My Visit to the Pharaoh City

Entrance to the Apis Tomb

You need a lot of credulity when you go to Egypt, and a superb contempt for anything less than three thousand years old. If you don’t have these, you spoil your holiday by questioning the wonderful stones told by dragomans and you fill your hand-bag with antiques of a mere yesterday.

The more one looks about the world, the more disgusted one becomes with the average globe-trotter. When he goes to Egypt – unless he happens to be a mad Egyptologist as well, and burns all the skin off the back of his neck and pants all day long under awnings up at Luxor – he limits his progress southwards to Cairo; and, instead of even getting familiar with the picturesque sights in the Arab town, and becoming acquainted with the varied and vigorous smells, he prefers knocking round the Ezbekiyeh, looking in shop windows and sipping his coffee under the verandah outside Shepheard’s Hotel. He can do all this much better in Paris; but then Paris is plebeian by the side of Cairo.

You can’t see a corner of Egypt without much physical discomfort. Even travelling by train is an experience long to be remembered. The sand sweeps in clouds into the carriages; your throat gets rusty and your tongue parched; your eyes are clogged with sand, and your hair looks as though it had become prematurely grey. The compartment, yourself, and your belongings, all assume the same hue, and you gasp for air and only swallow sand: you think that the sulphuric fumes on the Underground Railway on a hot August afternoon are preferable to the breath of the Libyan Desert in mid-winter.

But, if you insist on tasting some of the delights of travel, you had better ride across the wide sandy expanse to the City of the Pharaohs and visit the tombs at parched Sakkara.

Egyptian peasant women by the side of Memphis

When I visited the site of ancient Memphis I took the Upper Egypt train as far as Bedrashen – a dirty, squalid village, the houses built only of Nile mud and pitched together higgledy-piggledy, the fellahen squatting on their haunches in front of the doorways and blinking in the sunlight. The great river had overflown only a fortnight before, and for miles around the eye rested on great lakes, out of which rose thousands of slim-limbed, graceful palm-trees. Few of the fellahen were working. They have a greater belief in Allah than in themselves, and after they have pitched the seed into the ground they would consider it something like sacrilege to presume to help Allah in making the crops grow. So they sit and gossip while their wives – podgy women, but with good eyes – carry the water for household use in great jars.

The children are like children in all other parts of the world. They joy in the making of mud-pies, and they manage to make themselves as dirty as English children. You see the oxen plodding, slowly raising water in the primitive water-wheel fashion, while within the shade of a flimsy hut, made of maize leaves, a wrinkled, brick-complexioned old Egyptian idles away the morning humming snatches from the Koran.

Every donkey-boy is called Mahomet Ali, just as everybody in the Isle of Man is called Kelly. You have only to shout “Mahomet Ali!” from a window at your hotel for the street to be immediately as crowded with donkey-boys as Mark Twain’s back-yard was with dogs when he advertised for one that had been lost. At Bedrashen I was besieged by at least fifty boys who all said their names were Mahomet Ali. I explained in the middle of a wildly gesticulating throng that the particular Mahomet Ali I wanted was surnamed Dodo. I got hold of him at last – a lanky, bright-eyed youth in a long blue robe and a white skull-cap – and I warned him of the speedy vengeance of a friend of his at Cairo should he give me other than the best donkey in the village, overcharge me, or bring me back too late to catch the evening train to Cairo. He protested the excellency of his donkey, his moderate charges, and his trustworthiness; and he proceeded to show that what was my wish was his by offering to kill at least half a dozen other donkey-boys who persistently paraded the merits of their long-eared friends, just as though it were my intention to spend the day riding over the trackless desert on six steeds abreast, like an acrobat at a circus.

One had hardly got rid of the crowd of screaming youngsters, demanding baksheesh, and ridden along the tortuous path under the palms, and taken several short cuts across the miry ground, which ended in my donkey sinking to his haunches in the mud, while I talked to Dodo brilliantly and vigorously about his being a dunderhead – all of which highly delighted him, for he could not have grinned more had I been precipitated into the mud myself – before I was on the site of Memphis, probably the most ancient place in the world, where the Pharaohs ruled, and where Moses probably played as a little boy.

Time is a cruel cynic, and Memphis the Glorious is now about as picturesque as a brickfield. Indeed, it is uncommonly like a brickfield. There is not a single stone edifice remaining, but you can spend several hours risking your neck by riding over mounds and along walls made of sun-dried bricks, all that practically remains of the ancient city. It is easy enough to trace the narrow passages and the foundations of the houses.

I climbed to the summit of the highest mound and gazed round – shall I say with feelings akin to disappointment? – on the far-stretching expanse of sand, with the blazing sun overhead and the ground baked and verdureless beneath. There was no sound in the hot air – not even the drone of insects – and I sat down and tried in my mind’s eye to rear great palaces out of these mud remnants, to picture the glories of the past, the time when the Pharaohs lived here and ruled the land.

I stayed for a long time on the site of Memphis, and could see no one treading the streets that the Pharaohs trod. The Great Pharaoh, Rameses II., of whom we read in Exodus, probably divided his time between Memphis and Thebes. All the Pharaohs vied with one another in adorning the temple of Ptah. But the glory of the place waned and it revived, and it waned again and it died. Many were the hot battles fought around its walls. Assyrians, Ethiopians, and Persians won the city in turn by force. The Romans came and destroyed the temples and the Turks, who conquered later, took the stones of the ancient palaces to build houses for themselves on the other side of the Nile. It took centuries to despoil Memphis of its architectural marvels, but it was most effectively despoiled, although, no doubt, excavations would reveal fresh wonders.

But nobody managed to remove the two great Rameses statues. Skirting the edge of the inundated laud, and passing through a palm-grove, I came to these massive statues. Here again arises the question, How were these blocks hewn? Lying among the trees is the first of the statues. It was on its back, and I climbed on to the breast to obtain a view of the face. The features are quite clear. Another statue lies near. The finders gave it to the British Museum, but it would be twice as difficult as Cleopatra’s Needle to remove, and so it still lies at Memphis. It is broken, but when whole it must have been over forty feet in height. Both statues lay hidden for centuries under the Nile mud. Herodotus says that Rameses II. placed two colossal statues before the temple of Ptah, and there is no doubt these are the two. There they lie to-day, with their stony gaze, no longer guarding the entrance to a temple, but points of curiosity to visitors from every corner of the earth. They are far over three thousand years old, but close to them has been found pottery calculated at over seven thousand years old. This shows that Memphis existed in very early times indeed, although now hardly anything remains to mark its existence and certainly nothing to suggest its splendour.

Though so little marks the spot where in the dim past a mighty city stood, and although not a single well-preserved vestige is to be seen of the houses of the living, I had only to turn my donkey’s head in the direction of Sakkara to find resting-places of the dead which have defied the ravages of time, and where the hieroglyphics are as fresh as though cut only the week before last. The ride from the village of Alit Rabineh to Sakkara is pleasant enough for a mouth or two in the winter-time, for then it is along artificial embankments slightly raised above the thousands of acres of land on which a foot of water lies.

As you ride along, jog-jog, your donkey-boy running by your side and endeavouring to tell you something in unintelligible English, eleven pyramids come into sight – some big and impressive, others small and made of mud, crumbling away. Swift-legged youths come careering along the road, their pockets full of antiquities which they desire to sell. Many are spurious, of course, but the whole district is so rich in treasure, and articles are so easy to find, that it is not really worth while to make imitations. Visitors out here are few, and the lads are willing to part with their finds for practically anything. They think Europeans mad to ride across the desert till the tongue dries and clings to the roof of the mouth with heat, but they would think them madder still to pay the prices asked.

Lovers of curiosities in London would no doubt gladly enough pay ten shillings for a defaced statuette, four or five thousand years of age, taken from the historic tombs of Sakkara. I readily purchased a pocketful, seven or eight pieces for a small piastre (penny farthing). Little trinkets, which even in Cairo are worth three or four shillings, you can easily get for the same price. The boys don’t know the value of their finds – and neither do you, unless you happen to be an experienced Egyptologist. I know a Cairo dragoman, who is acquainted with Egypt as well as I know the street in which I live, who has the keenest scent for antiques. He showed me a beautiful tinted scarab for which he asked twelve sovereigns, and made no secret that he purchased it for four shillings. On the edge of the Libyan Desert the man who desires to collect relics of ancient Egypt may do so at the expenditure of as many shillings as he would spend pounds at home.

At the entrance to the tombs I had only to turn over the rubbish heaps with my foot to find embalmed legs, great pieces of mummy cloth, while in five minutes Dodo found little bits of necklace and so on. I dismounted, and wandered over the sand from mound to mound, marvelling that so much that was curious and historically interesting could be had for the mere picking up. As far back as history goes there is mention of this most famous burial-ground of Memphis, where the kings and noble families were interred, either in the pyramids or the rock caverns, and, more important than all, where the sacred hulls were placed in sarcophagi with ceremonies more gorgeous than at the funerals of kings.

As I ascended the steep sandy side of the plateau with slow progress, for at every yard my feet sank in the soft sand, I had right before me the Step Pyramid, so called because it is built like steps. It is the oldest monument standing in Egypt. How old, it would be risky to even hazard a guess, but it is not going too far to say that it is at least six thousand years of age. The stone is not solid, but easily breaks under the foot, so that I experienced some difficulty in mounting the first step. Very few folks ever go to the top, because it is dangerous to do so. Long before Western Europeans knew of such things as the pyramids the Bedouins probably entered the tomb and ransacked it of its treasure. A hundred years ago and less, when first scientific men were turning their attention to the systematic exploration of Egypt, the Arabs did all they could to thwart them, and, although they knew where interesting tombs were, they declined to tell. But the Arab is human, and he unwittingly gave clues by offering to sell antiquities to the Europeans. The Europeans kept their eyes end their ears open, and by the antiquities offered knew when they were getting near the place they were looking for.

Looking from this pyramid, my eye ranged westwards over an ocean of sand. British people, accustomed to their green meadows, sylvan lanes, and shady trees, can little appreciate the awful desolation of the desert. There is not a road or a shrub – nothing but a trackless expanse of burning sand, with a dry wind blowing it in your face. Even the sky, so blue and brilliant, seems less beautiful because there are no clouds. Away to the north, however, one turned for change, for the waters of the Nile had covered the land with many palms, and the dark green was pleasant to rest the eye upon. The great Pyramid of Cheops stood clear against the heavens, and the alabaster mosque of Mahomet Ali at Cairo, with its slim pillars, could be easily distinguished. As one glanced over the desert, it seemed hardly possible that within a few minutes’ walk were the tombs of the sacred bulls and the Mastaba of Ti, with the most perfect examples of early Egyptian art in existence. They are below ground, so that you might pass within a hundred yards and not notice them. I hastened to the shelter of the rudely built house where Mariette, the French Egyptologist, spent so many years of his life, and close to which he made so many discoveries. The discovery of the Apis tombs alone was sufficient to secure him enduring fame. It is a desolate enough place, made of mud, but with a covered terrace, in the shade of which it was pleasant to sit while a couple of baksheesh-seeking Bedouins poured cool water over my heated hands.

The wrinkled-faced old Bedouin who was my guide knew less English than I knew Arabic. The one word he seemed acquainted with was “Bull,” and whenever he came to a tomb he said “Bull,” and that was all the information he could impart. But what a wonderful place this was! There was a long gallery, with chambers to the right and to the left containing massive granite sarcophagi in which the remains of the bulls, mummified and adorned with trinkets, had been placed. How these great pieces of hewn granite were brought down to these chambers is difficult to understand. Almost at the entrance there was a lid to one coffin, and further down the passage – along which one groped in the gloom with only a flickering candle to provide light – was the coffin itself. For some reason, these had not been taken to their destination. I found the air in these tombs oppressively close. My own shadow danced weirdly on the rock walls, and a word echoed strangely through the caverns. There were hieroglyphic inscriptions round some of the coffins perfectly plain. The sand and the dry African air had preserved them. I climbed to the top of one of the sarcophagi, where the lid had been pushed along for a foot or two, and was able to look into the dark chamber. The darkness, the flickering light, the knowledge that I was in a place trodden by the feet of the old Egyptian kings, and where were buried animals who were revered more than the kings themselves, could not fail to impress me, and a thousand strange fancies and thoughts flooded the mind.

When I came out from these tombs, and stood getting accustomed to the glitter of the sun once more, I felt as though I had been reading a page of some strange romance, not unlike “Gulliver’s Travels,” but over which was the conviction it was no romance at all, but as true as it was wonderful.

This part of Egypt, where Memphis once stood and Sakkara still remains, is, as I have said, crowded with treasure of the time when the Pharaohs were great in the land. It is only a few minutes’ walk from the Apis tombs to the Mastaba of Ti. Ti, as far as I can make out, was a sort of African Dick Whittington who lived nearly five thousand years ago. He was humbly born, but by strict attention to his duties he rose to be the most trusted servant of three kings – Ra-nefer-ar-ka, Re-en-user, and Kaka – and he married a lady called Neferhotep-s, who belonged to the royal family. He was the king’s chamberlain, he kept the king’s secrets, he was president of the gate of the palace – whatever that might be; he was also president of the royal department of writing, was a sort of archbishop at the pyramids of Abrisir; he did something in the way of prophecy, looked after the sacrifices, and was a guardian of the mystery of divine speech. Tombstones do not always tell the strict truth; yet I should he sorry to offend any of the descendants of Ti by suggesting he was a less wonderful man than he is represented to be. He must have been wealthy, for the burial chamber he built for himself, and which was completed by his relatives, is the finest Mastaba yet discovered. On the walls are some perfectly preserved specimens of early Egyptian art. The human figures are stiff, but the pictures of animals are true to life. One secures an admirable conception of the Egyptian five thousand years ago by looking at these paintings. You see a bakery and a pottery, men fattening geese, others building ships, and others sailing in them. There are scenes of the harvest, the reaping and the threshing, and the filling of sacks. There is a representation of a court of justice, with the judges taking elaborate notes. There are processions of ladies. Calves frisk about and cows are milked, fish are caught and birds snared. When Ti wanted diversion, he went hippopotamus hunting, and there is a big picture of hint engaged in that interesting sport. Numerous are the pictures of Ti, who is represented four tunes as tall as anybody else.

There are several other Mastabi close by, only one of which I visited besides that of Ti – namely, the Mastaba of Mera. Here again one saw representations of how things were done long, long ago, and noticed how very little change the turn of thousands of years has brought. With Dodo I spent a considerable part of the afternoon turning over mummy-heaps, seeing hundreds of bones, legs, arms, and skulls wrapped in mummy cloths, which were still strong and serviceable, and picking up parts of necklaces which had once adorned the dead. It was a singular occupation in the broiling heat of the afternoon, being choked with the dust, and no water to be obtained within several miles. When I saw a man far off climbing laboriously up the side of the plateau with water from the marsh below, I set off at a gallop towards him and demanded water. The giving of water is almost a religious act in the East, and the Arab allowed me to have several long pulls at his jar.

When the sun was beginning to slant quickly to the earth and lighting up the horizon, edging the desert with saffron and gold, I started my journey back again over thousands of tombs and through the scanty ruins of ancient Memphis. I rested for some time at a spot where a number of fellahen were at work packing dates in cases made of matting. The packing was done with their naked feet, stamping the dates into small space. Half a dozen of them were thumping away with their heels, all keeping time by singing over and over again in Arabic that Allah is great and watches them all the day. The Moslems are ever quoting and chanting parts of the Koran. These poor ignorant fellows, tanned a dark brown with the sun, and the perspiration running down their breasts, were worshipping even while at work. They were familiar with the site of Memphis, but they knew nothing of its past. Perhaps where they stood the Pharaohs had worshipped in the temple of Ptah who knows?

by John Foster Fraser
From The Quiver Magazine, published in 1897