ts
oe a
rd
10:
ie hy
Feslen) OR Se Rite Mi
Lalas ‘acy
SE ‘
2% val
pi Heb:
9)
hs
RR Aenea hoa sa BP ats)
1e ifr 2: UR i
BH ANA ERNE VES
PG eee AT ebeaded ad oat
, rae eee
LIFE AND WORK
AT THE GREAT PYRAMID.
VOL, i:
. Y
EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLE,
FOR :
bord EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, = LONDON . . : E.
<
+... HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. _
CAMBRIDGE. . -, . = .,- MACMILLAN AND CO. PR MRRE So yhy es
- . M‘GLASHAN AND GILL, @LAscow. . . «JAMES MACLEHOSR,
4
ihn ag RL A ley»
“as pains ieeale
Vol. 1. Ba i
The Cotter, w the Kings Chamber,
A.D. 1865.
Plan looking from above’, the’ shading wv proportion’ to the deviation’ trom a horizontal plane.
Scale’ of British’ Inches .
W.H.MS Farlane, lath? Edint
LIFE AND WORK
AT THE GREAT PYRAMID
DURING THE MONTHS OF JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH, AND APRIL, A.D. 1865;
WITH
A DISCUSSION OF THE FACTS ASCERTAINED.
BY C. PIAZZI SMYTH, F.R.SS.L.& E.
F.R.A.S., F.R.S.8S.A. 5 HON, M. INST. ENGIN. SC., P.S. ED., AND R,A.A.S. MUNICH AND PALERMO; PROFESSOR OF PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, AND ASTRONOMER-ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND.
IN THREE VOLUMES;
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ON STONE AND WOOD.
ViOD.T,
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 1867.
TO THE MEMORY OF
PROFESSOR JOHN GREAVES, IN THE YEAR 1638,
AND COLONEL HOWARD VYSE,
IN 1837,
Alike distinguished in their respective epochs, for honourable labours and faithful research at the Pyramids of Jeezch ;
AND MORE PARTICULARLY
TO THAT OF
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, REPUBLICAN GENERAL IN 1798,
Who earnestly sought to moderate the rigours of war upon the ancient
land of Egypt, by causing his army to become most efficient means for introducing there, step by step in tts victorious progress, the ele- vating influences of science, and amenities of literary learning ;—on
a scale so vast, and with an intelligence so many-sided, as not only to
hawe far surpassed all the wealthiest Kings and Princes of the earth, either of earlier or later times,—but to have been crowned with discoveries
wm the Great Pyramid, both possessing crucial importance for that
primeval monument’s metrological theory, and bringing to clearer light
things long since dimly alluded to in Holy Writ:—this record of some
further, though only private and individual, work performed on that foundation, is dedicated by
C. PIAZZI SMYTH.
ed
ae ca
¥ g ie
he
a
PREFACE.
THE positive duty of prosecuting the subject of the Great Pyramid, had been earnestly as well as formally urged upon me by the late John Taylor,’ during the last few months of his useful and laborious life ; so that when he peacefully departed soon after, or in July 1864,—I suddenly found my- self not altogether free from the pressing of a very serious responsibility.
Though but ill prepared for the task, and cer- tainly not having sought it, I yet resolved from that moment to contribute whatever I could to the cause ; and with this view lost no time in com- mencing to take a step, which, of all others, seemed just then to be the most necessary towards enabling the current of general investigation to flow steadily on. That step was, to try to add something prac-
1 Author of The Great Pyramid: Why was it built, and who built it? 8vo. 2d edition. Longman & Co. London, 1864.
Vili PREFACE.
tical to the best of Mr. Taylor’s literary researches ; or, in other words, to visit the ancient Pyramid where it stands, and has stood for so many thousands of years ; and personally remeasure those parts of it, concerning which all modern writers vary so much in their observations and statements, as to prevent every theory alike,—whether John Taylor’s or any other man’s——from being either firmly founded, or satisfactorily refuted upon them. Pondering much on the last words of the eminent deceased, and over-estimating, perhaps, the public appreciation of the objects aimed at,—I commenced their practical pursuit, in a frame of mind, unfor- tunately too hopeful, that the perfect and final time for the complete unrolling of the primeval world’s greatest wonder, had at last arrived. But if I erred therein,—the mishaps, oppositions, ruin- ous expenses, and troubles of every kind which were experienced before getting further than Cairo, both fully disabused and largely punished me. Yet after I had then and there given up in grief those first fair hopes, and laid it to my heart merely to do with my own hands whatever was directly within my-calling (though, too, all my own means and powers might appear ever so unequal to the task required), and determined not to presume to urge, or expect to push, the development of the Great
PREFACE. 1x
Pyramid subject in its entirety, to any extent or degree, and did work on painfully and laboriously in that manner,—then, if one may be allowed to draw some inference from facts experienced, and be thankful for mercies beyond one’s deserts,—I am bound to confess, that the latter course and conclu- sion of the work were as fortunate, as its commence- ment had been discouraging : resulting altogether, in a greater number of original and independent scientific observations of the Great Pyramid being obtained, and securely brought home,—than had ever been accumulated before,—-certainly on means so slender and apparently insufficient.
In simple justice to the great benefits derived (when engaged in the above operations) from his liberal concessions,—I am bound to give my best thanks most prominently to His Highness the Vice- roy of Egypt, Ismail Basha ; who, besides granting a free transit on the railway to all owr,—for my wife accompanied me,—camping and. scientific packages, was pleased, through his superintendent of monuments Mariette Bey, master of the cere- monies Zeki Bey, superintendent of excavations Signor Vassalis, and His Excellency the Governor of Jeezeh,—not only to convey our party at his own expense from Old Cairo by boat and camels to the
x PREFACE.
Pyramids,—but to establish us there before the Arabs in so official a manner, and with such autho- rity,—that our safety was looked to through the whole period of our stay, with an efficiency which left nothing further to be desired for the complete security of both life and property ; and could hardly have been exceeded in its good effect under the best European Government.
To T. F. Reade, Esq., Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul in Cairo, my thanks are due; he always showing anxiety to acquit himself satisfactorily of the manifold, as well as difficult, duties which fall on our public representative in that city of many nations.
Likewise to Andrew Coventry, Hsq., of Moray Place, Edinburgh, for his perfectly spontaneous con- tribution of a handsome sum of money, wherewith two first-class measuring instruments, one for the angular inclination and the other for the linear height, of the Grand Gallery of the Great Pyramid, were specially procured.
To John Hartnup, Esq., Director of the Liverpool Observatory, for much and hospitable kindness both when leaving, and returning to, the Mersey; to facilitate the navigation of whose ocean-going ships, he has done, and is doing, so much.
And finally to Messrs. W. B. Brough & Co., mer-
a
—
PREFACE. xl
chants in Alexandria, an enterprising and generous firm, whose acquaintance it would have been greatly to our advantage to have made much earlier than we did.
_ The names of several other kind friends will be found gratefully alluded to in the course of the present book; which has been arranged in three volumes, on the following plan ; viz. :—
VotumE I. gives both a popular account of the general circumstances under which the observations were made, and a social view of the progress of the work during a four months’ life in the tombs, and amongst the Arabs of the Pyramid hill. | This latter part of the proceedings being found of espe- cial importance,—in enabling any one fully to realize the strange situation, with all its ancient surroundings; and acquire thereby that desirable calmness of mind and freedom from new sensations, so important towards procuring impartial, rigid, and rigorous measures. |
VouvumE II. contains the original numerical ob- servations, in length, angle, and heat, arranged in order of subject. These form rather a heavy part to be read straight and steadily through by every one ; but are useful, nevertheless, to glance over, in order to acquire clear ideas of actual detail ; and are
xi PREFACE.
even absolutely necessary to refer to, in all cases of disputed data; an unhappy characteristic hitherto of almost everything in modern literature connected with the Great Pyramid.’
VoLuME III. contains the discussion of the above observations in three several steps, as follows; viz.—
Division 1 considers the more immediate results deducible from the observations, touching the. chief facts of construction and position in the Great Pyramid ; with the special view of elimi- nating accidents of dilapidation ; and, from the present, arriving at the ancient, size and shape, —both of the building as a whole, and of its chief component parts.
Division 2 takes up a higher or more recondite class of phenomena, and shows nearly all the detail of the building to have the effect. of con- stituting the Great Pyramid,—in its origin and before it was used for any sepulchral purposes, —a Metrological monument ; or, a grand com-
1 See the Author’s Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 1864; where, on page 103, are given twenty-five authorities for the size of the coffer, varying from each other by inexplicable quantities in every element of length, breadth, and depth or height, both inside and out.
On page 67, sixteen authorities for the number of horizontal courses of masonry in the Great Pyramid, as being from 125 to 255.
And on page 266, eleven authorities for the height of the Grand
Gallery, varying amongst themselves from 270 to 360 inches; with four- teen for the length of the same, varying between 1440 and 1947 inches.
PREFACE. Xl
memoration in stone of a truly cosmopolitan system of weights and measures: extending through nearly all subjects, such as length, weight, heat, angle, and time ; with a wealth, too, as well as surpassing power, of exactness of reference to the great standards of Nature,— whether of the earth as a whole, or the preces- sional movements of the starry heavens,—such : as may worthily excite the attention, and claim the respect of all the educated amongst man- kind.
While Diviston 3 endeavours to realize the history of Egypt, both public and private, in the long prehistoric days of the building of the Great Pyramid; to essay why, and by whom, that monument was erected with the characteristics now discovered ; and to speculate wherefore it may be, that after so long a period of oblivion, the true idea of the Great Pyramid’s original purpose, should only now be coming to be understood in the world.
And if the general result of the whole book be found by fair and able readers to show, that some of John Taylor’s views have formed a true com- mencement and have indicated the right line of approach to further developments of the same
ennobling order,—I trust that other men’s minds
XIV PREFACE.
may be moved to examine the whole subject with new tests, and pursue it with far greater powers than mine.
Nor can it be doubted, but that some fine spirits will take up the investigation heartily, when they come fully to understand,—that the Great Pyramid may be looked on in the unique and invaluable his- torical light, of a contemporary record of the events of more than four thousand years ago : that its inter- pretation can be approached directly, by the appli- cation of modern exact science alone: and that its pages, so read,—in the very ipsissema verba, and even letter-forms themselves, of the original autograph,—reveal a most surprisingly accurate knowledge of high astronomical and geographical physics,_-though at a date, nearly fifteen hundred years earlier than the very first, and extremely infantine, beginnings of such things among the ancient Greeks ; besides exhibiting some remarkable connexions with, as well as dependences on, the religion of Sacred Writ in the Patriarchal times of the world.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I. APPLICATION TO HIS HIGHNESS THE VICEROY,
PAGES
CHAPTER II. WAITING IN CATRO, 16-39 CHAPTER III. REACH THE PYRAMIDS, 40-66 CHAPTER IV. REPORT ON THE GREAT PYRAMID, ; : : 67-96 CHAPTER V. WORKING PRELIMINARIES, 97-117 CHAPTER VI. ARRIVAL OF RAMADAN, . 118-140 CHAPTER VII. OF PASSAGES AND ANGLES, 141-169 CHAPTER VIII. 170-195
ROCKS AND ANCIENT RUBBISH,
XV1 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX. MODERN RUBBISH AND RAMADAN,
CHAPTER X. THE SECOND PYRAMID,
CHAPTER XI. INSTRUMENTALS,
CHAPTER XH. TOMBS OLD AND NEW,
CHAPTER XIII ANTECHAMBER AND KING’S CHAMBER,
CHAPTER XIV. PROGRESS OF THE SEASON, * .
CHAPTER XV. ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS,
CHAPTER XVI. MAGNESIUM PHOTOGRAPHY, .
CHAPTER XVII. CONCLUDING WEEK, .
PAGES -
196-233
234-271
272-311
312-354
355-387
388-424
425-468
469-516
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN VOLUME I.
(Tax following Plates, being mostly on very small scales, are capable of little more than giving first approximate ideas of the general nature of the subjects observed and measured. It is par- ticularly requested, therefore, that no ‘Pyramid measures’ be taken from the Drawings; but that the numerical entries of the original measures, contained in Volume 11., be always referred to, when exactness is required.)
No. OF PLATE.
I. COFFER IN THE KING’S CHAMBER—FRONTISPIECE.
REFERRED TO AT P. 85, 377, AND VOL. IL. INSERTED AT PAGER
II. MAP OF PYRAMID HILL, F : “ XVill REFERRED TO AT 62, 1384, 186, 417, etc.
TII. VERTICAL MERIDIAN SECTION OF GREAT PYRAMID, . . P a i xviii REFERRED To AT 81, 94, 238, etc.
IV. GROUND PLAN OF GREAT PYRAMID, ; xvili REFERRED TO AT 201, 208, 212, etc.
V. WELL-MOUTH, PARTICULARS OF, . : 80
REFERRED TO AT 80, AND VOL. IL.
VI. LOWER PART OF LOWER OR NORTH END OF GRAND GALLERY, . - . 167 REFERRED TO AT 167, 238, 302, AND VOL. IT.
VOL. I. b
XVill LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
No. oF PLATE. INSERTED AT PAGE
VII. PHOTO-LITHOGRAPH OF KING SHAFRE’S OVALS, REFERRED TO AT P. 347.
VIII. AIR-CHANNEL MOUTHS, NORTH AND SOUTH,
REFERRED TO AT 413, 415, AND VOL. II.
IX. CORNER SOCKETS OF GREAT PYRAMID, REFERRED TO AT 526, AND VOL. IL.
X. STEPS OF DECAY OF AN AVERAGE JEEZEH PYRAMID, REFERRED TO AT 183 AND 262.
WOODCUTS.
TWO SMALL VIEWS OF SECOND PYRAMID, ROYAL OVALS,
347
414
526
254 347-349
—
Vol. I.
Longitude of Meridian’ passing through GEL Pyramid - oh Aare d
eek Sp: L, = we x “nh
Pyrami aft
‘
Vie ire
Ean
. io pooogut
58 North.
a 8 pe 3 a
eno pnoggg “4 aye | OBaR00;; re santa I
OOgngGo 0 en atrooae® 2 2 eZ INN
we $4 ah , 9 ane _ Pay ek Wy RC CONE eae” ns “uss re ff fal ft uf) Re 5 noi, aS 7 beet
ere Ad ae? Fi. ies
Fi,
y
a
Syeie ww
to 29
Sh as
, Bi a 5
ty vt
Sy: © I RAIN,
a
y
> ay 1S Fey
ss " 7] aL SAAS of om oe ae VOR he ”: Ahn ey 4 ' ae ‘ath jel Sa le, : ee S > = y iS vag te ; a 4 eh < 5, Mae Ue sy mi ; Mrs 2.4
LB Lees “oman nc ge
= (bee Aas ©: a Ly bile ane, Bag. SS ee Ss \ a) NG \ = r oe “gs Sea
vk eee fel An cas IS
Ye
oe
EM COTTIN
: See SSN SAA SRA NAAN NS RS oN
Berk) SS ek ; y = 5 i as esa sy mS PPPL EEL LIVI IV AV z Sues 7) AS we ‘I TB <Z R x / ik jl o
en obs ~S
MELON pg ep meer mm ee nn em Ly
Seconds of Latitude to be added oe re Pa So a
we pace | mwmnommmn wrens wensoe So *7 lag ti IOC he Ny Ms; bepeepac Cth ba teed alban % . Ree A 4 or : yx N Je W446 se $x a N DMC, Fs as . Re ofr eal ta WO Ror ey as 2. Third: = "my! CAN e Fae MY ‘ en sap WS S<Pyramiad Wes ae = : vs rae ey yyy AIRES : ey, fey ea 1,22 Sy Mi My, BENE pu Vg ty
anita
i LSS dich KASS RN is NAYS btn
Fy rbiy
wn Ba SENNA SS SE SES NO fe we IIAOLL AOL ALLO ALEE
£6 4 sai > \%, ay ay, ny Mn % SEZ HN a “yy N ny lig / Z eS RRR ae rR ed di y, LE SAN | Gorenegerce cere eatarppecensin Ve = it fe = on
EE | ans were! {j
yy, “Ain
Vy f
~
iv
lle lg, i. — Wal i, i
- Lhe numbers 4,5 54 6 ¢7 849 are Colonel Howard Vyses for distenguishing the three’ small Pyramids near the.
rows h/ GE Pyramid = 2 a (nearly) East of Greenwich .
'. Map of the Pyramids of Jeczeh’, and, their hill of tombs. after Boward Wee. * Scale’ 10,006.
z
le/= 1,000
AY
Great Pyramid.
a es V8 18 5 % 43 ¥ s 485 BIN S : if
ies 3 PR nt! ceeNZ, > ; ' Ses rr Sah py 5 soe i ; LS 29 Bey > ra : er, To OMCIU BREEN” ane ~. 20 Village’ {| ag fj E j- bo i E 2 Soe sp ie uf ih BHC . Sant i L. EME Saline A i 1 Eee ts cd ae ' sos Cee. gee Slistys y Se OR Ray, SE : : Yai Qtendin Soto eA as N TON A, Se 2 S No aly NANNY ' > S388 (Og A ‘ “a 3 me = : y
\ : : I ‘ ' : ( ; ‘ A \ 7 -| i( “A ’ ;
Meridian’ Section/ through’ Great Pyramid and is Hill, looking West.
BEF fy ie ae
Level of water iw wells , iw AD.1865.
FA 4 Cam — SELES. So — TS y % a =e Lae =e ioe eee = tis
i WL N's = LT. ieee Gee OO ee SW Gl c= ZB UES Bes oS
listenguishing the three small Fyramids near the 3°” ¢ Great Pyramids respectively.
W.H.M® Farlane, Lith? Edin?
Blank Page Digitally Inserted
Vot.I. Pie.
hae ace of Meridian’ passing through! GE Pyramid - 265" (nearly) Bast of Greenwich .
2 We = Map of the ih NS Pyramids of Jeczeh’ Ran / and, their hull of tombs. after Howard Wyse. ‘Seade- 10,000 200.
2 = 10,000
}
Ps —
aN Ny
ee
WITLI MLR CRORE
Mean level of Mediterranean’ Sea), in/ AD 1865.
Meridian’ Section’ through’ Great Pyramid and us Hill, looking West.
AY
TLEITUILTLTPTLITIILL PTT PELE SEL
“777
Uji
HLL
Yi
: Bo: : ee wi AS ae oogau i no 0 0 las amet | ci, O88R00 4 a Lismeonatt, ga ; oongda la
pogpgooA 0 a airboa0” igs Ag Ss NN
Be He, 4c : : ie jp perererree rere LO 4 a RY 3 5 ge we Fy we Wei “mpaeer me awe aE) fal iy a fl ai fj i ou ie *, eo [Ee
58 North’.
wee \
oe ” SS ae Ss
a
to: 29
snes ae ORO 3% aie ut ul \ bmn Lata —— ics e ae z “1g Oe wk ae - ais $ES : seal
: TS
es a ag a ‘ Lite. ae ys \ si i Retin pps Prep “ERS ;
RTT
HRSA PSS SA SN SS ES RR ne et
ia
PPALTETIIANIAV ASSN
‘Mb
) s
+
i
Ry y awa AIS SS SE ek aA, af
eI L ONE po ep eer nm oe oe nn ee ep
ansSs se
a if dma BT Ok ee sseee. eeatiairges Bae Hid Wig ~~ saot TLE tid IOC he ¥ 4, the ty) paige Vhhasest aC at hag a NARS:
4
{ a Ni ; “ ON A we Mane hs, aS S 4 4 an fed y : Rue egy %, £; wt. Thirds 39g, SAP baratlle- a6, ia hs hy 2 yr K " Mig, aaa, ans go ne AN Wy, A eevee Gi 40h : NaS “yt Bienes Ned us 4 SSS ‘ees ie 2 f\ < : NSS Ss: & tS ip % Hi NZ, eA y en SS RS. iS a ie eT HRS Te oT ae ee INKS Pe ye y BIW’ ia Zon "yy ma “ant YG neh bigs fsa 4: mt fas
Banas ns snnnng-nnen-
See ty
GUA AGUCE PETIA D poet
(Wg. =) Wig a hoor ae Wy ! > Wye =. Y ant
Was AG OTS =
Level of water iw wells , iw AD. 1865.
Wi Wp i Ooi Zs inal AN Yj, wills ES <¢
&
Lhe munbers 4,5§6, ¢ 48 ¢9 are Colonel Howard Vyses for distnguishing the: three’ small Pyramids near the 32% G GreatP Pyramids respectively.
W.H.M? Farlane, Lith? Edin?
i
————— ee
Vol. 1:
Vertical Section, looking West, of the GREAT PYRAMI/D wn the / plane’ ot us passages:
showing the supposed ancient exterwr formed by the outer surface’
of the Casing - stones,
L865 AD.
Level of
Water av
Wells wv 1865 AD:
Mean Sea Lwel_.
1000 500 o 1900 2000 3000 6000
Scale, of British’ Inches E
Entpane pousage. Ai Mamoons hole’. Howard Vyses Casing- stones. ve & Ascending PUwsage. Horizontal passage. Queens chamber. Grand Gallery. Antechamber . Colter Kix wg s chamber Howard Vyse's chambers of construction’ M. N. Howard Vyses ventdating channels. 0. Subterranean’ chamber. PP. Welt so-called. Q.Q. Pssures iw rock forming the Hilb. R.R.R. Probable extent to which the local rock
esate cer!
ts employed: to assist the masonry of
oe the building
X. Excavation’ made by Howard. Vyse.
‘s osed Level of Water uv Wells te’ 2000
-O,
ped == Mean Sea Level
ee A. ee 000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9200
Scale pe British’ Inches.
W.H.M® Farlane, Iith? Edin*®
Blank Page Digitally Inserted
fr Gees PES:
18 A. Entrane prssage. Vertical Section, looking West, B. AlMamoons hole’. of the \ C. Howard Vyses Casing: stones. D. 78 Ascendz assage’. GREAT PYRAMID ie wees wn the plane of EF Qewid chahe. its passages: G.G. Grand Gallery. H. Antechamber. showurg the supposed ancent exterwor $2 Zale formed by the outer surface K. Kings chamber of the Casing - stones, L.. Howard Vyses chambers of construction’ ww dotted. lines. M.N. Zoward Wyses ventilating channels.
0. Subterranean’ chamber. PP. Welt so-called. Q.Q. Lissures iw rock forming the Hilb. ce R.R.R. Probable extent to which the locatrockk e ax “ employed: to assuel es masonry of Se the buclding. we X. Excavation’ made by Howard Vyse.
L865 AD.
hevel of
Water wu
Wells uv 1865 or osed level)
AD; —-. adler tn Wells tr’ 2000 B73 tae Ort
Mean Sea lwel ~~ oe = Meaw Sea hae ___
1000 500 0 7000 2000 3000
Scale of Pay Triches.
W.H.M® Farlane, Iith? Edin*®
x PAs a ety ome i x -—— es H : a
Aa nd hy ma fi
Vol.
my
West Horizontal Section’ of Great Pyrami
Nas
Sk
es
ee Se
Chamber:
) Air- channels, above that Ler age mouth Howard Vyses Casing stones, now covered
%
SF 8 5 ese gia eS Sigh ess lee S sig es tS SESS Seekers SS S18
1%
fo va
S.8.8.8. The & corner sockets of thy ancient casing,
@. =: Fissure w Rock’, now covered
, April 1865.
by Mess’ Aiko & Inglis
71
Seale of British’ Inches .
_ North: Air-chans
Size of Pyramid horizontal sectiow at level of outl
Jase ee ee ee ee a ee en a eo a eee ee ee ee
South Aur channel
y Rubbish) heap, =
Air-channels. Bast
Sea
¢
You orev Thegbbishy heap. .
sf.
2,
= ee yas
IZ EE eS
SSS SS SSE SAAS CoS Wes
K > SS SS
SSS — é a ae ——
Us
or eae ee Hien
, a . Wan
NAY N 18 y Sig
} cH Nt 3 H)
RY : SiS S 8 iy Boxy
LAN eo ee oe : 3 geet
ny = ais N 6 iS Wee if
ONINAY eee N 2 BS I cise
aN | He ae Eee Ve SES iy yaSesta
ANS S385 2 Gh FUR is panne
LAS S a iy CAE
( = wins as ag as ‘es aE
. IN) Vy 8 $8 H aN 7 N EH
A : eS dD 8 SSH
nay wD aN Sian SS 5 sy SG
amie nares N 2 = ' >) oS Jini Ey
Renee . i ial = 8 ie 8 : Eee
Bee = ONG Sig heday ts co ee Sva ilshg SIS See Se § Ss i's pace
Bite x gio Sg $88 Pe ees : ai
ee SS Wid 9 Sta 8 § 8 i po Sa
ng N RIS g y oS " is is war
: gee et eae aan es EH
CRUE Be Oy aan taee Y 3 Hh x i
s ee Hi if NNN
cee | u é No
Si§ lt re NU ARD STAND
W.H-MS Farlane, Lith? Edin?
Blank Page Digitally Inserted
Daa A OT LD AT CT TOT A SO OL LO OS SO SOT LO OT DO OE TT SO IO OS Fa aa ae er ae nae ar a a TO TO SE OY TL EE I OT A A
a LL TL OS SY
a
WOVEN EL
$c
4 + f 1 1 A
ad but)
Sz
LS
<7 4 z=
7 wee
EP
ts S Ni — 8 =
Chamber:
also the Air- channels, above that level
Entrance Pass Be: AlMamoons
IES
H
oe
ara ‘
ay
ie
age mouth
hole’. Howard Vyses Casing stones, now covered)
\y Kings Chamber.
pa
\ Nas wen
Sen
Aw-channels .
Great Pyramid,
by Mess’ Aiko & Inglis, April 1865.
Horizontal Section’ of
8.8.8.8. The ¥ corner sockets of thy ancient casing,
@. =. Fissure ww Rock’, now covered
on level of Floor of Kings A Cc K
showing Size of Pyramid horizontal sectiow at level of outlet: of the’
Ses
4 N Ni Ny Ni u M N N NN N Ny N\ Ay N N N N
H Ny Ny
N ty
\ \ \ \
\ \ 1) u Ny N N) N N N Ny N NI Ny NY N Ny \y Ny N Ny N X yy Ny Ny Ny Ny NI Ny Ny y) \y Ny 4 NY Ny iy \ N N Ni M 1
N N N N N \ N N i
\ 1 \ \ \ \ 4 N N
\ y
Pn ew bees e pee
v, , ; hs
Seale of British’ Inches .
W.H-MS Farlane, Lith? Edin?
SSS
SS
>
Ss
SOE SS
S ~
—
Sx
eee
OSS ESS
EN
A
r\ A
=
Re Sak!
‘s
ra {oh} 4
ES \A
V4
Arn
a
RS NO
=
Err
+ ea ta
gaa a8
Hid
amin S = Sam
KLE
Ler Rubbish hea, if
oon LOST
L/
ff
(=F —S
LT.
LL
X
<ZZ.
EF
SS
_————S
VOL 4
pe
JOURNAL
PROCEEDINGS.
‘The Great, The Mighty God, The Lord of Hosts, is his “name; great in counsel, and mighty in work :—which hast ‘ set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even unto this
‘ day. JEREMIAH XXXII. 18-20.
CHAPTER IL.
APPLICATION TO HIS HIGHNESS THE VICEROY.
_Havine left Edinburgh in November 1864 for Egypt, impelled only by the hope of contributing, during the following winter and spring, towards new and improved measures of the Great Pyramid being obtained,—owr course, for my wife always accompanied me, became pretty definite after we had once arrived in the metropolitan city of Cairo.
The local authorities were of necessity to be con- sulted, especially as centring in their honoured and powerful head, His Highness Ismael Basha, Viceroy of Egypt; for without his countenance nothing could be attempted in such a land, at all times rather uncertain near its desert boundaries, and now requiring a long-continued and undisturbed visitation at a critical point.
The British Consul, Mr. T. F. Reade, was accord- ingly called upon without delay, and happily found to be actuated, within the limits of his instructions, by all praiseworthy enthusiasm and cheerful alacrity to do whatever belonged to his official part. That part was indeed rather unfortunately confined to
VOL. I. A
2 THE BRITISH CONSUL. [ CHAP. I.
merely procuring me the honour of a presentation to His Highness the Viceroy, and then leaving me to plead the case as best I might; and see how far the ruler of all Egypt, freed from any approach to diplomatic pressure or consular advice, would voluntarily condescend in this instance of being applied to by a solitary and entire stranger, and for the cause of a peculiar branch, of a not yet very popular subject, of learned research.
Mr. Reade having, however, as a first step, sug- gested the advisability of a written memorial being prepared beforehand, I not only drew up at once something of the kind, for his private inspection, but during an enforced delay of several days caused by the non-arrival of certain boxes from Alexandria, endeavoured to obtain some assistance from local criticism, if not the benefit also of native counsel on a few of the special topics included.
Nor was this step by any means to be thought lightly of ; for Cairo, during many years the seat of the Egyptian Scientific and Literary Institute, has its own savants, its own history of their labours and successes, its own rules of philosophic faith, and above all, its own ideas of the Pyramids, the monu- ments of the monuments of Egypt. Highly impor- tant therefore to learn from those gentlemen what- _ ever they could teach ; and in case of finding that they confirmed the recent Northern suspicion of there being still many sensible improvements that might be made in the exact mensuration. of the
CHAP. 1. | THE CAIRO INSTITUTE. o
Great Pyramid,—would any of those experienced members of the old Eeyptian Society, some of them Kuropeans by birth but now long naturalized in Egypt, be willing to join in, or of themselves to undertake, an immediate attempt to supply such defalcations of knowledge? and to what extent could the labour of such a work be divided, and the authority of its conclusions multiplied, by com- bining the efforts of different nationalities ?
The many friendly conversations which were generated in discussing these questions with such few members of the late Institute as we could hear of or meet with in Cairo, proved highly interesting ; for they showed that theories of the monuments, and sometimes of a most ingenious kind, were rife in Egyptian minds; that Eeypt itself was looked on as having a superior right to settle many general scientific questions, by reason of the far greater length of time, measurable only by thousands of years, that written records of natural phenomena have been kept up in the cities of the valley of the Nile, than in those of any other civilized country whatever ; and that much good investigation had been carried on during late years, by one person or another, even in the way sometimes of actual Pyramid measures, though they were to be met with as yet nowhere, except in the original manu- script.
But after giving full weight to every piece of information that could be brought up on this side,
4 CONSULAR INTRODUCTION. [ CHAP. I.
the conferences also proved pretty plainly,—not only that large omissions in the metrical description of the Great Pyramid did really exist,—but that no one savant then in Egypt was believed to be either at liberty to undertake, or inclined to prosecute, the subject of supplying them during the coming season, in any manner or to any degree.
I should not then be interfering with the researches of any one else, or standing in any other man’s light, if furnished with the Viceroy’s permission to go out to the Pyramid and measure it in European fashion ; and that was something to be assured of in the present day of multitudinous prosecutions of similar branches of knowledge. So after a little further counsel with special friends, the memorial was finally drawn up with more polish, though in a shape not radically different from its first sketch; and on December 21st, Mr. Consul Reade procured me the long-desired opportunity of presenting the paper to the Viceroy himself in his island Palace of Ge- zeereh, on the Nile, opposite to Boolak.
This facility of approach has long been a favour- able characteristic of the rulers of Egypt. For, upwards of five hundred years ago, Sir John Maun- deville, after stating that whoever will travel through this part of the country ‘where the Sowdan of Cayr ‘ dwellethe comonly, he moste gete Grace of him “and Leve to go more sikerly thorghe the landes,’— adds. thereto—
CHAP. 1. | MEDIAVAL SULTANS. 5
‘And also no straungere cometh before him (the ‘Soudan of Cayr and Lord of 5 Kyngdomes), but ‘that he makethe him sum promys and graunt, of ‘that the straungere askethe resonabely, beso it be ‘not agenst his lawe. And so dose othere Princes ‘bezonden. For thei seyn, that no men schalle ‘ come before no Prynce, but that he be bettre, and ‘schalle be more gladdere in departynge from his ‘ presence, than he was at the comynge before hym.’
In Sir John’s day of tumult and war, the Sultans were nearly confined to the Citadel, which yet frowns on Cairo, from the heights leading up to the Mokattam Hills; or, as the antique traveller expresses it :-—
‘There dwellethe the Soudan in a fayr Castelle, ‘strong and gret, and wel sett upon a Roche. In ‘that Castelle dwellen allewey, to kepe it and to ‘serve the Sowdan, mo than 6000 Persones, that ‘taken all here necessaries of the Sowdan’s Court. ‘I oughte right wel to knowen it, for I dwelled ‘ with him as Souldyour in his Werres a gret while, ‘agen the Bedoynes.’
But now, in times of peace and tranquillity, the chief of Egypt has descended from that warlike perch, and sought the amenities of modern life in a fertile island, and a palace near the level of the Nile.
Quite a new erection is this viceregal residence of Gezeereh, indeed hardly yet completed, and seeming to aim at the picturesqueness of a single-storeyed, cottage style of rural seclusion for one of the great
6 THE MODERN RULER. | CHAP. T.
ones of the earth : surrounded by gardens, irrigated all day long by many water-wheels lifting up and pouring forth the muddy water of the Nile; and abounding with evergreen shrubs and graceful date palms ; winding ponds with frequent bridges of white marble and gilded iron work, and with globes of ruby, silvered, and tinselled glass, putting, under a bright sun, all the tints of the flowers to shame. There were sufficient military and civil officers about to illustrate the character of the residence, but ex- treme quiet was the order of the day ; and on enter- ing a half-dark room by an open French window from an ornamental terrace, we were at once face to face with the ruler of Egypt.
His Highness had been admirably punctual in preparing for the interview he had vouchsafed, and was blandly courteous as well as free from all dis- play in his manner. He had already been made aware of the contents of the memorial, which he was now pleased to accept, together with a copy of two late works on the Pyramid; and was well inclined to do something in the way of help towards more measures, of such parts of the Great Pyramid as were presently open, being secured. Not much though did he apparently like the prospect of himself under- taking any of those more important excavations and clearances which were alluded to in the second part of the memorial, and without which some of the most crucial measures of the building could not be obtained either by myself or any one else. But His
CHAP. ie MINISTER OF ANTIQUITIES. 7
Highness had great trust in his officer in charge of the antiquities of Egypt, Mariette Bey, and into his department my application would ‘go, with the understanding that something should and must be done.
At eight o'clock, accordingly, next morning, an officer from the palace arrived ‘to conduct me to the Museum at Boolak, and there make the introduction to the said Mariette Bey. With him a long discus- sion ensued, and at its termination I was asked to write out my objects and requests once again, but somewhat in conformity to what I had now just heard of possibilities and practicabilities, as a memo- randum for the Bey to take over to the palace and refer to in further consultation with the Viceroy.
I wrote out therefore something as follows :—
1st, A scheme of only moderate assistance to a small scientific party, but such as would be thank- fully acknowledged, and consisting of the following items :—
A. Government leave to go out to the Pyramids of Jeezeh, and observe there for three or four months.
B. Loan of Government tents, and right to oc- cupy any tombs that should be found suitable as a residence.
c. Protection for the time mentioned to person and property ; and
p. A general cleaning of the anterior of the Great Pyramid, as a preliminary to accurate measures.
8 TERMS OF APPLICATION. [ CHAP. I.
2d, A scheme of such far more important and -
larger assistance, as would inevitably give the first place beyond all compare, in the contemplated re- measurement, to the Viceroy ; and perhaps even cause his name to be remembered hereafter in the history of the Pyramid, in connexion with that of Khaliph Al-Mamoon who opened, and of Kings Shofo and Nu-Shofo who built, the mysterious structure.
This scheme to be composed as follows :—
A. In addition to the several items of scheme No. 1,—to uncover all four sides of the base of the Pyramid.
B. To remove altogether, or pierce a three-inch observing-hole straight through the centre of, the granite portcullis at the beginning of the first ascend- ing passage.
c. To clear the two ventilating channels of the kino’s chamber ; and
p. To sink a shaft down to the water-level from the floor of the subterranean chamber.
The Bey rather shook his head at the probability of any of the last set of requirements being under- taken, but thought that all the former were very likely to be granted ; meanwhile he obligingly intro- duced me to the Museum, and a very creditable institution to the Government of Egypt and to himself it certainly is.
A Frenchman by birth, and with his fortune still to make, as with many and many another man who
CHAP. I.| MARIETTE BEY. 9
has done precisely the right thing at the right time, or in other words achieved a great success by dint of his own native genius, M. Mariette came into Egypt in the train of the Duc de Luynes, a number of years ago, and as little more, we believe, than an assistant excavator. But his gift for the employ- ment, both the practical field-work, and the far higher one of hieroglyphic interpretation, in con- nexion with the classical notices, developing itself,— he was not only able to stand alone when his patron had left the country, but to continue making some minor explorations productive of antiquities, until he was in a position to come out with the full desire of his heart.
He had been distressed, and deeply, at seeing the remnants of ancient Egypt for ages ill-treated by the natives of almost every country. For years and years no one from Europe had visited the time- honoured valley, but to see what and how many art-memorials he or they could carry away. Belzoni was a well-intending individual ; but we are inclined to doubt his advanced position in ethics, when he expresses contempt for the fellahs of Egypt, because, merely, they ceased to appropriate statues and columns on finding there was no actual gold inside them. He, Belzoni, flattered himself that he be- longed to a higher civilisation ; for, knowing what golden prices the said sculptured remains would bring in the Parisian market, he carried them off in scores : or, he knew a reason for stealing, and stole
10 REGIME OF THE TRAVELLERS. [ CHAP. i,
accordingly. European Governments also competed in theft with private individuals, until from the largest obelisks down to minute signet-rings the treasures of Heypt became scattered over the earth ; and the ‘monumental land’ itself seemed to be in danger of lapsing at last into the pre-monumental and-entirely unliterary condition of either South Africa or Australia.
It was time, thought M. Mariette, that the pillag- ings of the ancient country should cease ; and by first displaying his own collection of antiquities in the form of a Public Museum, and then calling the attention of the authorities in a variety of ways to the case, he got them both to adopt his Museum as the nucleus of a national one for Heypt, and at once to stop by law the exportation of native antiquities to other countries. He himself too was appointed to look to the safety of all the monuments, and also to conduct any excavations which the real interests of science might demand ; in fact, to carry out his own system, in which the Museum formed a neces- sary part; for thereto were carried all the very small articles discovered, and which, if left at the place of their discovery, might be easily stolen. Nothing, too, but such portable curiosities were ever taken there, and no destruction of any large monu- ment has at any time been made, in order that the Museum might have specimens to exhibit.
‘How different, says M. Renan, who was in Egypt at the time of our visit, and has published his ideas
CHAP. I. | PRUSSIAN CULMINATION. Bt
on Egyptian antiquities in the Revue des Deux Mondes for April 1865,—‘ how different is all this ‘from the Egyptian Museum at Berlin ; for while ‘ that collection of the late Prussian king was formed ‘by carrying the saw and the hatchet among pre- ‘cious monuments, which, since the passage of M. ‘ Lepsius, have offered nothing but the aspect of ‘ destruction, the inappreciable Museum of Cairo ‘has never required the demolition of the least mor- ‘sel of a building.’ It encloses, in fact, only loose, and in size minor subjects of antiquarian interest.
Entering, accordingly, the handsome and airy halls which the Government has recently built at Boolak, we see there chiefly the miniature work of the old EKeyptians, and may well wonder almost as much at their peculiar artistic excellences therein, as we are ordinarily disposed to do on witnessing their triumphs in the colossal. The late Augustan Vice- roy, the gorgeous-minded Said Basha, of whom every one seems to have a good word to say, was so well pleased with the early results of the new insti- tution, as to appomt M. Mariette to the dignity of ‘ Bey, equivalent toa baron of the turbulent Mame- luke times, and gave him further powers, fully con- firmed by the present Viceroy, both for protec- tion and investigation in every part of his domi- nions.
Large excavations are therefore continually going on, in several divisions of the country at once, but all under M. Mariette’s direction ; and even his
12 NEW ORDER OF THINGS. | CHAP. I.
enemies confess his genius ‘in that he never put ‘pickaxe into the ground without finding some- ‘ thing ;’ occasionally, too, he alights on remains perfectly priceless for their literary worth, though the unlettered public may not think so ; for the Bey seeks chiefly such ‘inscribed’ stones as may enable the blanks of old Egyptian history to be gradually filled.
Of his success in this praiseworthy object, a most glowing encomium has been recently published in the Report to the Minister of Public Instruction in France, by M. le Vicomte E. de Rougé, a name long respected as amongst the foremost in Hgyptology, descriptive of his mission to Egypt in 1863-4. The mission consisted of a notable party; and ‘ during six ‘months we have copied, says their learned chief, alluding to Egyptian inscriptions, ‘ we have copied, ‘ copied, copied without resting ; we have brought ‘home six volumes of hand-copied inscriptions, and ‘ 220 photographs, and yet far more remain ;’ so im- mense was the amount of inscribed stones to which he was introduced by his countryman, Mariette Bey. The most precious of these inscriptions belonged to the earliest division of Egyptian history; and M. de Rougé mentions a certain ‘tablet of Memphis,’ discovered by Mariette, and which is to be to the kings of the third and fourth dynasties of Lower Egypt, what the celebrated tablet of Abydos has long been to the later dynasties of the Upper country.
But the crowning prize of all, was the discovery
CHAP. I. | PRIMEVAL STATUE. 13
of works of sculpture by the fourth dynasty ; their architecture was already known in the Pyramids, and their flat-work in the tombs, but their per- formance in the round had never been witnessed before, and is the oldest in all the world.
What then was this most ancient example of sculpture belonging to man like, equal to, or remind- ing one of ?
When Mariette Bey shows you the chief piece of it, you stand almost appalled before the presence it conveys. It is the life-sized portrait of a king who built one of the Pyramids, seated in the calmness of majesty and the isolation of rank, gazing honestly straightforward, and on high thoughts intent, into space. There is neither the total nudity of Greek sculpture, nor the encumbering frippery of modern royalty ; but the man is there, slightly more mus- cular in the arms than the Apollo Belvedere, though not less justly proportioned or exquisitely rendered ; yet still, his forte is thought and administration rather than manual labour, and his manner that of one who can afford to bide his time, and expects with solid reason to see all things eventually com- bine for good. The eyeis large and peaceful, the lips are rather fine as well as precise, the nose straight and thin, but not so much in the Grecian as the Anglo-Saxon manner ; and almost the only decora- tion is the quasi-heraldic supporter of a hawk de- veloped out of, rather than exactly standing on, the summit. of the back of the rocky seat, and folding its
14 DIORITE SCULPTURE. [ CHAP. I.
wings with benign protective influence towards the monarch’s respected head.
And in what material is this relic of the primal age of the civilized world? At first, you might be inclined to say, a greenish-grey black-veined marble. But had that been strictly the case, the men of the fourth dynasty would scarcely have had strenuous successors in another age equal to working in the basalt of Philce, the granite of Syene, or the hardened porphyry of Gebel Dokkan. Marble was, in truth, effeminate stuff to the authors of the work before us, and they had rather sought out for themselves one of the hardest varieties of the proverbially hard trap rocks, ‘ Diorite.’ This substance looks certainly at a distance not unlike such marble as described above, and is capable of taking even a higher polish ; but by what means? for the diorite will cut like a file into the materials which modern sculptors usually think hard enough, if not overhard, to work in.
Called ‘Chephren’* by some, and ‘ Rekof’? by others ; but as we may be able to show by and by, much rather to be termed ‘Shafre ;’ yet generally acknowledged both to have been of the fourth dynasty,® and to have had a share in the Pyramid building at Jeezeh—this king’s statue has been recently copied in plaster moulds, so that repro-
1 Baron Bunsen’s Lyypt’s Place in Universal History, vol. iv. p. 657 ; and M. Renan, Revue des Deux Mondes, for April 1865, p. 675.
2 Hoskin’s Winter in Upper and Lower Egypt. 1864.
3 William Osburn, in his Monumental History of Egypt, says the fifth dynasty, but reigning contemporaneously with the fourth.
CHAP. I. | JUSTICE TO EGYPT. 15
ductions of full size are obtainable at the Museum. Now, therefore, would seem to be the time for all those countries of Europe who have hitherto been revelling in the spoiling of Egypt ; and who, whether in their Governments, or their wealth-endowed indi- viduals, have been flattering their hearts, or quieting their consciences for so long, that, in tearing down, or breaking off pieces, and carrying away Egyptian ‘antiques, they were saving those remarkable treasures from destruction by the ignorant natives, —let them now, acknowledging the conservative Museum of Boolak, with the new system to which it belongs,—let them send back the choicest speci- mens of their former dilettante plunder to the country such things should never have left, and receive in return a copy of the earliest statue in the world, the most solemn and monarch-like figure that has ever yet been produced in stone. ae
OH 7 Ms al a WAITING IN CAIRO.
RATHER anxiously passed on the time from day to day after that conference in the Museum of Boolak ; for as yet no promised letter came, and no sign was given. Both my wife and self were de- sirous to be ready to start, the instant that the Government permit arrived ; but on what scale, style, or footing was it to be? That must depend entirely on the manner in which His Highness the Viceroy should finally respond to the application.
We had, indeed, already brought out in the steamer from England, twenty-seven boxes of vari- ous sizes; but they were almost entirely occupied with scientific instruments intended for Pyramid mensuration ; to be, in so far, my professional con- tribution, if any joint-stock scheme of working should be matured. ‘Most extremely inconvenient,’ had the mate of the said vessel remarked to us, ‘would he think it, to travel about the world even with half that quantity of packages ;’ but we had the whole ; and everything connected with living was still to be added. With no sparing hand too,
CHAP. IL. | COTTON FEVER. 17
it soon appeared, must these additions be made ; for to set up house in the desert for any long con- tinued period, according to Egyptian ideas of what was right, most compellingly required almost inter- minable etceteras to complete our European outfit ; and each article was purchasable only at a more extravagant rate than another, because, forsooth, Cairo in the winter of 1864, was in the height of what they called a ‘ cotton fever.’
This peculiar social malady, of which we had heard nothing in England, was positively raging on our arrival in the Valley of the Nile. American cotton having been withheld by the then four years’ war, Europe demanded supplies from all the rest of the world, and at almost fabulous prices; whereupon, obedient to the call, both Upper and Lower Egypt were instantly turned into a cotton-garden, and with such terribly complete effect, that on a sudden there arose a cry, in a land that had hitherto fed others, that its people were starving for want of bread. Their cotton was certainly fetching extravagant premiums, but railway, and river, and roads, were insufficient to convey it quickly enough to market, or to carry back plain food to the agriculturists. Money was flowing into Egypt at a rate never heard of before, but rather with the effect of encouraging the wildest speculations, running up the price of all necessities to the poor and needy, and unhinging the relations of different classes of society, than pro- ducing any solid improvement to the community.
VOL. I. B
18 CATTLE DISEASE. [ CHAP. IL.
‘ Keypt,’ said a native to us, ‘is now like an inflamed ‘arm ; there is plenty of blood in it, but it is not ‘ flowing in constitutional channels, and the arm is ‘ therefore not strong.’
Already had this state of things metamorphosed the Nile travelling for this year ; seeing that against one hundred tourists’ boats that had started for Upper Egypt in 1861, only twelve were known to have set forth in 1864 ; for it is not every traveller who can afford £500 or more for three months’ boating ; nor is it agreeable to know you are actually throwing your money away, by purchasing in such an exceptional region ; and where every trading man seems bent on raising each day the prices of his goods or services, and cheating the newly-arrived Franks, of all people, at every turn and every step.
Deeper gloom, however, than this was further overshadowing the country; for though a glut of wealth in some quarters had come to pass by dint of cotton and American war combined, the harvest had been a bad one. This arose from the inunda- tion having been scanty ; it was the second year too of insufficient Nile flood, and ‘after a bad Nile, ‘then comes the plague in the following spring,’ is the maxim there. Plague indeed to man had not yet occurred, but it had broken out grievously upon the cattle; and in the summer of 1864 almost all the horned animals perished. Hence the real working agriculturists were in consternation ; for how could they turn their sakiyehs or water-wheels without oxen? and without the continued supply of irriga-
CHAP. II. | HUMAN FEVER. 19
tion furnished thereby, how could any crops be raised in a rainless land, under a ceaseless daily scorching sun? Was the cattle visitation too to be followed by something similar to man? Many appeared to expect it, and their expectation was most fully confirmed, as the thousands struck down by cholera in the May and June of 1865 suffi- ciently attested soon after; but meanwhile the ruling principle was too generally ‘eat and drink ‘now, and make money with maddened ecstasy.’ Though living ourselves as economically as pos- sible, it was quite horrifying to see the pile of useful gold that we had to pay at the end of every week for mere hotel accommodation, without the measurement of the Great Pyramid being thereby promoted in any degree. Worse still, in those times of waiting and weariness of soul, my wife fell ill of the city fever ; and the wonder is, looking at the stagnant marsh that lies evenly spread just under the festering, dead-flat, blackened soil of Cairo, and the bringing up of its unwholesome waters again and again to the surface by the numer- ous public water-wheels to serve for damping the slime-covered streets and supplying the inhabitants, the marvel is that every one therein is not always laid up with the worst of fevers. You see, too, round about the city’s suburbs, earth’s and heaven’s fair horizon mostly cut off from view by huge arti- ficial hills of hardened excrement, the immense scavenger accumulations, through rainless centuries, of drainless streets without any inclination ; and yet
20 OPINIONS ON CAIRO. [ CHAP. IL.
M. Vansleb, writing, alas! before European atten- tion had been awakened to the virtue of sanitary arrangements, could fervently ejaculate of Cairo, ‘This great and illustrious city, she is situated on ‘a plain the most delicious in the world.’
Of Cairo and its narrow streets, gaudily dressed population, and crowded bazaars, a thousand and one English tourists, following the lead of the emi- nent Mr. Lane, have written abundance and super- abundance praisingly. To an artistic eye, and to a rich man having nothing to do beyond going forth, like the Khaliph Haroun Al Rasheed, to see what street adventures should befall him, or what might happen out of which occupation could be extracted for hours hanging heavy on their owners’ hands, things may appear thus enchanting and com- mendable. But the plain-spoken Signor Belzoni was nearer the ordinary British mark in thinking ‘the ‘ multitude of tedious manners, luxurious customs, ‘and inaptitude for direct business, but proficiency ‘in dissembling, rather a nuisance to a man of moderate means, and with a definite task to accom- plish within a limited time. From a similar point of view, too, Dr. Clarke was inclined to question the truth of the epithets of those who had styled Cairo the ‘ Wonder of the World,’ the ‘ Delight of the Imagination,’ the ‘Great among the Great,’ the ‘Holy City, the ‘Victorious ;’ and to agree with Bruce, who declared that he had ‘never seen a ‘place he liked worse, nor one which afforded less
CHAP. IT. | DAYBREAK IN CAIRO. 21
‘pleasure or instruction, nor antiquities which less ‘ answered their description ;’ and he added thereto of his own experiences much touching what he called the ‘innumerable abominations of the dirtiest ‘ city in the whole world.’
From the window of a sick-room, overrun with flies by day and mosquitoes by night, even in mid-winter, the prospects were not likely to be encouraging. At night certainly there was a short calm, and the stars beamed down over the silent city in their own pure beauty; but long, long before day, began both the noise and the stir ; first the cats, then the dogs awakened by the cats, then the pigs (our hotel was in the Uzbekééh, adjoining the Copts’ quarter) awakened by the dogs ; then the pigs awoke the geese, and the geese the turkeys, and the turkeys the cocks and hens; then came choruses of several or all, sometimes in succession, sometimes in simultaneous rivalry.
By this time, the ruddy glow of morning began to appear, reflected only upon a few thin, horse-hair- like, cirrhus clouds near the eastern horizon. There are never, as a rule, any more bulky water-carriers of the sky in this rainless land; for its atmo- sphere is clean deprived of all the visible agents and misty scenery that belong to the lower current of the atmosphere ; and even those fainter cloud- forms of the upper stratum, undergo some further thinning and evaporation still in passing, high as they do, above the dried-up desert plains on either
22 MORNING IN CAIRO. | CHAP. II.
side of Egypt,—a land whereof the ‘ Knyht of Saynt ‘ Abone’ remarked so truly, ‘ Hgipt is a long contree, ‘but it is streyt, that is to saye, narowe; for thei ‘may not enlargen it toward the Desert, for defaute ‘of Watre. For there it reyneth not but litylle in ‘that contree ; and for that cause they have no ‘ watre, but yif it be of that flood of their ryvere. ‘And for als moche as it ne reynethe not in that ‘ contree, but the eyr is alway pure and cleer (dust ‘ excepted), therefore in that contree ben the gode ‘astronomyeres, for thei fynde there no cloudes to ‘letten them.’ But to return to our dry Cairo day- dawn, let us note, as next in order, the yellow and stronger light in the Hast, and that then the disk of the sun itself comes up like a ball of liquid fire ; glaring, as it beams through the dusty atmosphere and shoots its long luminous arrows both athwart picturesque minarets, ragged with the flag-staves and lamp-holders in this lazy land, of some last year’s illumination, and amongst ‘mulqufs’ of tumble-down houses,—the ‘ mulqufs, those ancient, Coptic, garret-like, angular wind-sails, all turned towards, but not succeeding new in catching, the ‘ life-civing Etesian winds.”* Here and there in- deed is seen a smart-looking, Maltese-painted, new house; but then come acres of ruins, or ruin-
1 The ancient mulqufs were double, and the two openings turned - in opposite directions, which would tend much to establish a circula- tion of air throughout the house, such air entering at one aperture and leaving by the other; but the modern mulqufs seem to be all single, with their openings turned to the N. or N.w.
CHAP. IL. | LITTLE GIRLS OF CAIRO. 23
looking structures, little better than shapeless heaps of sun-dried mud-bricks; while a tall, graceful, date-palm waves, lamenting over the decay ; and, as a mourner, is covered from head to foot with clay dust. But so are all other objects around ; for none of them can partake, in this most earthy land fed by irrigation alone, of the rain of the waters of heaven to wash them clean.
Such roofs too, as the existing and inhabited houses generally had, viz., piles of old rubbish heaped upon them at top! for anything will do in a climate without rain. And there, on those roofs, are the cats of every house, muscular and most sculpturesque models of cats, sprawling in lion-like attitudes through the livelong sun-baked day, and intently occupied in merely regarding each other. With the early noon too comes on the rolling of grandees in their open carriages through the square of dust- covered sycamore and acacia trees, the prancing of others on horses, and scuffing through of others still on adorned donkeys; all ‘ cotton, cotton,’ as a half-pay Bey, in a seedy coat, remarked wofully to us. But then the more distressful picture that always went to our hearts, of the little girls of Cairo as they ran after all the animals ; those poor little girls supposed to be without any souls worthy of the name of souls, but with their long tails of platted hair and gauzy blue drapery flying behind them in the wind, as they vied with each other,—in an emulation certainly worthy of a better cause and quite superior to what-
24 COOKING FUEL OF CATRO. [ CHAP. 72,
ever is usually understood as that idle thing, ‘le ‘vrai génie Keyptien,—in seeing who, even at the peril of diving in between the very hind-feet of a colossal camel, shall first pick up its hideous drop- pings, and pat them into nicely-shaped cakes with her braceleted fairy hands, and then deposit them in the flat reed-basket she carries so deftly balanced on her head ; until she, the tender little girl, can triumphantly carry the morning’s collection home to some haggard old being, who utilizes a stray corner in the ruined streets, by carrying on there in the sun, too truly a manufacture of such high- scented ammonia-fuel, as a supply for all the cooks of this gorgeous, illustrious, and resplendent city, the great ‘ Masr-el-Kahireh,’ or ‘the Victorious Masr,’
Yet was the period of sickness enriched to us by making the acquaintance of the Chaplain to the con- sulate, and his family. He had only recently ar- rived from England, an invalid from overwork in his parish there, but must needs begin immediately to do something in his new neighbourhood, in order to be of the workmen rather than of the idlers in Egypt also ; well seconded too by the ladies of his family, whose extreme kindness and sympathy did almost as much in restoring my wife, as the pre- scriptions of the very clever Scottish doctor whose assistance was called in.
‘In Cairo,’ said Bruce, ninety-eight years ago, ‘ nothing can be concealed. All nations, Jews, Turks,
CHAP. II. | RUMOURS ASCENDING. 25
‘ Moors, Copts, and Franks, are all constantly on the ‘inquiry, as much after things that concern other ‘ people’s business as their own ;’ and it is very nearly the same still, whence it arrived that my having made an official application about Pyramid measure- ments to the Viceroy, came to be known and to travel. Some persons were sure that there must be great diplomatic influence working in secret, to result presently in a magnificent expedition being organized ; in which, too, they might possibly find a well-paid post for themselves ; not with any of the dull labour of looking after the thousands of work- men who would be employed, or of being account- able for ropes, and picks, and ladders, and other materials of excavation works,—but a sort of social science overseership, with mounted cavasses per- petually galloping about to carry orders to make every one else work, long ranges of viceregal tents wherein to receive visitors to public feastings, and absolute power over the peasants far and near.
But as Dr. Clarke long since most truly remarked of Cairo, and even anything or everything in Egypt, ‘ it has always been the subject of amplification, from the earliest periods of its history ;’ nor did we think the description less true, when on another day an acquaintance rushed in upon us and proclaimed, ‘All Alexandria is in an uproar, and an uproar ‘about you and your unwarrantable and tyrannical ‘ application to the Viceroy ; they say you want to ‘ stop all visitors from seeing the Pyramid, and they
26 RUMOURS DESCENDING. | CHAP. II.
‘ won't hear of it. They report too that the Viceroy ‘told you in answer, that he could not think, as a ‘just ruler having the good of his people at heart, ‘of standing between the poor Arabs and the ‘ presents they were in the habit of receiving from ‘visitors to the Pyramid; and you were dumb- ‘foundered, they say, at the virtuous rebuke; and ‘there has not been such a pitch of indignation in ‘the maritime city for years.’
Well, thought we, if that is true, it shows that the population of Alexandria are still of the same nature as of old, when they had their great insurrection, because a Roman soldier killed a cat; a people always ready to be fanned up into a ferocious tumult, and on account of nothing, or next to nothing. How truly wrote the Emperor Adrian to the Consul Ser- vian: ‘I am convinced, my friend Servian, that of ‘all the inhabitants of Egypt, the Alexandrians ‘are the most trifling, wavering, changing at every ‘ change of public rumour, inclined to sedition, vain ‘and insolent. But I wish them no other curse ‘ than that they may be fed with their own chickens, ‘ which are hatched in a way I am ashamed to relate.’
So I went on quietly as before with the only scientific question there had been a possibility of commencing in Cairo, at all bearing on any of the matters to be looked into afterwards at the Pyramid ; viz., the mean temperature of the soil. The numerous wells in and about the city, delivering up water from a depth of from 300 to 400 inches in a constant
CHAP. II. | TEMPERATURE OF WELLS. 27 @
stream by the sakiyehs, seemed to offer a favourable opportunity for this sort of observation, and evi- dently enabled the subject to be treated at once very closely ; for while in the winter months of Decem- ber and January, with air varying from 45° to 65° Fahrenheit, the waters of the Nile were found to be 58°3° and 58°9° ; those of the wells were all between 66° and 71°. Evidently the great heat-wave of the previous summer was settling slowly down into the earth at its average rate all the world over, of about
360 inches of ordinary soil in six months; and its
maximum point, blunted no doubt by all the badly conducting substance it had passed through, was to be found just then very near the level of the great stratum of quiescent water which all these wells were drawing upon. Yet there were minute differ- ences in the temperature of different wells, not very easy to explain ; and one of them, the ‘ White Well, on the road to Boolak, was always warmer than any other by two, three, or more degrees, though seldom a degree different from its own temperature ; so that, at the early morning hours, or as soon as the many religious ablutionists had one after the other given the wheel two or three turns, lifted up a few buckets full of water, and performed their day-dawn orisons to the east and departed, allowing me then to move up with my apparatus before the bullocks arrived for the regular service of the day,—there was actu- ally a difference in temperature of more than 22° between the air and the water ; and a great crowd
28 IRRIGATION BY WELLS. [ CHAP. II. &
of the faithful would presently gather close about, to see the temperature of many successive glasses of water tried ; and to admire the nimbleness of the mercury in rushing up on each occasion through a large part of its scale.
Those wheel-worked water wells have a further feature of interest ; for they appear to be the sole means by which large parts of the plain country east and north-east of Cairo,—formed, no doubt, of the mud of the Nile, but, as we were told, never now reached by the inundation,—can be cultivated. Except, indeed, the surface is artificially irrigated, it becomes, not only in summer, but all the rainless sun-shiny year through, as dry and desolate as a brick ; yet irrigate it artificially by raising up the water from some 300 to 400 inches in depth, where — the supply is nearly inexhaustible, and the whole plain may become a garden of herbs, even such as Moses described. Israelitish Egypt to be.
Now there is at present,! and indeed has long been, much earnest discussion going on in literary circles as to the position of the Goshen of Scripture. The general idea first arrived at, is to place it east- ward, or north-eastward of Egypt; but that leads to such barren lands, that many have followed the views of Bryant, who placed it in the Delta, near its southern termination. Yet there are many ob- jections producible to that hypothesis, which would not apply to a position skirting the outside of the
1 Atheneum, October 7, 1865, p. 269.
CHAP. IL. | PLACE OF GOSHEN. 29
- Delta in the eastern direction on the same parallel of latitude,—if only it could be shown that the normal fertility of Egypt might be secured there, in addition to the free run of the neighbouring desert-hills and plains.
But it was precisely at the southern beginning of this probable site of the Goshen of Jacob and his sons (for it was more extensive afterwards), that we saw much ground rendered habitable and useful to man solely by the water-wheel wells ; or rather by the work performed there ; for the first and total cost of the home-made machinery in each case seems very trifling indeed, while the labour is, on the contrary, so difficult to supply, more especially since the recent murrain amongst the cattle, that many wells are already falling into disuse and decay, to the decrease immediately of the cultivated area. Given therefore a people with a superabundance of cattle in this particular region, and there is no doubt its garden produce would increase immensely ; and such a cattle-possessing people the Israelites of the captivity pre-eminently were.
Those speculations were presently cut short by a most timely letter from Mariette Bey, informing that the Viceroy had been pleased to appoint His Excel- lency Zeki Bey, Master of the Ceremonies, to arrange our affair, as I should duly hear on calling at the Palace of Gezeereh. There accordingly they detailed to me, next day, that all the items in scheme
30 VICEROY’S GRACIOUS DECISION. [ CHAP. Il.
No. 1 were graciously allowed by the Viceroy ; with the very liberal addition of the following,—1st, Con- veyance for the whole party from the east bank of the Nile to the Pyramids, and back again after the work should be completed; and 2d, Peremptory orders to the nearest villagers to furnish us with sup- plies of food at the usual market prices, during the entire period of our stay,—a piece of thoughtful care which we found in the end to be highly re- quired in the country districts of Egypt. The polite officials further gave me two Arabic letters, one to the Commandant of the Citadel for tents, and the other to the Governor of Jeezeh, who was to be responsible for our transit to the Pyramid.
The last letter on being delivered, with some kind assistance from the Consul, disclosed a very courteous Turkish official, but brought to light a peculiar Egyptian traveller's difficulty. The reserve inun- dation water, long expected from the upper country, had just at that very instant come down and drowned all the land in the direct route to the Pyramids. This was not the inundation of the Nile—which had been over nearly three months before,—but was a certain half intended, half accelerated irrigation accident ; and the Governor of Jeezeh was momen- tarily receiving in his little Court of Justice excited messages from one village or another, telling of the arrival of the destroying flood, and describing the depth of the waters around them. He promised, however, to send out his own people to make special
CHAP. 1. | DAY FOR STARTING. 31
inquiries and fordings in the line of the Pyramid road, and let us know in a few days how soon he could undertake to conduct us along it.
Now, therefore, the domestic preparations were pushed on rapidly ; and my wife, nearly recovered from her illness, and assisted by a bright-eyed, young English married lady, resident in Cairo, and accom- panied by our two servants, an Abyssinian, and an Arab-Copt convert (both recently engaged by the kind advice of a very obliging member of the American Mission), perambulated the bazaars and wider streets to purchase the furniture, cooking- ‘apparatus, provisions, water-jars, and all other im- pedimenta that were deemed essential to Egyptian life. Scarcely, too, was all this completed, when, on January 3d, we received notice that, on the follow- ing Saturday, the 7th of the month, the Governor of Jeezeh would be ready to perform his part of piloting us through the overflowed land, if we would repair with bag and baggage to the ferry of Old Cairo,* at an early hour of the forenoon.
‘This was indeed delightful, and we sent im- mediately for the two servants, Hanna Intana, the
1 Old Cairo, Fostat, or Masr El Ateekek, lies, like Boolak, on the east or nearer bank of the Nile, but about three miles farther up the stream, and in the neighbourhood of the ancient city of Babylon of Egypt, concerning which Sir John Maundeville thus discourses :— ‘ And undirstonde zee, that that Babyloyne I have spoken offe, where ‘that the Sowdan dwelleth, is not that gret Babyloyne, where the ‘ dyversitee of langages was first made for vengeance, by the Myracle ‘ of God, when the Grete Tour of Babel was begonnen to ben made; ‘ but wyte thee wel this Babyloyne of Egipt, near the Cytee of Cayr, ‘ sytt upen the Ryvere of Gyson, somtyme clept Nyle.’
32 UNEXPECTED OBJECTION. | CHAP. IL.
Abyssinian, and Wahabee Michael, the Arab Chris- tian, and let them know when the real work was to begin,—-their pay had been going on for three weeks, and their baksheeshes had been many, both on account of Christmas Day and New-Year’s Day (when they had knocked at our door before sunrise, to remind us that they were in the new year, as much as in the old, our devoted slaves, ready for whatever was to occur at the Pyramid), and in compliment to some of their native holidays besides. But now, on re- ceiving the stirring information, they were confused, talked seditiously to each other, and then wanted to know if I could not write to the Governor of Jeezeh to delay starting until Monday morning.
Why ?
‘Because Friday was the Copt’s Christmas Day ; ‘and they would be so worn out with the festivities ‘ that they would be quite unfit for travelling next ‘morning to the Pyramids.’
Yet neither of them was of Coptic faith; and while the tall, thin, high-cheeked, consumptive- looking, though coal-black Abyssinian was only inclined either to give very general reasons or to explode into anger if questioned why he brought up another Christmas, after having accepted the holiday and baksheesh of the Frank anniversary, —-his shorter, brown-visaged, hatchet-faced, hook- nosed companion at once declared that, although he and all his family had long been converted to the evangelical Presbyterianism of the American Church,
CHAP. IT. | FAIR PROMISES. 33
his grandmother was a Copt; and, in honour of her, it was perfectly necessary for him to keep the Coptic idea of the day without omitting any of its honours, and without regard to any other Christmas Days he might, or might not, find it expedient to keep.
After a laboured discussion of their fancied difi- culties, these geniuses were at length brought appa- rently to see that the date for starting, fixed, after so many preliminaries, by the Egyptian Government, was not to be lightly altered; and that the sun really rose at so very moderate an hour at this mid- ‘winter season of the year, that there was no valid and sober reason why they should not be perfectly ready for work by the late daylight on Saturday morning, let Friday be whatever religious anniver- sary it might. So at last, with that day secured to them as a whole holiday, and final instructions given on Thursday afternoon, as to their going down very early to Boolak on Saturday to gather up certain water-filters, sacks of charcoal, and crates of fowls,—which they themselves had asked to be allowed to purchase there, because they could be had there so much cheaper than in Cairo, and were necessary to give the last finish to the completeness of Mrs. Piazzi’s arrangements for the desert-home,— we dismissed them with good wishes for their second Christmas Day in the season, and congratulations on — being engaged in a scientific Pyramid measurement which the Government of their own country had condescended to approve of and promote.
VOL. I. c
34 TREACHERY SUSPECTED. [ CHAP. IL.
Late on Friday evening, visitors called—the head of the American mission, and two brother mission- aries, one from Alexandria, and the other from Syria. They kindly mentioned much of their pro- fessional objects, labours, disappointments and suc- cesses ; also of the general spirit of inquiry that is springing up in Muslim minds to test the truth of their book ; and of the inevitable though secret removal from this world of any young man of rank, should new-light manifestations on his part become known to the authorities that be,—autho- rities evidently wise as serpents to nip in the bud all attempts at free examination there. But the worthy chief has come to us bent on other objects too ; for, ‘though learned, literary, and fully employed, he can think for others even in the common affairs of life as well ; and in the course of the day he had met our Abyssinian and Arab, and had not liked either their looks or their answers ; in fact, he suspected they were going to desert their engagement to us when the morning came, though he could not get them explicitly to declare themselves then. But he had come down at this late hour of the evening to our hotel to forewarn us of what might happen, and to say that with the earliest daylight he would pro- ceed to look out for any other servants who were to be had, if in any degree suitable and willing to enter on life at the Pyramid.
We were of course exceedingly obliged, though as much astonished ; for the Arab had taken to such
CHAP. II. | ARAB NATURE EXCUSED. _ 35
airs of importance over his fellows on the strength of being engaged for the Pyramid expedition ; and the Abyssinian cook, thinking as much of himself as if he had been of the Emperor Theodore’s own establishment, had been allowed to lay in amongst other stores, every possible luxury he could think of for himself after the manner of his nation and to his own taste,—until some of the packages reeked again with garlic, and lard, and African maccaroni ; and both the men had professed such personal attach- ment to us! The ungrateful traitors! we thought. ‘Ah!’ but then suggested the philanthropic Chris- tian missionary, ‘do remember how the morals of ‘the country, especially of the lower orders, are ‘strained by the sudden accession of these Califor- ‘nian times of unbounded wealth arising from the ‘cotton mania. Such extravagant prices are given ‘now in all the merchants’ offices for assistants of ‘almost any kind, if they can but speak a little of ‘any European language, that few will remain in ‘any ordinary service.’ The actual circumstances, he assured us, would turn and spoil any human nature, more especially ‘Arab human nature, which ‘is so gentle, simple, touching, and easily deceived.’ And therewith, after certainly saying all that could be advanced for that side of the question, he left us for the night, with the further parting, earnest re- quest, that we would not judge generally of all Arabs by what we should see of the Pyramid Arabs; for they were wild, cunning, vindictive, and lawless to a
36 - LORDLY TRADERS. [ CHAP. II.
degree, as all travellers were continually complaining to their several consuls. But those Pyramid men were an utter exception, he argued, in the whole of Egypt, and not really to be thought of as Arabs at all. Morning broke on January 7th, 1865, bright, dusty, and rainless, as usual with a winter Cairene day, but no servants came. I went over to the Merchant Company’s stores hard by, and had all our collected stock of goods there packed on waggons, whereon room was still left for the additions to come up from Boolak ; but yet these traps did not make their appearance, nor the servants either. I had previously applied, on the strength of both English and Scottish letters of introduction, to the said Company—who are the recent successors in a ‘ Limited’ concern to a firm of great and deserved good. fame in the history of the modern commercial development of Egypt,—that they should send down one of their clerks, or any one who could speak either English or French as well as Arabic, to accompany the waggons to the river bank, where the Governor of Jeezeh’s men were expected to be found awaiting them. But one of the Directors, a portly man, with something of an Indian com- plexion, answered magniloquently ‘that they really ‘ could not do anything of the kind ; their business ‘was so extensive, so rapidly increasing, and so ‘ lucrative, that they could not afford me the assist- ‘ ance or spare the time of any one on the establish- ‘ment, either clerk or porter, to accompany the
4
CHAP. IL. | SERVANTS NOWHERE. 37
‘goods even to the distance of only a couple of ‘miles ; and the keeping of them in their stores for ‘the last three weeks had been extremely incon- ‘venient to the Company ; for the room occupied, ‘would have been much more profitably employed ‘in holding cotton, of which they had vast quan- ‘ tities, and were daily making immense gain.’ These merchant princes, nay far more than mer- chant princes, had also been recommended to be our bankers ; and, after notable percentages charged, were ready to advance what money was required, but only in gold ; for ‘they did not deal in silver ‘money, they said, pure and simple, when asked for small change suitable to country villages. But by an act of private grace the Secretary had this morn- ing procured a bag of Austrian silver dollars, great pancakes of things dedicated to Maria Theresa ; and with this very important help from our agents, I returned to the hotel once again. ! There, behold a janissary, obligingly sent from the Consulate by Mr. Reade. We could not converse with him certainly, but he knew something of the work to be done; and when at a late hour the Arab servant, almost driven over by the American missionary, did come, but only to announce, with a sulky air and a savage tone, that he had taken another service,—that the Abyssinian had got the ophthalmia, and he did not know what he had done with the money for the contribution from Boolak,— Janissary Osman, though lame of one foot by a
38 SORRY STARTING. [ CHAP. II.
recent fall, walked Mr. Wahabee over to the ‘ Chan- cellerie’ of the Consulate to finish his explanations there. We then mounted our donkeys, following the waggons loaded with whatever they had, down to the prescribed rendezvous at Masr-el-Ateekeh ; and not having a single person in the party with whom we could exchange an intelligible word, or consult on what we should do on arriving that night at the Pyramids, deprived of some of the first requirements of life. |
It really called for courage in a lady to set forth on such a journey ; but the spirit of her who was here concerned rose equal to the occasion, and en- couraged itself by indulging the firm conviction that some turn in our fortunes for the better would surely soon take place ; or some unexpected assist- ance befriend our efforts to hold to a complicated appointment in a good cause, after we had done everything that of ourselves it well lay in our power to do. But it was not until we had actually em- barked on board the roomy boat sent over to the eastern bank by the Governor of Jeezeh, with all the packages too out of the waggons securely there on board under our own eyes, and with a gentle breeze from the south slowly swelling forth the great lattine sail that shot up high and brightly white into the pure blue sky, and gradually bore us noiselessly, as well as with delightful smoothness, to the west, across the ancient river, in that broad reach which extends in front of the Mekias or Nilo-
CHAP. It. | CROSS THE NILE. 39
meter Observatory,—that we began to feel any large amount of rest or relaxation of spirit, from the nameless little vexations and anxieties of the last several weeks.
My wife’s commissariat then produced some plain buns, and Janissary Osman, after duly washing out, filled one of the earthenware water-bottles we had bought in passing through the bazaar of Old Cairo on our way to the river side, with Nile water as the accompanying beverage ;—muddy no doubt and as opaque as milk with suspended clay ; but then was it not Nile water, so celebrated by nation after nation through four thousand years! Did not that glorious old Roman, Pescennius Niger, silence his murmuring legions by exclaiming, ‘What! crave ‘ you wine, and have Nilus to drink of?’ And ina subsequent age, did not an educated Saxon describe with equal admiration, but greater particularity, if not exact adaptation to our case, did he not de- tail lovingly ‘how Nile water cureth the dolour ‘of the reins, and is most sovereign against that ‘windy melancholy arising from the shorter ribs, ‘ which so saddeth the mind of the diseased’ ?
At all events we ate our bread in thankfulness and took the water with satisfaction. For why? behind us now, and to be so for many months, lay the purse-proud modern Muslim city and its spring- tide of tulip-clothed individuals struggling after wealth ; while in front rose the Jeezeh shore and the calm of the ancient land.
CHAPTER III. REACH THE PYRAMIDS.
THE entrance into Jeezeh,! after climbing the steep clayey bank of the river, is effected between two little coffee-houses, and then by a narrow winding lane overshadowed with trees; a grain mar- ket on one side, and earthenware goolah shops on the other. This narrow thoroughfare was crowded. with passengers to and fro; soldiers also, in their bright nizam dress, were numerous, and on the elevated stone bench before one of the coffee-houses @ gallant Turk was blowing enormous clouds from a hookah, while we surveyed the scene from chairs placed for us on the opposite erection.
- Confusing at first, yet method there was in it of some sort, for by degrees things were got into evi- dent shape ; camel after camel was introduced on the scene, made to kneel down, soldiers clustered about it as thick as bees, packed its back most
1 Of the name of this little town, after which the chief Pyramids have been designated in modern times, we have collected the following spellings from different authors; besides the idea of Bryant, that it is derived from Geshen or Goshen, the location of the Israelites :— Gyzeh, Ghizeh, Gizeh, Giseh, Jizeh, Jeezeh, Gheezeh, Geezeh, —. Dsjise, Dschiseh.
CHAP. III. | CAMEL NATURE. 41.
astonishingly with our various boxes, lashed them on firmly, and then made each creature rise and wait ready loaded a little farther on up the wind- ing street. When five or six camels have been thus treated, we quite lose sight of the earlier ones in front, but more still are brought up in succession —eight camels at last. One, a very vicious animal, who cries out at every one, shows his fearful incisor teeth all round, exudes a red bladder-looking thing at the corner of his mouth,’ makes a sudden struggle to get up before half his load is on his back,—but instantly a dozen soldiers are upon him, and have him by the ears and stand on his bended legs before ‘he can straighten them, and he is compelled to take a share equal to his fellows.
‘How fortunate, remarked my better half to me, ‘that the Viceroy has ordered all this to be done ‘for you; you would never have been able to ‘manage it. I confessed how much we were
1 In W. R. Wilde’s Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira and other Places, is given the then recent explanation of this red-bladder pheno- menon, as determined by Dr. Paolo Savi of Pisa, who had discovered that such ‘guttural bladder is nothing else than an extraordinary ‘ development of the uvula, which is usually fourteen or fifteen inches ‘in length, and attached, not to the free margin of the soft palate, as ‘in other mammalia, but to its anterior or adherent edge, and also to ‘ the arches of the palate; so that, hanging like a curtain in front of ‘the velum pendulum palati, it appears to shut up the opening into ‘the fauces.’ And he then adds the necessary anatomical and physio- logical particulars for explaining how, when the animal gives a forcible expiration, the air, not finding a ready egress by the mouth, owing to the isthmus faucium being closed by the enlarged and distended uvula, forces it forwards in the shape of an elongated bladder, until it is pro-
truded from the side of the mouth, and then retracted by the azygos muscle.
42 ENGAGEMENT OF IBRAHEEM. [ CHAP. ITl.
obliged both to the Viceroy and his able Governor of Jeezeh ; and then up came, over the river bank, a well-dressed, grey-bearded, respectable-looking little Muslim, bringing a letter. A letter from the truly kind American missionary. He has engaged the bearer as cook and general servant for us, under such and such conditions of wages. We promise Ibraheem—for that is his name, and he speaks some English—to accomplish all that is written in the letter; whereupon he is perfectly satisfied, and throws himself into the spirit of the scene at once ; talking friendlily, yet with dignity, to the great Turkish officer, his soldiers, to Janissary Osman, who now returns to Cairo, the camel-drivers, and every one about,—picking up thereby all the particulars of the business, and showing himself far from in- experienced in such affairs. Dressed in a red and white turban, a natty embroidered brown jacket, but furnished with a huge-pointed hood for drawing over the head in bad weather, large blue inexpres- sibles, yellow slippers, and on his finger a silver set turquoise-ring of size, squareness, and solidity almost fit for an ancient Memnon,—we cannot think of him as a cook at all; his philanthropic and: experienced-looking countenance, united with his promptitude to embark at a moment’s notice on a desert excursion, and his capacity for cheerfully making the best of any circumstances he should find himself placed in,—compel us rather to see in him Ks Sindibad, the Sailor of many voyages, or a
CHAP. III. | LEAVE JEEZEH. 43
first cousin at least of that notable overcomer of innumerable difficulties.
Now too, the last camel has been loaded; a tall stern-looking man, in red tarboosh and severely simple costume of a blue outer and a white inner garment, is brought up and introduced as the Sheikh of a Pyramid village,—having been sent for from there by Government that he may be per- sonally charged with our safe journey; donkeys with carpets on them by way of saddles, but no bridles or stirrups, are produced, and we ride off for the Pyramids in earnest.
Yet not by the near route. Instead of striking straight across the plain westward, where there is still too much water for transit, our march is directed south-westward, along high mud-banks ; flat are these at top, but not unfrequently cut deeply through by side streams, and forming then such awkward fissures for the donkeys to cross, that we speculate on the awful shaking which will be ex- perienced by both boxes and camels when they have to step over, or into, or pass in any way the same places; for both they and Ibraheem have somehow fallen far behind, while we and our Roman-toga enveloped Sheikh were pushing on to the front.
The country hereabouts consists generally of gar- den-ground sprinkled with trees; the former in- creasing in proportional extent, and the latter resolving themselves more and more into separate groves of date palms, the farther we proceed. One
44. DATE-PALMS. | CHAP. ITI.
date-tree grove, Phenix dactylifera, was almost a forest in extent, and remarkable for the bright green grass forming a velvety sward on the soil below and amongst the trees; exhibiting therefore a delight- ful combination of the best English meadow-grass, with continued colonnades on every side of what is so peculiar to the south, viz. palm-tree trunks ; while high above our heads, through the groined and fretted roofs formed by the interlacing of curving compound fronds, the afternoon sun was darting its oblique and coloured rays.
On and on we thus went, passing mud-built villages, and date-tree groves, and mud-land, the day wearing away apace ; then by boat over a canal running north and south; and then along another line of elevated mud-bank, trending south-westward, and on either side of which symptoms of the recent flood began to appear, in shape of cotton-fields half drowned in water; thus we progressed, gradually entering at last one broad scene of water desolation, where every green or growing thing was either earried away or completely covered over by the dark slime of the waters; the celebrated ‘donum Nil, the agricultural gift of the patriarchal river. The landscape was now one huge plain of chocolate- coloured mud, coursed through here and there by several snake-like streams of yellowish water, the rearguard of that great and overflowing army which had so recently passed that way, leaving only those few stragglers to follow on behind.
CHAP. Ill.| | THE SHEIKH’S DILEMMA. 45
Presently we arrived at a break in the embank- ment, for a whole section of it had been carried away by the flood, and a notable stream was now rushing violently along through the gap northward. Here the donkeys were sent back by their accom- panying boys, and we crossed in a rickety boat with the toga’d Sheikh to the opposite side—only, how- ever, to sit on the driest part of the ground, for there was no one there. And though the Sheikh every half minute folded his blue toga about him in some new arrangement of noble folds which would have captivated a classic painter, and used his hand for a peak to his red tarboosh where the ulemas of his religion allow no such projection to exist, and tried to peer into the extreme and sunshiny distance of the plain, just under the western hills, which were now fast throwing their shadows towards us,—he could see nothing but the motionless ranges of far- off date-palms. So asking us presently if we were afraid of being left alone, and receiving an answer to a quite contrary effect, off he started on foot to the west, and was soon out of sight.
Here then was an opportunity for studying Egyptian landscape, at the very witching hour too of setting sun and evening’s purple tints. Dark mud, mud, mud on every side. I went to the edge of the water stream to collect from its very bank an undeniable example of inundation slime for sub- sequent examination in the microscope ; but could
46 CLAYEY SOIL. [CHAP. IIL.
not manage it without getting huge clogs of mud sticking to my feet and increasing at every step ; and even when I had returned to the top of the embankment, the difficulty was to get quit of them ; for stone or stick or even blade of grass there was none, and what looked angular semi-rock like soil proved to be only old mud, dried somewhat hard, —with its microscopic particles of mica slightly glistening in the light, and ready to attach them- selves on to, with every rub I gave to clean off, the great clay balls on my feet.
Then the much-bepraised soil of the Nile, thought we, must after all, with its adhesive pot- clay properties, be more adapted to brick-making than to agriculture. It is certainly untoward for trees, which as a general rule would have their root- pores completely suffocated in it; and what shall we say for the comfort and cleanliness of the inha- bitants in a land of none but muddy water, and where all the soil is soft adhesive clay? We could only hope that Pharaoh’s daughter had a nice set of stone steps, kept duly clean from all the peculiar and dark ‘gifts of the Nile, whereby to descend to her bathing there. Yet though the valley of this river is prevented by its clayey quality from com- paring with that of, say the Ganges, the Irrawaddy, or Mississippi, for large botanical glory, it does derive some advantages from its close plastic com- position; nay, perhaps it has even therein, con- sidering Egypt’s position in the rainless belt of
CHAP. III. | INUNDATION EFFECTS. 47
northern Africa, the very right thing in the right place. For had the ground been porous, what would have become of all the crops committed to its charge, when it only gets wetted once in the course of a whole livelong thirsty year? In other regions, and even where the soil is rather more compact than ordinary agricultural loam, we have seen attempts to water gardens artificially under an African sun; and half an hour after the watering they looked very much as they had done half an hour before, so very short-lived was the effect, and so utterly did the great furnace of that sun-illu- mined sky of brass, laugh to scorn all the attempts of man to bring into play an opposite force.
But here in Egypt, it was nature herself that was concerned : and only observe how she brings on the power, whatever that be, of water; viz., in a sheet so vast as almost to rival the spread of the blue sky above, and in quantity so portentous that the husbandman begins to tremble and fly from its presence as from a rushing mighty danger. In fact the water is brought upon this Egyptian land, when- ever it is brought at all, in a quantity, and depth, and for a time and in a manner that enable the fluid to enter into and thoroughly soak that pro- verbially impervious clay ; and then when that is wetted, what shall extract the moisture out of it again? Not even the mighty sun shining in its African glory for six months at a time, or until the destined inhabitants of the ancient valley have
48 THE PYRAMIDS SEEN. [ CHAP. III.
gathered in their year’s supply of food ; for the clay holds in tenaciously the lifegiving moisture against all external influence, just as those thick-leaved plants of the succulent order, the euphorbias and aloes,-—Africa’s own special desert progeny,—resist all evaporation through their thick-skinned leaves, and remain the only signs of vegetable life, through the most scorching season of an ever torrid year. Something else too could be said in favour of Egypt, wet, as we saw her then, viz., the colour and force of the landscape in a picturesque point of view. How frequently do we in many travellers’ books meet with Egyptian views, characterized by being hard and red ; or all red and yellow, in light tints too that weary themselves with sameness, and are flat, flat without air or distance. But now to the north-west, what a scene! The Pyramids of Jeezeh on their far-off desert hill ; the Great Pyramid fully revealed with its confusion of sepulchres on the steep below, and underneath that again, on the flat- tened plain, a few thin fretted lines of distant villages with their beloved date-palms just showing their crowned heads. The second Pyramid is also visible, but half concealed by large palm-trees in the middle distance; and the third, conspicuous enough with an undulating Libyan background, but too small to interfere with the notability and majesty of that one of the three which all the world has long agreed to call the Great Pyramid. How far off through a tenderly illumined atmosphere are
CHAP. III. | NILE BIRDS. 49
all these monuments of the past; and how much farther by the aid of the tinted hills, and interven- ing plains and distant villages hardly to be made out but by telescopic gaze. And then came the strangely pronounced forms of the waving fronds of lofty palms in middle distance, with the sun’s light striking full amongst them,—eclipsing some in rays of golden splendour, and again eclipsed itself in their deep purple shadows below ; while, lower and nearer still, the eye wanders over long reaches of the dark-brown wetted plain ; dark almost to intense blackness, yet always in some rich tint of Vandyke brown or chocolate-colour, that gradually lightens and brightens up to the more immediate foreground, with its tumultuous river of yellow waters and sentinels of snow-white, crane-like birds ; reminding. one of the medizeval traveller's description,—that ‘about this Ryvere Nyle ben manye briddes and ‘ fowles, or Sikonyes that thei clepen Ibes ;’ for this fair bright egret is the nearest living representative here of the ancient ibis, and is equally a friend to, and confiding in, man. ;
On the opposite side, again, or to the south-west all gorgeous with the rays of the setting sun falling full in its direction, what force and power are given to all the nearer and middle distances by these mellow browns of the overflowed land ; and then beyond them comes the end of a village into the view, its mud-hovels illuminated so resplendently on one side, and throwing shadows so pronounced
VOL. I. D
50 MOKATTAM HILLS. [ CHAP. IIL
on the other, as to look like some natural fortifica- tions improved by ancient kings. Beyond still, and south of these forms again, what distance is ex- pressed in the dark green plain, where woods of date- palms rise behind woods of date-palms ; each mellow- ing gradually into the far-off air, like the successive elm rows of the more fertile parts of England, when seen from an occasional height. But here the vision does not finish yet with these faint small forms ; for beyond all the distance that mere tree-covered slopes and leafy vales can make manifest, rise to view, on the eastern or Arabian side of the Nile, the exquisitely aérial lilacs and blues of the Mokattam Hills. From their gaunt and serried sides were brought, four thousand years ago, the most compact of the blocks for building the Pyramid, and still they furnish the corner-stones and pavements for modern palaces in Cairo; and we can distinguish even from this spot the square and more determined angles of their composition over all the other hills, and see too the warrior faces of many a noble cliff, which lighten up for a moment into a golden glow with the last look of the sun upon them ; and then only blues and aérial greys are seen encompassing their forms, while evening hastens to fall over the whole valley.
By this time many figures began to be perceived coming along the eastern or now farther line of the embankment we had already travelled over. They are the camels with our boxes and baggage ; steadily
CHAP, III. | NIGHT COMES ON. 51
they come striding along, but at the appearance of the breach they are stopped, made to kneel down in a group, all the packages are removed, formed into a wall round about, and preparations evidently begun by the drivers to bivouac there for the night. The ancient Ibraheem, whom we had long distin- guished amongst them by his white beard and his witch-like pointed hood, now thrown over his head, having seen all these arrangements duly completed, crossed the water and came over to us, but could give very little explanation. The stars were ap- pearing one after another, and the silvery lustre of the crescent moon thrown down from a high angle, the complement of the sun’s then wintry and night position, was overpowering the faint remains of day’s twilight ; imparting without doubt new beauties to the scene, but making it not look very much as if we were going to be at the Pyramids that evening. Presently, before the absolutely last faint tinge of blue illumination had left the western sky, dark forms of horses, men, and camels, were seen, relieved against the low streak of faint level light in that direction, and all of them hurrying along towards us. Nearer and nearer they approached, following the top of the embankment. At last they arrive ; first our friend in the toga, whom we can just recognise in the party by the light of the moon, and then a variety of other, and even higher grandees of rural kind. With salutations respectful, they re- quest us to mount on the animals they have brought ;
52 ARRIVAL AT SHEIKH DEADAR'S. [ CHAP. IIL.
and we ride along, a winding cavalcade, leaving the high embankment after a time, and then closely following our leaders through the dark shades of palm groves, and through cultivated land, with sheets of water reflecting the horned moon and evening star; until finally, pushing up a steep ascent to a village, a true Egyptian village of mud- built huts, and then through an archway, we dis- mount inside it ; are shown through a garden, and then into a notable house beyond, where, in the largest room, they seat my wife and self on the most honourable cushions at the head of the apartment ; and we learn with thankful satisfaction that for the rest of the night we are to be the guests of the worthy Sheikh Deadar, of the village of Khatremar Omar,—a locality indeed far south of our original destination; but then, what an unsought and unexceptionable opportunity for seeing Egyptian manners, as they do really practise them amongst themselves in Egypt!
The guest-chamber was about thirty feet long, fifteen wide, and twenty high; covered over its floor with matting, and near the upper end with a Turkey carpet besides. There were three or four British chairs, but nobody used them ; and the only other furniture was a huge lantern, standing about four feet high, and acting both as furniture and decoration too, so smart was it made with gilded tin-work, and so many piastres (230) had it cost the
CHAP. Ill] | THE SHEIKH BROTHERS. 58
Sheikh in Masr. They put one candle into it, but were so little satisfied with its illumination, that a second candle was brought, in an English green glass candlestick, and placed on a dirty little stool amongst the party seated in all decorum on the floor. This party numbered now three brothers of Sheikh Omar,—all of them Sheikhs together,if we understood aright,-—with large white turbans, and extensive blue togas folded around them ; our friend of the Pyramid village, full of gravity of expression; a Turkish officer in semi-military costume, representing the Jeezeh Governor ; a variety of other village notabili- ties ; and Ibraheem, who was alone able to interpret.
The honest men really did all they could to make the British strangers feel at ease ; apologized often for their smoking, and tried to make it up by pro- ducing frequent cups of coffee, very full of sugar, and amazingly hot. Then came the dinner, a mul- tum in parvo truly,—a dozen dishes all packed on a round metal tray, that was placed on a little stool of a table: mutton, fowl, and various vegetable dishes, both sweet and savoury, as well as the large flat cakes of bread that were to serve as plates, but no plates of course, or knives and forks either. It was, to tell the truth, the dinner prepared for the Sheikh himself, his brethren, and Muslim friends ; but, with rare courtesy, offered to the Christians first to partake of as far as they would. The Muslims indeed could not remain in the room to witness such defilement ; and one by one they departed, when a
a4 ABSENCE OF THE HOSTESS. [ CHAP. TI.
Nubian slave entered, bearing a brazen basin and tall ewer, with two table-napkins. He proceeded to pour water over our hands, first the one, then the other, presented the napkins, which he left with us, and signified that all was ready to begin the repast ; but before our actually commencing, the Sheikh returned with his youngest son, a child of about five years of age, dressed in blue and gold, a yellow sash, and red tarboosh. He may eat with us, though the father cannot; but the latter is amazingly pleased when we pull off with our fingers a tender piece from the scalding hot boiled fowl, and stuff it into the mouth of the innocent one.
O Sheikh, Sheikh! this is all most admirably meant on your part; but what a far warmer wel- come should we not have appreciated it, and what a sunshine to the soul would there not have been in that room, if the ladies of your household, ‘the ‘angels in the house,’ albeit you know them not as such, could have visibly assisted your hospitable en- deavours! How the poor man has to labour, in consequence of his self-deprivation of helpmeets ! for no sooner have he and his friends finished their dinner—and which we suspect they partook of under the archway outside, by the light of a blazing fire they have got up there,—than behold him returning again with Ibraheem, bringing two rolled-up masses of bedding, which they proceed to spread on the floor ; and discuss again and again over the method of doing it, with the dignity of sultans and the sageness
he
CHAP. III.]| SHEIKH’S GARDEN IMPROVEMENTS. 55
of the greatest pundits that ever the Hast produced. Then, again, the Sheikh brings in sundry carpenter's tools, and works long and confusedly at the door of the room inside, his Roman toga requiring refolding many times during the operation, until at last he shows that the locking machinery will work, hands _ me the key, and we are left to ourselves until the morning.
Up early that next morning ; Ibraheem soon ap- pears; all symptoms of the bedding are quickly removed, and he is complimented by my better-half on how well he understands what requires to be done. ‘ Excuse me, madam,’ says he,—his grey mustaches curling upwards with his honest smile,—‘ excuse me, “madam, but I have been a great deal with English ‘ ladies and gentlemen, and have learned much from ‘them; and besides that, I was with Colonel ‘ Howard Vyse, when he lived at the Pyramid.’
Here was news, and good luck too ; and so with cheerful prospects we went out into the little garden, and admired to Sheikh Omar his great plane-tree, hoped he would see his young date-trees grow very high and have much fruit ; and inquired the names of the copper-coloured wood-pigeons, and the crested black and white striped birds that were flitting about here and there, and the exquisitely blue- flowered creeper on the wall, until breakfast was announced. There the young man in the blue and gold cloak again appeared, and _ besides stuffing him with sugar, we gave him a portrait of Maria Theresa ;
56 RESUME THE ROAD. [ CHAP. IIL
paid out small sums of money, under the advice of Ibraheem, to various members of the household ; and finally mounted the carpeted donkeys in the midst of half the villagers congregated to look on ; find- ing ourselves after that once more under the lead of the Pyramid Sheikh, and trudging along the great westward-trending embankment,—that long mud- mound some twenty feet high above the land on either side, and forty feet broad at top.
Across presently, by an Arab stone bridge of several arches, the Grand Joseph Canal ; not the Patriarch’s, but Sultan Saladin’s, they say, but do not prove it ; and then we can trace our way clearly enough to the desert edge without any further impediment. Pass a few acacia-trees with long white thorns, very simi- lar to Acacia Capensis in South Africa, then per- ceive a pebble or two on the hitherto pure mud of the embankment, and in a few minutes more reach the desert itself with its world of yellow ochre sand, quartz or jasper stones, and little else besides. Next we turn sharp round, due north, riding thencefor- ward by the narrow sandy flat that lies all along between the light brown hills on the west and the cultivated land on the east, direct to the Pyramids ; 2.e., those of Jeezeh, for their Abouseer and Sak- kara rivals, which we had before closely approached, are now left far behind our backs.
South-eastward from us under the winter’s morning sun were the Mokattam Hills, in the most delightful
CHAP, I11.] DESERT FIRST ENTERED UPON. 57
faint-blue, or lilac of true distance ; relieved below by the dark olive-green of many intervening ranges of palm-tree groves, and set off above by exquisite banks of delicate white clouds, all transfused with pure sunlight, and of a texture that made them look like level streaks of bright and wavy floss silk, ex- tending all along the horizon from south-east to south, and even south-west. But due west were only the blue sky and the yellow hills. A strange appear- ance too they had, these hills of a ‘ rainless’ land ; for it was an appearance, first and most remarkably, of washing, and even superabundant washing, by rain ; there were no cliffs about them, and except the sprinkling of brown pebbles over their summits’ they had no other natural markings than the dis- tinct drainage of rain, forming young ravines over all their flanks.
It was rather a long ride that, approaching the Pyramids from our extreme southern starting-point, with the sun right behind us, and the country in front therefore very yellow and shadowless ; but in- venting improvements in the primitive saddle-gear of our donkeys partly occupied the time ; and while still two or three miles off, the Sheikh, giving a great swing of his toga round his shoulders, and arranging it in a new manner still, called our attention to the Sphinx.
It is what we had been noticing for some time past, but could hardly believe in its paltriness and complete distinction from the Pyramids. It is ver-
58 FIRST VIEW OF THE SPHINX. [ CHAP. III.
tically under the Great Pyramid certainly, but so far under, as to be three times nearer the base than the top of that long table-formed hill, on whose sum- mit not only the Great, but all the other Pyramids of Jeezeh, are situated. In fact, the Sphinx appears to us to be vulgarly shoved in at the base of the hills, merely to be away from the cultivated land, just like any trifling modern tomb! The head and face are visibly reddish, the neck and line of the back white, on the yellow sand ; while a clump of plane- trees and a group of date-palms close in front of it, add another proof of how far below the eternal drought and solitude of the Pyramids, the said Sphinx must be.
At length, after heading the ‘ Southern Causeway, and passing the trees with a dervish’s well amongst them, we reach the man-monster, the andro-Sphinx as it has always been, though some writers will still call it ‘she; find there the camels and boxes, as well as a colonel’s tent lent by the Egyptian Government out of the stores in the Citadel, already erected on the sand, ‘for the lady and gentleman.’ But we hold the position to be untenable as a permanent abode, for many reasons ; besides expecting no grace from living there under the shade of the Horem-hou, the biggest, if not also the oldest, idol in the world. ‘ Where, then, will you have the tent ‘erected ?’ said the guides, ‘for it had better be ‘ put up in its final position before the men of the ‘ Governor of Jeezeh leave !’
CHAP, III.| CHOOSING AMONGST TOMBS. 59
The where was of course at that moment a problem ; and though we would far rather have spent the rest of the day in quiet, we immediately organized a walking-party, consisting of the Sheikh, Ibraheem, and a few Arabs, who appeared no one knew how, to perambulate the Pyramid Hill all over, and endeavour to balance the respective advantages of the various sites for habitation.
First of all they took us west of the Sphinx to Dr. and Mrs. Lieder’s tomb ; a sepulchral chamber cut out of the rock; yet not where that worthy couple, who were still living in Cairo, had been buried ; only where some other person’s mummy was deposited four thousand years ago, and turned out of it again with ignominy one thousand or three thousand years afterwards ; and where finally Dr. and Mrs. Lieder had entertained for several weeks a whole party of their friends, both ladies and gentlemen, one joyful springtime in Said Basha’s reign.’ But we found the place now half-full of sand, with seas also of moving sand in front, and the Sheikh said something about there being snakes there.
‘Excuse me, madam, put in Ibraheem, ‘but let
1 Poor Dr. Lieder is now dead, having fallen a victim in Cairo to the fearful visitation of cholera which occurred there in June 1865. Be- sides his life-long missionary labours, remembered with gratitude by many, he is honourably mentioned in Bunsen’s Egypt's Place in Uni- versal History, as supplying one of the great data in ‘ the beginning of ‘ the second period of the modern history of Egypt in the fourth age of ‘ the world ;’ or thus, under date a.p. 1834, ‘ Coptic again made intel- ‘ ligible to the Copts as the language of the Bible by Protestant mis- ‘sionaries (Coptic School in Cairo, Gobat and Lieder).’
60 EAST-CLIFF TOMBS. [ CHAP. III.
‘me show you Colonel Howard Vyse’s tomb :’ and thereupon he led the whole party round by the east or south-east side of the Great Pyramid Hill toa quiet nook there, looking out in front over the green Egyptian plain, and gently spared by the storms of sand which come sweeping over the hill-top under violent winter winds chiefly from the south-west. On most parts of the hill-side, the sand-streams had buried the original outline ; but in this happy corner there was part of the primeval escarpment or lime- stone cliff to be seen, and now stuck full of ancient tombs ; that is, of little rooms with doorways open- ing through the face of the cliff, but their contents of humanity plundered ages ago, and distributed throughout all the museums of Europe. There were two or three storeys of the tombs, of various sizes and shapes, and they extended for several hundred feet along the length of the cliff, with various de- signs of architectural finish, Climbing up with difficulty above the lower storey, much encumbered with rubbish, we entered by a particular doorway a room carved into the substance of the hill, and some fourteen feet broad by twenty-five long : that was Colonel Howard Vyse’s tomb, 1.e., the old Egyptian sepulchre which he used partly as a residence and partly as a storehouse during the many months of 1837 which he spent at the Pyramids. Down again, and up another rude staircase in the face of the cliff, and we entered into Mariette Bey’s tomb, or one which he had excavated and cleared since
CHAP. 11. | NORTH-WEST TOMBS. 61
Colonel Howard Vyse’s visit. Not quite so large as the former, but with a window-place as well as a doorway,—and decorations at the farther end of alto- relievo figures, as large as life, showing the former possessors of the property somewhere in the reigns of the fourth and fifth dynasties of the earlier Pharaohs before Abraham, and with some basso-relievo carv- ings about the entrance,—this tomb, on the whole, seemed to be the most desirable residence we had yet met with ; protected also by the entire bulk of the hill, from being heated up at mid-day by the sun, as the tents would infallibly be, and with its doorway defended by a projecting rock from the direct attack of winds from any quarter.
But were there no tombs a little higher up the hill, nearer the Pyramid, and therefore close to the work for which we had come? One Arab, by name Alee Dobree, immediately offered to show tombs on any and every part of the hill; and he knew pre- cisely what we wanted without having it explained. ‘ All right,’ he said, ‘I know,’ and away he led us, with long vigorous strides, up the face of the hill, and over its sloping top towards the north-east corner of the Great Pyramid. Abundance of tombs and sepulchral wells we passed, but all open at top and encumbered with ruins ; then reached the Great Pyramid itself, rounded its northern heaps of rub- bish, and amongst other half-destroyed tombs, to- wards the north-west, came to a cleft in the ground, masonried on either side. ‘Here is the place,’ said
62 SOUTHERN TOMBS. [ CHAP. Ill.
he ; and winding his toga tightly about the upper part of his body, and leaving his shoes behind, he descended, straddling from side to side, sticking either toes or fingers into small joints of the stones, until at last he leapt on the solid earth at the bot- tom, went along a subterranean passage northward, and then turning west, declared that there were fine rooms there.
So there might be, thought we, but the mode of entrance is rather against them. That, however, he could not understand at all; it was as simple as pos- sible to his Arab activity, and the rooms below so beautiful and large. ‘Yes, but then the view from ‘them was bad,’ we suggested ; ‘could he not find ‘ something from whence we should see a date-palm ‘ waving in the wind?’ So then he marched us to the west ; but there was nothing particularly adapted there, though the external forms of the tombs rose often temple-like above the ground ; then we passed between the Great and second Pyramids, and having inspected a tomb in the south-east, which had a spacious enough porch looking eastward, but of no great breadth, and attended with the inconvenience of a square well some seventy feet deep in one corner, we returned to Mariette Bey’s tomb in the eastern cliff. (See Map, Plate 11.)
‘Excuse me, began Ibraheem, ‘ but I knew it was ‘the best from the first ; and pray look here at. this ‘ nice little tomb just opposite your door,—lI’ll make ‘that into my kitchen ; and we'll have those two
CHAP. IL. | EAST TOMBS SELECTED. 63
‘mummy-pits that lie between, filled up to the sur- ‘face, and then I can put up my great water-filters ‘there in a quiet corner shaded from the sun ; and ‘if you'll only go three steps down the face of the ‘cliff that way, what another beautiful room you ‘come to there,—it will just do for the lady and ‘ gentleman to take dinner in.’
All this was quite true, and not only so, but a semi-secret passage within the face of the cliff led from this last apartment into Colonel Howard Vyse’s grand saloon; so we immediately determined to have all our instrument-boxes brought into that stronghold ; and make it the workshop, storehouse, comparing-room for the measuring bars, and what- ever else we might require for the scientific service about to commence.
The camels, therefore, with their loads, were brought round from the Sphinx to the foot of the eastern cliff; by great hauling, and many hands, all the boxes were hoisted into the Howard Vyse apart- ment, secure there from all direct sun temperature ; coffee was made, presents given, the Jeezeh men re- turned to their homes, and we were left alone with Ibraheem to make appropriate arrangements by nightfall.
The Sheikh, however, in the toga, and a certain old Arab of deep design, and with the most marked vertical wrinkles on his forehead we had ever be- held, had not entirely departed ; for, after commun- ing together at the base of the cliff for a while, they
64 THE ‘GUARD’ MOVE. [ CHAP. III.
came up again, and inquired ‘how we were going to ‘manage about guards at night ?’
‘In such a dangerous and out-of-the-way position,’ they argued, ‘ we should not be safe without six men ‘ every night to guard us; and each of these men ‘must be paid two shillings every ordinary night, ‘and in cold weather three.’
‘To guard us from what?’ we asked. ‘ From the ‘ Bedouins of the desert,’ they answered. ‘Those ‘hereditary robbers of peaceful men,’ said they, ‘ might come down any night at a moment’s notice, ‘if they heard that unprotected travellers were ‘there. Why! herein Colonel Howard Vyse’s room ‘close by, after he left, a Nubian tried to live and ‘support himself by letting out lodgings to tra- ‘vellers; and he went on bravely for a time: ‘until one dark night the Bedouins came down, ‘killed him, robbed his wife of her necklace, ‘ ear-rings, finger-rings, nose-rings, and everything ‘ of value she possessed ; and they, the perpetrators ‘of the crime, could never:be discovered, so there ‘ was no redress.’
From twelve to eighteen shillings a night during four months, besides cost of day guards, we thought a high tax to pay these children of nature ; and for, after all, defending us from themselves, if the truth were known. So we told them that we had nothing to do with it, that the Viceroy had ordered them to see that no harm befell us, and if they thought that six men were necessary for our safety, they had
a
CHAP. II. | M. VASSALIS. 65
better send that number, and not one less, or they would be reported accordingly. This view of the case was not at all favourably received ; and when they became excited and tried to explain the whole affair to us from one end to the other, and prove every point of it, their semi-English passed into pure Arabic, and we failed to understand them altogether.
Evening was now advancing, and this grand question entirely unsettled, when help arrived. M. Vassalis, superintendent of excavations under Mariette Bey, and with instructions from his chief to aid our Pyramid projects, had just arrived in the neighbouring village, and now came up from there to see how we were faring. No sooner, too, was he seated in our dining-room bower of stone,—for it was that rather than a close tomb,—than he took up the disputed point; while the Arabs, who were again collected in numbers, squatted on all parts of the cliffy staircase, wherever they could find any foot- room, between him and the sky ; and had a deal to contend about wordily as to the propriety of their views. But M. Vassalis, an Italian of the grand Belzoni type, had a powerful way of putting the case before them in a very few unanswerable words ; and indicated so clearly to them what the Viceroy’s pro- ceedings would be, if any harm happened to the lady and gentleman during their stay at the Pyramids,—that we were presently informed the guards would be duly sent, and we should have no further trouble about them.
VOL. I. E
66 REMBRANDTINE NIGHT-GUARDS. [| CHAP. IIL.
After sunset, accordingly, and when we, thankful for the many mercies vouchsafed to us, were read- ing in our stone bower, or occasionally looking over the land of Egypt, spread like a carpet before this hill of tombs,—and there was just moonlight enough to show the landscape but not to dull the stars,—three warlike figures, wrapped in shapeless white burnouses, and with long guns strapped at their backs, passed before us to take up their posi- tion at the top of the slanting path or steps in the face of the cliff; while three others similarly armed stationed themselves below : so that then, with the cliff immediately above, and the cliff below, our door- ways, and the one and only path of oblique access defended at either end, we were as humanly safe as an admirably strong position could possibly make us.
CAA LER. 4 ¥, REPORT ON THE GREAT PYRAMID.
On the next morning, 9th of January, there was work to begin upon early ; for M. Vassalis came over from his village in the plain, and announced that Mariette Bey, on the part of the Viceroy, had in- structed him, M. Vassalis, to take twenty men, under two Reis or captains, from the Government excavations at Sakkéra, and place them at my ser- vice during a month, as a help towards preparing the interior of the Pyramid for mensuration, or for doing anything else that might be required in the interests of science; always excepting any ‘ break- ‘ing of the Pyramid ;’ and M. Vassalis was to see particularly that I did not do that. These Sakkéra men, moreover, were already arrived, and the question for immediate settlement was, on what subject were they first to commence ?
‘Why, let them go and begin by brushing out ‘and then washing down all the floors and walls ‘ of the several rooms and passages inside the Great ‘ Pyramid, we answered.
‘Oh, but that,’ he urged, ‘is not sufficiently pre-
68 PRELIMINARY PARTICULARS. [ CHAP. IVs
‘ cise for them to work by. You must go in your- ‘self and see exactly how matters stand, for not ‘until you have directed your own eyes to things ‘connected with the monuments of Egypt,—~and therewith he pointed with both fingers to his two eyes first, and then to objects before him,—‘ not until ‘you have comprehended them so with the eyes, can ‘ you form any real notion in this country of what is ‘to be done, and how. And you must be quick in ‘coming to a conclusion, for it is not for a whole or ‘ complete month the men will be here to work for you ; ‘ only from now up to the time when Ramadan be- ‘gins ; for Ramadan stops everything in Egypt, and ‘not even Government can get its own orders exe- ‘ cuted then, for the people fast, and have no strength.’
Evidently at this rate not a day was indeed to be lost, for the Muslim month of Ramadan would be upon us within less than three weeks ; and when the Viceroy had granted so much as the services of twenty men under two Reis, it was my duty to make it go as far as possible, for the credit of His Highness’ very liberal contribution, as well as the furtherance of Pyramid knowledge.
For himself, M. Vassalis declined, as he said, the pleasure of accompanying me, for he had been too often inside the Pyramid to love overmuch the stooping in its narrow passages. All that was pos- sibly quite true, for nature had cast him in a heroic mould of more than ordinary human proportions ; but his declinature also arose, in part, from the
a
CHAP. IV.] CANDLE-CARRYING, MODES OF. 69
a i
higher-toned motive of wishing to leave me quite free and unfettered in forming first ideas of what should be done. But he brought up with him, to attend upon me, two lithe and supple Sakkara youths, capable of going in anywhere like eels ; and the local Arab, Alee Dobree, who had been so active the pre- ceding day, volunteered his services also. Quickly, therefore, with their assistance, was one of the Edin- burgh boxes unpacked, and a supply of its candles and candlesticks with glass shades taken out, to serve for our exploration.
‘What’s the use of those glasses?’ asked Mr. Alee, ‘ there ’s no wind inside the Pyramid.’
‘No natural wind, we replied, ‘but we shall make ‘some apparent wind by our own moving about ; ‘ and that will cause the candles to gutter, and drop ‘spots of wax on the beautiful polished floors.’
‘Well, but all the travellers, and the Arabs who ‘go in with them, every day drop candle-grease all ‘ about,’ responded he ; ‘and why should not we do ‘ the same, and save ourselves the trouble of carrying ‘the heavy glasses 2’
The glasses were, however, insisted on ; and with them we were soon off-on our march, under the brilliant morning sun, to the ancient Pyramid. A stiff breeze, as we approached its honoured form, was blowing from the south, eddying and whirling about the corners. of the great building’s northern side. Every now and then, in the midst of the otherwise perfect deadness and immobility of this vast sepul-
70 FIRST SYMPTOMS OF APPROACH. [CHAP. IV.
chral region, away went in the wind some antelope- like thing, bounding over the stones, or behind the various tombs and heaps of rubbish, or at last dis- appearing over the edge of the hill; anything, in short, to escape the intruder’s gaze, as though we had been sportsmen on ruthless slaughter bent ; but the frightened, springing, flying object proved in every case to be merely a large sheet of paper, that had wrapped up some tourist’s pic-nicing provisions on previous days, and had been left defiling the ground and even littering the air. In quantity too, these things were almost incredible ; while, as we doubled the north-east corner of the Pyramid, the usual site of those gormandizing operations, we had to tread most cautiously, especially my barefoot companions, among fragments of black bottles, and other need- less refuse of thriftless feasting. Climbing up, however, rather slantingly along the northern face of the Pyramid, first by ascending the long slope of the hill of rubbish that lies against it, and for the last few yards by the rectangular stone ranges of the Pyramid itself,—we arrived at that well-known hollow, about fifty feet above the base and twenty- five feet east of its centre (2.e, the central vertical line of the northern side), where the entrance passage presents itself to view. ‘There, too, are first seen those strangely inclined courses of stone surrounding and forming the passage, not at right angles to the general side of the Pyramid, but kept with exactest care a certain small angle different therefrom ; and
CHAP. Iv.| PRESENT USES OF THE PYRAMID. 71
they are further, as is quite evident even on a first glance, of a whiter and denser stone than the ordi- nary vertical and horizontal courses of the mass of the building. (See Plates m1. and tv.)
The floor, again, of the passage, very much harder than any other portion of it, extends out far in front of either the walls or roof; for these have in part been broken away to the depth of many feet inward from the original Pyramid surface, and thus form something of a grotto on the northern face, which is always in the shade during the middle of the day. Hence, alas! more broken bottles, more greasy scraps of paper, and also names innumerable carved, cut, hacked, painted, and marked in various ways on the fair and once beauteous stone. Even while we were lighting our candles preparatory to entering, there were three ‘travellers’ and their dragoman, who had just finished their ‘luncheon,’ — as these desecrating feasts are always termed by the Arabs who behold them, no matter at what hour of the day they occur,—and all four were now standing above the roof of the passage, engaged in adding their names in the space exactly under that remark- able double pair of cyclopean blocks placed ‘ en décharge’ above the entrance. These gentry were in the very position of the figures in Sandys’ view of ‘The entrance into the Great Pyramid,’* even to
1 The entrance itself in his Plate is strangely disfigured by a pud- ding-shaped lump of stone, the original of which, as such, is simply incomprehensible. (See our Plate 11. vol. ii.)
72 COMPETING INSCRIPTIONS. — [ CHAP. IV.
the thirst-inspiring accompaniment of an Arab boy climbing up to them’ with a goolah (earthenware bottle) of water, and helping himself up by the same fractured western corner of the roof-block, which was used as a handle in his, Sandys’, day ; and yet Sandys began his journey so long ago, as to have passed through France ‘hard upon the time when that ‘ execrable murther was committed upon the person ‘of Henry the Fourth, by an obscure varlet.’
Many therefore are the inscriptions, and inscrip- tions upon inscriptions,—for these inscribers are no great respecters of each other,—in this neighbour- hood ; yet none of their handiworks can compete in size with that of Dr. Lepsius, who has held forth at enormous length in praise of the virtues of the late King of Prussia, on the highest and westernmost of these remarkable blocks. That inscription is indeed noble in the space which it occupies, but the site of it must have been rather unhappily chosen by the courtly philologist ; for, in the few short years that have intervened, there would seem to have been torrents of rain, ‘rainless’ though the region be generally termed, torrents that have brought vilifying streams of mud from the upper masonry right through the centre of the modern hieroglyphics ; nay, worse still has happened, for certain obscene birds of night, for their own foul ends, have presumed to take a particular fancy to that neighbourhood ; and, by a style of marking peculiar to themselves, have made confusion more confounded.
CHAP. IV. | ENTRANCE PASSAGE. 73
But our candles are now lighted, and we must enter ; enter too the largest building in the world by the smallest of all doorways—ze., only 47°3 inches high by 41°5 wide ; and that also not in the most convenient position, but tilted over towards the south, by the same angle that the floor inside dips in the same direction—z.e., 26°3° nearly. There might therefore be dangerous slipping,—for, as Sandys truly observes, the descent is made, and with much stooping, not by ‘stairs, but as down the steep ‘ of a hill—were not this danger guarded against by there being shallow notches cut across the smooth stone at every two or three feet of distance. Before, however, we had got very far down this declining passage, behold these cross notches increasing, both in depth, length, and closeness, until they began to form long holes in the direction of the axis of the passage ; and at last, such notable trenches, as to occupy all the breadth of the floor to within five or six inches of its edge on either side, and to have an almost uninterrupted run lengthways. Though excessively rough at the bottom, and occasioning many a staggering step,—yet they constituted an effectual lower level to the floor ; and suchas would enable any person either ascending or descending the passage, to perform the task with less of ‘that ‘ uneasy benefit of stooping’ which annoyed the old explorers, than first appearances promised.
‘Who made all these holes in the floor, Alee 2?’ we inquired of our guide.
74 FLOOR-HOLES. [ CHAP. IV.
‘Colonel Howard Vyse,’ was his prompt reply.
We demurred nevertheless to his information, from the tenor of many paragraphs in the worthy Colonel’s book; but could not fully discuss the matter just then ; for, with every step of each of our party, up rose such clouds of fine white dust, the abrasion of Mokattam limestone, and remained from their fine- ness suspended in the air,—that we were all immersed in a thick chalky haze ; in the midst of which, stoop- ing, jumping, struggling downwards as the floor-holes allowed or obliged, and fending ourselves off with hands and elbows from either side wall to prevent going head foremost down in front,—we reached at last the end of this series of broken pits; coming then to an untouched length of smooth floor, down which we slid on our heels, and finally alighted full bump against a steep bank of sand, that visibly terminated the passage at that point.
Now this point was after all, at a distance of hardly one hundred feet from the outside or begin- ning of the passage ; and all the world knows that ‘the entrance passage’ of the Great Pyramid, pre- serving the height, breadth, and angle given above, goes right down in one uninterrupted line to a dis- tance of more than three hundred feet ; diving down indeed into the solid earth far underneath the base of the built monument, and there opening into the subterranean chamber, the largest of all the cham- bers of the Pyramid, and the chief of those works underneath the surface of the ground, the prepara-
CHAP. Iv.| THE PASSAGE BLOCKED. 75
tion of which, according to Herodotus, occupied so many years previous to the commencement of the building.
‘This is the road,’ said Alee, trying to lead the thoughts he saw rising in our minds, by over officiously showing the way into a large cavernous- looking hole, that opened out sideways from the west wall of the entrance passage, just above the anomalous sandbank.
‘Yes, I see it is, was the reply, ‘if you mean the ~ ‘ way up to the first ascending passage ; for that is * Khaliph Al Mamoon’s hole, and just where it should ‘be; but stop here for a moment, if you please, ‘OQ Alee, who knowest more than any other ‘ Pyramid guide ; and explain what is the meaning ‘of this great bank of sand, blocking up so cruelly ‘all the lower part of the entrance passage beyond ‘ this point which we have reached ; and preventing “any access to the subterranean chamber.’
‘Why,’ returned he with a faint smile, and having seated himself despairingly in the Oriental manner, ‘it just means what you say; precisely that and ‘nothing more, for no one can go beyond the sand ; ‘but if they want to see the King’s chamber and ‘ sarcophagus, and everything else that all the tra- ‘ vellers come to visit, they must turn off here into ‘ Al Mamoon’s hole, and so go up just as I told you.’
‘Pray, though,’ we asked, ‘who first brought the sand into the passage 2’
But Alee was not well pleased with this question,
76 WHO DID IT? [ CHAP. IV.
and tried to parry it by asking argumentatively, ‘ How the travellers could ever get through the ‘ Pyramid quick enough, if they had to go down ‘the long subterranean passage, in addition to ‘visiting the upper galleries and the chambers ‘there. They had not strength enough for it too,’ he said ; ‘and so it was for the travellers’ own good ‘that the Arabs were obliged to stop up the pas- ‘sage completely, and show there was no hollow ‘space beyond that; for if anything at all of a ‘hole were left visibly open, the travellers were so ‘troublesome in asking where that hole led to, and ‘ then insisting on being taken there.’
‘What length of time,’ we asked, ‘has the sand- ‘ bank been in this place ?’
‘Oh, a great many years, answered he, ‘ more ‘than he could recollect ; and then he became ab- sorbed in philosophically examining the state of each and every one of his toes, in a sort of earnest and kindly manner too, as if they had been so many fingers on which he was about to draw kid gloves.
‘And has no tourist, during all that time ever ‘seen, or asked by name to be shown the subter- ‘ranean chamber at the bottom of this entrance ‘ passage ?’ we persisted in inquiring.
‘But how are the travellers to know that any ‘ chamber is there, if they don’t see it ?’ urged he, ‘and if they don’t know there is such a thing, how ‘can they have any desire to see it? Once on a ‘time perhaps there used to be travellers who knew
CHAP. IV.]| ARAB TALES OF TOURISTS’ WAYS. si
‘all about the Pyramid ; but, muttered he, rue- fully shaking his head, and bringing the examina- tion of his toes to an abrupt conclusion, ‘there’s a ‘great change come over all the travellers in late ‘years. Formerly, whenever they visited the Pyra- ‘mids they would stay several days, and be a long ‘time looking carefully at every tomb; and they ‘would talk with us Arabs about our houses and ‘ our fields, and ask us how we were getting on, and ‘seemed to think they would like to be Pyramid ‘ Arabs too; but now the travellers are always in ‘such a hurry, and they are getting more and more ‘in a hurry every year. One of the Arabs looking ‘ out now at the village, has only just time to ery out ‘that travellers are coming, and immediately the ‘ Pyramid Sheikhs and all the guides run to the hill ; ‘but before they can get there the travellers are ‘upon them, for they make their poor donkeys ‘gallop through the sand; and the moment they ‘arrive at the Pyramid they call out for their ‘luncheon, never waiting for the corks to be drawn ‘ out of the bottles, but knocking their necks off on ‘the stones and letting the pieces fall all about ; ‘and then they tell the Sheikh, “ Now look sharp, old ‘fellow, and get us three Arabs apiece to take us ‘up to the top of the Pyramid that we may see the ‘view, and be down quicker than any one else; and ‘ we'll time you by our watches ;” and they no sooner ‘come down than they are on their donkeys again, ‘and away they go over the plain to Masr, and we
78 AL MAMOON’S HOLE. [ CHAP. IV.
‘never see them a second time. Only a very few ‘ too of all those travellers ever go inside the Pyra- ‘mid; and as they don’t pay any more than their ‘ friends who merely went up the outside,—the poor ‘ Arabs can’t afford to let them know that there are ‘many chambers or passages. It won't do at all to ‘let the travellers stop too long inside the Pyramid ; ‘ outside it might be well enough if they liked it, ‘ but inside they are burning our candles all the ‘time, and Arabs can’t find wax-candles by digging ‘any day in the tombs.’
‘Well! that will do, Alee, for the present,’ said we, ‘as to the stopping up; have the goodness to ‘lead on now to the upper passages.’ So therewith he heralded the way with his candle in the glass shade into Khaliph Al Mamoon’s hole on the west ; a ruinous place enough, where much of the compo- nent masonry of the Pyramid must have tumbled out, and the steep rising floor is a mass of dust and broken stones ; but turning sharply round in the _recess towards the south, and then scaling a little rock-like cliff by means of small holes worked in the rough stones for Arab fingers and toes to catch in, and turning eastward again while so doing,—he entered by a large side opening into the bottom of the ‘ first ascending passage,’ at a point just above its lower portcullis stop.
This, to us, new passage, is, as every one knows, in the same vertical plane with the entrance pas- sage ; but, instead of dipping, it rises, at an angle
CHAP. IV.| FIRST ASCENDING PASSAGE. 79
of 26°3°, more or less, as it proceeds to the south. The floor is furnished with shallow notches to pre- vent feet from slipping, but was to our examination sadly covered with dust and limestone refuse ; while both walls and roof exhibited such lamentable decay as to give much of the lower part of the passage a large and rounded cavernous aspect,—by candlelight of course——for we were now quite beyond the reach of any daylight. But we could see enough of the ruin to call to mind Professor Greaves’ description, nearly two hundred and thirty years earlier, to the effect of the beauty of the archi- tecture of this passage, and to the greater ‘softness ‘and tenderness’ of the stone composing walls and roof, over that of which the floor was constructed. ‘ The ingenious young man, Titus Livius Burretinus, ‘the Venetian, first made the observation, and Greaves afterwards confirmed it, apparently by trying the surface with his knife; and if the huge exfoliation of the stone now to be observed has chiefly been effected since their day, grave doubts may well be entertained as to how much longer those parts of the Pyramid are going to last, where the material is of the ‘tender, but the treatment by modern men of a decidedly untender kind. Proceeding up and up, stooping always, and care- fully carrying our lights, but immersed constantly in the dusty haze of our own stirring, we found the upper part of this passage in rather better pre- servation than the lower, as to the original plane
80 WELL MOUTH. [ CHAP. IV.
surfaces of its walls ; yet the highest and southern- most roof-stone was ominously cracked through the middle along its central line. This mischief oc- curred at a point where said passage opened into the grand gallery or second ascending passage. In- stantly on entering that, there was a feeling upon us of greater solemnity and perfect quiet. We could now unbend our backs and stand straight up, rather wondering in the awful room of twenty- eight feet high above our heads, and its ceiling rising still farther, and one could think unlimitedly, as it proceeded southward. Close on the right hand was a square hole (see Plate v.), leading, by a short horizontal duct, to the mouth of that celebrated well going down to the lower parts of the Pyramid ; and so awfully deep, that the primitive Muslim who lucklessly fell down it in the year of the Hegira 345, ‘was no less than three hours falling, according to ‘ his terror-stricken companions; who heard the most ‘ horrible cries ; and then going out of the Pyramid, ‘ sat down in front of its northern face, and talked _‘ the matter over.’
Before us, southward, the floor was level to a small distance, and very narrow, but encumbered with fragments of stones ; and even when we had come to the end of this part, and had climbed, by straddling in the most inconvenient manner from hole to hole (and rather remarkable holes too), in either side-wall or bank ; and so had climbed up to the true inclined floor of the grand gallery, rising
Vertical Section parallel to North-wall of Grand Gallery, through axis of the We,
z,
ey, and looking North. y iy
ea POI eZ ima ae ae ig in
See
LZ
‘aD
AA Perspective view, from very close by, of Entrance
to hole leading to the Well; shewing that. a fampstone : has been broken out.
WH.M Farlane, Lith? Edin?
CHAP. IV. | GRAND GALLERY. 81
at an angle of 26°3°, and decorated on either side with the well-known ramps or long stone benches on the incline,—still every surface was thick with white powdery stone-dust, and the ‘ramp-holes’ absolutely filled with it. A long ascent there was, by that gallery-floor ; stopping, as we did, every now and then to admire the lofty walls, and their ‘seven ‘ overlappings of the tables of stone ;’ though occa- sionally to grieve over huge fractures from their edges; and then to find perhaps the ramp itself completely broken away for a distance of several feet, and the ascent at such places rather hazardous from the absence of an accustomed support for the hand. (See Plate 11.)
By aid, however, of the cross notches cut on this floor also, and gradually increasing in depth and power towards the upper end, we reached the top of the incline, and came to the grand upper step; a noted architectural feature of the original construc- tion, and nota small embarrassment to any one requiring to pass over it with a heavy burden: for it was planned to be a fine bold step, rising at once nearly three feet high vertically out of the ascend- ing floor ; so that there must be no slip backwards thereat, or the results might be ruinous. But now, alas! how is this great step fissured by two deep, snake-like cracks, and broken away by hammers to such an extent all about the middle, that there is little feature of any kind remaining.
From this point you enter, stooping, the very low
VOL. I. F
82 ANTECHAMBER. [ CHAP. IV.
passage that leads on southward, out of the upper end. of the grand gallery ; entering thereby at once the granite constructions of the Pyramid, all previously having been in limestone of one sort or another. And now to see the chipping perpetrated on all the corners for ‘specimens!’ This was most apparent in the little ‘antechamber ;’ where the ‘ pilasters,’ or projecting rims, between the supposed portcullis blocks had, bit by bit, been knocked almost entirely away, and some of the last fractures of the fine red granite looked very fresh indeed.
Stooping again after leaving the antechamber, another low passage brought us into the King’s chamber, that grand and final construction of the whole Pyramid, for which, and towards which, the entire fabric was erected. Here Alee and his two Sakk4ra young friends sat very dutifully on one side, with a single candle amongst them, while I took the remaining lights in either hand and began an inspection.
A magnificent room without doubt; granite the walls, the ceiling, and the floor ; with the important coffer standing solemnly at the farther or western end.
In the north-western corner, a long hole, caused by the taking out of three floor-blocks, that men descending thereby, might burrow under the granite floor, and especially under that part where the coffer stands, and search for possible mummy-pits
CHAP. IV.| WALLS OF KING'S CHAMBER. 83
in the underlying limestone masonry ; an old mis- chief long before Colonel Howard Vyse’s time, though further worked in by him. But he de- scribes the floor-joints as exquisitely true and fine, beyond almost anything else in the Pyramid ; while now, on the contrary, the floor is remarkably dislo- cated, with some of its stones an inch or two higher than the others! Is this the result of recent strain- ing on the building by reason of the large amount of quarrying performed above, below, and round about this precious room by the many curiosity- seekers, who have plagued its existence and per- forated its structure in all directions? One almost thinks it probable, for in the south-eastern corner are some frightful fissures in the wall, going right through two or three courses of the granite blocks as they stand, and evidently therefore produced by pressure on those blocks in their present position ; and that is close to the very place in the masonry, at the back and above, where the Signor Caviglia of Vyse in 1837, the Captain Cabilia of Belzoni in 1817, was for so many years quarrying and blasting, in his false and entirely unfounded hopes of finding another chamber connected with the south air-chan- nel. These walls of the King’s chamber had been so tenderly cared for by the builders, lest too much weight should press upon them, that the architect had constructed his curious arrangement of the five hollow chambers of construction over its ceiling : but when the divisions between. those chambers were
84 MODERN PAINT MISUSED. _—_[ CHAP. IV.
recently blasted, and the limestone backing of the granite below, largely knocked away,—no great wonder that the walls are now found to be cracking, and the floor giving and rending; for this room is in the Atlas condition of supporting the huge pres- sure of the whole upper part of the Pyramid.
Then looking round the walls, elsewhere truly composed of the ‘ beautiful and spacious polished ‘ tables of red granite, behold names, names, names ; not many cut, for the material is too hard for pocket- knives ; but what with white oil-paint, and black tar put on with a large brush, and in letters eight inches high, the stains in the classic ‘marble of Syene’ are villanous indeed. If, too, the travellers had not carved anything into the granite, they had chipped its edges wherever they could get at them ; whence it came, that all round the doorway not an inch in length remained unchipped ; similarly round about the openings of both the south and north air- channels ; at several places in the floor, and in the western wall, where the joints were not quite close ; and last and chiefest of all, on the poor coffer.
Every possible edge of this was chipped away with large chips along the top all round, both inside and.out ; chip upon chip, wofully spoiling the origi- nal figure ; along all the corners of the upright sides too, and even along every corner of the bottom, the latter being rendered more amenable to the vile hammers of petty destructors by being tilted up on a large round pebble thrust in below at the
CHAP. IV. | COFFER’S MATERIAL. 85
southern end ; while the upper south-eastern corner of the whole vessel was positively broken away by successive chippings, to a depth and breadth of nearly a third of the whole. Horrible in themselves, these extensive fractured surfaces had at least the merit of enabling one to settle in a moment the long-disputed question of the material of the coffer, and say it is not porphyry, but a blackish variety of red granite ; and all honour should therefore be given to those amongst past authors who pronounced in their day for red granite against porphyry, black marble, and whatever else the substance has been called.’ (See Frontispiece.)
Except the mere alteration of the name granite coffer for porphyry coffer, this correction possesses no further influence upon anything theoretical that has been advanced in connexion with the Pyramid ; but our eyes almost at the same time caught sight of another feature, which appeared at first of most revolutionary character; viz., the western side of the coffer is, through almost its entire length, rather lower than the other three, and these have grooves inside, or the remains of grooves once cut into them, about an inch or two below their summits, and on a level with the western edge; in fact, to admit a sliding sarcophagus cover, or lid; and there were the remains of three fixing pin-holes on the western side for fastening such cover into its place.
1 Chief among these authorities who were right, are Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Dr. Richardson, Dr. Clarke, M. Denon, Dr. Shaw, and M. Maillet.
86 LEDGE UNREPRESENTED — [ CHAP. IV.
The import of all this struck us almost dumb for a time; and we thought, if this cutting into the original proportions of the coffer, to convert it into a sarcophagus, is really an ancient work,—why and wherefore did the French savants of A.D. 1799, re- present it, in the exquisite engravings of their great national work, without any such cuttings whatever ; or, as a pure box-shape, with sides of equal height and thickness all the way round,—depriving us now of the serenity of our dependence on that mighty series of books of theirs, the glory-idol of far more extensive sections of the French people than their scientific men alone? But if, on the other hand, we really can depend on what the learned authors say they paid a great deal of attention to, and witness the special article criticising Professor Greaves’ description of the coffer, (and he also mentions it as a mathematically formed solid, or ‘two cubes set neatly together,’)—why then, in such case of loyalty to Academicians of Paris,’ this
1 The following is extracted from the Travels of Dr. Clarke, who had several interviews with members of the Institute in Alexandria, shortly previous to their return to France :—‘ The French Institute of ‘ Egypt was divided into four sections, severally consisting of the ‘ Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, Literature, and the Fine ‘ Arts. The following persons were its members :—
‘Those marked with an asterisk had left Egypt at the time of our
‘ (Dr. Clarke’s) arrival.
‘ MATHEMATICS.
* Andreossy. Costaz. Malus.
*Buonaparté. Girard. *Monge.
Fourier, perpetual Lancret. Nouet. Secretary of the Le Pere. *Quesnot.
Institute. Le Roy.
CHAP, Iv.] IN FRENCH ENGRAVINGS. 87
modification must have been worked into the coffer in the course of the present century.
In the earlier part of it, however, would now seem to be the conclusion ; for we were not then aware of Mr. Perring’s magnificent plans and drawings of the Great Pyramid, in Colonel Howard Vyse’s folio
‘ PHYSICS,
*Beauchamp. Delisle. *Dubois (pére). *Berthollet. Descortils. Geoffroy.
Boudet. Desgenettes. Larrey.
Champy (pére). *Dolomieu. Savigny.
Conté,
‘ POLITICAL ECONOMY.
Corancey. Jacotin. Reynier.
*Dugna. *Poussielque. Tallien.
*Fauvelet Bourienne.
‘LITERATURE AND FINE ARTS.
*Denon. : *Parseval. Rigo. Dutertre. Protain. Rigel. Le Pere. Don-Raphael. *Ripaut.
*Norry. Redouté.
‘To these sections of the Institute were also annexed the following persons, under the several heads :—
‘ LIBRARIANS, ‘ COMMISSION OF AGRICULTURE. Coquebert, Méchain. Champy (pére). Delisle. Nectoux. ‘ COMMISSION OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. Antiquaries. Chemists. *Ripault. *Pourlier. *Berthollet. Descotils. Architects, Champy (pére). Champy (ils). Balzac. *Norry. Surgeons. Le Pere. Protain. *Dubois. Lacypierre. Astronomers. Labate. Nouet. Méchain ( fils). Artist for Design. *Quesnot. Dutertre. Botanists. Geometricians. Deslisle. Nectoux. *Monge. Costaz.
Coquebert. Fourier. Corancey.
88 GIVEN BY HOWARD VYSE. [ CHAP. ay
publication, dated 1837-1839 ;* where the sarco- phagus features in the sides of the coffer are duly shown ; viz., cuttings into it suitable for sliding on a lid; but no lid given or reported discoverable, even to the smallest fragment.
Engraver. Literati. Fouquet. *Denon. Lerouge. Civil Engineers. *Parseval. Le Pere, Arnolet. Mechanics. Girard. Caristie. Conté, Coutelle. Faye. Favier. ; Le Pere (Gratian). Dubois. Artists. Devilliers. Adnés (pére). Adnés (ils). Martin. Moline. Aimé. Couvreur. Saint Genis. Duchanoy. Collin, Lancret. Alibert. Cécile, Mechanical Engincer. Fevre. Regnault, Lenoir, Mathem. Inst.-Maker. Chabrol. Bernard. tae ; j usicians. Jollois. Potier. , } Pei daisy. Viana Rigel. Villoteau. Geographical Engineers. Mineralogists. Jacotin. Bertre. *Dolomieu. Roziere. Simonel. Lecesne. Cordier. Dupuy. Levesque. Laroche, Naturalists. Jomard. Faurie. Geoffroi, Savane: Corabeuf. Painters,
Engineers—Constructors.
Boucher. *Greslé, Redoubte, Pt. of Nat. History. Chaumont. Apothecaries. Oriental Literature. aera ae Roahionss. Marcel. Raige. *Joubert. Delaporte. Sculptor. Belletete. Casteix.’
1 Published by James Fraser, 215 Regent Street, London, 1839. Originally the size of the book was 24 inches high by 36 long ; rather unwieldy, no doubt, though excellent for reference to the plates; but a lately purchased copy of the same edition has had all the plates folded in two, and with them, of course, the printed pages as well, making the opening of them out for reference or reading, as inconvenient as well can be imagined.
CHAP. IV. | DATE OF THE LEDGE ? 89
We looked at the affair, therefore, for a short time in that point of view; and found undoubtedly, that the present sarcophagus appearance has nothing about it which is in excess of the assumed original coffer ; the characteristic being merely a small amount of defect therefrom ; so that, given the coffer com- plete as the French savants pictured it, or as it proves itself to have originally been,—a clever granite- worker with appropriate tools could very soon do all that was required to bring about the present alterations ; that is, to take off some very modest parings, from one angle chiefly, near the top. So proportionally small are they, indeed, to the whole work, that they may have been effected long before the French visit, and even in a certain not only pre-Al Mamoon, but now suspected pre-Cambysean, entrance into the Pyramid by Egyptians them- selves; and have, by their insignificance, escaped the Argus-eyes of the learned Academicians,
Be that, however, as it may,-—-the Pyramid theory which brought us to Egypt, concerns itself not with what the vessel may have, at any subsequent time to its birth, been cut down to and made to measure as a sarcophagus, nor with the names of the perpetrators of such reduction,—but with what precisely were the vessel’s cubical contents in its first and original shape as a coffer; and for the determination of this query, sufficient materials fortunately remain. The coffer question was therefore, in this manner, found to be essentially similar to every other problem
90 HITTING THE COFFER. [ CHAP. IV.
requiring settlement in and about the Pyramid, including the very Pyramid itself as a whole ; for what that body measures now, after the in- juries of four thousand years—injuries that have always been in the way of reduction of, and abstrac- tion from, the original figure or size, never of adding anything thereto—is of no_ theoretical importance whatever; unless as leading to the discovery of original marks, capable of showing satisfactorily what the primitive size, at the time of the building, must have been.
With this general principle, therefore, strong on my mind; and some idea, too, that Bonaparte’s French Academicians may have looked through the intervening reductions, up to what they concluded, on good mechanical ground, must have been the original form of the vessel before them, when they prepared its elevations, plans, and sections,—we went on with our present mere inspection of repair and disrepair ; and, on looking over the edge into the coffer’s interior, saw there only dust, dirt, and a huge lump of limestone.
‘What is this great stone doing here, Alee?’ I inquired.
‘Why, the travellers want it whenever they come,’ returned he, ‘to hit the coffer with hard, and make ‘a sound like a bell.’
‘Then just have the goodness to take it out, and ‘ throw it down into that deep excavation under the ‘ floor, —was the only answer that could be made
CHAP. IV.| ANCIENT VENTILATING CHANNELS. 91
in the spirit of obedience to His Highness the Viceroy’s desires touching the preservation of the monuments of Egypt, and with due respect to the principles of the Museum of Boolak.
But this little operation raised, into a smoke-like cloud, the dust that was more than two inches thick on the bottom of the coffer; and not for ten minutes or more could we see into it again. The whole floor of the room too was similarly covered with the infinitely fine, white, and dry limestone powder, that rose in misty haze with every step we took across it. This accompaniment causing the heat of the room to become oppressive, we examined inter- estedly the two openings of the ventilating channels in the north and south walls. Nota breath of air was passing through them. Alee Dobree said that was always so in the winter time ; but that in sum- mer, on a very hot day outside, a little motion of air could just be seen. He took us, however, after- wards to an excavation of Signor Caviglia’s, tending north-westward from the entrance of the ante- chamber; and there we perceived the north air- channel, not only intercepted and cut in two; but the small remaining portion leading off to the King’s chamber,—and where we had been experi- menting very carefully for traces of ventilation- currents,—rammed full of stones and sand; and the same very modern choking was afterwards found to have been performed upon the larger remnant of the shaft leading outwards to the open
92 QUEEN'S CHAMBER. | CHAP. IV.
air; as well too with the southern as the northern channel.
I questioned the guide specially about these air- channels, drawing a vertical section of the Pyramid to ‘place’ every passage we had yet visited or seen ; and he surprised me much by saying that there was another air-passage still; and when asked to take the pencil and show where,—he drew a shaky line leading out just over the entrance passage of the Pyramid. This being quite unrecorded by Howard Vyse, Gardner Wilkinson, or any other explorers, I immediately demanded that he, Alee, should take me to where it opened on the outside of the Pyramid. So in our way out, we merely stopped a few minutes to look in at the Queen’s chamber, and take note of a monstrous quarry-hole in the eastern side of the floor, under the strange niche in the wall, and a huge heap of stones and rubbish in the north-west corner, rising nearly a third the height of the room : ‘noysome savour, indeed, ‘and grave-like smell,’ such as offended Sandys, we did not perceive, but of his ‘ rubbidge’ there were whole waggon-loads ; and then, in a few minutes more, we were ascending the outside of the Pyramid at its north-eastern angle.
Why we should go so far away from the vertical of the entrance passage, if the new air-channel had its opening close above that noted portal, did not appear ; but Alee declared he was going the shortest
CHAP. IV.| SUPPOSED NEW AIR-CHANNEL. 93
and easiest way. Yet still it was a long climbing up and up and up; so long, indeed, that at last we arrived at that large break-out in the corner, which is technically known to all the guides as ‘ half-way,’ but is really rather more than half-way, to the top of the Pyramid ; and when Alee began climbing higher still, I was obliged to remind him that we were not wanting then to visit the summit of the Pyramid, but only to see the air-hole he had spoken of, and shown in the drawing to be very much lower down. Still he said he was going to it as straight as he could go; and at last when there appeared very little more of the yellow Pyramid left between us and the blue sky, nearly overhead, he began to strike off horizontally towards the central vertical line of the northern face.
Now began the critical work ; for hitherto, though the stair naturally formed by the courses of masonry at the corner slope, was often most inconveniently high for any man, other than a long striding Arab, to step up, viz., forty or fifty inches at a time, yet they were sure and safe ; for they are generally composed of the hard Mokattam limestone, are free from débris ; and, rising only at the corner Pyramid angle of 41°, have more horizontal than vertical sur- face. But the courses forming the general side of the Pyramid, were composed only of the friable rock of the Pyramid’s own hill; were of the steeper slope of 52°, or necessarily with less horizontal than vertical surface; and were so decayed by the
94 ARAB FAILURE ON PAPER. [.CHAP. IV.
weather, or obscured by gravelly matter brought from above by rain, that the ordinary stepped side of the Pyramid, in some cases degenerated to little better than the sloping surface of a mouldering but dangerously steep hill.
However, in one way or another we contrived to climb along with our faces to the Pyramid, until Alee came to a worked hole trending down towards the centre of the Pyramid at an angle notably differ- ent from the passages proper, or 32° 45’, as a pocket clinometer seemed to indicate. On noting this angle, however, and the height above the ground; I was obliged to exclaim, ‘ Why, this is Colonel Vyse’s ‘northern air-channel! where, Alee, is the other ‘ lower channel you promised to show me ?’
‘This is it; and it is the only one in all the ‘northern face,’ said he. (See Plate 11.)
‘But this is not in the position you marked in ‘my drawing, I returned, taking the paper out of my pocket, and showing him what he had there put in with his own hand.
Whereupon, borrowing the pencil again, he began to discourse on air-channels, and passages, and cham- bers; and while showing he did really know a great deal about them in themselves, yet exhibited the most singular incapacity for accuracy with regard toadrawing. For although the one before him, was on the small scale of only about three inches for the whole height of the Pyramid, he considered that - putting the pencil-point within a whole inch or two
CHAP. IV. | ARCADIA IN EGYPT. 95
one way or the other of the right place on the paper, was quite close enough for all practical pur- poses ; and that in fact, his zigzag marking for an air-channel near the bottom of the Pyramid was, to his eye and judgment, an absolutely identical line with my straight one near the upper part of the Pyramid ; and that they both spoke with equal accuracy to one and the same air-channel, viz., the well-known one of Colonel Howard Vyse.
We had therefore been led a most needless climb after a fatiguing inspection of dark interiors, and began accordingly rather to underrate the faculties of Alee Dobree as a Pyramid guide; but when he presently turned round and pointed out, from that very notable height where we were then suspended on the Pyramid side, all the villages in the fertile plain of the Nile and southern end of the Delta ; and named them by their names, and spoke of the old Arab bridges; discussed the recent inundation ; described the various species of agriculture then commencing in the dark brown, well-wetted ground ; and went into the hopes and fears and hard toil of the peasants at that, their cold season; but painted a glowing picture of the happiness that would ensue on the arrival of genial summer, when all the plain, now so black, would be bright green, and there would be food for everything with life, for the birds, the beasts,,and the Arabs with all their families ; that delightful Egyptian summer-time, he said, when all the crops would be so abundant, both the corn
96 SOMETHING IN ALEE DOBREE. [ CHAP. IV.
in the fields and the cucumbers in the gardens, that every one might eat and have enough to spare for his neighbour, and no one need feel his heart con- tracted, or think the world was black before his eyes,—why, on hearing all this fluent outpouring both of local topography and good native senti- ment, we could not but begin to see that Alee Dobree was a man of sterling moral worth ; endued too, with quite enough general knowledge to become a very good helper in mechanical researches about the Great Pyramid, though not to be trusted again in any matter involving minute accuracy on a small-sized paper plan.
CHAPTER V. WORKING PRELIMINARIES.
On returning to the ‘East Tombs,’ affairs were found there greatly advanced toward the possible, for modern civilized life. Old Ibraheem of the snowy beard was fertile in expedients ; he had redis- covered, too, most of the wooden plugs inserted by Colonel Howard Vyse in the rock-walls of these convenient chambers; and driven nails or hooks anew into them, whereby to suspend both cleanly tapestry and curtain-doors ; while at the same time he kept a whole drove of little Arab boys employed all the morning in bringing him water and Nile mud, wherewith he plastered up unsightly holes that might conceal a snake. He also made himself a whole kitchen-range, by building several little cast-iron boxes into a bank of stones, cemented and finished off at top with this cheap substitute for lime-mortar, so conveniently present to the hand of every inhabitant in the favoured Egyptian valley.
He had a peculiar gift likewise, in spreading the native reed-mats, to make a flat and clean floor; of which full advantage had been taken ; both in the
VOL, I. G
98 SMYNE. [ CHAP. V.
bedroom decorated with the alto-relievos of the ‘lady and gentleman’—or rather of the ladies and gentlemen, for there were two pairs of them—of four thousand years ago ; and in the bower of stone, which had become a very respectable sitting-room for a modern party ; with table, chairs, and boxes that held both sideboard fittings and writing-desk luxuries. An assistant, moreover, had been en- gaged ; one Smyne by name, a regular Arab villager . in look and costume, but very smiling, cheerful, and ready to help Ibraheem in anything and every- thing ; besides continually declaring his purpose to serve us as long as we should remain at the Pyra- mids, and then accompany us back to Scotland, if we would take him. He was perhaps rather too abundant in protestations, and had given out already a large variety of information about him- self; so that I was immediately instructed, among other things, that he was a pure Arab, and not an Egyptian at all, was aged twenty-two, and was going to be married the week after Ramadan.
Of course I complimented him on his prospects, which he acknowledged pleasantly, but then de- clared that his intended marriage was ‘maleysh, or no matter at all, and of no consequence what- ever : which was of course thought very strange by the lady. But now Ibraheem demanded help, for dinner was ready to be served up, and the whole world would be out of joint with him if anything was to interfere with his arrangements there; so
CHAP. V. | IBRAHEEM’S BIG BOX. 99
the table being spread with a fair white cloth and the appointments of a small canteen, we waited to see what would come. First, a messenger with hot plates, wrapped up in a towel to prevent sand blowing on them in the short transit along the face of the cliff from the tomb-kitchen to the tomb- dining-room. How has that ancient mariner, thought we admiringly, been able both to cook the dinner and heat plates too at that miniature kitchen-range of his, where only a pinch of char- coal is burning in each of his primitive little grates? But while we are wondering, and have heard the lid of the big box,—the biggest of all our _travelling-boxes, and which when emptied of its original contents of bedding, tent (lent us by our kind friend R. M. Smith, Esq., of Edinburgh), ete. etc., Ibraheem had immediately applied for and conveyed into the recesses of his tomb, to be both closet and lockers for all the paraphernalia of his art and his kitchen,—had heard the lid of this box open and close frequently with vehement bangs that made: its hasps ring again,—suddenly, behold a procession ; Ibraheem in his dragoman costume leading the way with one element of dinner, and Smyne in a long toga following him with another, and after him a similar but smaller chocolate-faced youth, and after him another smaller still, but each having something or other out of Ibra- heem’s big box ; and our table is covered in a trice with everything that hungry human nature need
100 IBRAHEEM’S DINNER. [ CHAP. V.
desire. A really good soup, rich, well-flavoured, and fair to contemplate besides; a small roast of lamb, done to an exquisite turn; pleasant-looking potatoes, not over-boiled outside, and yet, strange to say in modern times, done thoroughly through to the heart, such was our Sindibad’s magic skill ; and presently followed a sweet pudding, that looked pure as Oriental alabaster, and yet wanted nothing that pudding should possess. Of course we showered compliments upon the artist-author of all this per- formance in the desert, and the twinkling of his one eye which ophthalmia had spared, and the rising of the ends of his grey mustaches, told how much the praises were appreciated ; evidently expected too—as why should they not have been, when he had been continually, morning, noon, and night, imagining and arranging the whole subject in his mind with the enthusiasm of any French chef; combined, however, in Ibraheem’s case with the dignity of a Roman senator ?
Who, however, were these little mites of Arabs, small by degrees, and, by courtesy, beautifully less, | following Smyne? Oh, these, we were told, are his younger brothers ; he has brought them over to do his work for him ; it is not usual in Egypt for any one to perform other than the lighter and more orna- mental parts of the work he may be paid to do. From head Basha to cook’s scullion it is all the same: the man who is paid, pockets the money, and then looks out for some smaller or younger
CHAP. V. | EGYPTIAN MORALE. 101
man whom he can compel to do the hard work for him. The true ‘génie Egyptien, of all Cairenes, and others too, is to recline all day long on luxurious cushions ; accomplishing nothing more than smoke tobacco and drink coffee in the cool shade, and see other men in the distance and broil- ing sun doing their work for them.
‘Well, but all that is very immoral,’ we remarked.
‘Oh, not at all” answered our Sindibad philoso- pher, ‘not at all here; this country is not like ‘ yours, and there is no other way of getting work ‘ performed well in our land. If a man had to do ‘ with his own hands the work he is paid to do, ‘ why, his first thoughts would of course be to spare ‘and cherish his own flesh—for what does a man ‘care for so much as his own self?—but if he has ‘some unfortunates under him to do his work for ‘him, he never thinks about sparing their flesh or ‘cherishing their muscles. Only look at Smyne ‘now, so dignifiedly smoking a huge cigarette of ‘his own lazy twisting up; he is already retired ‘for the day from all active work, and which he ‘can so well afford to do, because he has his small ‘brothers before him to attend to any little et- ‘ceteras there may be about the kitchen or the ‘water-jars; and if they attempt to shirk the ‘smallest portion of such duty, he cries out at them ‘like an “efreet ;” so then you see it is excellent ‘education for them in the way of learning what ‘they will have to perform as men; and it is not
102 PREPARATION OF REPORT. [ CHAP. V;
‘less useful for him, because it teaches him how to ‘comport himself in any high office to which the ‘Governor of Jeezeh, or the Kaimakan may raise ‘him some of these days; and, as he says, who ‘knows how soon Smyne may be elevated to be a ‘ Reis, and perhaps even made a Sheikh of Pyramid ‘guides? But poor Smyne is always fancying that ‘he is just going to become a great man, or that “some very good fortune is to befall him,—though ‘it never comes, and his friends are rather afraid ‘that he is not very wise in the head.’
As we were far too much of strangers to presume that we understood the affairs and modes of going on in this country, we heard all and denied nothing. Besides, a report had to be written out on the state of the interior of the Great Pyramid, together with a project for its thorough cleansing ; and the sen- sible Alee Dobree was waiting all this time to take said report over to M. Vassalis in his village on the plain. He had to wait too long after dark, for although there had been a blazing sunshine, blue sky, and high temperature throughout the day, yet the darkness came on lamentably soon, for it was yet the winter season of short days and long nights in this southern land ; whence strange differences as well as resemblances began to develop them- selves, day by day, between such an Egyptian sojourn and an ordinary summer excursion in the northern hemisphere,—where, when the weather is warm enough for tent life, or open cave and stone-
CHAP. V. | IBRAHEEM’S FOWLS. 103
bower occupation to be indulged in with pleasure,— the days are so long, that little of stores for the night are required. But here, in Egypt, during January, we soon found that our hopes of making the best of opportunities, depended in no small degree on abundant supplies of lamps and candles, and the utilization of many of the nightly hours.
It was some time after my wife had retired to the sculptured room for the night, and I was still writing at the table in the stone bower,—when Ibraheem looked in at the upper corner, from the staircase ledge on the face of the cliff, and called my attention to something. ‘Oh, so fat!’ exclaimed he, while the fitful rays of two wax-candles twitch- ing in the open but not windy air displayed his sage smiling countenance, and his hands holding up a couple of unfortunate fowls ; and ‘Oh, so fat!’ ex- claimed he again, on perceiving he was recognised.
‘Are they not always fat ?’ I hastily answered ; but the worthy man’s philanthropic visage implied deep grief for my ignorance of the important things of life ; for fowls in the Egyptian country are as a rule kept starving until close upon the time they are wanted for the table ; and though several had been brought from the village that day, Ibraheem would have none of them, they were so poor and lean, fit precursors only to a famine in the land. So he had sent at last a special messenger to a village a great way off, where there was a Sheikh reported to have a couple of fowls really presentable before a cook.
104 DOMESTIC COUNTINGS. [ CHAP. 'V.-
Well, the time passed on again ; moths from the desert came flying into the bower in abundance ; and every now and then a great scarabeeus entered with a grand tantarara of sound, knocking himself violently against something or other, and requiring to be forcibly turned out. The Egyptian land in front lay level and silent under the silver moonlight and the sparkling canopy of stars, while every now and then the Arab guards at top of the cliff were calling to those at the bottom, or vice versd, ‘ Are * you awake? open your eyes, open them very wide.’
Presently in comes Ibraheem again, looking now very solemn, and arrayed in a long white robe like a ghost ; he seats himself on a tent-package half in and half out of the bower, and says, with a gravity that admits of no declining, that he has come to ‘count with me.’
On what system of numeration? I am almost inclined to ask, raising my eyes from the paper ; but he immediately begins to unfold an impressive tale—so many paras spent for one article of pro- visions, and so many for another, and his powers of memory must not be disturbed in calling up the vision of the whole day’s proceedings, for his brains are his only account-books. But as soon as the drift of his visit is apparent, he is told that he must not come to the gentleman about these difficult things ; let him speak to the lady about them every day in the forenoon, and she will ‘ count with him’ as far as he desires, and let him have all the money
CHAP. V.| MORNING IN THE DESERT. 105
too which he needs. And in fact that system was found to act ever afterwards so perfectly, that the gentleman was left with nothing but the Pyramid and its proper mensuration to think about, during all the rest of our occupation of the Eastern tombs.
Up soon next morning, and in time to see the earlier dark and coloured dawn of day before the brighter one, when colour is mostly lost in light ; and splendid depth of coloured hues too did appear, —for the green of the cultivated land in the middle distance, relieved by the brown-yellow of the desert sands in the foreground, went off in the further distance actually into deep Prussian blue, before they faded again to join the haze on the horizon,— that warmed once more as it rose up to the general glow of lurid red, which belted all the lower sky. Such intensity of blue we had never seen before in any landscape, and the accompaniments rendered it perfectly harmonious.
As the day approached, the colour-effect de- creased ; but when the sun itself rose above the Mokattam Hills, and darted its long arrows of light through and amongst the palms of the nearer villages in the plain, there were powerful effects of simple light and shade that balanced or overcame everything else. Our night-guards were now seen on the illuminated sandy plain below, having per- formed their prostrations towards the east, wending their way towards their respective villages ; whence
106 DESERT PRECAUTIONS. [ CHAP. V.
the shepherds with their flocks, as often leading as driving them, were diverging to their search after scanty herbage in stray nooks and corners of the desert ; while between the nearest Pyramid village and our tombs, were observable, in long straggling line, Smyne and his little brothers coming in easy style to their practical school ; with sindry others too, whom the calculating Ibraheem had organized into a service for bringing water and butter and egos, and we know not what besides.
When during breakfast, he came to show a large plateful of fresh eggs just procured, and to receive compliments on their beauty ; but was asked ‘had ‘he not got in plenty of eggs the day before ?’ then this untiring factotum explained, that for the present time merely, he had; but it would never do in the desert, to have supplies to last only from hand to mouth. For not on the ultimate, but the penulti- mate furnishings must we live, if we would avoid an occasional contretemps ; and that at all. events it was his duty to have something more and further always safe in his big box, beyond what all the Arabs round about knew anything of.
His calculations were indeed incessant, and ever forerunning the time ; and were guided apparently in his mind by such an awful sense of the responsi- bility that rested upon him, combined with the duty of a certain amount of gentle despotism,—that it was quite bewitching to behold. So that, when my wife complimented him after breakfast this morning on
CHAP. V.| M. VASSALIS ON THE REPORT. 107
the magnificent bowls of coffee and milk; and asked, as an innocent matter of course, ‘Are we to have coffee again to-morrow ?’ ‘No!’ said he, with the ponderosity of the Medes and Persians, but at the same time with a respectful bow, and a smile to assuage the rigour of the announcement,—‘ No! tea ‘to-morrow : coffee the one morning, and tea the ‘other. There was, in fact, no disputing such a degree of firmness, relieved with philanthropy, and all being exerted for our good.
But now comes another party over the sandy plain from the village El Kafr, and bearing right to our tombs. It is M. Vassalis, and his host, the Reis Atfee ; and when M. Vassalis arrives, he is in con- sternation at the report sent to him.
Now, the paper had rather struck me in writing it, as very moderate ; for I had carefully omitted all notice of the four more important subjects con- tained in the second part of the memorial to the Viceroy,—as the contemplation of them had not seemed very agreeable to the Viceregal feelings ; and I had merely described a cleaning of the interior of the Pyramid, beginning with the King’s chamber, and so going downwards.
‘Very well, said the Superintendent of Egyptian excavations ; ‘ but to effect that, you require that ‘ the coffer should be lifted up, and the flint pebble ‘that is pushed in under one end, should be re- ‘moved ; and you want all the rubbish, filling the ‘ramp-holes in the grand gallery, picked out ; and
108 EGYPTIAN LABOURERS. [ CHAP. v3
‘the broken stones on the floor of the Queen’s ‘ chamber carried away, or filled into the hole there, ‘and the obstruction in the lower part of the ‘ entrance-channel removed ; and then, to have the ‘ whole of those chambers and passages swept out, ‘and finally washed down with soap and water. ‘ Now, all that,’ added he, ‘will occupy a great ‘ deal of time, and Ramadan will be here before it ‘is finished, and what will you do then?’ Upon which the Reis Atfee shook his head in chorus, and intimated that he, Reis Atfee, did not understand how it could be done at all.
But M. Vassalis went on, regretting that he had not near enough men for the work ; they were called twenty men, but there were really only two or three grown men amongst them, and all the rest were merely little boys. He qualified that indeed pre- sently, by saying, that Arab men were too lazy to work, and all the great excavations in Egypt were earried on by boys. Colonel Howard Vyse’s con- clusions, after he had had the experience of employ- ing from one hundred to three hundred, of men and boys, for six months together, was very simi- lar; and the local report is now, that the Arabs are not such good labourers as formerly, even to the very moderate extent they ever attained to. Formerly, they were ordered to work, and beaten if they did not ; whereupon they accomplished what- ever they were desired to do; but now, men say, there 1s a new order of things—no compulsory
CHAP. V. | FORWARD POLITICS. 109
labour throughout Egypt for nothing. On the con- trary, each man is paid something as labour-wages, and instantly the ungrateful fellahs exclaim,—‘ Hah ! ‘hah! the Basha is afraid of us; that is why he ‘ pays us;’ hence they care not to work overmuch, in order to show their independence. It was a pity, some think, that the Basha, in his improvements, had rather put the cart before the horse; for he ought to have educated the people, before he treated them like free and civilized men. But in the mean- time, were it not for the more pliant natures of the little boys, there would be little progress in all the land. Each of these boys was to be paid by Govern- ment one piastre a day, and the Reis five piastres.
But then, to return to the case before us, whether they were men or boys, what could a mere twenty do inside the Pyramid, when they had come here without anything beyond their baskets and hands ? That was actually the primitive fact! for they had no brooms, no cloths, no soap, no ladders, no ropes ; and in short, no anything at all, of all the many things that were absolutely necessary in any proper redding-up of the inside of the Pyramid.
Then, could not M. Vassalis apply to his chief, Mariette Bey, to furnish him with necessary stores ?
Not then, for Mariette Bey had gone to Upper Egypt in company with M. Renan, and such stores were rather in keeping of other officials, who had their strongholds in the Citadel. The supplies existed there in immense quantity for the public
110 THE SUPERINTENDENT'S SUGGESTION. [ CHAP. V.
works ; but the keepers thereof would not listen to him, M. Vassalis ; or, if at all, not for weeks and weeks, and then Ramadan would be down upon us, and the whole thing would be over. In short, he considered there was nothing else for it, but for me to write to the British Consul, and ask him kindly to intercede with a certain Minister in charge of the materials of public works; applying urgently for an immediate supply of these stores, so evidently necessary to the good intentions and favouring orders of His Highness the Viceroy, towards Pyramid mensuration being carried out.
The Reis Atfee again shook his sapient head, as he sat just on the edge of the cliff outside the stone bower, enveloped in his toga, listening to everything ; and remarked that he could not see how anything was ever to be done. But we thought there was much in the last part of the Superintendent’s re- marks, for the Viceroy had no doubt come out ex- cellently well in favour of a scientific project, had given most liberal orders, and now his intentions were being neutralized by some want of correspon- dence between certain much smaller officers of his state.
1 Something of the same sort, but on a larger scale, had occurred to Colonel Howard Vyse, which he describes thus, under date April 24, 1837 :—
‘The work at Campbell’s Tomb was again resumed. As the depth, ‘ particularly in the foss, had become very great, and the ropes were ‘much worn, and therefore ill calculated to sustain the weight of the ‘ casks, which were secured with iron hooping, I entertained great ap- ‘ preheusions for the safety, not only of the people who worked at the
CHAP. V. | IDEA ADOPTED. 111
So the affair resulted in my writing a full account of it, both to Mr. Consul Reade and. to our Consul- General also, for he had now returned from England ; requesting their action in the matter, and mainly as they should see it for the interest of the Viceroy’s eredit in European scientific circles, that any small obstruction to the carrying out of his enlightened and liberal orders should be removed.
This done, and funds for the payment of boat- hire, etc, being supplied,—M. Vassalis and_ his attendant Reis left us, to see that the letters were immediately taken to Cairo by two of the biggest members of the youthful working party ; though indeed Reis Atfee expressed his fears, that if they were very big, they might take the opportunity of running right away and never coming back. But when he had at length taken himself away to his
‘ windlasses above, but also of the boys, who were employed below in ‘ filling the casks. The greatest care was taken to keep the latter out ‘of the way when the machine was at work, and luckily no serious ‘ accident happened: and an application was made to M. Piozan, the ‘consul, by which I obtained an order for a rope to be made at the ‘citadel; but, notwithstanding the order proceeded from Habeb * Effendi (the Governor of Cairo), the people refused to make it, ‘alleging that a ‘‘new machine was required to do so,” although ‘ larger ropes had been made by the same people for Mr. Hill, when he ‘had the care of the steam-engine at the copper-works in the citadel. ‘ As the application failed, Mr. Hill found in the Basha’s stores some ‘rope, that by splicing would have answered the purpose tolerably ‘well. Another order was obtained, and was signed by the Governor ‘and by all the different authorities, excepting one person, who, upon ‘ being informed that the rope was wanted for the Pyramids, refused ‘ to sign it. Iwas therefore obliged to send to Alexandria (one hundred ‘and forty miles distant), and in the meantime to buy up any old ‘ cordage of sufficient size that could be met with at Boolak.’
112 REIS ALEE SHAFEI. [ CHAP. V.
darling village,—there attended upon us the other Reis, viz., Reis. Alee Shafei, to see what could be done as a beginning of Pyramid-cleaning, pending the arrival of all that magnificent furniture now applied for from the Citadel.
Reis Alee Shafei was as brown as the Reis At- fee, and similarly costumed in red tarboosh, with bright blue tassel, a dark purple-blue toga folded around a nondescript dress of white, and supplied with sulphur-yellow slippers ; but he was a much more noisy man ; his eyes were large and prominent, as belonging to a loquacious temperament ; and his beard, with the chin included, projected continually forwards, after the fashion of the language of self- esteem. He belonged apparently to Sakkéra, from whence he had brought up his detachment of little men, and was now living with them in some of the tombs of the lower storey of our sepulchral cliff. Being furnished, therefore, out of our private stores, with lamps, candles, brooms, and lucifers, and taking with him his long wooden-stemmed pipe, off went Reis Alee Shafei and his little ones to the Pyramid, accompanied by Alee Dobree (who had now entered our service permanently), to show how the beginning of the cleansing was to be effected.
The latter soon returned to the Vyse instrument- room, and announced himself ready for work. Now the first thing was, to make a window-frame, door- frame, and door for the tomb-bedroom ; whereupon
CHAP. V. | ARAB SAWING. 113
he stript himself of all outer clothing down to his long white shirt, and was ready, he intimated, for most egregious carpentry. ‘All right, I know,’ was his constant remark ; but he set about hacking the wooden planks with the saw in such a style, that I had to stop his sawing, in order to teach him how to draw a straight line with a chalked string. ‘All right, I know,’ was the word again as soon as the para- phernalia were produced, so I left them with him for a time, while attending to other matters; but on returning, lo! he had discarded the string, chalked a wavy line, some two or three inches broad on the board’s surface, and was sawing away anywhere within its broad limits ; expending his strength uselessly in forcing the flat plane of the saw into a sinuous cut, but really flattering himself all the time that nothing could be straighter or more exact. So I found, alas! that I must do all the sawing myself, and there was much to be done before our rooms were properly fitted ; but it proved excellent practice and useful preparation for the scientific carpenter- ing, that afterwards fell to my undivided lot, inside the Pyramid.
Meanwhile the Reis Alee Shafei contrived to fill nearly all our horizon. Twice a day would he come for more candles, and lucifers, and brooms, and wooden apologies for scrapers, picks, and shovels ; and announce that his work was going on gloriously, but was supereminently difficult. Each time that they swept the King’s chamber, the dust for the
VOL. I. H
114 CLEANING IN THE PYRAMID. [| CHAP. V.
most part rose in clouds, filled the air, and made their breathing so difficult that they had to leave after a couple of hours of it; and when they went back next day, there was all that raised and flying dust of yesterday, neatly deposited again on floor and coffer and everything else, very much as before. Then when they came to the Grand Gallery, and began to sweep out its centuries of dust, and clear the ramp-holes of their collections of ages,—he made out, that the limestone powder rose in whirlwinds perfectly volcanic ; and they heard travellers enter- ing at the lower end, and saying ‘ What’s all this? Dreadful!’ and then exclaiming wildly, ‘O take me ‘ out, take me out, or I shall die!’ But the gallant Reis and his little men went on bravely for all that, and worked, they said, until they could see no longer ; that is, they worked and he looked on, squatted orientally on the great step, and smoking his long pipe until the air was so thick, that there was no escape for the clouds he puffed out of his mouth. When these heroes returned to the tombs, they did most assuredly look very dusty; and the poor little boys had white lines round their black eyes, caused by the quantity of white dust which had settled on their long eyelashes. And they were well worked too; for the Reis Atfee came over from El Kafr quietly and seriously, with very little talk and no noise, and gave them a spell at the sweeping, whenever an expedition to a neighbouring village for more tobacco or any other equally important
CHAP. V.| | ACCIDENT TO A CLEANER. 115
occasion prevented his co-chief, Alee Shafei, from occupying his usual post of distinction.
Once there was great excitement,—the Reis brought out of the Pyramid one of the little fellows in his arms, they said, half dead ; first it was reported that he had fallen down the well; but then, that it was one of his companions had let his pick fall from a height on the other’s forehead, and the news-telling in and about Ibraheem’s kitchen was immense.
When my wife went to ascertain the facts of the case, and had the little boy brought up that she might see him,—finding him with a severe cut above his eyebrow,—she had the wound cleansed and bound up with plaster and a cambric handker- chief, desiring the wound to be looked after and kept clean. But Ibraheem said, ‘O no! Arabs never ‘touch a wound from the time it is