Memphis and surroundings

The Arabs who were conducting us towards the pyramids of Saccara, stopped our asses at a small hut by the way-side, and told us that here was a Frank whom we must visit. There came out from it a person of a countenance very foreign, with the deep lines and brown stain of a travelled and weather-beaten man. He appeared glad to see us, congratulated us on being the first to whom he could show a late-found treasure, and with ready politeness conducted us to it. Not twenty yards had we to go; – a very fine colossal statue of a noble countenance, with a scroll represented in its closed hand, a tablet on its breast, and that striped clothing on the thighs, common on the statues and figures at Thebes, lay where it had been lately uncovered, and where it has lain for centuries, not three feet under the surface of the soil. This, he told us, he believed and hoped would enable him to discover the site of the temple of Vulcan, of which he thought it must have formed an ornament. He now led us to his maison rustique, as he termed it; one which he had caused to be erected close to his treasure, and which he had only arrived that morning from Ghizeh to occupy. He had not even unpacked a single thing; but he insisted on our waiting till we had drank coffee; – a kind of thing the Arab servant would contrive to give you if the meeting was under a rock, at a temporary halt; and if you go away without taking it, you are considered deficient in politeness. He now recommended us to ride first to Dashour, then return by Saccara to him; and that on the morrow he would be happy to show us the interior of the most interesting one at Saccara, and ride with us over the site of Memphis.

This gentleman was no other than the enterprising and persevering Caviglia.

Away we ambled, along fields, and past wells, and through date-groves, till at last we came out on the edge of the desert, at the foot of that shapeless mass of sun-baked mud called the Brick Pyramid. On the sand by its side, lay bricks; here, single, there, two or three joined together; they are large, thick, and square in form, and the dry earth composing them, held together by straw, most plentifully mixed, and yet white and shining as it was served out by the task-master to those who laboured at making them. Of the two stone pyramids near this spot, one is very handsome, its casing smooth, and the squares of stone united with surprising exactness; its form, towards the top, has an inclining bend, both at the angles and on the sides, which gives it a character quite different from the others. That by its side would be a fine thing in the eye of the traveller, if the two at Ghizeh were not so superior in size, that when seen, they almost efface this from your memory; I ascended it with one of my companions, by an angle, which gave us just such a path as is presented to the assailant of a breached bastion, – sand, rubbish, fallen stones to tread on, others erect, to be wound round or mounted with a longer stride; even from the summit of this one, the men and asses standing at the foot, were reduced to a most dwarfish size, and, gazed long upon, would make you, if you stood on the edge of a side-step, feel giddy. Strange structures! – for whom raised, and by whom, and when? We know not, and, perhaps, we do not feel the less pleasure in contemplating them, because none can tell us. We rode along the desert to those of Saccara, verdure on our right, and on our left, sand, an ocean of it, wide, pathless, still, stretching far, far away to where lies that savage country, Leonum aricla nutrix.

Several of the pyramids of Saccara have lost their casing, and present naked sides of sand and rubbish. The principal one here is, in descriptive truth, not a pyramid; but vast, square, altar-like steps, six in number, rise in graduated lessening proportions to a flat summit: Arab tradition calls it the Seat of Pharaoh, and states it to have been the spot whence the ancient kings of Egypt promulgated their laws to their assembled subjects. I leave antiquarians to battle with tradition, and I triumph as much as any one in the successful efforts of their learning, when they account for, and expose its absurdities, beat down the strong holds of any important error, or establish any important truth: but Tradition is a very poetical, a very pleasing personage; we like to meet him on our travels, at least I do, and I always ask him a question. You will find him grey and blind, sitting among all old ruins, and “Death standing dim behind!”

We passed on to some tombs and mummy-pits; found at the mouths of some, fragments of broken-down walls, with figures and hieroglyphics; one, I remember, with a priest admirably painted on it. We also saw two statues of females seated, the size of nature, which had been lately dug out, and two more afterwards in the village near; one of the last was rather on a larger scale; they were of a soft white stone, the eyes painted, also the hair, and the ornaments on their robes and persons. Even with this paint, which I do not like on a statue, and can ill understand how, in the bright day of Pericles, Athens could have tolerated; even, I say, with this drawback, they had a sweetness and beauty of expression we all admired.

Returning, we again called on Caviglia. Magic had been at work in his little hut: plans and drawings were hung all round, concealing and ornamenting its walls; his books established on shelves and tables; in fact, it looked that sort of home, in which the soldier and the traveller find some comfort in their sojournings. Among his books, I observed Denon, a Florence edition, the Zendavesta, and the works of Pascal. We turned over the plates of Denon; and he showed us a small hieroglyphic vocabulary, in manuscript, for the interpretations in which Dr. Young and Mr. Champollion were the authorities.

He declined returning with us that evening to our boat, but said he would himself accompany us to Saccara on the morrow, which he did. His wish was to show the interior of that pyramid¹ opened by the French, he having founded some opinion on the examination of it, which leads him to suppose that none of the pyramids were sepulchres; – I leave him to amuse himself with the difficulty. He is a kind man, with much enthusiasm about Egyptian antiquities, having exhibited enterprise and perseverance, and fearlessly expended all he could: he is unpretending, too, considering his visit to Paris, and the nonsense he heard talked there about Moses and Orpheus, and which, at times, will peep from under his modest avowals, that he is only a sailor, with a strong turn this way, which has made him both labour and read on antiquities.

We were all much disappointed, and he was exceedingly provoked, to find that the Arab fellahs had blocked up the entrance, and that so effectually, and with such huge stones, that it would have taken many men and a day’s labour to have removed them. We returned along a raised bank, just dividing the desert from a low, green, cultivated flat, the ancient bed of the lake Acherusia: we went on, and through a few clumps of dates, and down to another long open flat, where, to the eye of the antiquarian, a few stones scattered here and there in the corn, give the site arid traces of a street of the ancient city of Memphis.

“Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshower’d grass with lowings loud.”

In other parts, you see remains of a wall of unburnt brick; and again, in one spot, brick-work of a later date; a part of a bath; and also the facing of a canal. These last are of the city in its latter days: the stones, with their hieroglyphics, as old as the time of its first founder; the sumptuous temple of the great Vulcan of the Egyptians, so renowned once, is the more particular object of Mr. Caviglia’s search; and here, as his fancy suggests, and his means admit of his buying and rooting up a tree, or getting them not to sow on a few square yards of fertile land, he digs, and excavates, – finds nothing! Hopes, fears, and digs again, and finds a broken shaft, a statue, or a stone, and sleeps the sounder, and wakes the happier for it! He appears to understand how to conciliate the common Arab very well: though not settled, he was already erecting near his hut, where he had dug a well, a little kind of wig-warn of the date leaf, about six feet or more in height, which would give just as much shade as a bit of park paling or hurdle might; little enough, but sufficient quite to invite all the Arabs as they passed by, to stop, deposit their staff or load, ask for water, and take a sleep, leaving their blessing with the good man as they departed.

He showed, and with no little pride, a number of the Quarterly Review, which spoke of his labours with high praise and deserved encouragement. I borrowed the volume, as I saw it contained much about the pyramids; and I certainly was indebted to some ingenious and astounding calculations concerning the quantity of stone employed in the erection of that, known by the title of Cheops, for very increased pleasure in surveying it. Mr. C. dined with us in the evening, and the following morning we dropped down to Ghizeh.

View of the Pyramids at Saqqara and surroundings

From the moment that you leave Ghizeh, until you reach the pyramids, they seem continually near to you; you would think that you had but a narrow field to cross to reach their base: you have four miles to ride: they certainly have an awful look; everlasting as it were, compared to any other structure which you have either seen, or know to exist, or can imagine. But this does not arise, perhaps, so much from their apparent size, as from your knowledge of what that really is, and also from the sublime unity of design, solidity of construction, and the severe simplicity of their once sacred form.

He who has stood on the summit of the most ancient, and yet the most mighty monument of his power and pride ever raised by man, and has looked out and round to the far horizon, where Lybia and Arabia lie silent, and hath seen, at his feet, the land of Egypt dividing their dark solitudes with a narrow vale, beautiful and green, the mere enamelled setting of one solitary shining river, must receive impressions which he can never convey, for he cannot define them to himself.

Let us come down, let us leave this spot. Some one of our poets has placed on this mighty pedestal that skeleton form with scithe and hour-glass. Time sits in triumph on this empty tomb, – a fitting throne!

We passed into its dark chambers, long, gloomy passages; above, around, all vast masses of stone; Arabs crowding on us and noisy, and the torches blazing on and throwing a gloss on their bronzed skins: we rested awhile near the broken empty sarcophagus, and then clambered up a rude ladder, and crawled through a low passage to another chamber; afterwards we went down the well and out through another passage, which leads up, and joins the principal one near the entrance. The total descent, from the mouth of the well, is 155 feet; two of the shafts are perpendicular; the third having, however, a very rapid inclination. With an Arab lighting you, and muttering something to drive the demons from him, you let yourself down this well, pressing your back against the side, stretching out your hands to steady yourself, and feeling with your dangling foot for the narrow, small, worn niches that scarce give a resting place to the ball of your toe; at length you reach the bottom, and, after looking about you, and pausing awhile, in the gloomy depth, you make your way up a very long passage, catch the light of day, and go gladly forth, – dusty, dirty; faces covered with perspiration from the heat, and blackened by the smoke of torches, we looked as I have seen men look in battle.

We rested ourselves for half an hour, and then proceeded to the pyramid opened by Belzoni. The passage into this has the finest polish on the masses of granite I think it capable of receiving; the fine chamber cut in the living rock surprised us, as it does all visitors; and how these ancient men contrived to cut so well in the hardest stone, when we cannot now make instruments fine enough to accomplish the same thing, at least I know those sent from England failed, remains, for the present, a wonder, and we look back upon them as cunning in their craft.

It is impossible to visit these pyramids² without reflecting on the spirit and the skill of those intrepid pioneers of antiquarianism, Caviglia and Belzoni: the latter I never saw, the former I shall not soon forget; his pursuits have unsettled many of those notions which he probably received in childhood, and have given him, I suspect, no consoling equivalent. I remembered, however, that there lay in his cottage one of the finest uninspired volumes ever penned, “The Thoughts of Pascal,” and I could not help wishing that, while looking for the temple of Vulcan, he might find a nobler prize.

Near the great pyramid there are some low tombs, two of which have their walls covered with paintings: – there is the birth and story of Apis, the cow calving; there are sacrifices, feasting, dancing; there is an antelope in a small wood; and there is a figure which (though a mere trifle) called and fixed my attention, a man carrying two square boxes across the shoulder on a broad flat bending piece of wood; exactly similar this is to the manner in which burdens are borne in India, by what we there call bangy-coolies. It suggests to me what I had forgotten before to remark, – the peculiar way in which you see, in paintings at Thebes, the end of the girdle or loincloth gathered, plaited, as it were, and hanging down before their middles, is exactly Indian; nor, to my eye, is the complexion or feature, either in the paintings or statues, very different from some tribes of Brahmin; but I am fanciful, though not unobservant, and must leave others to dismiss this with a smile, or think it over as an amusement in some morning’s walk.

We returned from our day’s ride in silent delight. They are the tombs of Cheops and Cephrenes, says the Grecian; they are the tombs of Seth and Enoch, says the wild and imaginative Arabian; an English traveller with a mind warmed, perhaps, and misled by his heart, tells you that the large pyramid may have contained the ashes of the patriarch Joseph; and, at least, he displays ingenuity in showing the grounds on which he builds his supposition. It is all this which constitutes the very charm of a visit to these ancient monuments. You smile, and your smile is followed and reproved by a sigh. One thing you know, – that the chief, and the philosopher, and the poet of the times of old, men “who mark fields as they pass, with their own mighty names,” have certainly been here; that Alexander has spurred his war-horse to its base; and Pythagoras, with naked foot, has probably stood upon its summit.

The sphinx disappointed us; it does generally, I should think: drawings and prints deceive wonderfully; it has neither the size, the majesty, nor the sweetness with which it is usually represented.

From Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and in Italy
by Moyle Sherer, 1824

Notes

¹ The same which the Arabs call the Seat of Pharaoh; and here, perhaps, tradition does not err; but the other pyramids are surely sepulchral.

² The great pyramid is ascended without further inconvenience than is caused by the great height of many of the steps. There is no sort of danger; but he who knows himself likely to turn giddy, should direct his looks either far out or else to the stones immediately below and near him, never to the bottom of the pyramid. I mean during the ascent, or while coming down. On the summit he need not take such caution. The Arabs crowd round and pester you; yet here and there, where the steps are high, you avail yourself, not unwillingly, of a lifting hand to save time and fatigue.