Chapter IV: Letter III

CAIRO. _October 16, 1842._

We were detained nearly fourteen days in Alexandria. The whole time went in preparations for our journey; the Pasha I saw several times more, and I found him ever favourably disposed towards our expedition. Our scientific researches were inconsiderable. We visited the Pompeian pillar, which, however, stands in no relation to Pompey, but, as the Greek inscription on the base informs us, was erected to the Emperor Diocletian by the Præfect Publius. The blocks of the foundation are partly formed of the fragments of older buildings; on one of them the throne-cartouche of the second Psammetichus was yet distinguishable.

The two obelisks, of which the one still standing is named Cleopatra’s Needle, are much disintegrated on the weather side, and in parts have become quite illegible.[4] They were erected by Tuthmosis III. in the sixteenth century A.C.; at a later period, Ramses Miamun has inscribed himself; and still later, on the outermost edges, another King, who was found to be one, till now, totally unknown, and who was therefore greeted by me with great joy. I must yet mention an interesting collection of ethnographical articles and specimens of natural history of every kind which have been collected by a native Prussian, Werne,[5] on the second Nile expedition of the Pasha to the White River, in countries hitherto quite unknown, and have been transported to Alexandria but a few months ago. It appeared to me to be so important and so unique of its kind that I have purchased it for our museum. While we were yet there it was packed up for transport. I think it will be welcome in Berlin.

At length the _bujurldis_ (passports) of the Pasha were ready, and now we made haste to quit Alexandria. We embarked the same day that I received them (on the 30th of September), on the Mahmoudîeh canal. Darkness surprised us ere we could finish our preparations. At 9 o’clock we left our hotel, in the spacious and beautiful Frank’s Place, in M. D’Anastasi’s two carriages; before us were the customary runners with torches. The gate was opened at the word that was given us; our packages had been transported to the bark several hours before upon camels, so that we could soon depart in the roomy vessel which I had hired in the morning. The Nile, into which we ran at Atfeh, rolled somewhat considerable waves, as there was a violent and unfavourable wind. Sailing is not without danger here, particularly in the dark, as the two customary pointed sails, like the wings of a bee, are easily blown down at every gust; therefore I advised the sailors to stop, which they did every night when it was stormy.

Next day, the 2nd of October, we landed at Sâ el Hager to visit the remains of ancient Saïs, that city of the Psammetiche so celebrated for its temple to Minerva. Scarcely anything exists of it but the walls, built of bricks of Nile earth, and the desolate ruins of the houses: there are no remains of any stone buildings with inscriptions. We paced the circumference of the city and took a simple plan of the locality. In the northwestern portion of the city her Acropolis once stood, which is still to be distinguished by higher mounds of rubbish. We stopped the night at Nekleh. I have the great charts of the _Description de l’Egypte_ with me, on which we could follow almost every step of our trips. We found them, till now, very faithful everywhere.

On the 3rd we landed on the western bank, in order to see the remains of the ancient canal of Rosetta, and afterward spent nearly the whole of the afternoon in examining the ruins of an old city near Naharîeh; no walls are now visible, only rubbish-mounds remain; but we found in the houses of the new town, several stones bearing inscriptions, and mostly used for thresholds, originally belonging to a temple of King Psammetichus I. and Apries (Hophre). Next night, we stopped on the western shore near Teirîeh, and landed there the next morning, to seek for some ruins situated at about an hour’s distance, but from which we obtained nothing. The Libyan desert approaches quite close to the Nile here, for the first time, and gave us a novel, well-to-be-remembered prospect.

On the following morning we first perceived the great pyramids of Memphis rising up above the horizon: I could not turn my eyes away from them for a long time. We were still on the Rosetta branch; at noon we came to the so-called Cow’s Belly, where the Nile divides into its two principal arms. Now, for the first time, could we overlook the stately, wonderful river, resembling no other in its utmost grandeur, which rules the lives and manners of the inhabitants of its shores by its fertile and well-tasting waters. Toward the beginning of October it attains its greatest height. But this year there is an inundation like none that has been known for generations. People begin to be afraid of the dykes bursting, which would be the second plague brought upon Egypt in this year, after the great cattle murrain, which down to last week had carried off forty thousand head of cattle.

About five o’clock in the evening we arrived at Bulaq, the port of Cairo; we rode immediately from the harbour to the city, and prepared for a longer residence in this place. By-the-by, that we should say Cairo, and the French _le Caire_, is a manifest error. The town is now never called by any name but Mas’r by the Arabs, and so also the country; it is the ancient Semetic, more euphonious for us in the dual Mis’raim. First, at the foundation of the present city in the tenth century, New Mas’r was distinguished from the ancient Mas’r el Atîgeh, the present Old Cairo, by the addition of El Qâhireh, _i. e._ “the Victorious.” The Italians omitted the _h_, unpronounceable in their language, took the Arabic article _el_ for their masculine _il_, and so considered the whole word, by its ending too, a masculine.

The holy month of the Mohammedans, the Ramadan, was just beginning, during which they take no sustenance throughout the day, nor do they drink water or “drink smoke;” and accept no visits, but begin all the business of life after sundown, and thus interchange day and night, which caused us no little trouble on account of our Arab servants. Our Khawass (the honorary guard of the Pasha that had been given us), who had missed the time for embarking at Alexandria, joined us here. As our Prussian Vice-consul was unwell, I addressed myself to the Austrian Consul, Herr Champion, to whom I had been recommended by Ehrenberg, regarding our presentations to the representative of the Pasha at this place. He interested himself for us with the greatest alacrity and zeal, and obtained us a good reception everywhere. The official visits, at which Erbkam and Bonomi mostly accompanied me, had to be made in the evening at about 8 o’clock, on account of the Ramadan. Our torch-bearers ran first, then came, on donkeyback, first the Dragoman of the Consul and the Khawass of the Pasha, and lastly ourselves in stately procession. We nearly traversed the whole town, through the Arab-filled streets, picturesquely lighted by our firebrands, to the citadel, where we first visited Abbas Pasha,[6] a grandson of Mahomet Ali; he is the governor of Cairo, though seldom in residence. From him we proceeded to Sherif Pasha, the lieutenant of Abbas, and then to the war minister, Ahmet Pasha. Everywhere we were received with great kindness.

The day after my arrival I received a diploma as an honorary member of the Elder Egyptian Society, of which the younger one, that had sent me a similar invitation while in London, was a branch. Both had meetings, but I could only attend the sittings of one, in which an interesting memoir by Krapf, on certain nations of Central Africa, was read. The particulars had been given him by a native of the Enarea country, who had travelled into the Doko country in commercial pursuits, and who described the people in much the same way that Herodotus does the Libyan dwarf-nation, after the narrations of the Nasamoneans, viz., as little people of the size of children of ten or twelve years of age. One would think that monkeys were spoken of. As the geographical notices of the till now almost unknown Doko country are of interest, I have had the whole paper copied, to send it, together with the little map that belongs to it, to our honoured friend Ritter.[7]

On the 13th of October we made a trip to the ruins of Heliopolis, the Biblical On, whence Joseph took his wife Asnath, the daughter of a priest. Nothing remains of this celebrated city, which prided itself on possessing the most learned priesthood next to Thebes, but the walls, which resemble great banks of earth, and an obelisk standing upright, and perhaps in its proper position. This obelisk possesses the peculiar charm of being by far the most ancient of all known obelisks; for it was erected during the Old Empire by King Sesurtesen I., about 2,300 B.C.; the broken obelisk in the Faîum near Crodilopolis, bearing the name of the same king, being rather an obelisk-like long-drawn stele. Boghos Bey has obtained the ground on which the obelisk stands as a present, and has made a garden round it. The flowers of the garden have attracted a quantity of bees, and these could find no more commodious lodging than in the deep and sharply cut hieroglyphics of the obelisk. Within the year they have so covered the inscriptions of the four sides, that a great part has become quite illegible. It had, however, already been published, and our comparison of it presented few difficulties, as three sides bear the same inscription, and the fourth is only slightly varied.

Yesterday, the 15th of October, was His Majesty’s birthday. I had determined on this day for our first visit to the great pyramid. There we would hold a festival in remembrance of our king and country with a few friends. We invited the Austrian Consul Champion, the Prussian Consul Bokty, our learned countryman Dr. Pruner, and MM. Lieder, Isenberg, Mühleisen, and Krapf to this party, at which, however, it is to be regretted that some were not able to assist.

The morning was indescribably beautiful, fresh, and festal. We rode in long procession through the quiet streets, and along the green alleys and gardens that are planted outside it. Almost in every place where there were well-tended plantations, we found that they had been laid out by Ibrahim Pasha. By all accounts, he appears to adorn and repair every portion of the country.

They were incomparable minutes, those, when we came forth from among the dates and acacias; the sun rising to the left behind the Moqattam Mountains, and illumining the heads of the pyramids opposite, that lay before in the plain like giant mountain crystals. All of us were enraptured by the glory and greatness of this morning scene, and solemnly impressed by it. At Old Cairo we were ferried across the Nile to the village of Gizeh, whence the larger pyramids receive the name of Háram el Gizeh. From here one may ride to the pyramids in the dry season in a direct line for an hour of little more. As, however, the inundation is now at its highest point, we were obliged to make a great circuit upon long embankments, coming almost up to Saqâra, and did not arrive at the foot of the great pyramid for five and a half hours.

The long and unexpected ride gave a relish to the simple breakfast that we immediately took in one of the tombs cut in the rock here about five thousand years ago, in order to strengthen us for the ascent. Meanwhile a spacious gaily-decked tent came down, which I had hired in Cairo. I had it pitched on the north side of the pyramid, and had the great Prussian standard, the black eagle with a golden sceptre and crown, and a blue sword, on a white ground, which had been prepared by our artists within these last few days, planted before the door of the tent.

About thirty Bedouins had assembled around us in the interval, and awaited the moment when we should commence the ascent of the pyramid, in order to assist us with their powerful brown arms to climb the steps, about three to four feet in height. Scarcely had the signal for departure been given, ere each of us was surrounded by several Bedouins, who tore us up the rough steep path to the apex like a whirlwind. A few minutes afterward our flag floated from the top of the oldest and highest of all the works of man with which we are acquainted, and we saluted the Prussian eagle with three cheers for our king. Flying toward the south, the eagle turned its crowned head homeward to the north, whence a fresh breeze was blowing, and diverting the effects of the hot rays of the noontide sun. We too, looked homeward, and each remembered, aloud, or quietly within his own heart, those whom he had left behind, loving and beloved.

Next, the prospect at our feet enchained our attention. On one side is the valley of the Nile, a wide ocean of inundated waters, which, intersected by long and serpentine embankments, broken now and then by island-like high-lying villages, and overgrown tongues of land, filled the whole plain of the vale, and reached to the opposite mountain chain of Moqattam, on the most northerly point of which the citadel of Cairo rises above the town lying beneath. On the other side, the Libyan desert, a still more wonderful ocean of sand and desolate rock-hills, boundless, colourless, soundless, animated by no beast, no plant, no trace of human presence, not even by graves; and between both is the desecrated Necropolis, the general plan and the particular outlines of which unfolded themselves sharply and plainly, as upon a map.

What a landscape! and with our view of it what a flood of reminiscences! When Abraham came to Egypt for the first time, he saw these pyramids which had been built many centuries before his arrival; in the plain before us lay ancient Memphis, the residence of those kings on whose graves we were standing; there lived Joseph, and ruled the land under one of the mightiest and wisest Pharaohs of the New Empire. Farther on, to the left of the Moqattam Mountains, where the fertile plain borders the eastern arm of the Nile, on the other side of Heliopolis, distinguishable by its obelisk, begins the fruitful country of Goshen, whence Moses led his people forth to the Syrian wilderness. Indeed, it would not be difficult to recognise from our position, that ancient fig-tree, on the way to Heliopolis, by Matarîeh, beneath the shade of which, according to the legends of the land, Mary rested with the Holy Child. How many thousands of pilgrims from all nations have sought these wonders of the world before our days,--we, the youngest in time, and yet only the predecessors of many thousands more who will come after us, and behold, and climb these pyramids, with astonishment. I will describe no farther the thoughts and feelings that came flooding in at those moments; there, at the aim and end of the wishes of many long years, and yet at the actual commencement of our expedition; there, on the apex of the Pyramid of Cheops, to which the first link of our whole monumental history is fastened immoveably, not only for Egyptian, but for universal history; there, where I saw beneath the remarkable grave-field whence the Moses-rod of science summons forth the shadows of the ancient dead, and lets them pass before us in the mirror of history, according to rank and age, with their names and titles, with all their peculiarities, customs, and associations.

After I had narrowly scanned the surrounding graves, with the intention of selecting some spots for future excavations, we descended once more to the entrance of the pyramid, procured lights, entered the slanting shaft with some guides, like miners, and reached the gallery by ways I well knew by drawings, and at the so-called King’s Chamber. Here we admired the infinitely fine joinings of the monster blocks, and examined the geological formation of the passages and spaces. Then we commenced our Prussian national hymn in the spacious saloon, the floor, walls, and ceiling of which are built of granite, and therefore return a sounding metal echo; and so powerful and solemn was the harmony, that our guides afterward reported to the other Bedouins outside, that we had selected the innermost recesses of the pyramid, in order to give forth a loud and universal prayer. We then visited the so-called Queen’s Chamber, and then left the pyramid, reserving the examination of the more intricate passages for a future and longer visit.

In the mean time our orientally-decked tent had been put in order, and a dinner prepared within, in which Prussians only took part, with the exception of our two English companions. That our first toast here was “His Majesty and the Royal family” need not be told; and no great eloquence was necessary to render all hearts enthusiastic in drinking it.

The rest of the day passed in gay, festal, and hearty reminiscences and conversations, till the time of our departure arrived. We had yet to wait a quarter of an hour after sunset, to give our attendants, donkey-drivers, and the rest of our Arab suite, time to eat their frugal dinner, which they had not yet taken, despite all the heat and labour of the day, in consequence of the Ramadan. Then the bright full moon guided us in the cool still night over the sand and water ocean, through villages and plantations of date-trees, back to the city. We did not arrive there until about midnight.