Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé, etc

Front matter

&m f» K <m > I m EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AND OF THE KEDIVE. BY F. BARHAM ZINCKE, vicar of wherstead, and chaplain in ordinary to the queen. HUMAffl N1HIL ALIENUM LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE. 1871. [All Rights reserved.] DEDICATION. To my Stepson, Francis Seymour Stevenson, / DEDICATE THIS BOOK; IN THE HOPE THAT ITS PERUSAL MAY SOME DAY CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS DISPOSING HIM TO THE STUDY OF NATURE AND OF MAN, SINGLY FOR TRUTH'S SAKE.

Introduction

. — ♦ — Those particulars of the History of Egypt, and of its present condition, in which it differs from other countries, are factors of the idea this famous name stands for, which must be brought prominently into view in any honest and useful construction of the idea. Something of this kind, is what the author of the following work has been desirous of attempting, and so was unable, as he was also unwilling, to pass by any point or question which fell within the require ments of his design. His aim, throughout, has been to aid those who have not studied the subject much, or perhaps at all, in understanding what it is in the past, and in the present, that gives Egypt a claim on their attention. The pictures of things, and the thoughts about them, which he offers to his readers are the materials with which the idea of Egypt has been built up in his own mind : they will judge how far with or without reason.

The work had its origin in the notes of a tour he made through the country in the early months of Introduction. VI this year. It is, indeed, the notes actually made at the time, and with the objects before him, but subse quently revised, and methodically arranged, with occasional expansions and omissions. As he started for Egypt at a few hours' notice, it did not occur to him to take any books with him : this will in some measure account for the disposition manifested throughout to follow up the trains of thought Egyptian objects suggest. He has retained this part of his notes not only because it was necessary for what came to be the design of the work, but also because, had it been excluded, the work would have ceased to be something real ; for then it would not have been, what it professes to be, a picture of that particular train of thought which the sights of Egypt actually produced in the author's mind.

Wherstead Vicarage, May iT,th, 187 1. CONTENTS. CHATTER PAGE I. Egypt and the Nile „ i II. How in Egypt Nature affected Man ii III. Who were the Egyptians ? 23 IV. Egypt the Japan of the Old World 40 V. Backsheesh. — The Girl of Bethany 43 VI. Antiquity and Character of the Pyramid Civilization 49 VII. Labour was Squandered on the Pyramids because it could not be bottled up 54 VIII. The Great Pyramid looks down on the Cataract of Philæ '. 63 IX. The Wooden Statue in the Boulak Museum 65 X. Date of Building with Stone 68 XI. Going to the Top of the Great Pyramid 78 XII. Luncheon at the Pyramids. — Kef 85 XIII. Abydos 90 XIV. The Faioum 98 XV. Heliopolis 1 10 XVI. Thebes— Luxor and Karnak 117 ' XVII. Thebes— The Necropolis 126 XVIII. Thebes — The Temple-Palaces 137 XIX. Rameses the Great goes forth from Egypt „ 147 XX.

Germanicus at Thebes 155 XXI. Moses's Wife 159 XXII. Egyptian Donkey-boys 161 XXIII. Scarabs 168 XXIV. Egyptian Belief in a Future Life 172 XXV. Why the Hebrew Scriptures ignore the Future Life 182 XXVI. Effect of Eastern Travel on Belief 212 XXVII. The Historical Method of Interpretation 220 XXVIII. Disappearance of Monuments from the Delta Contents. VIII CHAPTER PAGE XXIX. Post-Pharaohnic Temples in Upper Egypt 236 XXX. The Rationale of the Monuments 241 XXXI. The Wisdom of Egypt, and its Fall 250 XXXII. Egyptian Landlordism 279 XXXIII . Caste 283 XXXIV. Persistency of Custom in the East 288 XXXV. Are all Orientals Mad? 292 XXXVI. The Koran :. 295 XXXVII. Oriental Prayer 298 XXXVIII. Pilgrimage 303 XXXIX. Arab Superstitions. — The Evil Eye 307 XL. Oriental Cleanliness 314 XLI. Why Orientals are not Republicans 316 XLII.

Polygamy — Its cause .'. 320 XLIII. Houriism 327 XLIV. Can Anything be done for the East? 335 XLV. Achmed Tried in the Balance with Hodge 341 XLVI. Water-jars and Water-carriers 347 XLVII. Want of Wood in Egypt, and its Consequences 350 XLVIII. Trees in Egypt 354 XLIX. Gardening in Egypt 358 L. Animal Life in Egypt. —The Camel 360 LI. The Ass. — The Horse 367 LIL The Dog.— The Unclean Animal. — The Buffalo.— The Ox. —The Goats and the Sheep.— Feræ NATURÆ 37 j LIII. Birds in Egypt 370 LIV. The Egyptian Turtle 3g, LV. Insect Plagues ,gr LVI. The Shadoof ,g» LVIL Alexandria 300 LVIII. Cairo 3qg LIX. The Canalization of the Isthmus 413 LX. Conclusion .,, K E D I V E.

Chapter I. Egypt And The Nile

Ouodque suit campus, vallem decursus aquarum Fecit. Ovid. The history of the land of Egypt takes precedence, at all events chronologically, of that of its people. The Nile, unlike any other river on our globe, throughout more than the last thousand miles of its course, the whole of which is through sandy wastes — for the valley of Egypt is but the river channel — is not joined by a single affluent. Nor, in this long reach through the desert, does it receive any considerable accessions from storm-water. From the beginning of history — that is to say, for at least six thousand years, for almost so far back extend the contemporary records of its monuments— Egypt has been wondering, and, from the dawn of intelligent inquiry in Europe, all who heard of Egypt and of the Nile have been desiring to know what and where were the hidden sources of the strange and mighty river which alone had made Egypt a country and rendered it habitable.

Nowhere, in modern times, has so much interest been felt about this earliest and latest problem of physical geography as in England ; and no people have contributed so much to its solution as Englishmen. At this moment the whole of the civilized world is concerned at the uncertainty which involves the fate of one of our countrymen, the greatest on our long roll of African explorers, who has now, for some years, been lost to sight in the perplexing interior of this fantastic continent, while engaged in the investigation of its great and well-kept secret ; but who, we are all hoping, may soon be restored to us, bringing with him, as the fruit of his long and difficult enterprise, its final and complete solution. Thoughts of this kind do not stand only at the threshold of a tour in Egypt, as it were, inviting one to undertake it, but accompany one throughout it, deepening the varied interest there is so much everywhere in Egyptian objects to awaken.

One of the first questions which forces itself on the attention of the traveller in Egypt is — How was the valley he is passing through formed ? This is a question that cannot be avoided. It was put to Herodotus, more than two thousand years ago, by the peculiarities of the scene. He answered it after his fashion. It was, he said, originally an arm of the sea, corresponding to the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea ; and had been filled up with the mud of the Nile. Those were days when, as was done for many a day afterwards, the answers to physical questions were sought in metaphysical ideas. The one to which the simple-minded incomparable old Chronicler had recourse on this occasion was that of a supposed symmetrical fitness in Nature. There is the Red Sea, a long narrow gulf, a very marked figure in the geography of the world, trending in from the south, on the east side of the Arabian Hills.

There ought, therefore, to be on the west side ofthe Arabian Hills a corresponding gulf trending in from the north. Otherwise the Arabian Gulf would be unbalanced. That necessary gulf had been where Egypt now is. The demonstration was complete. Egypt must have been an arm of the sea, which had been gradually expelled by the deposit from the river. This argument, however, is not unassailable, even from the fitness-of-things point of view. Had the fitness-of things been in this matter, and in this fashion, a real agent in Nature, it should have made the valley of Egypt somewhat more like the Red Sea in width ; and it should also have interdicted its being filled up with mud. It should have had the same reasons and power for maintaining it which it had had originally for making it. In this way, however, did men when they first began to look upon the marvels of Nature with inquiring interest, suppose that metaphysical concep tions, creatures of the brain, were entities in Nature, and would supply the keys that were to unlock her secrets.

" Egypt is the gift of the Nile." But I believe that it is the gift of the Nile in a much larger sense than Herodotus had in his mind when he wrote these words. It is the gift of the Nile in a double sense. The Nile, in the first place, cut out the valley, and then filled it up with alluvium. The valley filled with alluvium is Egypt. The excavation of the valley was the greater part of the work. That it was formed in this way was suggested to me by its resemblance to the valley of the Platte above Julesburg, as it may be seen even from a car of the Pacific Railway. You there have a wide valley, like Egypt, perfectly flat, bounded on either side by limestone bluffs, sometimes inclined at so precipitous an angle that nothing can grow upon them, excepting, here and there, a conifer or two, and sometimes at so obtuse an angle that the slopes are covered with grass.

These varying inclina tions reproduce themselves in the bounding ranges of the valley of Egypt. The Platte writhes, like a snake, from side to side of its flat valley, cutting away in one place the alluvium, all of which it had itself deposited, and transporting it to another. It is continually silting up its channel, first in one place, and then in another, with bars and banks, which oblige the stream to find itself another channel to the right or left. The bluffs, though now generally at a considerable distance from the river, must have been formed by it, when it was working sometimes against one, and sometimes against the other side of the valley ; and sometimes also for long periods leaving both, and running in a midway channel. Why should not the Nile have done the same ? This supposition is supported by the fact that when you have a soft cretaceous limestone, and rocks that may be easily worn away, the valley of Egypt is wide.

When, as you ascend the stream, you pass at Silsileh into the region of compact siliceous sandstone, the valley immediately narrows. And when you enter the granite region at Assouan, there ceases to be any valley at all. The river has not been able, in all the ages of its existence, to do more than cut itself an insufficient channel in this intractable rock. All this is just what you would expect on the supposition that it was the river that had cut out the valley. We are sure, at all events, of one step in this process. For there is incontrovertible evidence that, in the historical period, the river flowed at a level twenty-seven feet higher that it does at present, as far down as Silsileh. In several places, down to that point, may be found the Nile alluvium, deposited on the con tiguous high ground at that height above the highest level the river now reaches in its annual inundations.

There is, besides, the old deserted channel from a little below Philæ to Assouan, into which the river cannot now rise. Here, then, is the evidence of Nature. We have also the testimony of man to the same fact, contemporary testimony inscribed on the granite. Herodotus tells us, that from the time of Mœris, the Egyptians had preserved an uninterrupted register of the annual risings of the Nile. This Mœris of the Greeks was Amenemha III., one of the last kings of the primæval monarchy, before the invasion ofthe Hyksos. This register was preserved both in a written record, in which the height of the inundation was given in figures for each year : this is what Herodotus men tions ; and also in engraved markings on suitable river-side rocks. Of these markings, we, fortunately, have a series at Semneh, in Nubia.

Sesortesen II., the father of Amenemha III., had conquered Nubia. This event took place between two and three thousand years before our era. To secure his conquest, he built a strong castle on the perpendicular granite cliffs at Sermseh, between which the Nile had cut its channel. His son, not content with instituting the written register Herodotus mentions, ordered that the height of the inundation should, each year, be inscribed on the granite cliffs of Semneh, which had been fortified by his father, and where an Egyptian garrison was kept. This castle, little injured by time, is still standing. Here was the most appropriate place for such a register. It was the actual bank of the river; it was perpendicular ; it was indestructible ; it measured all the water that came into Egypt. Amenemha must have been familiar with the place, for it was the custom of the princes to accompany the king in war.

Now, there are thirteen of Amenemha's inscriptions at this day on this cliff. Each gives a deeply-incised line for the height of the rising, and under it is an hieroglyphic inscription, informing us that that line indicates the height to which the river rose in such and such a year of Amenemha's reign. In every instance the date is given. In the reign of Amenemha's successor, the invasion of the Hyksos took place, terminated the old monarchy, and for four hundred years threw everything into confusion. But, what we are concerned with, is the fact that in the reign of this king and his successor, the Nile rose, on an average, twenty-four feet above the level to which it rises now. Here, then, are two witnesses, Nature and Man. The coincidence of their testimony is as clear and complete as it is undesigned.

It may, therefore, be accepted as an undoubted fact, that the Nile is now flowing from Semneh to Silsileh at a level lower by at least twenty-four feet than it did at the date of the inscriptions. Nature says there was a time when it rose at least twenty-seven feet higher than at present, for at that height it deposited alluvium. There is no discrepancy in these three additional feet, though there would have been a discrepancy had Nature indicated three feet less than the markines. The only question for us to consider is, how this was brought about. It could have been brought about only in one way, and that was by the river deepening its channel. As far down as Silsileh it had been flow ing at a higher level. Here there must have been a cataract, or an actual cascade. Whatever the form of the obstruction, the stream carried it away.

And so, again and again, working backwards, it ate out for itself a deeper channel all the way up to Semneh. This is just how the Niagara river is dealing with its channel. It has undertaken the big job of deepening it, from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, down to the level of Ontario. The stone it has to work in is very hard and compact. It has now done about half the work, and every one sees that it will eventually complete it. All that is required is time. The River Colorado, we are told, runs for six hundred miles of its course in a canon, a mile in perpendicular depth, all cut through rock, and some of it granitic. This is what the Nile did in the historic period for at least two hundred miles of its course. It planed down this part of its channel to a lower level, to what may be called the level of Egypt.

Why should it not have done precisely the same work in the pre-historic period for — say, the four hundred miles from Silsileh to Cairo ? That is just what I believe it did. Of course, there were aboriginal facilities which decided it upon taking that course. There may also have been greater depressions in some places than in others. There was harder work here, and lighter work there. The planing was carried on rapidly in one district, and slowly in another. But I believe that, after making whatever deductions may be thought proper for aboriginal depressions, it is safe to conclude that the valley of Egypt was, in the main, cut out by the Nile. It did not begin to obtain its abrading power after the reign of Amenemha III. There may have been a cataract once at Cairo. When this was carried away, another must have been developed somewhere above its site, and so on back wards all the way to Silsileh, where we are sure that there was once something of the kind.

In a still remoter past the river may not have come as far north as Cairo, but may have passed through the Faioum, or by the Natron Lakes, into the desert. This is a question which, to some degree, admits of investigation. The river would not always bear on the same side of the valley. A little change in any part of the channel, and which might result from any one of a variety of causes, would deflect its course. It is so with all rivers. These causes are always everywhere at work. The river would thus be always shifting from one side of the valley to the other, and, impinging in turn on the opposite bounding hills, would always be widening the valley. The number of side canals, especially the Bahr Jussuf, which, throughout almost the whole length of the valley, is a second Nile, running parallel to the original river, must, during the historical period, by lessening the volume of water in the main channel, have very much lessened its power of shifting its course.

But every one who voyages on the Nile will become aware that this power is still very great. He will often hear and see large portions of the bank falling into the water. In many places he will observe the fresh face of recent landslips. On the summit of these slips he will occasionally see interior sections of some of the houses of a village which is being carried away by the stream. On the fresh faces of recent slips I often observed that the stratification was unconformable and irregular. This indicated that the sand and mud out of which the alluvium had been formed, had not been deposited at the bottom of a quiet lake-like inundation, but must have been formed at the bottom of a running stream, precisely in the same way as the sand-banks and mud banks of the existing channel are always at the present time being formed.

This irregular stratification is just what we might expect to find in the alluvium of a valley through which runs a mighty river, always rest lessly shifting its channel to the right or to the left.'" I was not in Egypt during the time of the inunda tion ; I can therefore only repeat on the authority of others, that for the first few days it has a green tint. This is supposed to be caused by the first rush of the descending torrents sweeping off a great deal of stagnant water from the distant interior of Darfour. This green Nile is held to be unwholesome, and the natives prepare themselves for it by storing up, in anticipation, what water they will require for these few days. The green is succeeded by a red tint. This is caused by the surface washing of districts where the soil is red. The red water, though heavily charged with soil, is not unwholesome.

With respect to the amount of red in the colour of the water of the inundation, I found it stated in a work which is some- * I was glad to hear in the lecture delivered by Professor Owen at Stafford House on the 12th of June, that he had accepted the view I have submitted to my readers in this chapter, and which I had propounded to him last December on the Nile, of the modus operandi by which Egypt had been formed. times quoted as an authority on Egyptian subjects, that it was such that the water might be mistaken for blood. This I do not understand, as the soil this water leaves behind has in its colour no trace of red. By the time the water of the inundation reaches the Delta, it has got rid of the greater part of its impuri ties. This causes the rise of the land in the Delta to be far slower than in Upper Egypt.

In winter, when the inundation has completely subsided, the water, though still charged with mud, in which, however, there is no trace of red, is pleasant to drink, and quite innocuous. The old Egyptians represented in their wall-paintings these three conditions of the river by green, red, and blue water. For myriads of years this mighty river has been bringing down from the highlands of Abyssinia and Central Africa its freight of fertile soil, the sole means of life, and of all that embellished life, to those who invented letters and built Karnak. It is still as bountiful as ever it was of old to the people who now dwell upon its banks ; but to what poor account do they turn its bounty ! How great is the contrast between the wretchedness this bounty now maintains, and the splendour, the wealth, the arts, the wisdom it maintained four and five thousand years ago !

The Egyptians have a saying, with which, I think, most of those who have travelled in Egypt will agree, that he who has once drunk the water of the Nile will wish to drink it again.

Chapter II. How In Egypt Nature Affected Man

Continuo has leges, æternaque fœdera certis Imposuit natura locis, quo tempore primum Deucalion vacuum lapides jactavit in orbem. VlRGlL. The physical features, and peculiarities of a country are one of the starting-points in the history of its people. If we do not provide ourselves with this knowledge before we commence our investigation of what the people were, and did, the character of the people, and of the events is sure very soon to make us feel the want of it. It is so in a higher degree with the history of the Egyptians, than with that of any other people. They were, emphatically, a people that stood alone, and the peculiarities of the people were the direct result of the peculiarities of the country. Its environment by the desert, gave it that security which alone in early days could have enabled nascent civilization to germinate and grow.

It possessed also a soil and climate which enabled its inhabitants to devote themselves to some variety of employments and pursuits, and prevented their being all tied down to the single task of producing food. The absence of these two great natural advantages elsewhere placed insurmountable difficulties in the way of advancement in other parts of the world, as long as the arts by which man battles with nature were sew, and feeble ; and the organization of society in consequence only rudimentary. So was it for instance in Europe at the time when Egypt was at the zenith of its greatness ; where, too, for long centuries afterwards, nothing could have been done without the aid of slavery, which alone made mental culture possible for the few at the cost of the degradation and misery of the many.

Egypt was differently circumstanced. There one man might pro duce food sufficient for many. The rest, therefore, could devote themselves to other employments which might tend in different ways to relieve man's estate and embellish life. In this matter the river and the climate were their helpers. The river, manured with an annual warp, irrigated, cleaned, and softened the land ; and the climate, working harmoniously with the river, made the operations of agriculture easy, speedy, certain, and very productive. What in other countries, and in later times, the slow advances in arts, and knowledge, and in social organization, as the successive steps become possible, brought about for their respective inhabitants, Nature did, in a great measure at once, and from the first, for the Egyptians. Another of the early hindrances to advancement arose out of the difficulties of communication, which prevented either a military force from maintaining itself away from home, or a single governing mind from acting at a distance.

Of course in matters of this kind the effects of the want of sufficient means of communication are greatly aggravated by the want of foresight and the distrust men have in each other, which belong to such times and circumstances. No thing but the organization of tribes and cities can be How in Egypt Nature affected Man. 13 accomplished then. Egypt, however, had advantages in the great and varied gifts of Nature to which our attention is now directed, which enabled her, in some remote prehistoric period, to emerge from this politically embryonic condition, and to form a well-ordered and homogeneous state, embracing a population of several millions, who were in possession of many of the elements of wealth and power, and had attained to a condition that would suggest and encourage culture. Of these advantages, that which came next in order to the soil and climate, was that its good fortune had conferred upon it a ready-made means of communication, absolutely complete and perfect ; no part of the country, either in the valley of Egypt, or in the Delta, being more than a few miles distant from one of the most easily navigable rivers in the world.

And that nothing might be wanting, this advan tage was equalised to all by a provision of nature that, at a certain season of the year, the descending current of the river should, for the purposes of navigation, be overbalanced by a long prevalence of northerly winds ; thus giving every facility, by self-acting agencies, to both the up and the down traffic. I may also observe that the river ran precisely in that direction in which it could serve most effectually as a bond of union by serving most largely as a channel of commerce. If its course had been along the same parallel of latitude, that is, from East to West, or reversely, then throughout its whole length the productions of its banks would have been the same. It would, therefore, have been of little use as a means of commercial interchange.

Where there was no variety of productions there would have been no commodities to exchange. But as its course was in the direction of longitude, its stream offered a highway for the exchange of the varying products of the different degrees of latitude it passed through. This difference in the direction of their courses already con stitutes a vast difference in the comparative utility of the streams of the Amazon and of the Mississippi ; and must ensure to them very dissimilar futures. Another of the provisions that had been made for the early progress of the country was something quite unique : there was not by Nature, and there could not be constructed by man, a single strong place in the whole of Egypt, such as would enable powerful and ambitious individuals, or malcontent factions of the people, to maintain themselves in independence of the rest of the community, or to defy the government.

Nature had supplied no such places, and the conditions of the country were such that they could not be formed. This is a point of so much importance that I will return to it presently. It ought not to be unnoticed here, for it is one of the important peculiarities of the country, that Egypt yields both a winter and a summer harvest. The overflow of the river, and the warmth of the winter sun suffices for the former, and artificial irrigation for the latter. This gives it the advantage of two climates, the one temperate and the other tropical ; for though it is north of the tropic its temperature is rendered tropical through its environment by theheat-accumulatingdesert. Egypt is thus enabled to exceed all other countries in the variety of its produce. Both its wheat and its cotton are grown beneath its palms.

This variety of produce ought to contribute largely to the wealth, and well-being of a country ; and it was, we know, a very considerable in gredient in the greatness ofthe Egypt of the Pharaohs. Hozo in Egypt Nature affected Man. 15 The characteristics of surrounding Nature had corresponding effects on the ideas and sentiments of the ancient Egyptians. We may, for instance, be absolutely certain that had they lived in an Alpine country, although they might have had the power of commanding the requisite materials on easier terms, they never would have built the Pyramids, for then an Egyptian pyramid would have been but a pigmy monument by the side of Nature's pyramids. But as they stood in Egypt, when seen from the neighbourhood of Memphis and Heliopolis, and throughout that level district of country, they went beyond Nature.