Out of Egypt

Front matter

Book C B

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Contents

Chapter page

I. The Desert 19

II. On the Threshold 24

CHAPTER I The Desert

IT is the desert — one cannot say the centre of the desert, or its heart, for there seem no boundaries. At first all is without form and void, it is that which lies back of the Beginning. We may speak of the desert expression of Egypt, though the desert has many expressions; for, while sometimes interrupted by the whirlwind, they all seem the expressions of one reverie; which reaches its height at noon when life is fullest and stillest, and we wait breathless for what is to come. Then do we feel how God thought, and the world is.

From this mood we lift up our eyes to the hills which give us one background, and we realize they are not of the shifting sand, but their foundations are sure. They are, in truth, the oldest hills, first to be raised above the waters, and though they are all barren, among them are cool purple shades, "the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land."

Under the spell it casts upon us, we journey in the desert. Motion incarnate is the camel, stepping so softly that as we ride, it is the earth which seems to reel, yet in the throes of creation. At last before us rise liie first and greatest monuments of Man, announcing the beginning of Time where they first marked Space; and deep in a hollow, lifting itself from the drifting sands, we find Form emerging, clothing Majesty — a human head.

Still, after the brief span of human history, it represents the mystery, which we have called by name. For that Time and Space and Form might be, one more thing is essential* the Word — the name of each. Without this word, in the days of dawn men felt that nothing could exist, and further believed that the knowledge of a name gave power over its owner; since the name is the word for the idea of the thing, and thus represents its soul.

But this word is not the Sphinx's secret. We had recognized its name ourselves, ere we learned that the god for whom it stood, is thus addressed in a hymn of the Egyptians:

"O Form, one, creator of all things, O one, only, maker of existences."

Uncovered from the sands, as its inscriptions tell us, by an early ruler in obedience to a dream; and gazing into the morning with wide, unseeing eyes through the centuries, what mystery of primitive religion, what revelation of Truth, does the Sphinx embody.?

Below its feet, in the shadow of the Pyramids, where the river brings life to the desert, the women of Egypt draw water.

THE DESERT U

The melancholy note of a large bird calls from the valley; small wagtailis flit by us; and a Semitic Bedouin boy in white comes flying from Nowhere on a gaunt camel, waving his arms in sheer exuberance of life. Near us, a company of graceful chfldren, clad each in one loose garment, are busily carrying away the earth to uncover some further marvel of the morning of Time.

We stand beside the Sphinx, with the sun behind us now, and follow its gaze across the tender green of the Nile plain; over the shimmer of the river; over the modern city, to the hills rose-colored in the evening light. Those are the hills from which these first great monuments were wrested — the hills of our first delight. We know that tonight trains of camels are carrying down the day's last load of stone from the edge of the ancient quarries to the boats by the river bank. It is over there, in that continuation of the desert, that One Other and I have taken up our abode, there where the yellow sands sweep round us, and the heavens open above these distant Pyramids for the golden afterglow.

Back in our village Helouan, from dawn until "the purple earthshadow climbs the mellow-eastern sky, "* we watch the changes in the Mokattam Hills. After dark itself has fallen, comes a lifting

*R. Talbot Kelly.

of the curtain, and the second glow shines out fine and strange, like the light from a golden lamp; while the rock seems to glow from within. Here, shut from all the world, yet with all space about us, we are daily learning the meanings of what we have seen and heard.

Our villa, the salemhk of an Eastern palace, lies in a garden. The garden is an artificial oasis, but in it the desert blossoms, and nowhere else is the rose so precious. The few houses are the color of the sand, from which they seem hardly separated, reflecting the sunsets in the same way. Some of these buildings are harems, bound round with this monotony of sand. By degrees it is the details which we notice — every rider, every black-robed figure, stands out strongly, till in isolated bits we spell the Present, the ephemeral, eternal life of today, in which we are to have our part. Curious topsy-turvydom, strange anomaly of ancient and modern. East and West. There is much in the situation to amuse us, much which seems irreconcilable.

[It is modern life, our Western civilization, which intrudes itself from the hotel to our villa and flutters over the great expanse of desert. "My first horse-back ride was on an elephant,*' said the very large American woman; "my second, on a camel; my third, on a donkey." For us, the saddles are now often on the donkeys, two little brothers, named Black Diamond and Little Joe respectively.

Little Joe is long and lean, and shows in particu-

THE DESERT 23

lar the trait supposed to be most characteristic. His obstinacy will allow no other donkey to get ahead of him. When Black Diamond steps up. Little Joe steps out, and gaining with his long stride, heads my donkey off. Neither persuasion nor force can turn his head. Black Diamond, with good nature, but a like obstinacy, tries again; and so we zigzag fom side to side of the road, a process which rather accelerates our arrival, since we make up by the impetus of the racing impulse, for the extra ground covered.

On the broad desert, however. Black Diamond has a chance. From our saddles the Other and I feel the freedom and charm of the free, golden desert, where even lowly Egyptians walk with the sweep of Victory.

CHAPTER II On the Threshold

IT was at Cairo, three full moons ago, that we began our journey into the far land of Egypt — Cairo, the new life of Memphis, the city of Saladin's Citadel, and Aladdin's wonderful lamp, the portal to the passage which leads to the Beginning.

Here we were initiated to the spirit of the land, to the poetry and symbolism of the East, by the Mahmal celebration attending the starting of the Mecca caravan. Once every year pilgrims from Cairo, with others gathered from many lands, go on their long journey to bring refreshment from the fountain of the most wide-spread religion in the world, Mohammedanism; and in the open square of the city, where the ceremonies took place, we saw the Orient rise to life as by some magic of the Arabian Nights.

The setting was historic. Before us towered the Citadel of Saladin. Whoever may be the Mohammedans' greatest romantic hero and representative to themselves, — perhaps it is Haroun-ar-Rashid, — Saladin is the most romantic figure and the finest representative of El-Islam to Christendom. For it was Christendom with which, as concentrated

u

ON THE THRESHOLD 25

in its Crusades, he contended |for the jHttle Kingdom of Jerusalem. At that time he proved his knightly qualities by his kindness to his enemy, Richard, the Lionhearted, to whom, as the old story is told, he sent snow from the mountains when Richard lay ill of a fever. The story at least typifies the spirit of the East. Such courtesies, as well as many other things in the Oriental civilization, were then beyond the comprehension of youthful Europe; and the Crusaders took back many ideas more valuable to them than the pathetic little kingdom, surrounded by the desert of an unknown religion, which they abandoned to those sweeping sands hundreds of years ago.

In the story of the Citadel of Cairo is compassed much of the story of Mohammedanism.

The height is now crowned by the Mosque of Mohammed Ali, founder of the reigning dynasty. It was built early in the last century and is copied from the great mosque of Constantinople, the present capital of the Mohammedan world.

At the foot of the Citadel, on the occasion of this Mahmal celebration, was placed the throne of the Khedive. And close beside us stood the sacred camel, waiting to receive the Mahmal, which is the gold-embroidered canopy that symbolizes royalty. How still he stood, the proudest of all camels, never used but for these holy journeys; with what strange silence he received his burden ; while a cordon of soldiers closed around him to protect him from too many touches of the thronging crowd of faithful, and thus incidentally, to prevent the faithful from obtaining too many blessings ! One old man fought desperately and persistently to reach him. Again and again the soldiers thrust the seeker back, and the master of ceremonies rode up threateningly on his white horse. At last all was ready — battalions of soldiers stood waiting, the attendant camels in gorgeous trappings were mounted, and all were motionless — except that two of the animals turned their heads slowly and observantly, and chewed reminiscently. Even the dervish water and lemonade-carriers and the cake-boys who had moved among the throng, became transfixed with expectancy. Everything awaited the arrival of the Khedive.

Suddenly the band struck up, four white-robed runners dashed into view on the further side of the square, a four-horse carriage drew up before the throne, — and the Khedive had come. The lines of soldiers widened to form an avenue for the camels; and to monotonous, rhythmic, Arab music the procession started, the long rhythmic stride of the Mahmal-bearer scarcely swaying the canopy. Around in a circle some four times they passed, then crossed to the Khedive that he might kiss the rope of the sacred camel, and went out at the farther side.

There followed an imposing review of the Egyptian army, some of whom were to escort the caravan. Then the carriages drove away; and, when the guards were released, the crowd surged over

ON THE THRESHOLD rt

the square, as a mighty rush of water when a dam is broken. Not a foot of ground in that great open space, so ample for the review, was now visible. It was the annual religious flood-tide in the people's lives.

This is Egypt, this is Mohammedanism.

Strains and fragments of its poetry recur through the modern life of Cairo. The beautiful white-robed runners, the short-lived Sais, precede the carriages; veiled and black-robed women move about, carrying their naked babies astride their shoulders, as did Egyptian women of old. And water-carriers are everywhere: — some with the skins of unfiltered Nile water; others w4th jars of filtered water on their backs, from wliich by bending, they may pour the liquid over their shoulders into little cups; and still others with large glass bottles slung before them containing lemonade.

These water-carriers are all dervishes, but we see nothing here or in their ceremonies of this religious aspect of their lives. The ceremonies of the howling and dancing dervishes to which foreigners are admitted are but a travesty upon their genuine religion.

As we followed the crowd back into the town, we realized how two architectural beauties mark the background of this Eastern life — everywhere the lacy, heaven-aspiring minarets and the fast vanishing " mashrabiyeh " windows. The name given to these beaded woodwork windows signifies "place of water" and was originally applied only to that projecting portion where the water was set to keep cool. They have their romance too, these windows, since they form the screened balconies through which the women peer down upon the world. Unfortunately, much of the woodwork has now been stripped from the houses and carried away bodily to make screens in Western homes.* This denudes Cairo of one of its chief graces — and under the present law the balconies may not be replaced for fear of fire.

One still sees in the bazaars the fascinating equipment of Eastern life; alluring because that life is so hidden from us, and the possession of its externals seems to give an entrance to it, at least, suggests its mysteries. But it is to be regretted that most of the contact of Europeans with natives is through bargaining — a most superficial contact and often entirely without understanding on the part of the Westerners, who condemn what they consider Oriental dishonesty. Yet they themselves do not seriously object to getting a bargain; why should they be disturbed at the Oriental attempt to make one? To the credit of the native be it said that it is a game which he enjoys most when his adversary comprehends it. Europeans and Americans are prone to treat other peoples with a superior contempt which does not facilitate understanding. The Oriental has a different standard of right and wrong, but he has his own

*The hotels in Egypt possess beautiful examples. Mena House has the finest collection.

ON THE THRESHOLD ^

deep sense of honor. His simple and childlike intensity of feeling is accompanied and safe-guarded by a profound reserve. It often leads him to display the opposite of his true seK, — as Lane makes clear, — and few indeed, among the students of the Orient, has he trusted suflBciently to admit them to the secrets of his inner life.

The bazaars of Cairo do not compare with those of Tunis, which is a far more Oriental city. Yet they suggest the Arabian Nights; and the building in which we found the chief of them, charmed us with a spell far different and deeper. For the narrow street runs through the Khan-el-Khahl, a house of the same idea as the khan or inn at Bethlehem — the first kind of hotel, a building into which the caravans of olden time came and were unloaded. The goods were placed on the ground floor and sold there, while the merchants lodged above them. In Mediaeval days commerce meant travel and adventure. Venice, the gateway from the East to the West, possesses such a building erected for the merchants, with sculptured camels to indicate its use. Cairo was once full of khans.

It was the Mohammedan Arabs of the Middle Ages who, as a Semitic people, living an Old Testament life, cast upon Egypt and the Egyptians the glamour of the East, and became to Christian Europe which strove with them, a living illustration of the West-adopted Bible story.

In Cairo one finds today the most important university of Mohammedanism in the Mosque of

El-Azhar, with its seven thousand scholars from different parts of the Mohammedan world "all seated on the ground." The students from each country have a room to themselves.

Geography has been introduced into the curriculum only within the last few years. Wonderful is the delight of the teachers in their new appliances; but we were told that students, beholding Cairo as a pin-head on the map of Africa, refuse to beheve. Is not Cairo the great centre of the world? — the rest but a small fringe or margin?

It is the study of Koran Arabic and the memorizing of that holy book by writing it, which occupy most of the school life of these youths. The classes, if such they can be called, are innumerable Kttle groups, each about a teacher, the members of each being near of an age. Many a little circle we find of Kindergarten years. Quiet, industrious and subdued under the stern watchfulness of their teachers, the gleam of their eyes reveals their native merriment and life. Is it this quality that keeps them cheery under conditions which our spoiled babies could not survive? They are writing with clumsy little fingers passages of the Koran, or perhaps the ninety-and-nine beautiful names of God, which are for them the beginning of knowledge. This method reminds us of the scholastic period of education in Europe — with this difference, that the motive beneath and through the Mohammedan learning is faith.

It is within the mosques that we see Mohammedanism in its most ideal and poetic aspect.

ON THE THRESHOLD 31

Five times a day at hours prescribed and in the eight positions of prayer must the devout Mohammedan praise God. If he is in his Httle shop in the bazaars and cannot get away to the mosque, he must, at the nearest possible moment to that which is ordained, drop down upon his prayerrug facing Mecca, and withdrawing his eyes from the world about him, repeat those worshipful expressions which constitute his contemplation of the Universal. It is a curious and suggestive picture. The small open shop is raised somewhat above the ground, so that we commonly sit on the edge of the floor as on a bench, to bargain. At prayer time, the walls form a frame, enclosing the rich background of rugs and Eastern ornaments, and the one white figure, with its look of inner absorption.

But somehow this picture reminds us of that Eastern praying on street corners, once so simply and so strongly condemned.

In the mosque, it is different, when the worshippers, having bathed hands and feet like the Hebrew priests of old, at the holy fountain of ablutions in the court, walk barefoot on to the holy ground and seem to enter into the silence.

The Mosque of Sultan Hassan, in the shadow of the Citadel, is the finest in Cairo. Its magnificent door is perhaps the most exquisite example of Arabic stalactite work in Egypt. But it is the cracked old walls which have for us a peculiar fascination, for this mosque was built from the

Great Pyramid. We know that those old stones were quarried thousands of years ago, near our present abiding-place; were taken across to the western side of the river, and over the hard road of the pyramid builder to be an inner coating of the mighty tomb of Cheops. Memphis faded when the glory of Alexandria arose; and later, the ancient city was destroyed that the stones of Memphis might become Cairo on the eastern river-bank. Then these blocks were retransported to receive new life — I had almost said, to enclose the latest chapter in the story of the ancient building; but the mosque is already tottering, and the Pyramid will continue to be when the beautiful Mohammedan temple has perished.

In our imagination the crumbling walls already fall apart and we pass through the portal of the East, back toward the Beginning of the West.

CHAPTER III Egypt, the Dawn

AS in the sunset skies and the desert sands the color of barren Egypt is marvellous, so is it with the life of the people. The color is the revelation of Egypt: yellow houses, whose chief beauty is their woodwork; mixed costumes of all colors; dark faces. It is true that the white Semitic Orient of other countries seems to mean a finer development, while it yet speaks of that early stage wliich possesses spiritual revelation and which belongs to the East. But the color of Egypt is the color of dawn, present now in the sunset, — yea, it is the color out of which the white light of eternal day is made.

It was the Past which drew us in the stones of Cairo, yet the way back seemed long at first. We felt that we possessed a clue for ourselves when we could decipher a few hieroglyphic signs. So each individual may have the feeling of a discoverer. Gradually the Past absorbed us, until Egypt belonged to the ancient Egyptians — all that has happened since seemed accident and impertinence. The magnitude of the Past overcame us, and a magic drew us into the spirit of those far-off times.

Egypt, from Cairo to Philae, the Gem of the Nile, — Egypt is the museum of the world, with a poetry of symboHsm in a romance of stories which clings to it all. Those stories form part of the foundation of our own. The museum in Cairo is Egypt's heart, where are now gathered together and protected the mystic treasures which are found: jewelry of queens and princesses; scarabs with the names of kings; papyri; gods and goddesses; and the ushabtis, "little answerers," figures of servants buried with the dead, so that when the spirit is called to work in the Afterworld, they may answer for him, "Here am I!"

What poetry we find in the Egyptian titles: "The Book of Portals" and the "Book of that which is in the Underworld!" The Egyptian idea of the Ka or double, with its sign of the upHfted arms was as the Hindoos' "Astral body;" and their thought of the after-life, like that of the Mohammedans today, was the thought of a long journey.

Wonderful old Egyptians, who divided Time into our calendar, long before history began; who measured the hours of the day and night and saw a symbol for each; who first wrote of the seven ages of Man! Back through Rome and Greece, without a break, we can trace in Egypt the beginnings of our science, of our material civilization. And beyond all this there is something, formal still, but more profound than all.

There came a moment when, in the royal room of the museum we gazed face to face upon the Pharaohs. That is where the spell was laid upon our own lives, through our deepest feeling. Here, with his strong, still, old face uncovered, is the second Rameses, Rameses, the Great, father of Pharaoh's daughter. Merneptah, his son, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, is also here, but his body has never been unwrapped. Because of the Hebrew story, there are those who refuse to believe that it is he, and we know that his own tomb appears as if unused. But the Israelites made their record after looking from the other side of the waters in a moment of intense excitement and relief. There is every reason to suppose that Egyptian troops may have been overwhelmed in the sand at the head of the Red Sea, but Merneptah was not with them and escaped.

These, then, are the Pharaohs, whose story was told us when, in our own form of religion, inculcated in childhood, we were taught reverence. And the deeper we advance into this mysterious land, the more in its broadest sense do we realize that religion is the secret of Egypt, the secret of the Beginning.

Under the spell which conquered the interest of the Present, we visited again and yet again the Pyramids.

Bronze lions guard the entrance to the bridge, over which, while it was closed against the river traffic, we passed in the midst of carriages, laden camels, wide-panniered, jostling donkeys, and pedestrians. From a garden at the other end, a tram carried us along the beautiful road. This road was constructed for the pilgrimage of the Empress Eugenie to these wonders of ancient Egypt at the time when the Kliedive Ismail built Ghezireh Palace for her reception, and when he entertained her with such splendid f^tes as the world has scarcely seen and only an Oriental imagination could conceive. But a Western world was obliged to take charge of the financial side of Ismail's affairs, and Ismail died, broken-hearted, in exile in Constantinople. The Empress Eugenie, bereaved in a different way of her empire, — of her husband and her son, wanders sometimes in her dahabieh up the Nile and through the land of Egypt. Ghezireh Palace is an hotel, and this road of proud remembrance is the highway of the camel of the Bedouin and the carriage of the European. Occasionally a horse appears in gorgeous Oriental trappings. The tramway runs along one side of the way under a row of magnificent trees; and thus we approached the first to be built and the last to survive of the Seven Wonders of the World. We dropped the Present when we stood beneath it — the Great Pyramid — overwhelmed by its size and the fineness of its masonry. Such piles of stone, royal Mountains of Man, rise, breaking the desert for twenty miles on the western side of the river, but this Ghizeh group alone are "The Pyramids" to us all. They are an ennead standing for a dynasty, though only the three largest are generally known.

The position, the proportions, and the relations to one another of these three pyramids, reveal remarkable knowledge of direction, geometry, and principles of construction; they fill us now with amazement at the methods by which in that nonmechanical age, such prodigious weights were handled. As the outcome of their revelations, the Pyramids have furnished material for whole chapters, and even volumes, upon their secret significance. With what amount of conscious knowledge of occult meanings, these buildings were constructed, we can hardly know, but that which is true must prove mathematically true in all the larger knowledge of relations by which it may be tested. Therefore the Great Pyramid is considered by some a key to the whole philosophy of sacred numeration.

We stand where centuries of golden sand have beat about its base, slowly or swiftly have drifted or swept on it, and after all surged softly past. And it rests firm, a universal symbol, for us to read and comprehend at last.

The Egyptians, the first historic nation, and the first nation of the West, with whom lay our earliest beginnings of objective knowledge, here expressed their own strong sense of the material realm, the world of Form. Here they raised at the Beginning, "the most stupendous mass of masonry ever put together by human hands;" for it must cast the longest shadow over Time. It marks for us our entrance to the Past.

However, the Pyramid not only expresses this particular idea, but the Old Kingdom itself at its height. As Breasted suggests, it is the early state, here wrought into a tomb, beneath the apex of a single block. For the nation belonged to the king, whose control was absolute, with his sons and the members of his family next beneath him, their lives all given to making a material "eternal house" for the body of the great king who was to them a god. Thus the Old Kingdom has perpetuated itself.

Through all the changing hours of the long day the Pyramids stand the same, yet different. We loved them best in the evening light, when, free from the distractions of donkeys and guides, we slipped around the corner of the greatest, and went south, along the path between it and its family of three. Beyond these, looking along the valley and the desert plateau, we saw, as it were, a vast amphitheatre of sand, smooth as a circular sweep of snowdrift. In a hollow below us, perpetually arising through the earth was that majestic human head. We went down before the Sphinx, seeking its mystery which is never fully revealed.

Strange stories cluster round this head. It is not the Woman of the Greeks, but once represented a finite human king and then a god. Its inscriptions tell how Thutmose IV of the eighteenth dynasty dreamed of, discovered, and uncovered it from the sands. And it is still surreptitiously appealed to.

Just beyond it is a temple, sometime known as the Temple of the Sphinx, but now discovered to be only the giant gateway to the Second Pyramid. We look down into it, as it lies excavated, and realize what a Past is buried here. This gate was on the edge of the desert plateau, so that in floodtime boats came to its steps. From it, as from the others, belonging to the other Pyramids, the white-robed priests entered an inclined and covered causeway, leading up to the Pyramid enclosure. And all was white — gate and causeway and royal tomb, — save when lighted golden by the Sun. The king, whom the people wrought for, but rarely caught a glimpse of, was to them a god. Authority was from the first supposed to be divine.

The people dwelt in Memphis, the "White Wall," below. Upon a day we visited its site. That capital of the Ancient Empire and largest city of the New — Memphis of ^Ye thousand years and millions of inhabitants — is gone like the grass of the field — gone, to be endowed with new life in the city across the river.

In a lonely palm grove, where once stood the magnificent temple of Ptah, is the only representative of Memphis in her living glory — Rameses II, in two great prostrate statues. They unlock for us the story of Egypt; their loneliness is full of significance. It is Rameses, who, more than any other, represents the whole of Egypt, not only in the greatness of his reign and achievements, but in his connection with the Hebrews. He stands for one stage in the development of Man, Moses stands for the next.

Perhaps in no country of the world is history so personal, so completely included in the lives of the rulers. We are personally interested because much that belongs to our own lives had its source in Egypt; and the stories of the kings are spread out before us as an open book along the Nile, — in statues, in inscriptions, in paintings, in the very bodies themselves. The life of Rameses, the Rameses of Hebrew story, is revealed to us in detail almost from the day of his birth.