in such numbers that they produce a bewildering effect upon the mind.

At Esneh, their next halting-place, there was also a very beautiful temple, dedicated to Kneph. Assouan and Elephantiné (the Isle of Flowers) came next. At Assouan, Egypt proper ceases, and Nubia begins. Here the traveller enters upon the region of the Cataracts, a succession of rapids extending almost all the way to Philæ. The Nile at this point is singularly picturesque. First narrowed between banks of dark red cliffs, it suddenly expands almost to the breadth of a lake, and presents a broad expanse bristling with rocks and covered with innumerable islets, round which the water rushes in swirling eddies of foam. The navigation among these islets is difficult and dangerous; the boat half buried in spray, struggles gallantly forward, making a succession of rapid rushes, as if she were about to dive headlong over the fall; but it is too much for her; she recoils, quivers, turns round, and seems to be driving right upon a huge mass of black granite, when the Sheik of the Cataracts comes to her aid. This tutelary genius of the Nile dahabeeyahs has few of the external attributes of a hero. He is a little fat ugly man; but what of that? he knows his work, and can do it. A moment more, and the dahabeeyah and its inmates will be ingulfed in the foaming abyss; but before that moment comes, he springs up, plunges into the torrent, pushes off the boat by sheer force of muscle; and then he and his tawny assistants drag her up the rapid.

It is a lengthy operation; and while it was in progress, Miss Edwards and her party made a pilgrimage to Philæ. Beautiful Philæ, the fabled tomb of Osiris, the Holy Island whose very soil was sacred, still preserves almost uninjured the beautiful temples and gorgeous tomb-palaces which were the master-pieces of the later style of Egyptian art. The vastness, the gigantic proportions of Thebes and Karnak, are not aimed at here; on the contrary, there is an inimitable grace, an airy lightness about cloister and colonnade, which are half Greek. And what Art has so nobly accomplished, Nature has not been slow to assist. The cloudless sky, the graceful palms, the majestic carob trees, enwrap with greenness and beauty all the wealth of colouring, of sculpture, and of architecture which the past has bequeathed to this spot, once so hallowed, now so lonely. Lingering tenderly reminiscent on the pearly strand of this voluptuous Egyptian Iona, one half expects to see the white-robed priests of Isis wind again in long procession out of the shadow into the sunshine, solemn and stern, vainly questioning of the forgotten ages – What meaneth this?

Leaving Philæ, ever lessening in the distance, the travellers glide away into Nubia, and are quickly conscious of a perceptible change, first in the river scenery, which becomes wilder and more grand, and then in the character of the inhabitants, who become more savage, and at the same time more truthful and honest. The climate becomes warmer, and with the accession of heat, turbans disappear, and the only headgear is that furnished by Nature, consisting of profuse thickly matted hair, plentifully anointed with castor-oil, a species of pomade which frizzling in a tropical sun makes a Nubian beau or belle an exceedingly savoury individual. Very little clothing is worn; the young of both sexes are content with a slight covering round the waist, and the matrons with a single long loose garment of blue. The Nubian women are often beautiful, with lustrous gentle eyes, and grand majestic figures like Junos in bronze. If their wardrobes are slender, their jewel caskets seem well supplied, for they almost invariably wear a profusion of gold and silver ornaments.