Egyptian Sketches ... With ... illustrations

Preface

. These slight sketches were mostly written at Cairo during the autumn of 1889, and the first months of the present year. While there I lived in daily companionship with Europeans who were intimately acquainted with Egypt, and with the natives them selves. Therefore I believe that I know the Nile country better than the average visitor, to whom a single month is a long stay. Yet I am not an Egyptologist, and only desire to induce others to visit a land that I was loth to leave. For them I have herein simply written the experience and observation of a man from the New World. J. L. London, April, 1890. CONTENTS. CHAPTKR I*AGE I. An Eastern Day ... ... ... ... 1 II. Old Cairo ... ... ... ... 12 III. Hassan and Hussein ... ... ... 24 IV. Cairo and the Cairenes ... ... 33 V. The Copts and Hermits ... ... ... 44 VI.

Sakkara and Memphis ... ... ... 52 VII. The Pyramids ... ... ... ... 58 VIII. The Book of the Dead ... ... ... 82 IX. An Arab Marriage ... ... ... 103 X. The English in Egypt ... ... ... 114 XI. The English in Egypt (continued) ... ... 132 XII. Hanim ... ... ... ... 148 XIII. Up the Nile ... ... ... ... 167 XIV. To Luxor ... ... ... ... 188 XV. Thebes ... ... ... ... ... 206 XVI. Down the Nile ... ... ... 226 XVII. Old and New ... ... ... ... LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FAGF. Touloun Quarter, Cairo ... ... Frontispiece A Street in Cairo ... ... ... To face 12 Cairo — The Citadel ... ... ... ... „ 36 The Pyramids ... ... ... ... „ 64 Rameses II. ... ... ... ... ... „ 72 Coffin of Amenhotep I., 18th Dynasty ... „ 100 An Arab Marriage ... ... ... ... „ 108 Egyptlan Troops ... ... ... ... „ 142 A Daughter of Egypt ... ... ... „ 154 Hanim ... ... ... ... ... „ 162 The Dahabeeyeh ... ... ... ... „ 170 The Sakkieh ... ... ... ... „ 194 Thothmes III., 18th Dynasty ... ... ... „ 200 Suleyman ... ... ... ... „ 210 Deir el-Bahari ... ... ... ... „ 218 The Temple of Abydos ... ... ... „

Chapter I. An Eastern Day

Behind my Cairene house in tbe Abhasiyeh quarter, lay the garden, a very wilderness of flowers, which, though possessing none of the fragrance of temperate climes, were hrilliant and various in colour. Among them were myrtles, creeping jasmines with white blossoms, mandarins, and commoner orange trees covered with dark-green glossy leaves, and the slender acacias lifting feather-like foliage against the intense sky. Beyond the limit of my grounds, which were bounded by others whose gay show of roses equalled my own, was a tiny ruined mosque, erected long ago over tbe body of some almost forgotten Moslem saint. And farther still, a grove of palms rose in a stately group, typifying, by their height and peacefulness in the windless air, the quiet lofty contemplation that is the natural growth B of the mystic land of Egypt.

Beyond them once more were other groves by the Fresh-water Canal, in which I could discern ever and again the single mast of some trading-vessel or the twin spars of a dahabeeyeh with its white lateen sail moving between tbe vegetation on the water's edge. And farther, again, were other mosques and palms, and at last the yellow sand just where the sky became hazier and of a whitish blue, as it drooped over the ever lasting desert. After looking from the front of my Eastern home upon the white roads and whiter houses, this garden was an oasis of greenery and rest. Tbe mansion consisted of but one story, and the numerous rooms had stone floors. Only the salon was carpeted, the bedrooms having two or three Turkish rugs in each one. The balcony in front of the salon looked out on the fountain that threw yellow Nile water into tbe basin in tbe early morn ing and late afternoon.

All the windows and doors were provided with lattice-like iron shutters, which were closed in the evening, leaving the windows open. This permitted the cool night air to circulate through the apartments that became so heated during the day, and yet kept the house safe from the robbers who prowled everywhere. I rose in the morning at seven and took a cold douche. The water was so muddy, however, that AN EASTERN DA Y. 3 one sometimes seemed cleaner when he went into the bathroom than when he emerged. For they have no tanks nor cisterns on the tops of the houses, and the water comes in pipes straight from the saffron coloured Nile. It is always filtered for drinking and cooking, and no house is complete without a little chamber containing several immense jars through which the water slowly percolates into vessels beneath.

Coffee, in small cups without sugar or milk, is brought by Hassan immediately after coming from the bath, and is drunk before dressing. Tbe morning is spent in writing, reading, walking in tbe garden, and at 10.30 breakfast is ready. It consists usually of oranges and mandarins, rice, mutton, eggs, and poultry, with a very few vegetables, and those tasteless and flaccid. The cost of living in Cairo depends on a person's tastes. The expense of servants is very slight. A fair Arab cook can be engaged for twelve dollars monthly, and other servants from five to ten dollars each. They eat native food, consisting only of Arab bread and a few vegetables, without meat, which the house pro vides. A household of three servants, living in cluded, need not cost over fifty dollars per month. The rent of a good furnished house during the summer and autumn will be perhaps as much more.

Of course there are servants and servants. A good Greek or French cook cannot be hired under forty dollars a month, and it is very hard to find an Arab who can prepare a European dish with any degree of satisfaction. For myself, I found it difficult to get any appetite. It was so fearfully hot in September and October that I had Indian curries on the table every day. Red pepper was a delight, and Tabasco sauce a tearful blessing. My principal business between midday and three o'clock was to try and keep cool. Every native sleeps during those hours, but it is impossible for the stranger. If I lay down on the divan with a hand kerchief over my face, I was nearly suffocated. If I took it off, the flies and mosquitoes held high carnival on my prostrate form. The mosquitoes took a special liking to me as a new-comer, and if they could not get at my bead, they contented themselves with my hands and wrists.

They made life miserable to me for a couple of months, until I got inocu lated, and I never could arrange the mosquito curtains of my bed but that some one mosquito would awake me with his musical serenade and sharp sting. There is no gas supplied in the city, except to tbe principal hotels and in the Ismalieh quarter, where the richest Europeans reside. Where I lived, among the Egyptians, we had no such luxury, and were fain content with candles and lamps. It made not very much difference, however, for I never thought AN EASTERN DAY. 5 of reading or writing in the evening. The busy mosquitoes appropriated all the space below and around the banging lamp, and, after one or two attempts, I let them remain in supreme possession, and went out myself into the wide road in front of the fountain and garden.

There usually sat Mdlle. Rose, her father and mother, and some friends. We drank Mocha coffee and mestiche as we smoked cigarettes and the narghileb until long after mid night. They never talked of anything out of Egypt, though they asked me many questions about America, concerning which country they had some vague, indefinite ideas. When I said I was six days and nights travelling from San Francisco to New York, they expressed doubt, astonishment, and, I am afraid, a little incredulity. When one could go from Cairo to Alexandria in less than four hours, how could it be possible to journey nearly a whole week, and in the night time too ! They could not understand it, and I am afraid that I left Egypt without being able to fully convince Monsieur Raphael of my veracity in that statement. What do they talk of, one might ask?

Well, of very little. All the Orientals sit and drink, look wise, and speak but seldom. Of tbe last battle of Toski perhaps, and bow little Cucolo, Mdlle. Rose's black-skinned maid, was found wandering hungry and thirsty among the dead bodies tbe next day. EG YPT1AN SKETCHES. Her father had been killed, and the poor twelve year-old girl was trying to find him amid the two or three thousand bodies that lay mangled on the field. One of the Egyptian officers had found her, brought her to Cairo, and presented her to Rose. They told me that fifteen hundred half-starved wretches had been distributed by the victors, over Lower Egypt practically as slaves. Then Yida Ruscia would tell me of the prosperity of Cairo in the days of Ismail, when sixty dollars had been given for tbe hire of a carriage to take a party of revellers over to the Oizerah, to one of tbe Khedive's masked balls ! when ivory, and gum arabic, and slaves came down the Nile from the Soudan in immense caravans of camels, and every one in Egypt was rich.

Now everything was changed. They had lost Khartoum and the trade of the Soudan. Ismail was gone, and the cold-blooded English were there, dismissing good Moslems from tbeir easy official places, and filling the vacancies with young men from London. The present Khedive was a good man, but had no power or influence in his own land. He was, as his father had said of him, " without heart or head." These thoughts would be delivered at intervals and in fragments during the long evening, and there would come long silences when our whole AN EASTERN DA Y. 7 party would sit quiet and motionless, looking at the bright stars and brighter moon, as we listened to the music of tbe water falling into the basin. But these strictures on Tewfik Pasha, the present Khedive, are, I think, unfounded. He is not a Mehemet Ali, it is true ; but it is unnecessary — the English will relieve him of all trouble or uneasiness respecting his realm.

All that is really asked of the Khedive, and all that be does, is to go through tbe various official duties required of him in a proper manner, like a good actor on the stage. And he executes them right royally, as in the olden days. Nothing is omitted that might cause invidious comparisons with past splendour. When a consul-general of one of the great Powers is first formally presented to the Khedive, he is granted a reception which makes him quite an imposing personage. A state carriage is sent to his residence, with a second one for the attache's of tbe office. Mr. Eugene Schuyler, our representative in Egypt, was kind enough to suggest that, for one day at least, I might be constituted an attache, and so witness the presentation to the Khedive. Therefore it happened that, with Mr. Grant, I entered the state carriage following that of the consul-general's, and we were escorted to the Khedivial palace by outriders and a troop of Egyptian cavalry.

At the instant that the consul-general descended from the carriage at tbe palace-gate a salute of twenty-one guns was fired from the citadel. The consul-general was received standing by the Khedive, surrounded by his Cabinet, as if he were the most distinguished ambassador extraordinary or minister plenipotentiary. It seemed, indeed, like playing at royalty, but it is well known that, to tbe Oriental mind, nothing impresses so much as an out ward display of pomp and state. The reception chamber was decorated on the sides with magnificent Persian rugs, hung like tapestry on the walls, but the floor was simply of polished woods. After the Khedive bad saluted Mr. Schuyler and the attache's, and we were all seated, men-servants brought into tbe hall pipes of sandal-wood, filled with fragrant Leutakia or Syrian tobacco.

The pipes were over six feet long, and the bowl rested within a silver salver, placed on the floor. A kneeling attendant was ready to replenish the pipes with coals and tobacco. The mouthpiece was of amber, and just above where it joined the sandal-wood was one mass of diamond incrustations. There must have been over a hundred, many of large size, in each pipe. The Khedive, his Cabinet, together with the consul general and attache's, sat in a square, gravely taking a few whiffs, and never saying a word. The whole scene reminded me very much of the councils in AN EASTERN DA Y. 9 the book of Lewis and Clark, when tbe aborigines, covered with wampum, sat sedately in a circle and smoked the calumet of peace. How very odd it is, that the customs of the ancient Orient should find a parallel among the savages of America !

After the pipes came coffee, served in delicate china cups that were embedded in silver holders of elabo rate filigree work, also studded with brilliants. When, a few minutes afterwards, the consul-general departed, he found outside the palace a regiment of troops drawn up in line, who saluted the representa tive of the American Republic, while the band dis coursed the familiar melody of " The Star Spangled Banner." The servants of the Khedive wore long black frock-coats, and, even in the audience-chamber, did not remove their fez. Nor did the Khedive and his Cabinet. Tbe only people uncovered were the foreigners. The consul-general was escorted to his mansion with the same state as before, the people on the streets stopping to see the richly decorated state carriages and the plain black-robed men within.

A hundred dollars was distributed by M. Schuyler in gratuities to the coachmen, escort, and attendants of tbe Foreign Office. Formerly the Khedive gave to each representative of the Powers an Arabian courser, richly saddled and caparisoned, and also a splendid Damascus scimitar, with ivory handle ornamented with gold. But the phlegmatic English have stopped this bit of Oriental magnificence and generosity, to tbe great sorrow of all the foreign consuls-general. Of course the American consuls general, by a law of Congress, are not allowed to receive gifts of any kind from foreign potentates, but I understand that some of our consuls in Egypt in the past have conveniently forgotten this re striction. After the carriages were dismissed, we went m more humble vehicles of our own to make a formal call on Riaz Pasha, the prime minister.

There again we drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Hardly had we entered Schuyler's residence on our return, when Riaz Pasha was announced. He came to pay the customary civility of a personal visit to a consul-general who has been received by the Khedive. More coffee and cigarettes. Tbe capacity of these Egyptians for both is marvellous. Where we drink beer, wine, and spirits, they drink only coffee. Cups and cups of it go down their throats like drops of water. When the good old man, who is kind and gentle hearted, had left, we drove out across tbe river to the Gizerah, as it is called. On the west bank of the Nile lies the drive, circling inward as it goes down the river. This is a charming bit of land, bathed on every side by the waters of the Nile, and encompassed with groves of tall acacias and taller AN EASTERN DA Y. 11 palms.

It is the exact site of the battle of the Pyramids, when Napoleon inspired his troops by his spirited invocation to those gigantic masses, whose out lines are so vivid in the clear atmosphere, though ten miles away. The Gizerah is the fashionable drive of Cairo, and every afternoon it is thronged with carriages, horses, and donkeys. The Khedive, with a slender escort, always appears on Fridays and Sundays, followed at a little distance by his only wife, the Khedivia, who is in a closed carriage, with a deep veil covering her face wholly. No one walks in Cairo in the hot autumn days, and it is not necessary on the score of economy. A couple of horses, with driver and carriage, costs only forty cents an hour, and less in proportion for a longer time. We drove homeward across the Nile in the shadowing palms, while the sun glittered brighter than ever behind the mighty Pyramids.

Its glow shone upon their summits, and touched their sides with gold, even while the bases that fronted us became heavily purple. They alone were dark in all the landscape, for as the sun went down shining to the last as though it were midday, the full moon came up from the east over the minarets and mosques of Cairo, flooding the silent land with silver.

Chapter II. Old Cairo

1 have wandered for many a pleasant hour through the old quarters of Cairo. Go as often as one will, there is ever something new to be seen ; either a costume or a yashmak that for its novelty or strange ness causes one to stop and gaze with interest. There are no sidewalks, and the streets are very narrow. The houses are built of limestone rock, with the second and third stories in many instances of wood. These are placed close together right on the side of the little street, and there are no gardens nor trees of any kind. Many of the larger buildings have courtyards in the middle, where flowers and palm-trees grow in luxuriant profusion. But these courtyards cannot be seen from the street, for the entrance to them is by a narrow low door of thick, heavy wooden beams, clamped with iron rivets going through from side to side.

The doors are like those of a castle, and give one a faint idea of the state of Cairo three or four hundred years ago, when these buildings were con- A street in Cairo. To face page 12, structed. Each one was a fortress, with windows high up, protected with heavy iron bars like a prison, and, with its solid, stout walls, must have been secure against several score of the Arab troopers. They lap over the street at each additional story, and there fore, if there are two buildings opposite of three or four stories, their roofs approach so near that a man could quite easily leap over the street from one to tbe other. Across this space is stretched an awning when it is hot, and people pass to and fro in the shade beneath. All the shops are small, and are about two feet above tbe street level. There is never a chair, and the merchant sits cross-legged on the floor, which is covered with matting, while heaps of stuff from Damascus, Smyrna, and Bombay lie thrown around in utter confusion.

When they are taken from the little shelves in the early morning to show to a customer, they are not put back again until be closes the place at the setting of the sun. Silks and cottons, yashmaks and habbarahs, tarbushes and turbans, white light linens from Benares and scarlet Persian carpets from Ispahan, all lie on the floor in delightful disarray. And the Arab merchant placidly smokes his narghileh, with its fragrant Egyptian tobacco, gazing serenely upon the passers-by. A few Ameri can drummers are needed there to wake them up, though I fancy that they would have to change the people before they could alter their customs, now become sacred by the sanction of centuries. Next door to this shop would very likely be a laundry. Tbe laundry consists of a number of tubs sunk in tbe ground, which are filled with bluing.

Clothes are put in these vats to rest for a time, and are afterwards carefully washed and rinsed in the street, in front of the door. This occasions perhaps a little discomfort to tbe camels and donkeys, as well as the people who pass and repass in an endless line ; but the thirsty air and ground soon absorb the water. Passing along, one comes to a little place where candies and sweet cakes are sold. It is surrounded by dirty barefooted children, whose clothes are torn and draggled, and whose eyes and unwashed faces are covered with a swarm of flies that they hardly make an effort to drive away. This is one of the most unpleasant features of Cairo and Egyptian life. Half tbe native children have ophthalmia, especially up to the age of ten. Perhaps it is hereditary and comes from some taint in the blood, for it is nearly universal.

I suppose, if tbe children were kept cleaner and their eyes frequently bathed, that the disease would not be so common, but now it is frightful and very disagreeable to the visitor. Nevertheless many of these little wretches had a para to buy some sweets, and afterwards sat down and ate them in the street amid the dust, the camels, and the donkeys, while their less happy playmates looked on with envy. The Arab who supplied all these wonders was a benevolent-looking old fellow, with an immense white turban. At least, I should think it might have been white at one time. He said, " E-zi-ak " (good day), in the blandest of tones, and very kindly offered me some of bis goodies at the end of his thrice dirty fingers, appearing grieved when I could not, with all my philosophy, bring myself to eat them.

There now passes a Persian with his sheepskin hat. He is nearly as dark as the Soudanese with whom be saunters along. The summer heats of Teheran are almost as severe as those of Assouan. The Soudanese wears a red fez, swathed in folds of wmite linen. Behind them stalks with measured tread the Bedouin of the desert, in his picturesque dress, with his veil of blue and white and green dropping gracefully upon his shoulders. It protects his face and eyes from the blinding rays of the sun, reflected by tbe yellow desert sands as he spurns them beneath the feet of bis Arabian courser or swift dromedary. How intensely black are his beard and eyes ! Tbe Bedouin never seems to become gray, even at an advanced age. With his fierce visage and wandering life, be is the Red Indian of the East. Amid this meeting in the streets of Old Cairo of the peoples of every land in the Eastern world, with all their different costumes and customs, tbe Bedouin is by far tbe most attractive and imposing. ; He has preserved his mode of life and methods of existence from the days of Abraham.

No one has sought to wrest from him his desert sands, and he has been left tranquil upon the wastes where never a tree nor a shrub darkens tbe brightness of the mid day sun. From sand-hill to sand-hill he wanders, pitching his tent where his flocks and herds may find a little stagnant water. He lives by pillage and rapine, yet, when he has eaten salt with his guest, no royal monarch is safer or more respected in his own palace than is the Howardji under the tent of the Bedouin. Even in Cairo he is alone, as in the desert. He walks slowly and proudly on with erect mien, looking neither to right nor left, speaking to none, while all the others quietly make way for him. Here comes a wagon with only two wheels on a dead axle, drawn by a donkey. It has no sides, and seated upon the few planks that make the bottom are no less than eight women.

They have their feet tucked up under them, their faces covered with the impenetrable veil and yashmak, and they chatter away — well, as only women can chatter when a number of them get together. They are the wives and servants of some Arab, who bas sent them out for an airing. It seldom happens that the man who has several wives and odalisques has not also ample means to supply them with luxuries such as the harem beauties usually enjoy ; but once in a while there is some poor Lothario who has yet managed to have quite as many wives as his richer brethren, and this is bis cheap and safe way of giving them recreation. He cannot afford to keep eunuchs, so he sends them out together, and cer tainly they are safer guards for each other than a whole cohort of eunuchs would be. They are so closely veiled that it is impossible to tell the ser vants from the wives, though the former are always black girls from the Soudan.

Nothing can be seen but the eyes, and I have discovered that all eyes look the same under the deceiving yashmak ; one cannot tell the difference between sixteen and sixty. In fact, as the negro girls are the youngest and have perhaps the most lustrous orbs, one would be very apt to select from that standpoint as the Zuleika of the harem, some thick-lipped, flat-nosed, big-footed girl from Ethiopia. But they go along past the Arab cafe, on which they look curiously, as if it were some demon's cave. Tired of sight-seeing, I enter and order a cup of that fragrant black Mocha coffee, which is the delight and the nepenthe of the East. The cafe's, or saloons, of Egypt are divided into c. two classes : those that simply supply coffee, cognac, and cigarettes ; and the ones that sell hashish in addition to coffee and cognac.

Hashish is a kind of tobacco made from hemp, and is in its effects and uses a good deal like opium. It is smoked in pipes, just as the Chinese in Shanghai, Hongkong, and San Francisco smoke that drug. For ten cents a Cairene can buy enough to last him all night. The hashish cafe's, like our churches, are never closed. They tell me here that one of every four men in Cairo uses hashish. They smoke for two or three hours, and then fall into a sort of stupor or dream the whole night through. Mahomet's seventy virgins, whose youth and freshness are ever renewed, dance in transparent attire before their enraptured vision. Fountains of milk and honey, and the soft volup tuous harmonies of the zarab, mingle together in sweet confusion. They are Haroun al-Raschid, Saladin, or Mehemet Ali. Long lines of troopers on their -white Arabian steeds await with drawn and jewelled scimitars their slightest nod, as of the Prophet Mahomet.

The cry, " AUah-il- Allah ! " rings through their dull and stupefied minds, as they see themselves rulers over thousands, soldans of Egypt ; and they are awakened suddenly and rudely, to find around them a dirty Arab cafe', with a dim lamp black with grime, and their fellow hashish-smokers lying prone in the dust at tbeir * feet. Then they stagger to their miserable homes to sleep during the day a dead maudlin slumber, and arise next morning for their daily labour, with out a cent, with sodden brain and heavy limbs. Strange that people will, for a little fancied relief, even in a hashish dream, thus lower themselves below the beasts. But tbe sun is sinking fast behind the yellow line of the Libyan bills, and the serpent Nile flows placidly on under the gigantic shadow of the Pyra mids. Now the lamps are lighted in the shops of the narrow streets, from which the sun's rays have gone an hour.

The cafe's begin to fill and the crowds in the roads to increase. The camels in a long line, tied head to tail, and loaded with immense quantities of sugar-cane, so that they look like moving hay stacks, slowly and patiently thread tbeir pathway through the thronged street. The shops where lamp-oil of American and Russian production is sold, and the fruit marts, are filled with buyers. Pomegranates, mandarins, as well as dates, bananas, and almost every variety of tropical fruit known, are both good and cheap. Here is a donkey loaded with immense water melons, piled on each side of the basket that forms his saddle. The old farmer who drives him cuts the melons into large slices, and sells the luscious pieces for a para, or one-fifth of a cent, each. All this in the month of December. With a slice of water-melon and a cake of Arab bread, costing also only a para, the humble Egyptian eats a very good supper, and contentedly lies down to sleep on the ground under the eaves of some house, to shelter him from the morning rays of the sun.

This bread, which con sists only of flour, salt, and water, is made into cakes like pancakes, and is very good and palatable. The shadows come thicker, the lamps are lighted in the little open space in front of the large Arab cafe yonder. Presently the story-teller appears, and takes his seat on the high chair allotted to him, while the old, low wooden benches around are soon filled with groups of Arabs, prepared to listen and drink coffee. In a sweet, low, yet penetrating voice, distinctly heard in the quiet that prevails, the old Arab, with his white turban and long white beard, chants some tale of Hafiz, some exploit of Rustam, or a love-song from the Arabian pages of Avaluca. He does not exactly read, but rather sings, with due inflections and frequent pauses between each sentence and line.