WHAT I SAW IN EGYPT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1894, 22 May 1890, Page 31

WHAT I SAW IN EGYPT.

By Halkett-Dawson, M.A., F.S.S., F.R.G.S. Nothing can more indelibly fix in the mind j the idea of change and vicissitude in human affairs than a visit to a ruin of some castle, abbey, or cifey. A visit to a buried city is the occasion for a still more complex state of mind, even if the conviction of change is not more forcibly impressed upon one. But what shall one say of the curious sensations one experiences while treading the ground where once were enormous populations with their sins and sorrows, their hopes and fears, their joys and griefs, and where hardly a vestige remains to mark the spot? Two auch sites I visited — those of HELIOPOLIS AND MEMPHIS. Six miles from Cairo in a north-easterly direction stands a single granite obelisk, of no great size, with the bold characters of the most I ancient writing — said to be the oldest obelisk in the world. At a distance of a few hundred yards from it there exist some poor remains of an old wall. Around is a flat plain with here and there a small clump of trees — orange, sycamore, acacia, or limes — and the patient ox treading the endleaa circle of the sikazek bringing up the fertilising water from pits dug down to the level of the Nile; on the south and east the friDge of the yellow sandy desert ; to the north and west the garden of Egypt — the G^shen of the Bible. The winter crop was iv the blade ; the poor fellow was quietly going through his daily round. There was a hush aud a silence. Let my reader follow me for a minute or two, and I shall introduce him to three sets of phenomena — all of transcendent interest — associated with thij quiet, fertile, flat spot. I shall go back to the days of Joseph, 14 centuries before our era. This was then the site of On. Here it w' s that the Hebrew who had entered Egypt as a slave ro»e to high rank, and wooed and won the daughter of the pries!; of the Sun. Think of this priest's greatness. No ecclesiastic, if a Pope is excepted, ever had such pqwtr ami influence. Afc oue time in his service were 13,000 persons. On Epiphany Day 1 witnessed High Mass in St. Peter's, the most imposing, the most gorgeous ceremony in the modern world. I had never seen so mauy ecclebiastics in one procession before. But marvellous as such a service is, what could it be when compared with the ritual, with the pride, pomp, and circumstance of the service of the Sun ! If such was the temple, what must have been the size and importance of the surrounding city. The obelisks taken from Heliopolis throw some light on this. Mention of one will suffice. In the Piazza di S. Pietro, at Rome, there is the gigantic obelisk, weighing 500 tons, which Caligula brought from Heliopolis to Rome and placed in the Vatican Circus Its erection in its present position in 1586 was a famous and noteworthy engineering feab. Fancy its being transported to Heliopolis and erected there in what we regard the very juventws viundi ! If Heliopolis had its temples, it also had its university. I could not forget that one of the greatest of the Greeks — Plato— studied here. In reading his famous dialogues we probably get at many of the opinions and thoughts of the j professors of the cities of the Sun. Here, too, dear old gossiping Herodotus had a long chat with the priests of Ra. Strabo, the geographer, was also here, for he was no fireside geographer. The drop scene at last fell. Heliopolis, with its dramatis personal had its fine acts and its innumerable scenes. Cambyses swooped down upon it and levelled it with the ground. The regular troupe of actors and audience disappeared as thoroughly as from a played out digging township, and henceforth only a stray travelling company was now and again to meet there. But what companies ? There is a beautiful legend preserved of the Flight into Egypt, and associated with this plain. Near the insignificant village and well of Matariyeh — which must have been part of or a suburb of Heliopolis —is shown an old decaying sycamore tree, with a fresh water well named the Tree and Well of the Virgin. The legend has it that Joseph and Mary with the infant Christ were pursued here, and found shelter and safety in a hollow of a sycamore tree, and that spiders miraculously spun their webs across the opening. It is not pretended, of course, that the present tree is the original one. No, this one was planted in 1672. When one) dies another is put into its place. This famous tree belongs to the ex-Empress Eugene. At the opening of the Suez Canal the Khedive Ismail presented it to her. But here it is, and here it will now probably remain. Egypt is famous for its oranges. The sweetest I ever tasted I purchased from an Arab here, who has a most lovely garden of some acreß in extent around the trae and well. As I stood and thought, there came up a dirty looking creature in the habit of a Greek priest. He bad come to visit the sacred spot as a pilgrim. He was so reverential — he drank the water from the well, washed himself, sprinkled his weedy garment, prostrated himself and prayed, — that I lost eight of his insignificant size, his dirt, his seediness, in his devotion. I reproached myself for my first set of feelings towards him. Here I was a product of Western thought, taught by my religion to dispise relics, and hold such traditions and legends in contempt, and regarding the surroundings with feelings of mere curiosity, or at least with that intellectual attitude in which you regard the world as a mere spectator without letting your heart get touched by becoming an actor — a frigid kind of creature after all. Here was a highly emotional being whose love of Christ was warmed by the scene and by his actions of which the scene was the occasion. I am not quite sure whether Protestants have not lost something in their wholesale neglect and contempt for relics. I saw a sight at Rome which impressed me very deeply. On the east side of the Piazza di S. Giovanni, in Laterano at Rome, is the edifice containing the scala santa, a series of 28 marble steps from the Palace of Pilate at Jerusalem, which our Saviour ascended, and which the Empress Helena brought to Rome in 32G. The steps are protected by a covering of wood, which the devout ascend on their knees. Pius IX erected the adjoining staircases for the descent of the faithful, and had a marble slab inserted in the wall with a most thoughtful inscription. The lover worships the soil on which his sweetheart treads. That scala santa at the Lateran does unquestionably evoke emotions of the holiest type. If the reader will pardon this digression, I shall at once pass from a scene and a legend associated with the early history of the Prince of Peace, and pass to a very different set of circumstances. Near this sacred spot were fought in 1517 and . 1800 two of the great decisive battles of the j'" world. Different men enumerate as " decisive " a . different battles I regard the two conflicts £ fought here as in the category. Representing another faith from that of the Son of Man, in I 1517 Selim and the Turks fought a great fight, « conquered, aad became masters of Egypt, x Henceforth the story of Egypt was to ft enter upon quite a new phase — a phase B as much for the worse as we hope and H trust Tel-el-Kebir has inaugurated a phase of

| the story for the better. It was on this plaia, too, that General Kleber, of France, with 10,000 men, routed some 80,000 Orientals and obtained possession of Cairo - only to lose it soon, for in ■■ 1801 the French were forced to capitulate in 1 both Cairo and Alexandria, and to leave Egypt. From 1798 up till September 1801 the French may be said to have been in effective occupation of the country. Let us leave this spot where flourished once the arts of wnr and peace, where Joseph loved j and Plato studied : where what I may call " our own special," Herodotus, chatted with the savants of other days, aud where many another special will spend and has spent a well merited holiday, and proceed in quite another direction to MEMPHIS. The traveller to Memphis proceeds up the j Nile by steamer for some 15 miles from Boolak. On the way he passes the villages of Bedrashen, Mibrahineh, and Kaßriyek— horrible place 3as all these mud-built dirt heaps are. At the nearest point on the Nile to the spot where the i great statue of Rameses II lies and to the wonderful Pyramids of Sukkara, one can get a doukey and a boy for a day for a few piastres. So equipped, with the usual luncheon basket, a Baedeker, and a note book, one, may look forward to a day's keen enjoyment. The country is a flat plain of Nile mud, studded here and there with clumps of date palms, which are said to be worth about a napoleon each annually. Occasionally one comes upon a hollow filled with Nile water. Everywhere the land is in crop. One is treading on the site of Memphis. How large it must have been, let the great burial ground at Sukkara witness : 3200 acres in extent ! Of the vast city one can see nothing but the gigantic statues of Rameses II Let us see where we are chronologically. In the Nineteenth Dynasty, among the Pharaohs of Genesis and Exodus, we have here the Sesobris of the Greeks. The statue, which was 42ft in length before it was injured, belongs to the British Museum, j This object is mentioned by Hercdotus and S^rabo. Near it is another statue of Rameses II also, but of softer stone. Of Memphis ' nothing else remains. Fancy in the far distant future someone visiting Dunedin and finding all that remained of it a mangled statue of Robert Burns ! On the site of Memphis one is conscious of walking on as ancient a spot of civilisation as exists in the known world. The Memphites take us back to the Fourth Dynasty, to Cheops, Chephren,and Mycerinua. There was a busy human hive on this spot. From the Necropolis of Sukkara we know they were a clever, albeit a queer race of mortals. If we pass on to this spot we shall find grottoes filled with mummies of the ibis and the cat, we shall stand awestruok before the tomb of Ti, aud the tombs of the Apis bulls. What magnificent granite sarcophagi, polished as well as M'Donald, Field, and Co , of Aberdeen, can polish granite in these days with every modern appliance. You may speculate as to how these huge blocks got there, how it was all done, and so forth. So far the result is simply emotional, wonder, awe, bewilderment. History helps one little. You look in vain f©r the sacred lake of olden story over which the mummy of Apis was transported in a boat. Nowhere can you see the fabled five pastures once compared with Homeric asphodel meadows. Many things you are told of the spot. Here Hecate had a temple; and Cocytus a shrine. Here Justice, without a head, was worshipped ; and here the children of Israel erected one of the brick pyramids without straw. As I returned on my donkey I met at the head of a company of officers from the garrison with a few Englishmen, among whom I recognised Barrett, the artist (a nephew of Robert Browning) — what do you think ? A Scotch piper on an ass. When the North Pole is found, there will bo found there a Scotchman,