My Winter on the Nile

“I think it’s a perfect shame,” cries Madame, when she hears of it, “not to see his family for a year!”

“But one of his sons is on board, you know, as a sailor. And the steersman spent most of his time with his wife the boy’s mother, when we were at Assouan.”

“I thought you said his wife lived opposite here?”

“Yes, but this is a newer one, a younger one; that is his old wife, in Assouan.”

“Oh!”

“The poor fellow has another in Cairo.”

“Oh!”

“He has wives, I daresay, at proper distances along the Nile, and whenever he wants to spend an hour or two with his family, he runs us aground.”

“I don’t care to hear anything more about him.”

The Moslem religion is admirably suited to the poor mariner, and especially to the sailor on the Nile through a country that is all length and no width.

CHAPTER XXVIII.—MODERN FACTS AND ANCIENT MEMORIES

ON a high bluff stands the tottering temple of Kom Ombos conspicuous from a distance, and commanding a dreary waste of desert. Its gigantic columns are of the Ptolemaic time, and the capitals show either Greek influence or the relaxation of the Egyptian hieratic restraint.

The temple is double, with two entrances and parallel suites of apartments, a happy idea of the builders, impartially to split the difference between good and evil; one side is devoted to the worship of Horus, the embodiment of the principle of Light, and the other to that of Savak, the crocodile-headed god of Darkness. I fear that the latter had here the more worshippers; his title was Lord of Ombos, and the fear of him spread like night. On the sand-bank, opposite, the once-favored crocodiles still lounge in the sun, with a sharp eye out for the rifle of the foreigner, and, no doubt, wonder at the murderous spirit which has come into the world to supplant the peaceful heathenism.

These ruins are an example of the jealousy with which the hierarchy guarded their temples from popular intrusion. The sacred precincts were enclosed by a thick and high brick wall, which must have concealed the temple from view except on the river side; so formidable was this wall, that although the edifice stands upon an eminence, it lies in a basin formed by the ruins of the enclosure. The sun beating in it at noon converted it into a reverberating furnace—a heat sufficient to melt any image not of stone, and not to be endured by persons who do not believe in Savak.

We walked a long time on the broad desert below Ombos, over sand as hard as a sea-beach pounded by the waves, looking for the bed of pebbles mentioned in the handbook, and found it a couple of miles below. In the soft bank an enormous mass of pebbles has been deposited, and is annually added to—sweepings of the Nubian deserts, flints and agates, bits of syenite from Assouan, and colored stones in great variety. There is a tradition that a sailor once found a valuable diamond here, and it seems always possible that one may pick some precious jewel out of the sand. Some of the desert pebbles, polished by ages of sand-blasts, are very beautiful.

Every day when I walk upon the smooth desert away from the river, I look for colored stones, pebbles, flints, chalcedonies, and agates. And I expect to find, some day, the ewige pebble, the stone translucent, more beautiful than any in the world—perhaps, the lost seal of Solomon, dropped by some wandering Bedawee. I remind myself of one looking, always in the desert, for the pearl of great price, which all the markets and jewelers of the world wait for. It seems possible, here under this serene sky, on this expanse of sand, which has been trodden for thousands of years by all the Oriental people in turn, by caravans, by merchants and warriors and wanderers, swept by so many geologic floods and catastrophes, to find it. I never tire of looking, and curiously examine every bit of translucent and variegated flint that sparkles in the sand. I almost hope, when I find it, that it will not be cut by hand of man, but that it will be changeable in color, and be fashioned in a cunning manner by nature herself. Unless, indeed, it should be, as I said, the talismanic ring of Solomon, which is known to be somewhere in the world.

In the early morning we have drifted down to Silsilis, one of the most interesting localities on the Nile. The difference in the level of the land above and below and the character of the rocky passage at Silsilis teach that the first cataract was here before the sandstone dam wore away and transferred it to Assouan. Marks have been vainly sought here for the former height of the Nile above; and we were interested in examining the upper strata of rocks laid bare in the quarries. At a height of perhaps sixty feet from the floor of a quarry, we saw between two strata of sandstone a layer of other material that had exactly the appearance of the deposits of the Nile which so closely resemble rock along the shore. Upon reaching it we found that it was friable and, in fact, a sort of hardened earth. Analysis would show whether it is a Nile deposit, and might contribute something to the solution of the date of the catastrophe here.

The interest at Silsilis is in these vast sandstone quarries, and very little in the excavated grottoes and rock-temples on the west shore, with their defaced and smoke-obscured images. Indeed, nothing in Egypt, not even the temples and pyramids, has given us such an idea of the immense labor the Egyptians expended in building, as these vast excavations in the rock. We have wondered before where all the stone came from that we have seen piled up in buildings and heaped in miles of ruins; we wonder now what use could have been made of all the stone quarried from these hills. But we remember that it was not removed in a century, nor in ten centuries, but that for great periods of a thousand years workmen were hewing here, and that much of the stone transported and scattered over Egypt has sunk into the soil out of sight.

There are half a dozen of these enormous quarries close together, each of which has its communication with the river. The method of working was this:—a narrow passage was cut in from the river several hundred feet into the mountain, or until the best-working stone was reached, and then the excavation was broadened out without limit. We followed one of these passages, the sides of which are evenly-cut rock, the height of the hill. At length we came into an open area, like a vast cathedral in the mountain, except that it wanted both pillars and roof. The floor was smooth, the sides were from fifty to seventy-five feet high, and all perpendicular, and as even as if dressed down with chisel and hammer. This was their general character, but in some of them steps were left in the wall and platforms, showing perfectly the manner of working. The quarrymen worked from the top down perpendicularly, stage by stage. We saw one of these platforms, a third of the distance from the top, the only means of reaching which was by nicks cut in the face of the rock, in which one might plant his feet and swing down by a rope. There was no sign of splitting by drilling or by the the use of plugs, or of any explosive material. The walls of the quarries are all cut down in fine lines that run from top to bottom slantingly and parallel. These lines have every inch or two round cavities, as if the stone had been bored by some flexible instrument that turned in its progress. The workmen seem to have cut out the stone always of the shape and size they wanted to use; if it was for a statue, the place from which it came in the quarry is rounded, showing the contour of the figure taken. They took out every stone by the most patient labor. Whether it was square or round, they cut all about it a channel four to five inches wide, and then separated it from the mass underneath by a like broad cut. Nothing was split away; all was carefully chiseled out, apparently by small tools. Abandoned work, unfinished, plainly shows this. The ages and the amount of labor required to hew out such enormous quantities of stone are heightened in our thought, by the recognition of this slow process. And what hells these quarries must have been for the workmen, exposed to the blaze of a sun intensified by the glaring reflection from the light-colored rock, and stifled for want of air. They have left the marks of their unending task in these little chiselings on the face of the sandstone walls. Here and there some one has rudely sketched a figure or outlined a hieroglyphic. At intervals places are cut in the rock through which ropes could be passed, and these are worn deeply, showing the use of ropes, and no doubt of derricks, in handling the stones.

These quarries are as deserted now as the temples which were taken from them; but nowhere else in Egypt was I more impressed with the duration, the patience, the greatness of the race that accomplished such prodigies of labor.

The grottoes, as I said, did not detain us; they are common calling-places, where sailors and wanderers often light fires at night and where our crew slept during the heat of this day, We saw there nothing more remarkable than the repeated figure of the boy Horus taking nourishment from the breast of his mother, which provoked the irreverent remark of a voyager that Horus was more fortunate than his dragoman had been in finding milk in this stony region.

Creeping on, often aground and always expecting to be, the weather growing warmer as we went north, we reached Edfoo. It was Sunday, and the temperature was like that of a July day, a south wind and the mercury at 85°.

In this condition of affairs it was not unpleasant to find a temple, entire, clean, perfectly excavated, and a cool retreat from the glare of the sun. It was not unlike entering a cathedral. The door by which we were admitted was closed and guarded; we were alone; and we experienced something of the sentiment of the sanctuary, that hush and cool serenity which is sometimes mistaken for religion, in the presence of ecclesiastical architecture.

Although this is a Ptolemaic temple, it is, by reason of its nearly perfect condition, the best example for study. The propylon which is two hundred and fifty feet high and one hundred and fifteen long, contains many spacious chambers, and confirms our idea that these portions of the temples were residences. The roof is something enormous, being composed of blocks of stone, three feet thick, by twelve wide, and twenty-two long. Upon this roof are other chambers. As we wandered through the vast pillared courts, many chambers and curious passages, peered into the secret ways and underground and intermural alleys, and emerged upon the roof, we thought what a magnificent edifice it must have been for the gorgeous processions of the old worship, which are sculptured on the walls.

But outside this temple and only a few feet from it is a stone wall of circuit, higher than the roof of the temple itself. Like every inch of the temple walls, this wall outside and inside is covered with sculptures, scenes in river life, showing a free fancy and now and then a dash of humor; as, when a rhinoceros is made to tow a boat—recalling the western sportiveness of David Crockett with the alligator. Not only did this wall conceal the temple from the vulgar gaze, but outside it was again an enciente of unbaked brick, effectually excluding and removing to a safe distance all the populace. Mariette Bey is of the opinion that all the imposing ceremonies of the old ritual had no witnesses except the privileged ones of the temple; and that no one except the king could enter the adytum.

It seems to us also that the King, who was high priest and King, lived in these palace-temples, the pylons of which served him for fortresses as well as residences. We find no ruins of palaces in Egypt, and it seems not reasonable that the king who had all the riches of the land at his command would have lived in a hut of mud.

From the summit of this pylon we had an extensive view of the Nile and the fields of ripening wheat. A glance into the squalid town was not so agreeable. I know it would be a severe test of any village if it were unroofed and one could behold its varied domestic life. We may from such a sight as this have some conception of the appearance of this world to the angels looking down. Our view was into filthy courts and roofless enclosures, in which were sorry women and unclad children, sitting in the dirt; where old people, emaciated and feeble, and men and women ill of some wasting disease, lay stretched upon the ground, uncared for, stifled by the heat and swarmed upon of flies.

The heated day lapsed into a delicious evening, a half-moon over head, the water glassy, the shores fringed with palms, the air soft. As we came to El Kab, where we stopped, a carawan was whistling on the opposite shore—a long, shrill whistle like that of a mocking-bird. If we had known, it was a warning to us that the placid appearances of the night were deceitful, and that violence was masked under this smiling aspect. The barometer indeed had been falling rapidly for two days. We were about to have our first experience of what may be called a simoon.

Towards nine o’clock, and suddenly, the wind began to blow from the north, like one of our gusts in summer, proceeding a thunderstorm. The boat took the alarm at once and endeavored to fly, swinging to the wind and tugging at her moorings. With great difficulty she was secured by strong cables fore and aft anchored in the sand, but she trembled and shook and rattled, and the wind whistled through the rigging as if we had been on the Atlantic—any boat loose upon the river that night must have gone to inevitable wreck. It became at once dark, and yet it was a ghastly darkness; the air was full of fine sand that obscured the sky, except directly overhead, where there were the ghost of a wan moon and some spectral stars. Looking upon the river, it was like a Connecticut fog—but a sand fog; and the river itself roared, and high waves ran against the current. When we stepped from the boat, eyes, nose, and mouth were instantly choked with sand, and it was almost impossible to stand. The wind increased, and rocked the boat like a storm at sea; for three hours it blew with much violence, and in fact did not spend itself in the whole night.

“The worser storm, God be merciful,” says Abd-el-Atti, “ever I saw in Egypt.”

When it somewhat abated, the dragoman recognized a divine beneficence in it; “It show that God ‘member us.”

It is a beautiful belief of devout Moslems that personal afflictions and illnesses are tokens of a heavenly care. Often when our dragoman has been ill, he has congratulated himself that God was remembering him.

“Not so? A friend of me in Cairo was never in his life ill, never any pain, toothache, headache, nothing. Always well. He begin to have fear that something should happen, mebbe God forgot him. One day I meet him in the Mooskee very much pleased; all right now, he been broke him the arm; God ‘member him.”

During the gale we had a good specimen of Arab character. When it was at its height, and many things about the attacked vessel needed looking after, securing and tightening, most of the sailors rolled themselves up, drawing their heads into their burnouses, and went sound asleep. The after-sail was blown loose and flapping in the wind; our reïs sat composedly looking at it, never stirring from his haunches, and let the canvas whip to rags; finally a couple of men were aroused, and secured the shreds. The Nile crew is a marvel of helplessness in an emergency; and considering the dangers of the river to these top-heavy boats, it is a wonder that any accomplish the voyage in safety. There is no more discipline on board than in a district-school meeting at home. The boat might as well be run by ballot.

It was almost a relief to have an unpleasant day to talk about. The forenoon was like a mixed fall and spring day in New England, strong wind, flying clouds, but the air full of sand instead of snow; there was even a drop of rain, and we heard a peal or two of feeble thunder—evidently an article not readily manufactured in this country; but the afternoon settled back into the old pleasantness.

Of the objects of interest at Eilethyas I will mention only two, the famous grottoes, and a small temple of Amunoph III., not often visited. It stands between two and three miles from the river, in a desolate valley, down which the Bisharee Arabs used to come on marauding excursions. What freak placed it in this remote solitude? It contains only one room, a few paces square, and is, in fact, only a chapel, but it is full of capital pieces of sculptures of a good period of art. The architect will find here four pillars, which clearly suggest the Doric style. They are fourteen-sided, but one of the planes is broader than the others and has a raised tablet of sculptures which terminate above in a face, said to be that of Lucina, to whom the temple is dedicated, but resembling the cow-headed Isis. These pillars, with the sculptures on one side finished at the top with a head, may have suggested the Osiride pillars.

The grottoes are tombs in the sandstone mountain, of the time of the eighteenth dynasty, which began some thirty-five hundred years ago. Two of them have remarkable sculptures, the coloring of which is still fresh; and I wish to speak of them a little, because it is from them (and some of the same character) that Egyptologists have largely reconstructed for us the common life of the ancient Egyptians. Although the work is somewhat rude, it has a certain veracity of execution which is pleasing.

We assume this tomb to have been that of a man of wealth. This is the ante-chamber; the mummy was deposited in a pit let into a small excavation in the rear. On one wall are sculptured agricultural scenes: plowing, sowing, reaping wheat and pulling doora (the color indicates the kind of grain), hatcheling the latter, while oxen are treading out the wheat, and the song of the threshers encouraging the oxen is written in hieroglyphics above; the winnowing and storing of the grain; in a line under these, the various domestic animals of the deceased are brought forward to a scribe, who enumerates them and notes the numbers on a roll of papyrus. There are river-scenes:—grain is loaded into freight-boats; pleasure-dahabeëhs are on the stream, gaily painted, with one square sail amidship, rowers along the sides, and windows in the cabin; one has a horse and chariot on board, the reïs stands at the bow, the overseer, kurbash in hand, is threatening the crew, a sailor is falling overboard. Men are gathering grapes, and treading out the wine with their feet; others are catching fish and birds in nets, and dressing and curing them. At the end of this wall, offerings are made to Osiris. In one compartment a man is seated holding a boy on his lap.

On the opposite wall are two large figures, supposed to be the occupant of the tomb and his wife, seated on a fauteuil; men and women, in two separate lines, facing the large figures, are seated, one leg bent under them, each smelling a lotus flower. In the rear, men are killing and cutting up animals as if preparing for a feast. To the leg of the fauteuil is tied a monkey; and Mr. Wilkinson says that it was customary at entertainments for the hosts to have a “favorite monkey” tied to the leg of the chair. Notwithstanding the appearance of the monkey here in that position, I do not suppose that he would say that an ordinary entertainment is represented here. For, although there are preparations for a feast, there is a priest standing between the friends and the principal personages, making offerings, and the monkey may be present in his character of emblem of Thoth. It seems to be a funeral and not a festive representation. The pictures apparently tell the story of the life of the deceased and his occupations, and represent the mourning at his tomb. In other grottoes, where the married pair are seated as here, the arm of the woman on the shoulder of the man, and the “favorite monkey” tied to the chair, friends are present in the act of mourning, throwing dust on their heads, and accompanied by musicians; and the mummy is drawn on a sledge to the tomb, a priest standing on the front, and a person pouring oil on the ground that the runners may slip easily.

The setting sun strikes into these chambers, so carefully prepared for people of rank of whom not a pinch of dust now remains, and lights them up with a certain cheer and hope. We cannot make anything melancholy out of a tomb so high and with such a lovely prospect from its front door. The former occupants are unknown, but not more unknown than the peasants we see on the fields below, still at the tasks depicted in these sculptures. Thirty-five hundred years is not so very long ago! Slowly we pick our way down the hill and regain our floating home; and, bidding farewell forever to El Kab, drift down in the twilight. In the morning we are at Esneh.

In Esneh the sound of the grinding is never low. The town is full of primitive ox-power mills in which the wheat is ground, and there are always dahabeëhs staying here for the crew to bake their bread. Having already had one day of Esneh we are tired of it, for it is exactly like all other Egyptian towns of its size: we know all the possible combinations of mud-hovels, crooked lanes, stifling dust, nakedness, squalor. We are so accustomed to picking our way in the street amid women and children sprawling in the dirt, that the scene has lost its strangeness; it is even difficult to remember that in other countries women usually keep indoors and sit on chairs.

The town is not without liveliness It is half Copt, and beggars demand backsheesh on the ground that they are Christians, and have a common interest with us. We wander through the bazaars where there is nothing to buy and into the market-place, always the most interesting study in an unknown city. The same wheat lies on the ground in heaps; the same roots and short stalks of the doora are tied in bundles and sold for fuel, and cakes of dried manure for the like use; people are lying about in the sun in all picturesque attitudes, some curled up and some on their backs fast asleep; more are squating before little heaps of corn or beans or some wilted “greens,” or dried tobacco-leaves and pipe-bowls; children swarm and tumble about everywhere; donkeys and camels pick their way through the groups.

I spent half an hour in teaching a handsome young Copt how to pronounce English words in his Arabic-English primer. He was very eager to learn and very grateful for assistance. We had a large and admiring crowd about us, who laughed at every successful and still more at every unsuccessful attempt on the part of the pupil, and repeated the English words themselves when they could catch the sound,—an exceedingly good-natured lot of idlers. We found the people altogether pleasant, some in the ingrained habit of begging, quick to take a joke and easily excited. While I had my scholar, a fantasia of music on two tambourines was performed for the amusement of my comrade, which had also its ring of spectators watching the effect of the monotonous thumping, upon the grave howadji; he was seated upon the mastabah of a shop, with all formality, and enjoyed all the honors of the entertainment, as was proper, since he bore the entire expense alone,—about five cents.

The coffee-shops of Esneh are many, some respectable and others decidedly otherwise. The former are the least attractive, being merely long and dingy mud-apartments, in which the visitors usually sit on the floor and play at draughts. The coffee-houses near the river have porticoes and pleasant terraces in front, and look not unlike some picturesque Swiss or Italian wine-shops. The attraction there seems to be the Ghawazees or dancing-girls, of whom there is a large colony here, the colony consisting of a tribe. All the family act as procurers for the young women, who are usually married. Their dress is an extraordinary combination of stripes and colors, red and yellow being favorites, which harmonize well with their dark, often black, skins, and eyes heavily shaded with kohl. I suppose it must be admitted, in spite of their total want of any womanly charm of modesty, that they are the finest-looking women in Egypt, though many of them are ugly; they certainly are of a different type from the Egyptians, though not of a pure type; they boast that they have preserved themselves without admixture with other peoples or tribes from a very remote period; one thing is certain, their profession is as old as history and their antiquity may entitle them to be considered an aristocracy of vice. They say that their race is allied in origin to that of the people called gypsies, with whom many of their customs are common. The men are tinkers, blacksmiths, or musicians, and the women are the ruling element in the band; the husband is subject to the wife. But whatever their origin, it is admitted that their dance is the same as that with which the dancing-women amused the Pharaohs, the same that the Phoenicians carried to Gades and which Juvenal describes, and, Mr. Lane thinks, the same by which the daughter of Herodias danced off the head of John the Baptist. Modified here and there, it is the immemorial dance of the Orient.

Esneh has other attractions for the sailors of the Nile; there are the mahsheshehs, or shops where hasheesh is smoked; an attendant brings the “hubble-bubble” to the guests who are lolling on the mastabah; they inhale their portion, and then lie down in a stupor, which is at every experiment one remove nearer idiocy.

Still drifting, giving us an opportunity to be on shore all the morning. We visit the sugar establishment at Mutâneh, and walk along the high bank under the shade of the acacias for a couple of miles below it. Nothing could be lovelier in this sparkling morning—the silver-grey range of mountains across the river and the level smiling land on our left. This is one of the Viceroy’s possessions, bought of one of his relations at a price fixed by his highness. There are ten thousand acres of arable land, of which some fifteen hundred is in sugar-cane, and the rest in grain. The whole is watered by a steam-pump, which sends a vast stream of water inland, giving life to the broad fields and the extensive groves, as well as to a village the minaret of which we can see. It is a noble estate. Near the factory are a palace and garden, somewhat in decay, as is usual in this country, but able to offer us roses and lemons.

The works are large, modern, with improved machinery for crushing and boiling, and apparently well managed; there is said to be one of the sixteen sugar-factories of the Khedive which pays expenses; perhaps this is the one. A great quantity of rum is distilled from the refuse. The vast field in the rear, enclosed by a whitewashed wall, presented a lively appearance, with camels bringing in the cane and unloading it and arranging it upon the endless trough for the crushers. In the factory, the workmen wear little clothing and are driven to their task; all the overseers march among them kurbash in hand; the sight of the black fellows treading about in the crystallized sugar, while putting it up in sacks, would decide a fastidious person to take her tea unsweetened.

The next morning we pass Erment without calling, satisfied to take the word of others that you may see there a portrait of Cleopatra; and by noon come to our old mooring-place at Luxor, and add ours to the painted dalabeëhs lounging in this idle and gay resort.

During the day we enjoyed only one novel sensation. We ate of the ripe fruit ot the dôm-palm. It tastes and smells like stale gingerbread, made of sawdust instead of flour.

I do not know how long one could stay contentedly at Thebes; certainly a winter, if only to breathe the inspiring air, to bask in the sun, to gaze, never sated, upon plains and soft mountains which climate and association clothe with hues of beauty and romance, to yield for once to a leisure that is here rebuked by no person and by no urgency of affairs; perhaps for years, if one seriously attempted a study of antiquities.