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
