NEW ZEALANDERS IN EGYPT

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23001, 22 April 1940, Page 7

NEW ZEALANDERS IN EGYPT

IMPRESSIONS OF THE PYRAMIDS SOLDIERS ENJOY AN EXCURSION (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service) MARCH 7. “Well, I suppose that taught him that you can’t play round with the Pyramids!” It was Napoleon Bonaparte of whom our companion was speaking. Pausing for a well-earned breath on a little platform hollowed out just under halfway up the side of the Great Pyramid, we had been told by our guide how Napoleon, in the course of his conquest of Egypt, had conceived the idea of making a gun emplacement there. But the steep sides of this enduring monument to an ancient civilisation had defied his army’s efforts to drag the gun into position. And we, who stood there nearly a century and a half later, found it pretty easy to realise how even the wiles of the famous Frenchman were foiled by this vast pile of stone. Then we started upwards • again, and the strenuous climb set us thinking that this was a sort of busman’s holiday for soldiers of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, who, in a few hours’ time, would be drilling hard again on dusty parade grounds somewhere in the hazy distance. As a respite from marching and wheeling- and sloping arms we were spending a crowded morning in recording for New Zealand some of the things which her sons are seeing and doing in this fascinating country. “Rather Flat World” And that is how we came to be scaling the pyramid early on this bright, late winter day. It was the highlight of our excursion, for the climb seemed to take us to the top of this rather flat world in which we are now living. Standing. at the summit, on. blocks of stone worn smooth by the movement of thousands of pairs of feet and decorated and redecorated with initials, carved, by thousands of penknives, we were able to look down on the huge city of Cairo, sprawling across the green s ribbon of fertile land that lies between two deserts. In another direction the Nile Delta stretched like* a patchwork quilt far beyond our range of vision; on still another side mile after mile of undulating sand shimmered in the growing heat. The view is well worth the climb, but it is pretty easy to become discouraged’ if you stand at the base of the pyramid and stare upwards too long at the row upon row of massive stone blocks. The thing seems to grow and grow until it tends to frighten you off. Yet the 450feet ascent takes comparative!/ little effort and time. The wisest plan is to choose a guide from among the horde which leaps out, seeking your favour, the minute you get within a stone’s throw of the pyramid, for although .the route to the top is well worn, it is congjdered quite easy to go astray. The fellow we picked bounded ahead of us like ah antelope, but he had the happy knack of suggesting, just as our boots began to feel like lead weights, that we should stop and rest. Even though thousands of tourists have made the ascent, I suppose every one of them has regarded the moment of reaching the top as one of triumph, and our case was no exception. “Guide-book stuff’’ it might be, but this was some-' thing to write'home about! Our guide, by the way, must have been wise to this human failing, for he was prompt m-inviting us to add our names to the thousands already carved in the stone. “See!” he cried, “General Gordon . . . and over there, King Edward.” Well, maybe. ... The Face of the Sphinx Down to earth again, we found it a mere step to the spot where the inscrutable but somewhat tattered face of the Sphinx looks unblinkingly oyer the dingy, outskirts of the city. There is a story that this enigmatic ■lady’s nose was blown away by a shot from one of Napoleon’s guns, but an Egyptian friend assured us that the damage was really, the result of wind’ and sand. “Bonjbur, inadame.” our officer greeted the great Stone figure. “You were up to your neck in sand when I saw you 25 years ago. And to think,” turning to us, “that all those years are only a fraction of a second in her lifetime.” We left the ancient and symbolical—and found the ancient and utilitarian. It was in the form -of a wooden plough driven by a native labourer behind two oxen, working in a typical-Nile Valley field. Explaining through our Egyptian friend that he was a British farmer and wanted to see ,liow the plough worked, my companion took over the job and cut new furrows with the primitive implement while the native encouraged the oxen with well-aimed clods of earth. He lived too close to the Pyramids not to know what “backsheesh” (money for nothing) means’, and he took our half-piastre—about IJd —more or less as a .matter of course. Still, it was worth a few hours’ wages to him. There was interest of a -deeper kind for us in a visit we paid to one of the several Cairo cemeteries in which lie many of New Zealand’s Great War dead. We were more than gratified .at the surrounding of the almost countless symmetrical lines of simple. headstones fresh, green lawns, box hedges, ornamental trees, and flowers in profusion. The English caretaker of the cemetery told us that no fewer than 157 New Zealanders were buried there, lying side by side with soldiers who served with the armies of Britain and Australia. We saw the familiar fernleaf on many a headstone, and read the names of members of the Mounted Rifles, the Maori Battalion, and other units to which our predecessors had belonged. Empire Unity We were reminded by those graves of the Empire cameraderie which the spirit of 1914-1918 engendered. On that same morning in a street near the city we found the 1940 counterpart of that comradeship. _ As' we walked we fell in with a soldier from a Scottish regiment; a bearded Indian signalman joined us, and in a minute or two we representatives of. three widely-flung parts of the Empire were walking by the side of an Egyptian policeman, mounted on his rangy, long-legged camel. There was Empire unity! The colourful history of ancient Egypt has been unfolded to many of us who have visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The crowning glory, of this storehouse of antiquity is the section devoted to treasures taken from the tomb of King Tu-Ankh-Amon. It houses gold almost by the acre, beaten and moulded into things of breathtaking beauty. All Cairo is an ever-changing picture. There is something new at which to wonder or delight no matter where we turn. We can stroll through bright, noisy bazaars, or gaze at the most modern products of the world in the most modern shops. We can watch the leisurely river life on the Nile, whose slow and muddy waters carry an endless flow of high-masted feluccas, picturesque native sailing craft. Yes, indeed—there will be some stories to tell some day at the fireside in many a New Zealand home!