Stanley in Africa

As you approach it you are guided by the modern light house, 180 feet high, which stands on the site of the Great Light of Pharos, built by Ptolemy II., 280 B.C., and which weathered the storms of sixteen centuries, lighting the sea for forty miles around. It was of white marble and reckoned as one of the “Seven Wonders of the World.”

Standing in the streets of Alexandria, what a crowd of historic memories rush upon you. You are in Lower Egypt, the Delta of the Nile, the country of the old Pharaohs whose power was felt from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of the Moon, whose land was the “black land,” symbol of plenty among the tribes of Arabia and throughout all Syria, land where the Hebrews wrought and whence they fled back to their home on the Jordan, land of the Grecian Alexander, the Roman Cæsar, the Mohammedan Califf.

No earthly dynasty ever lasted longer than that of the Pharaohs. We hardly know when time began it, but Brugsch dates it from Menes, B.C. 4400. It fell permanently with Alexander’s Conquest, 330 B.C., and was held by his successors, the Greek Ptolemeys, for three hundred years, or until the Romans took it from Cleopatra, whose name is perpetuated in the famous Cleopatra’s Needles, which for nearly 2000 years stood as companion pieces to Pompey’s Pillar.

The Pillar of Pompey, 195 feet high, still stands on high ground southeast of the city, near the Moslem burial place. But the Needles of Cleopatra are gone. Late investigations have thrown new light on these wonders. They were not made nor erected in honor of Cleopatra at all, but were historic monuments erected by the Pharaoh, Thutmes III., 1600 B.C., at Heliopolis, “City of the Sun.” The two largest pair were, centuries ago, transported, one to Constantinople, the other to Rome. The two smaller pair were taken to Alexandria by Tiberius and set up in front of Cæsar’s Temple, where they obtained the well known name of “Cleopatra’s Needles.” One fell down and, after lying prostrate in the sand for centuries, was taken to London in 1878 and set up on the banks of the Thames. It is 68 feet high, and was cut out of a single stone from the quarries of Syene. The other was taken down and transported to New York, where it is a conspicuous object in Central Park. They bear nearly similar inscriptions, of the time of Thutmes III. and Rameses II.

Egypt fell into the hands of the Saracen invaders in A.D. 625, and has ever since been under Mohammedan or Turkish rule. The Alexandria of the Ptolemeys with its half million people, its magnificent temples, its libraries and museums, its learning and art, its commerce for all the world, has lost all its former importance, and is to-day a dirty trading town filled with a mixed and indolent people.

There is no chapter in history so sweeping and interesting as that which closed the career of Alexandria to the Christian world. It was the real centre of Christian light and influence. Its bishops were the most learned and potential, its schools of Christian thought the most renowned. It was in commerce with all the world and could scatter influences wider than any other city. It had given the Septuagint version of the Bible to the nations. All around, it had made converts of the Coptic elements, which were native, and Egypt’s natural defenders in case of war. But these it had estranged. Therefore the Saracen conquest was easy. Pelusium and Memphis fell. Alexandria was surrounded, and fell A.D. 640. “I have taken,” says Amrou, “the great city of the west with its 4000 palaces, 4000 baths, 400 theatres, 12,000 shops, and 40,000 Jews.” Amrou would have spared the great library of 700,000 volumes. But the Califf’s (Omar’s) answer came, “These books are useless if they contain only the word of God; they are pernicious if they contain anything else. Therefore destroy them.”

Aside from the monuments above mentioned, there is little else to connect it with a glorious past except the catacombs on the outskirts, which are of the same general character as those at Rome. These catacombs possess a weird interest wherever they exist. They abound in one form or another in Egypt, and are found in many other countries where, for their extent and curious architecture, they rank as wonders.

Those lately unearthed in the vast Necropolis of Memphis, and called the Serapeion, were the burial place of the Egyptian God Apis, or Serapis, the supreme deity represented by the bull Apis. This sacred bull was not allowed to live longer than twenty-five years. If he died before that age, and of natural causes, he was embalmed as a mummy and interred in the Serapeion with great pomp. Otherwise, he was secretly put to death and buried by the priests in a well. In the Serapeion are some magnificent sarcophagi in granite, and inscriptions which preserve the Egyptian chronology from 1400 B.C. to 177 B.C.

The great catacombs at Rome were the burial places of the early Christians. It was supposed they were originally the quarries from which the building stone of the city had been taken. But while this is true of the catacombs of Paris, it is now conceded that those of Rome were cut out for burial purposes only, less perhaps to escape from the watchfulness of despotic power, than in obedience to a wish to remain faithful to the traditions of the early church which preserved the Jewish custom of rock or cave sepulture. These catacombs are of immense and bewildering proportions. Their leading feature is long galleries, the sides of which are filled with niches to receive the remains. At first these galleries were on a certain level, twenty to thirty feet below the surface. But as space was required, they were cut out on other levels, till some of the galleries got to be as much as three hundred feet below the surface. There are some attempts at carving and statue work about the remains of illustrious persons, and many inscriptions of great historic value, but in general they have been much abused and desecrated, and we are sorry to say chiefly by Christian peoples, mostly of the time of the Crusades, who found, or supposed they would find, rich booty, in the shape of finger rings and other precious things laid away with the dead. MacFarlane, in his book upon the catacombs, tells of a company of gay young officers of the French army who entered them on a tour of inspection. They had plenty of lights, provisions, wine and brandy, and their exploration became a revel. They finally began to banter one another about venturing furthest into the dark labyrinthine recesses. One, as impious as he was daring, refused to leave the crypts till he had visited all. Darting away, torch in hand, he plunged into gallery after gallery, until his torch began to burn low and the excitement of intoxication left him. With great difficulty he found his way back to the chapel where he had left his companions. They were gone. With still greater difficulty he reached the entrance to the catacomb. It was closed. He shouted frantically, and madly beat upon the railings with a piece of tombstone. But it was night and no one could hear. In desperation he started back for the chapel. He fell through a chasm upon crackling, crumbling bones. The shock to his nerves was terrible. Crawling out, he reached the chapel, amid intolerable fear. He who had many a time marched undauntedly on gleaming lines of bayonets and had schooled himself to look upon death without fear, was not equal to the trials of a night in a charnel house. His thirst became intolerable. He stumbled upon a bottle left by his companions and, supposing it contained water, drank eagerly of its contents. In a few moments the drink acted with violence and, in his delirium, he became the victim of wild visions. Spectres gathered around him. The bones of the dead rose and clattered before him. Fire gleamed in eyeless skulls. Fleshless lips chattered and shrieked till the caves echoed. Death must soon have been the result of this fearful experience had not morning come and brought fresh visitors to the catacombs, who discovered the young officer in a state of stupor and took him to the hospital. For months he lay prostrate with brain fever. He had been taught the weakness of man in that valley of the shadow of death, and ever after gave over his atheistic notions, and lived and died a christian.

You may leave Alexandria by canal for the Nile, and then sail to Cairo. You will thus see the smaller canals, the villages, the peasantry, the dykes of the Nile, the mounds denoting ruins of ancient cities. You will see the wheels for raising water from the Nile by foot power, and will learn that the lands which are not subject to annual overflow must be irrigated by canals or by these wheels. You will see at the point where the Nile separates into its Damietta and Rosetta branches, the wonderful Barrage, or double bridge, intended to hold back the Nile waters for the supply of Lower Egypt without the need of water wheels. It is a mighty but faulty piece of engineering and does not answer its purpose. From this to Cairo the country gets more bluffy and, ere you enter the city, you may catch glimpses of the Pyramids off to the right.

But the speediest route from Alexandria is by rail. You are soon whirled into the Moslem city. Cairo is not an ancient city, though founded almost on the site of old Egyptian Memphis. It is Saracen, and was then Kahira (Cairo) “City of Victory,” for it was their first conquest under Omar, after they landed and took Pelusium. It was greatly enlarged and beautified by Saladin after the overthrow of the Califfs of Bagdad. It dates from about A.D. 640.

It is a thickly built, populous (population 327,000) dirty, noisy, narrow streeted, city on the east bank of the Nile. Its mosques, houses, gardens, business, people, burial places, manners and customs, tell at a glance of its Mohammedan origin. Its mosques are its chief attraction. They are everywhere, and some of them are of vast proportions and great architectural beauty. The transfer of the Mameluke power in Egypt to the present Khedives was brought about by Mohammed Ali, an Albanian. The Mamelukes were decoyed into the citadel at Cairo and nearly all murdered. One named Emim Bey escaped by leaping on horseback from the citadel. He spurred his charger over a pile of his dead and dying comrades; sprang upon the battlements; the next moment he was in the air; another, and he released himself from his crushed and bleeding horse amid a shower of bullets. He fled; took refuge in the sanctuary of a mosque; and finally escaped into the deserts of the Thebaid. The scene of this event is always pointed out to travelers.

It is a city divided into quarters – the European quarter, Coptic quarter, Jewish quarter, water carriers’ quarters, and so on. The narrow streets are lined with bazaars – little stores or markets, and thronged by a mixed populace – veiled ladies, priests in robes, citizens with turbaned heads, peddlers with trays on their heads, beggars without number, desert Bedouins, dervishes, soldiers, boatmen and laborers.

Abraham sent Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. Matrimonial agents still exist in Cairo in the shape of Khatibehs, or betrothers. They are women, and generally sellers of cosmetics, which business gives them opportunity to get acquainted with both marriageable sons and daughters. They get to be rare matchmakers, and profit by their business in a country where a man may have as many wives as he can support.

Your sleep will be disturbed by the Mesahhar who goes about the city every morning to announce the sunrise, in order that every good Moslem may say his prayers before the luminary passes the horizon.

There is no end to the drinking troughs and fountains. Joseph’s well, discovered and cleaned out by Saladin, is one of the leading curiosities. It is 300 feet deep, cut out of the solid rock, with a winding staircase to the bottom.

West of the Nile and nearly opposite Cairo, is the village of Ghiseh, on the direct road to the pyramids, mention of which introduces us to ancient Egypt and the most wonderful monuments in the world.

Menes, “the constant,” reigned at Tini. He built Memphis, on part of whose site Cairo now stands, but whose centre was further up the Nile. The Egyptian name was Mennofer, “the good place.” The ruins of Memphis were well preserved down to the thirteenth century, and were then glowingly described by an Arab physician, Latif. But the stones were gradually transported to Cairo, and its ruins reappeared in the mosques and palaces of that place.

Westward of the Nile, and some distance from it, was the Necropolis of Memphis – its common and royal burying ground, with its wealth of tombs, overlooked by the stupendous buildings of the pyramids which rose high above the monuments of the noblest among the noble families who, even after life was done, reposed in deep pits at the feet of their lords and masters. The contemporaries of the third (3966 B.C. to 3766 B.C.), fourth (3733 B.C. to 3600 B.C.) and fifth (3566 B.C. to 3333 B.C.) dynasties are here buried and their memories preserved by pictures and writings on the walls of their chambers above their tombs. This is the fountain of that stream of traditions which carries us back to the oldest dynasty of that oldest country. If those countless tombs had been preserved entire to us, we could, in the light of modern interpretation, read with accuracy the genealogies of the kings and the noble lines that erected them. A few remaining heaps enable us to know what they mean and to appreciate the loss to history occasioned by their destruction.

They have served to rescue from oblivion the fact that the Pharaohs of Memphis had a title which was “King of Upper and Lower Egypt.” At the same time he was “Peras,” “of the great house” – written Pharaoh in the Bible. He was a god for his subjects, a lord par excellence, in whose sight there should be prostration and a rubbing of the ground with noses. They saluted him with the words “his holiness.” The royal court was composed of the nobility of the country and servants of inferior rank. The former added to dignity of origin the graces of wisdom, good manners, and virtue. Chiefs, or scribes carried on the affairs of the court.

The monuments clearly speak of Senoferu, of the third dynasty, B.C. 3766. A ravine in the Memphian Necropolis, where are many ancient caverns, contains a stone picture of Senoferu, who appears as a warrior striking an enemy to the ground with a mighty club. The rock inscriptions mention his name, with the title of “vanquisher of foreign peoples” who in his time inhabited the cavernous valleys in the mountains round Sinai.

The Pharaohs of the fourth dynasty were the builders of the hugest of the pyramids. The tables discovered at Abydos make Khufu the successor of Senoferu. Khufu is the Cheops of the historian Herodotus. His date was 3733 B.C.

No spirited traveler ever sets foot on the black soil of Egypt, without gazing on that wonder of antiquity, the threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge of the desert, an hour’s ride over the long causeway extending out from Ghiseh. The desert’s boundless sea of yellow sand, whose billows are piled up around the gigantic pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb, surges hot and dry far up the green meadows and mingles with the growing grass and corn. From the far distance you see the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were regularly crystalized mountains, which the ever-creating nature has called forth from the mother soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue vault of heaven. And yet they are but tombs, built by the hands of men, raised by King Khufu (Cheops) and two other Pharaohs of the same family and dynasty, to be the admiration and astonishment of the ancient and modern world.

We speak now of the three largest – there are six others in this group, and twenty-seven more throughout the Nile valley. They are perfectly adjusted to points of the compass – north, south, east and west. Modern investigators have found in the construction, proportions and position of the “Great Pyramid” especially, many things which point to a marvellous knowledge of science on the part of their builders. If the half they say is true of them, there are a vast number of lost arts to discredit modern genius. Some go so far as to trace in their measurements and construction, not only prophecy of the coming of Christ, but chart of the events which have signalized the world’s history and are yet to make it memorable. They base their reasoning on the fact that there was no architectural model for them and no books extant to teach the science requisite for their construction, that their height and bases bear certain proportions to each other, and to the diameter of a great circle, that they are on the line of a true meridian, that certain openings point to certain stars, and so on till ingenuity is exhausted.

The three large pyramids measure thus

As soon as a Pharaoh mounted the throne he gave orders to a nobleman, master of all the buildings, to plan the work and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edifice was raised on the limestone rock of the desert in the form of a small pyramid built in steps. Its well constructed and finished interior formed the king’s eternal dwelling, with his stone sarcophagus lying on the stone floor. Let us suppose this first building finished while the king still lived. A second covering was added on the outside of the first; then a third; then a fourth; and so the mass of the giant building grew greater the longer the king lived. Then at last, when it became almost impossible to extend the area of the pyramid further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, and fitted accurately into the angles of the steps, covered the vast mass of the king’s sepulchre, presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four faces. More than seventy of such pyramids once rose on the margin of the desert, each telling of a king, of whom it was at once the tomb and the monument.

At present the Great Pyramid is, externally, a rough, huge mass of limestone blocks, regularly worked and cemented. The top is flattened. The outside polished casing, as well as the top, has been removed by the builders of Cairo, for mosques and palaces, as have many of the finest ruins on the Nile.

The Sphinx was sculptured at some time not far removed from the building of the three great pyramids. Recent discoveries have increased the astonishment of mankind at the bulk of this monstrous figure and at the vast and unknown buildings that stood around it and, as it were, lay between its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has been blown away and revealed these incomprehensible structures. In a well near by was found a finely executed statue of Khafra, builder of the second pyramid.

There are other sphinxes, but this at the base of the Great Pyramid is the largest. It has a man’s head and a lion’s body, and is supposed to represent the kingly power of the sun god. Its length is 140 feet, and height 30 feet. Between its paws is an altar, to which you ascend by a long flight of steps. The Arabs call it “the fatherly terror.”

In the middle “chamber of the dead” of Menkara’s pyramid was found his stone sarcophagus and its wooden cover, both beautifully adorned in the style of a temple. They were taken out and shipped for England, but the vessel was wrecked, and the sarcophagus now lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The lid was saved and is now in the British Museum. On it is carved a text or prayer to Osiris, king of the gods: “O Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Menkara living eternally, child of heaven, son of the divine mother, heir of time, over thee may she stretch herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant that thou shouldst be like god, free from all evils, king Menkara, living eternally.”

The prayer is not uncommon, for parts of it have been found on other monuments. Its sense is, “Delivered from mortal matter, the soul of the dead king passes through the immense spaces of heaven to unite itself with god, after having overcome the evil which opposed it on its journey through earth.”

The entrance to the great pyramid was formerly quite concealed, only the priests knowing where to find the movable stone that would admit them. But now the opening is plain, and is about forty-five feet from the ground on the north side. Thence there is a descent through a narrow passage for 320 feet into the sepulchral chamber. The passage is much blocked and difficult. The great red granite sarcophagus is there, empty and broken, mute receptacle of departed greatness, for which the relic hunter has had quite too little respect.

With the end of the fifth dynasty pyramid building ceased. The glory of Memphis departed and went to Thebes, where kingly vanity seems to have sought outlet in the temple architecture whose ruins are the wonder of the world.

Above the old site of Memphis, is Toora, and out on its desert side are the pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. The most remarkable is the Step Pyramid, believed to be more ancient than those of Ghiseh. But there is something even more wonderful here – the Temple of Serapis, which it took four years to disengage from the sands of the desert after its site was discovered. It seems to have been dedicated to Serapis, the sacred bull of Egypt. Beneath it is a great catacomb where once laid the remains of thousands of sacred bulls. Their stone coffins are still there, cut out of solid blocks of granite, and measuring fourteen feet long by eleven feet high.

Further up the Nile are the high limestone cliffs of Gebel-et-Teyr, on which perches the Coptic “Convent of the Pulley.” The monks who live here are great beggars. They let themselves down from the cliff and swim off to a passing boat to ask alms in the name of their Christianity.

The next town of moment is Siout, capital of Upper Egypt. It stands on the site of ancient Lycopolis, “wolf city,” and is backed in by lofty cliffs, from which the views are very fine. Further up is Girgeh, whence you must take journey on the back of donkeys to Abydos, off eastward on the edge of the desert. Here was the most ancient city of This, or Tini, where Mena reigned, on whose ruins Abydos was built, itself an antiquity and wonder. Here is the great temple begun by Seti I. and completed by his son Rameses II., 1333 B.C. Rameses II., was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Its roof, pillars and walls are all preserved and the chiselling on the latter is something marvellous. What renders it doubly interesting is, the name of the sculptor is preserved. His name was Hi, and he must have been a man of decided genius, for his picture of the king and son taming the bull is quite spirited. In this temple is also the celebrated sculpture called the “Table of Abydos,” which gives a list of sixty-five kings, from Menes down to the last king of the twelfth dynasty, a period of 2166 years. It is a most invaluable record and has done much to throw light on Egyptian history. It was discovered in 1865. Abydos then, or Tini, was the starting point of Egyptian power and civilization, as we now know it. Here was the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, transferred afterwards to Memphis where the pyramids became their monuments, re-transferred to Thebes where the temples chronicled their greatness and grandeur. Old as Thebes is, Abydos is older, and Tini older still. Most carefully has the temple at Abydos been exhumed from the sand which has preserved it for three thousand years, most of the time against the hands of those who, knowing better, would have spoiled its fair proportions and its great historic value. Abydos seems to have been a city of tombs, and it is possible that the greatness of all Egypt sought it as a burial place.

The most powerful of these Theban Kings, were those of the twelfth dynasty and on, beginning 2466 B.C., though Thebes can be traced back to the sixth dynasty as a city. It was a period in which strong monarchs ruled, and the arts were cultivated with magnificent results. Thebes was the capital, and on its temples and palaces the most enormous labor and expense were lavishly bestowed. And this not in Thebes alone, but in all the cities of Egypt; and they all make history too, impressive, invaluable history.

Siout owes its present importance to the caravan trade with Darfur and Nubia. Passing on toward Thebes, the river banks get more and more bluffy. You soon come to Dendera on the west bank. Its ruins are magnificent, and by many regarded as the finest in Egypt. The portico of its ancient temple is inconceivably grand. Its length is 265 feet and height 60 feet. It is entirely covered with mystic, varied and fantastic sculptures, hieroglyphics, groups, figures of deities, sacred animals, processions of soldiers – in short the manners and mythology of all Egypt. The workmanship is elaborate and finished. The interior is no less beautiful. The roof contained a sculptured representation of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It has been taken down and is now in the museum at Paris.