A New Sea and an Old Land, being papers suggested by a visit to Egypt at the end of 1869, etc

Preface

. AVhen, in tbe autumn of 1869, I was invited to visit Egypt, to witness the opening of the Suez Canal, I took account of what I knew of the Old Land. Hitherto I had fancied that my knowledge, though not profound, was tolerably accurate and extensive : examination proved to my chagrin how confused and imperfect it was. So at once I set to work, attempting to verify and supplement unsettled ideas, in the hope to escape even yet the reproach of ignorance when I should mingle with the well-informed world who would flock to the fStes. Arrived in Egypt, great was my surprise to find that hardly anybody was conversant with her past or present, and that my scanty reading enabled me to speak with some confidence on the subject — nay, that I was sometimes referred to as an authority. Seeing this, it was, I hope, no presumption to imagine that there were many in the world who might desire to be taken so far as even I could take them toward a knowledge of Egypt ; and hence originated the papers in this volume which treat of history and antiquities. Thus I have not the smallest pretence to write as a teacher of this profound subject. At the most I can

PREFACE.

. VI pretend to have got into a somewhat higher form than very many of my countrymen, who possibly may thank me if I help them to the level that I have reached. On my side I shall be happy if, by raising a curiosity concerning Egyptian history and remains, I can extend the inclination to study them. The papers describing the opening of the Canal and the sights of Cairo give simply my personal adventures and the reflections which are written in my diary. I had arranged with Mr Blackwood, before I left England, to publish an account of the affair. My residence in Manchester, the headquarters of the Northern District in which I am employed, will account for my correspondent being a magnate of the city of cotton. The narrative of the journey to Venice, as it takes the reader over deeply-trodden ground, requires some apology.

It was written and sent to the Magazine to gratify a longing which I felt to express myself on the subject, and I fear, without sufficient reflection as to whether any one would care to go over the track again in my company. Some pleasant criticisms, which I thankfully acknowledge, have secured it a place in the volume. Erom looking back to the brilliant doings at Port Said and Ismailia, only a few months old, the mind cannot but by an effort return to things present, so much has the scene changed. In Egypt the talk was all of peace and universal brotherhood ; the signs

PREFACE.

. VII were of goodwill, and of high and beneficent enter prise. France, as the patron of the Canal, had the foremost place among the assembled nations ; and France's graceful and gracious Empress, the most noted personage in so great a company, seemed to our short sight the most favoured of beings. At her side the Crown Prince of Prussia, who, in less than a year, was to deal the first of those blows which were mortal to the French Empire, evinced cordial amity and the sense of common enjoyment. It was impos sible then to suppose that the next summer would witness one of the bloodiest and most eventful wars that have ever desolated Europe, or that the French Empire could be demolished in two months after swords were drawn. It is but fourteen months since I saw the things of which I write, yet many of them have been thrown back into dimness of the past by the astounding events which have crowded since then to occupy the thoughts of men.

Thus the opening of the Canal had scarcely its share of in terest. But, though the Continent has changed so greatly, it is once more at peace, and it may be hoped, perhaps, that attention will again be directed to the peaceful subjects from which it was so rudely startled. I trust that there are many who, now tired of ideas of change and strife, will feel it a relief to revert to the old things of Egypt, and to the new work so bravely wrought on her Isthmus. W. G. H. March 1871. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAP. I. EGYPT AND THE STOEY OF THE SUEZ CANAL, . 1 IT. GETTING OUT OF THE SMOKE, .... 39 III. THE OPENING OF THE SUEZ CANAL, ... 86 IV. THE VOYAGE FROM ISMAiLTA TO SUEZ, . . .135 V. THE SIGHTS OF CAIRO, 179 VI. ABOUT WHAT THE OLD EGYPTIANS KNEW, . . 228 VII. ABOUT HOW THE OLD EGYPTIANS LIVED AND DIED, 270 ILLUSTRA TI0N8.

THE NILE BY MOONLIGHT, — Frontispiece. A NEW THING IN COTTON, ...... 84 THE LANDING OF THE EMPRESS, . . . . .122 SHIPS ENTERING THE CANAL, . . . . . .139 THE HADJI BEFRIENDS US, . . . . . .162 DONKEY PROCESSION TO THE PYRAMIDS, . . .193 AN AWKWARD RENCONTRE, . . . . . . A NEW SEA AND AN OLD LAND. CHAPTEE I. EGYPT AND THE STOEY OF THE SUEZ CANAL. AN INTRODUCTORY PAPER. December 18G9. There are few minds that will fail to be moved at the mention of Egypt. So closely has that country been connected with all generations of the world, that to have no chord which vibrates at the name argues a low intelligence. Divine teachings, science old and new, history, tradition, fable, war, research, politics, commerce, colonisation — if there be any interest, if there be any pursuit, all own some association with that long -famous land.

Nor are its relations with learning and science alone. They are interlaced with everyday life and household words. The Mummies, the Nile, the Pyramids, are nouns familiar even to the unlearned and unwashed. Our bluff countryman for whom, without much knowledge, suffices the faith in England's glory and invincibility, must turn to Egypt A for some favourite instances. He can tell of Alex andria and Aboukir, though unwitting, possibly, of the hemisphere in which they lie. And now again Egypt asserts her affinity with the active peoples of the world. Another stupendous work upon her soil, wrought by myriads of men, at a cost exceeding the value of many a principality, calls thither the great and talented and enterprising of the earth to celebrate the artificial union of two seas, and to stamp on men's minds the significance of the achievement.

It is progress which gives this last prominence ; it is anticipation of an unborn future that attracts the nations. A few days, and the nar ration of the events on the Isthmus, and speculation on the changes that are to follow, will be all-absorb ing. But there is yet an interval of expectation before we turn the page, and it may profit us if, while we wait, we glance back at the wondrous records that lie behind. We will shout to-morrow for the Egypt of the nineteenth century after Christ, but to-day let us ponder over the Egypt of the past — the Egypt of Cheops and Sesostris, of Joseph and Moses — the Egypt of rites, and spells, and monuments, and symbols : marvellous, mystic land ! When we think of the great age of Egypt as a nation, how in her antiquity she stands alone, more venerable than any nation in the world, the truth cannot be grasped without an effort of the mind.

Following the lead of the antiquary or the native annalist, we in these islands are lost in the maze of primitive barbarism when we have reached the Briton and his paint and his edged axle : this is withered eld ; this is the beginning of things. But what is this epoch in respect of the old days of Egypt, which had passed her meridian, great in arts and arms, be fore the Druid or the Pict was heard of ! Or if we take the days before England had a history, and mete the eras of Greece and Rome, or even of Assyria, we cannot attain to Egypt's early youth by this measure ment. The Jews alone of all the nations of Asia can trace an antiquity approaching that of Egypt : and, even here, how stands the case ? When Abram, representing in his single person the Jewish nation of his day, went down into Egypt, Egypt was already a country with a settled government.

Egypt is so old that no trace of her youth, and, a fortiori, none of her infancy, can be found. She first appears on the page of history armed, learned, subtle, and inscrutable, like Pallas from the brain of Jove ! Not only her barbarous and fabulous period is lost to recollection, but the records which she may have left of her early strength have perished from very age. If it be asked, How can antiquity be proved beyond the records of it % the answer is, that the very oldest remains to which we can affix a date are of such a character that they could have been produced by only an advanced and instructed people. Comparison will be assisted by the insertion of a few dates. It should, however, be premised that the era of Menes, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy, is taken from the calculation of Mr Osburn, who brings it to a very late year by unsparingly cor recting the chronology of others."" First record of Egypt, 446 years before Abram = 2364 b.c. Ninus the Assyrian, .... 2059 B.C. Abram in Egypt, . . . .1918 B.C. Supposed date of Homer, . . . 884 B.C. Romulus, . . . . .714 B.C. Socrates died, .... 400 B.C. Cæsar invaded Britain, . . . 55 B.C. " There is no difficulty," says Mr Kenrick,t " in fixing on the country from which ancient history must begin.

The monuments of Egypt, its records and its literature, surpass those of India and China in antiquity by many centuries." The antiquity of Egypt is, however, only part of the wonder : to complete it her vitality must be taken into account. In the days of Noah, or soon after, she owned the same name and much the same character that she bears to-day. She has seen her vicissitudes, no doubt — she has been triumphant and down-trodden at different times ; but while younger nations were all-powerful for a season — as witness the Assyrian, the Macedonian, and the Eoman empires — and then perished for ever, she has battled with * According to Herodotus, the Egyptian monarchy was founded 11,806 B.C.; according to Manetho, 3S93 b.c. Mr Rawlinson says, in a note to his translation of Herodotus : " The Egyptian claims to a high relative an tiquity had, no doubt, a solid basis of truth.

It is probable that a settled monarchy was established in Egypt earlier than in any other country. Babylonian history does not go back beyond B.C. 2234, Egyptian begins nearly 500 years earlier." t Kenrick's ' Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs. ' oblivion and obscurity, awoke up to life again after depression, and, like her mummy wheat, outlasting millenniums, has proved the strength of her principle of life ! The conquests of Egypt have been pushed far be yond the bounds of Egypt proper, into Arabia, Judea, Assyria, and Ethiopia. On the other hand, foreigners have conquered and subjugated Egypt. But it would seem as if nature had forbidden the integrity and individuality of Egypt to be affected by these political changes. She did not absorb into the State the countries which she conquered, neither was she denationalised by her invaders.

In many instances a native prince was, after the deposition of the legitimate king, set up by the conqueror, subject to the payment of tribute. Where this was not the case, the conquerors conformed to Egypt more than the Egyptians conformed to them, and the foreign invasions altered the native race no more than the Norman settlers, spoliators and rulers though they were, converted the race of these islands from Anglo- Saxon. Taken in connection with these recollections, the attitude of Egypt just now is significant. Twenty years ago she made a great stride towards freeing herself from the rule of Turkey, and she became a separate Viceroyalty. At this moment she is rousing herself to energy, and the memory of her old name and a desire to command respect seem to be animat ing her and her ruler.

Who shall say that before the close of the century there may not be once more an independent Egypt — the same Egypt which was known to the Patriarchs and the Greeks — vying with European and Asiatic lands in modern arts and modern commerce 1 And if Egypt's national life be wonderful, so also is her physical life — and her physical life is the Nile — a name as famous as any that the world can show. Many a river of the earth has had, or has, its distin guishing epithet and its stirring history. Horace, stamping the Hydaspes as legendary, traced in that word a title of nobility. But what word or what cluster of words can express the sublime ideas which awaken at the name of the Nile ! " Egypt," said Herodotus 2300 years ago, " is the gift of the Nile." Mr Osburn says to-day, " Egypt is the Nile, and the Nile is Egypt."

If in pagan days divine honours were ascribed to the Nile, it was for a better reason than could be rendered for most heathen worship. To natural perception the river was the giver of all good things : its favour was health and plenty ; the withdrawal of its benefits would be ruin. And its mysteries might well impress and awe the mind. Its beginnings, so men thought, were from everlast ing : no one could declare its generation ; its course was immeasurable ; the waters rose and fell without apparent cause. A time came when the Nile ceased to be divine ; but it did not cease, and has not ceased, to be a marvel. Its crocodile is no longer adored, but that and behemoth too are still hallowed by associa tion. In short, to regard the Nile with sang froid is impossible, steel our hearts philosophically as we may.

That ark of bulrushes among its flags pictured to our imaginations when reason had scarcely dawned, will present itself amid our studies and our researches. Pharaoh's dream, the frogs, and the water of blood, the magicians with their enchantments, the rod of Aaron astonishing the monarch on the river's bank, cannot be driven away from the visible tide. Herod otus and his stories, Cleopatra and her charms, all these memories rush in when we think of the Nile. And this as if the Nile, devoid of interest in itself, required the aid of imagination to give it charm ! Nay, the truth is rather that the Nile, in all senses gifted and affluent, and not as other rivers are, superadds a spiritual power to a surpassing natural grandeur. This volume of water which has rolled thus for forty or fifty centuries along a course of 2000 miles, has been and is one of the greatest physical wonders.

Mr Osburn, in his ' Monumental History,' shows us clearly how a daily observation of the Nile affects a visitor from Britain. About the winter solstice the Nile will be found, he tells us, " a magnificent expanse of tolerably clear water, with the blue tinge which also distinguishes the waters of the Pdione as they issue from the Lake of Geneva." The overflow is just past, and the scene is of a fertility and beauty unequalled. " The vivid green of the springing corn ; the groves of pomegranate-trees ablaze with the rich scarlet of their blossoms ; the fresh breeze laden with the perfumes of gardens of roses and orange-thickets ; every tree and every shrub covered with sweet scented flowers : these are a few of the natural beauties that welcome the stranger to the land of Ham. There is considerable sameness in them, it is true, for he would observe little variety in the trees and plants, whether he first entered Egypt by the gardens of Alexandria or the plain of Assouan.

Yet it is the same everywhere, only because it would be impossible to make any addition to the sweetness of odours, the brilliancy of the colours, or the exquisite beauty of the many forms of vegetable life, in the midst of which he wanders. It is monotonous, but it is the monotony of Paradise." But to comprehend the power of the transfor mation, the Nile must be viewed at midsummer, contracted, turbid, slimy, stagnant, with black sun cracked mud forming both its shores. All beyond them is sterility and sand, with the forms of trees, dust-coated and scarce distinguishable, withering before the Spirit of the Desert. Thus must nature lie for a season that the reinvigorating power of the flood may have opportunity for beneficence. And lo ! its harbinger, the north wind, cleaving the sandy, burning atmosphere, makes its presence felt.

The dust disappears, the colours of nature shine out again, and all is expectation of the next great act. It comes at last. The word is heard from Cairo that the waters are rising, and the first green slimy con dition of the augmented stream attests the fact. This greenness, however, is soon gone, and the waters wax more turbid as the tide advances rapidly. They be come at last deep red like a river of blood, opaque and thick, throughout Upper Egypt. This is the Bed Nile. The rise goes on now somewhat fitfully but incessantly. The thick opaque character sometimes partially disappears, but the deep - red hue never, during high Nile, until the lower lands are reached, by which time much of the sediment has been deposited. Along the banks nature a-tiptoe waits for the welcome flood. Indefatigably it spreads itself over the burnt face of the wilderness, and the green herb is possible once more.

Dams burst, and obstructions are carried away with a mighty noise, but the sound is not one of terror : all living things know it, and rush to meet the kindly power. And yet, though it comes to bless, its majesty, like the state of Jove, may be dangerous to the rash or improvident : an ill fenced farm or village will be swept away like a hen roost ; but these are rare accidents. The general feeling is joy. " The men " (these are the words of Osburn, who has all along been followed in the de scription of the overflow) — " the men, the children, the buffaloes, gambol in its refreshing wraters, the broad waves sparkle with shoals of fish, and fowl of every wing flutter over them in clouds. Nor is this jubilee of nature confined to the higher orders of creation. The moment the sand becomes moistened by the approach of the fertilising waters, it is literally alive with insects innumerable.

It is impossible to stand by the side of one of these noble streams, to see it every moment sweeping away some obstruction to its majestic course, and widening as its flows, without feeling the heart to expand with love and joy and confidence in the great Author of this annual miracle of mercy." By midwinter the river is again running blue within its banks. And now, ere we pass to the chronicles of Egypt, a few thoughts are due to some important uses to which Providence has been pleased to put this land. Abram, perishing of famine, was led thither and nourished at a time when he was childless, and his death must have frustrated the splendid promises which were to take effect through him. Later on, his descendants, still a small band, preceded by Joseph, found an asylum in Goshen, and multiplied there a peculiar people, although at length evilly entreated.

Again, on the banks of Nile the compassion of Pharaoh's daughter reached the little being in whose doomed life were wrapped up, so to speak, the oracles of God, and the deliverance of His people. And, lastly, when another Joseph fled by night from the sword of Herod and took the young Child and His mother, it was into Egypt that he departed. Thus were the purposes of Heaven and the hope of the world made mysteriously to survive through the shelter of Egypt ! It is impossible, in a paper of the length to which this can reach, to give an historical account, however meagre, of the country and its government; and yet to say nothing of its annals would be to omit one of the most interesting of the topics proposed for con sideration. Perhaps if some well-known epochs in other history be selected, and the measure of Egyp tian periods be taken by them as a scale, we may get something of an outline which, filled in with a note or two, may take us irregularly down the stream of Time.

For, as the learned reader will not require to be told, the Egyptians, as far as we know, were innocent of dates referring to any well-known era. They have recorded the lengths of reigns, but left it doubtful in regard to some of these whether they were distinct and consecutive, or wholly or partially contemporaneous. The student, therefore, can do no more than determine, to the best of his judgment, the actual succession and chain of kings down to some known date ; and then, by means of the chronology so obtained, work back and reduce occurrences to our standard of time. It is an interesting truth, that the old Egyptians left a profusion of records in the forms of tablets, papyrus -rolls, obelisks, pictures, statues, mummy-cases, &c. ; and that knowledge of the men and facts to which these relate has by no means reached its fulness, as it was supposed a century ago to have done.

On the contrary, the light, eclipsed at that time, seems to have been grow ing stronger ever since ; and not only has knowledge of the most ancient Egyptians increased most remarkably, but there is the best reason to hope that the means of full and accurate knowledge exist, and that the science of deciphering is all that we want to make us intimately acquainted with this wonderful people and their long-sped ages. Great learning and acu men have been brought to bear on this alluring subject ; and the regret now seems to be, not that the means of knowledge fail us, but that time and opportunity will not in our day suffice for the use of a modest fraction of the means. While we were ignorant ourselves, we moderns — after the manner of benighted and satisfied people — largely imputed ignorance and mendacity to chroni clers.

Dear old Herodotus was reviled as a story teller (in a bad sense) or a dupe ; Manetho and Era tosthenes as wilful impostors ; Diodorus and Strabo as men to be heard with extreme caution. But the admission of the light has tended to reconcile these ancients with each other, and with contemporary history. Discrepancies enough there are still ; but instead of sneering at these, our pundits now indulge a hope that the difficulty has been only in ourselves, and that the keys of the enigmas are in the temples, or the pyramids, or the tombs, or graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever. We all remember how, in the Eastern story, Ali Baba, after he had robbed the robbers, took to measuring his gold in a vessel— he had so much that he could not possibly count the coins, and so he took account of them by the bushel.

Something in the same way, Egyptian histories, embarrassed by the wealth of their lore, give us bushels or sheaves of kings, reckoning them by dynasties, not reigns. It is very well for Roman empires, French monarchies, and such ephemera, to note the names of consuls or kings : old Egypt tells off its Pharaohs as we buy hobnails — by the score. Thirty-one dynasties, say the autho rities, make up the account of government from the beginning of history to the Macedonian subjugation. And now to raise some idea of what these dynasties were. The most ancient fact popularly known concerning Egypt is, of course, the visit of the patriarch Abram. He found a Pharaoh on the throne, and this Pharaoh, as is said by some who have taken much trouble to investigate the matter, was King Acthoes of the 11th dynasty.

The 11th dynasty, let it be noted! and Acthoes was the 6th"" of his dynasty. There had, therefore, been ten dynasties and five reigns of another dynasty (to say nothing of god -dynasties and hero-dynasties) before the day of Abram. AVho and what were all these dynasties 1 Well, some of the earliest — to wit, the gods and heroes who do not count in the thirty-one — were shadows, if not fables : shadows if, as some of the learned think, they repre sent Adam, Seth, Noah, and Noah's son and grand sons ; myths if their literal character of gods and demi-gods be not removed. And perhaps it may be thought, if proof of antiquity be the object, that * Or 16th, according to some. The more moderate calculation is here taken. Adam might serve the turn of the most ambitious. This, however, is by no means the case, for Adam — the Adam that we are descended from — was created only 4004 years before Christ, whereas Egypt claims to have had a king 18,000 years before their first historical king ; and further, the priests told Herod otus that the first historical king reigned 11,366 years before Herodotus was in Egypt — that is, 11,800 years before Christ !

This boast, however, their own chron icler, Manetho, does not undertake to make good. He is content with 3555 years before Christ as the time of the first - recorded Pharaoh, which takes Egypt back, at any rate, to a date anterior to the Flood ; and we find that there are moderns who, with a sort of geological licence, by no means wish to limit the dates of Egypt to the Flood or the Creation. It is not here intended to say how these questions should be determined. Even if one of the god-kings be Noah himself, and another Phut his grandson, and another Mizraim, as some suppose, these, as Egyptian rulers, can hardly be called historical. And there is the less reason for dwelling on such speculations, that we do not get down very far in the lists before we come on a name that can be verified.

Herodotus names a king Menes. Manetho's list has the same name at the head of the first dynasty — ten dynasties before Abram's friend. Now, a false list of names may have been given to Herodotus, and another false list may have been published by Manetho — nothing was easier : it was only to invent the names, and the thing was done. But when men in the nineteenth century after Christ begin to learn how to read Egyp tian inscriptions ; and when, on tablets and in tombs of undoubted antiquity, and of a date little posterior to the monarch, we find, fresh and uneffaced, his name and the names of his successors, and an account of his works ; when some of the works themselves, and the remains and traces of others, are yet to be seen on the surface of the earth ; and when the inscriptions and the works agree with the accounts of ancient writers, — then we begin to feel that we are on solid ground.

And we have the above proofs, all the learned agree, in the case of Menes. There was such a king ; he was Egypt's proto-monarch ; and if we put aside all calculations that would disagree with Scrip tural chronology, and accept the most modest anti quity for Menes, we must even then put him down as having lived 446 years before Abram. He is known not only to have lived, but to have undertaken vast engineering works, which means that he reigned over an advanced people. Menes, then, is our starting-point; but we must not jump down to Abram yet. Another important king or two have to be noted before we arrive at Abram 's friend. Lord Byron wrote : — " What are the hopes of man ? Old Egypt's king Cheops erected the first pyramid And largest, thinking it was just the thing To keep his memory whole and mummy hid ; But somebody or other rummaging, Burglariously broke his coffin's lid.

Let not a monument give you or me hopes, Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops." In truth it is highly probable that not one pinch of dust does remain of Cheops. As regards his mummy, therefore, the design has been a failure ; not so, how ever, as regards his memory ; for, even since Lord Byron wrote, this generation has made acquaintance with old Cheops, and (if we may parody Sir Lucius O'Trigger) though his dirty dust may have slipped through our fingers, his memory and his family pictures are as fresh as ever. The recognition came about on this wise. The pyramid was robbed, the sarcophagus broken, and nothingwas demonstrable except that somebody had lain there. Nevertheless Cheops was a match for Time. They ransacked his tomb, and thought they had exhausted the secrets of the pyramid, but they had not.