My Winter on the Nile - Warner Charles Dudley

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to lose it. The bones must be consumed if they would be safe, or else the owner of them must be a patriot and gain a forgotten grave. There is nothing that men so enjoy as digging up the bones of their ancestors. It is doubtful if even the Egyptian plunderers left long undisturbed the great tombs which contained so much treasure; and certainly the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Saracens, left comparatively little for the scientific grave-robbers of our excellent age. They did, however, leave the tombs, the sarcophagi, most of the sculptures, and a fair share of the preserved dead.

      But time made a pretty clean sweep of the mummy and nearly all his personal and real property. The best sculptures of his tomb might legally be considered in the nature of improvements attaching themselves to the realty, but our scientists have hacked them off and carried them away as if they were personal estate. We call the Arabs thieves and ghouls who prowl in the the tombs in search of valuables. But motive is everything; digging up the dead and taking his property, tomb and all, in the name of learning and investigation is respectable and commendable. It comes to the same thing for the mummy, however, this being turned out of house and home in his old age. The deed has its comic aspect, and it seems to me that if a mummy has any humor left in his dried body, he must smile to see what a ludicrous failure were his costly efforts at concealment and repose. For there is a point where frustration of plans may be so sweeping as to be amusing; just as the mummy himself is so ghastly that his aspect is almost funny.

      Nothing more impresses the mind with the antiquity of Egypt than its vast cemeteries, into which the harvests of the dead have been gathered for so many thousands of years. Of old Memphis, indeed, nothing remains except its necropolis, whose monuments have outlasted the palaces and temples that were the wonder of the world. The magnificence of the city can be estimated by the extent of its burial-ground.

      On the west side of the Nile, opposite Cairo, and extending south along the edge of the desert, is a nearly continuous necropolis for fifteen miles. It is marked at intervals by pyramids. At Geezeh are three large and several small ones; at Abooseer are four; at Sakkara are eleven; at Dashoor are four. These all belonged to the necropolis of Memphis. At Geezeh is the largest, that of Cheops or Shoofoo, the third king of the fourth dynasty, reigning at Memphis about 4235 B.C., according to the chronology of Mariette Bey, which every new discovery helps to establish as the most probably correct. This pyramid was about four hundred and eighty feet high, and the length of a side of its base was about seven hundred and sixty-four feet; it is now four hundred and fifty feet high and its base line is seven hundred and forty-six feet. It is big enough yet for any practical purpose. The old pyramid at Sakkara is believed to have been built by Ouenephes, the fourth king of the first dynasty, and to be the oldest monument in the world. Like the mounds of the Chaldeans, it is built in degrees or stages, of which there are five. Degraded now and buried at the base in its own rubbish, it rises only about one hundred and ninety feet above the ground.

      It is a drive of two hours from Cairo to the Pyramids of Geezeh, over a very good road; and we are advised to go by carriage. Hadji is on the seat with the driver, keeping his single twinkling eye active in the service of the howadji. The driver is a polished Nubian, with a white turban and a white gown; feet and legs go bare. You wouldn’t call it a stylish turnout for the Bois, but it would be all right if we had a gorgeous sais to attract attention from ourselves.

      We drive through the wide and dusty streets of the new quarter. The barrack-like palace, on the left of abroad place, is the one in which the Khedive is staying just now, though he may be in another one to-night. The streets are the same animated theater-like scenes of vivid color and picturesque costume and indolent waiting on Providence to which we thought we should never become accustomed, but which are already beginning to lose their novelty. The fellaheen are coming in to market, trudging along behind donkeys and camels loaded with vegetables or freshly cut grass and beans for fodder. Squads of soldiers in white uniform pass; bugle notes are heard from Kasr e’ Neel, a barrack of troops on the river. Here, as in Europe, the great business most seriously pursued is the drilling of men to stand straight, handle arms, roll their eyes, march with a thousand legs moving as one, and shoot on sight other human beings who have learned the same tricks. God help us, it is a pitiful thing for civilized people.

      The banks of the Nile here above Boolak are high and steep. We cross the river on a fine bridge of iron, and drive over the level plain, opposite, on a raised and winding embankment. This is planted on each side with lebbekh and sycamore trees. Part of the way the trees are large and the shade ample; the roots going down into moist ground. Much of the way the trees are small and kept alive by constant watering. On the right, by a noble avenue are approached the gardens and the palace of Gezeereh. We pass by the new summer palace of Geezeh. Other large ones are in process of construction. If the viceroy is measured for a new suit of clothes as often as he orders a new palace, his tailors must be kept busy. Through the trees we see green fields, intersected with ditches, wheat, barley, and beans, the latter broad-sown and growing two to three feet high; here and there are lines of palms, clumps of acacias; peasants are at work or asleep in the shade; there are trains of camels, and men plowing with cows or buffaloes. Leaving the squalid huts that are the remains of once beautiful Geezeh, the embankment strides straight across the level country.

      And there before us, on a rocky platform a hundred feet higher than the meadows, are the pyramids, cutting the stainless blue of the sky with their sharp lines. They master the eye when we are an hour away, and as we approach they seem to recede, neither growing larger nor smaller, but simply withdrawing with a grand reserve.

      I suppose there are more “emotions” afloat about the pyramids than concerning any other artificial’ objects. There are enough. It becomes constantly more and more difficult for the ordinary traveler to rise to the height of these accumulated emotions, and it is entirely impossible to say how much the excitement one experiences on drawing near them results from reading and association, and how much is due to these simple forms in such desolate surroundings. But there they stand, enduring standards, and every visitor seems inclined to measure his own height by their vastness, in telling what impression they produce upon him. They have been treated sentimentally, off-handedly, mathematically, solemnly, historically, humorously. They yield to no sort of treatment. They are nothing but piles of stone, and shabby piles at that, and they stand there to astonish people. Mr. Bayard Taylor is entirely right when he says that the pyramids are and will remain unchanged and unapproachably impressive however modern life may surge about them, and though a city should creep about their bases.

      Perhaps they do not appear so gigantic when the visitor is close to them as he thought they would from their mass at a distance. But if he stands at the base of the great pyramid, and casts his eye along the steps of its enormous side and up the dizzy height where the summit seems to pierce the solid blue, he will not complain of want of size. And if he walks around one, and walks from one to another wading in the loose sand and under a midday sun, his respect for the pyramids will increase every moment.

      Long before we reach the ascent of the platform we are met by Arab boys and men, sellers of antiquities, and most persistent beggars. The antiquities are images of all sorts, of gods, beasts, and birds, in pottery or in bronze, articles from tombs, bits of mummy-cloth, beads and scarabæi, and Roman copper coins; all of them at least five thousand years old in appearance.

      Our carriage is stuck in the sand, and we walk a quarter of a mile up the platform, attended by a rabble of coaxing, imploring, importunate, half-clad Bedaween. “Look a here, you take dis; dis ver much old, he from mummy; see here, I get him in tomb; one shillin; in Cairo you get him one pound; ver sheap. You no like? No anteeka, no money. How much?”

      “One penny.”

      “Ah,” ironically, “ket’-ther khâyrak (much obliged). You take him sixpence. Howadji, say, me guide, you want go top pyramid, go inside, go Sphinkee, allée tomba?”

      Surrounded by an increasing swarm of guides and antiquity-hawkers, and beset with offers, entreaties, and opportunities, we come face to face with the great pyramid. The ground in front of it is piled high with its debris. Upon these rocks, in picturesque attitudes, some in the shade and some in the sun, others of the tribe are waiting the arrival of pyramid climbers; in the intense light their cotton garments and turbans are like white paint, brilliant in the sun, ashy in the shadow. All the shadows are sharp and deep. A dark man leaning

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