their devotions, though there are several groups enjoying the serenity of the court; picturesque groups, all color and rags! In a far corner an old man is saying his prayers and near him a negro, perhaps a slave, also prostrates himself. At the fountain are three or four men preparing for devotion; and indeed the prayers begin with the washing. The ablution is not a mere form with these soiled laborers—though it does seem a hopeless task for men of the color of these to scrub themselves. They bathe the head, neck, breast, hands and arms, legs and feet; in fact, they take what might be called a fair bath in any other country. In our sight this is simply a wholesome “wash”; to them it is both cleanliness and religion, as we know, for Mr. Lane has taught us what that brown man in the blue gown is saying. It may help us to understand his acts if we transcribe a few of his ejaculations.
When he washes his face, he says:—“O God whiten my face with thy light, on the day when thou shalt whiten the faces of thy favorites; and do not blacken my face, on the day when Thou shalt blacken the faces of thine enemies.” Washing his right arm, he entreats:—“O God, give me my book in my right hand; and reckon with me with an easy reckoning.” Passing his wetted hand over his head under his raised turban, he says:—“O God, cover me with thy mercy, and pour down thy blessing upon me; and shade me under the shadow of thy canopy, on the day when there shall be no shade but its shade.”
One of the most striking entreaties is the prayer upon washing the right foot:—“O God, make firm my feet upon the Sirat, on the day when feet shall slip upon it.”
“Es Sirât” is the bridge, which extends over the midst of Hell, finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword, over which all must pass, and from which the wicked shall fall into Hell.
In these mosques order and stillness always reign, and the devotions are conducted with the utmost propriety, whether there are single worshippers, or whether the mosque is filled with lines of gowned and turbaned figures prostrating themselves and bowing with one consent. But, much stress as the Moslems lay upon prayer, they say that they do not expect to reach Paradise by that, or by any merit of their own, but only by faith and forgiveness. This is expressed frequently both in prayers and in the sermons on Friday. A sermon by an Imam of a Cairo mosque contains these implorings:—“O God! unloose the captivity of the captives, and annul the debts of the debtors; and make this town to be safe and secure, and blessed with wealth and plenty, and all the towns of the Moslems, O Lord of the beings of the whole earth. And decree safety and health to us and to all travelers, and pilgrims, and warriors, and wanderers, upon thy earth, and upon thy sea, such as are Moslems, O Lord of the beings of the whole world. O Lord, we have acted unjustly towards our own souls, and if Thou do not forgive us and be merciful unto us, we shall surely be of those who perish. I beg of God, the Great, that He may forgive me and you, and all the people of Mohammed, the servants of God.”
CHAPTER VIII.—THE PYRAMIDS
THE ancient Egyptians of the Upper Country excavated sepulchres for their great dead in the solid rocks of the mountain; the dwellers in the lower country built a mountain of stone in which to hide the royal mummy. In the necropolis at Thebes there are the vast rock-tombs of the kings; at Sakkara and Geezeh stand the Pyramids. On the upper Nile isolated rocks and mountains cut the sky in pyramidal forms; on the lower Nile the mountain ranges run level along the horizon, and the constructed pyramids relieve the horizontal lines which are otherwise unbroken except by the palms.
The rock-tombs were walled up and their entrances concealed as much as possible, by a natural arrangement of masses of rock; the pyramids were completely encased and the openings perfectly masked. False passages, leading through gorgeously carved and decorated halls and chambers to an empty pit or a blind wall, were hewn in the rock-tombs, simply to mislead the violator of the repose of the dead as to the position of the mummy. The entrance to the pyramids is placed away from the center, and misleading passages run from it, conducting the explorer away from the royal sarcophagus. Rock-tomb and pyramid were for the same purpose, the eternal security of the mummy.
That purpose has failed; the burial-place was on too grand a scale, its contents were too tempting. There is no security for any one after death but obscurity; to preserve one’s body is to lose it. The bones must be consumed if they would be safe, or else the owner of them must be a patriot and gain a forgotten grave. There is nothing that men so enjoy as digging up the bones of their ancestors. It is doubtful if even the Egyptian plunderers left long undisturbed the great tombs which contained so much treasure; and certainly the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Saracens, left comparatively little for the scientific grave-robbers of our excellent age. They did, however, leave the tombs, the sarcophagi, most of the sculptures, and a fair share of the preserved dead.
But time made a pretty clean sweep of the mummy and nearly all his personal and real property. The best sculptures of his tomb might legally be considered in the nature of improvements attaching themselves to the realty, but our scientists have hacked them off and carried them away as if they were personal estate. We call the Arabs thieves and ghouls who prowl in the the tombs in search of valuables. But motive is everything; digging up the dead and taking his property, tomb and all, in the name of learning and investigation is respectable and commendable. It comes to the same thing for the mummy, however, this being turned out of house and home in his old age. The deed has its comic aspect, and it seems to me that if a mummy has any humor left in his dried body, he must smile to see what a ludicrous failure were his costly efforts at concealment and repose. For there is a point where frustration of plans may be so sweeping as to be amusing; just as the mummy himself is so ghastly that his aspect is almost funny.
Nothing more impresses the mind with the antiquity of Egypt than its vast cemeteries, into which the harvests of the dead have been gathered for so many thousands of years. Of old Memphis, indeed, nothing remains except its necropolis, whose monuments have outlasted the palaces and temples that were the wonder of the world. The magnificence of the city can be estimated by the extent of its burial-ground.
On the west side of the Nile, opposite Cairo, and extending south along the edge of the desert, is a nearly continuous necropolis for fifteen miles. It is marked at intervals by pyramids. At Geezeh are three large and several small ones; at Abooseer are four; at Sakkara are eleven; at Dashoor are four. These all belonged to the necropolis of Memphis. At Geezeh is the largest, that of Cheops or Shoofoo, the third king of the fourth dynasty, reigning at Memphis about 4235 B.C., according to the chronology of Mariette Bey, which every new discovery helps to establish as the most probably correct. This pyramid was about four hundred and eighty feet high, and the length of a side of its base was about seven hundred and sixty-four feet; it is now four hundred and fifty feet high and its base line is seven hundred and forty-six feet. It is big enough yet for any practical purpose. The old pyramid at Sakkara is believed to have been built by Ouenephes, the fourth king of the first dynasty, and to be the oldest monument in the world. Like the mounds of the Chaldeans, it is built in degrees or stages, of which there are five. Degraded now and buried at the base in its own rubbish, it rises only about one hundred and ninety feet above the ground.
It is a drive of two hours from Cairo to the Pyramids of Geezeh, over a very good road; and we are advised to go by carriage. Hadji is on the seat with the driver, keeping his single twinkling eye active in the service of the howadji. The driver is a polished Nubian, with a white turban and a white gown; feet and legs go bare. You wouldn’t call it a stylish turnout for the Bois, but it would be all right if we had a gorgeous sais to attract attention from ourselves.
We drive through the wide and dusty streets of the new quarter. The barrack-like palace, on the left of abroad place, is the one in which the Khedive is staying just now, though he may be in another one to-night. The streets are the same animated theater-like scenes of vivid color and picturesque costume and indolent waiting on Providence to which we thought we should never become accustomed, but which are already beginning to lose their novelty. The fellaheen are coming in to market, trudging along behind donkeys and camels loaded with vegetables or freshly cut grass and beans for fodder. Squads of soldiers in white uniform pass; bugle notes are
