Into the Land of Egypt

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 230, 27 August 1938, Page 11

Into the Land of Egypt

BY H. V. MORTON

(Thirteenth Instalment.)

ON the east bank of the Nile, about four miles from Cairo, is a dis-. trict where dark old houses nod together across narrow lanes. The old gate of this district is thick, nail-stud-ded and heavy, and would not be out of place in the Tower of London. It opens proto6tingly with a wooden key about two feet in length called a dabba, and the old woman who opens it sighs and groans with drafnatic exaggeration as she shrewdly eyes the visitor before asking alms, not for the love of Allah, but for the sake of Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother, Sitt Mariam.

Life in these old lanes is curiously furtive and withdrawn, a strange contrast' to the vivid life outside, where along half a mile of quays the Nile bents stand with reefed sails, and corn and sugar-cane are unloaded to the shouting and singing of men. Old Cairo, for that is the name of this district, is the Christian quarter, and it has always led a life of its own, never quite trusting in the stoutness of the iron-bound gate. In my opinion all the vaunted sights of Cairo take second place to this squalid old district which few people visit. It was an okl town centuries before the Arabs built Cairo: it was the. Roman fortress of Babylon, the key to Upper Egypt. I like to think that St. Peter wrote his First Epistle from Babylon by the Nile amPnot, as it is generally assumed, from the better-known Babylon on the Euphrates. And I find it easier to imagine St. Peter in Egypt, on the highway between Jerusalem and Home, than in the more distant Babylon in Asia. * * * * IN the wonderful things to he found among the rubbish mounds of Old ' Cairo are the .colossal red brick bastions of the Roman fort, and also a superb gateway, now forty feet below the modern level, built by the Emperor Trajan. It was beneath this very gate that the lances of Amr rode in to the conquest of Egypt in A.D. 641. Through these very portals Islam poured into Egvpt to exalt the Crescent. There are many, finer monuments in Egypt but few, I think, of more historical interest. Hidden away in Old Cairo are curious old churches which wore still standing at the time of the Arab invasion. Like all Coptic churches, they are concealed from the man in the street. For many centuries the Copts were forbidden to ring their bells, and the congregations have wisely done everything possible to hide 'the buildings from the passer-by. Once inside, howeyer, you stand amazed by the Byzantine columns of marble upholding "the naves, by the rounded anses built in coloured stone, bv the hundreds of ikons hanging on the walls, and by an air of great age which lies over them like a dust, as it they had been closed and hidden for centuries, .and now stand open to the gaze of Christians of to-day. And this, in effect, lias happened, for the Copts, or Gypts, are the native Christians of Egypt, who were converted to Christianity in the Ist century. . *

they liave lived 11 secrct ,ifo diu : in ° I centuries of Moslem _ persecution, preserving their ancient customs with inflexible tenacity. So that the Christian of the West, accustomed to a Faith th&t has adapted itself to mod ern life, stands in their churches with the feeling that he lias entered a museum of primitive Christianity

Among the elm relies of Old Cairo is the ancient Church of Abu Sargeh, or St. Sergius, in whose tiny stone crypt, the Copts believe the Virgi n and the Child rested during the flight into Egypt. The altar of this crypt is a hollowed stone, which mav have been a 6tli century tomb-niche, and they point to the hollow as the place where the Infant Christ was cradled. Another church is A 1 Mu’allakah, which means the Hanging Church, because it is built high up between two of the Roman bastions, and is approached by a long flight of steps. This seemed to be the richest and best-car-ed-for of them all

(To be continued.)

CAIRO’S HIDDEN CHURCHES

It has a remarkable screen made of cedar wood, inlaid with thin plates of ivory set in an intricate star-like design. When candles are lit behind it, the light shines with a wonderful glowing rose colour through the ivory plates.

ANOTHER fine and ancient church is dedicated to Es-Sitt Burbara,

or St. Barbara; another is dedicated to Mari Girgis, under whose Arabic name I am 6ure few people will recognise St. George; another is called A 1 Adra hi Bablun, “the Blessed Virgin of Babylon,” and another Abu Sifain, which means the Father of Two Swords, the name the Copts have given to St. Mercuries.

When the news spread that a stranger was interested in the churches, an inquisitive crowd followed m.e, childishly delighted that I should be so interested, anxious that I should see everything, ready to unlock.anything, even the haikal doors that separate the body of the church from the altar and the apse.

Christian worship has been curiously tinged by eastern practice. When the men and women enter the churches they prostrate themselves before the haikal screen, touching the floor with their foreheads as Moslems do in the mosques. Whenever I wished to go into a sanctuary and look at an altar or an apse, I was careful to observe the Coptic custom by taking off my shoes.

The Coptic women, who were once veiled like the Moslems, used to be segregated from the men in galleries behind openwork screens. But this custom has died out, and women, who are now unveiled, sit in the body of the church.

Perhaps the strangest sight are the women who crouch cross-legged on the floor of these churches nursing what at first sight looks like bolsters. These are the bones of saints and martyrs. They are sewn up in Tound leather cases, and are kept in shelves or cupboards in the walls of the churches.

Although the ’ Coptic Church forbids the worship of relics, the women go there and. taking out the bones of their favourite saint, sit for hours whispering and praying ms they hold in their arms the. heavy leather cases as if-they were nursing children.

As in the Greek Church, there aro no statues, but the Copts regard their ikons with superstitious reverence, and nearly always tell you that a certain ikon has the power to work miracles.

EVERY church of Old Cairo, I noticed, had a huge stone tank let into the narthex floor near the west doors. In some of them fifty human beings could bathe. They are empty, and boarded over except during Epiphany, when they are filled with water, into which men and boys plunge after the service.

All the churches have small marble basins let into the floors of the nave, which are used on Maundy Thursday, when the priest observes the ancient custom of washing the feet of his congregation.

While I was wandering round these narrow lanes I came by chance to a nunnery, in which about twenty women, old and young, live in retire-, ment.