EGYPT AND THE PYRAMIDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 31

EGYPT AND THE PYRAMIDS.

! This was the title of a deeply interesting lecture delivered to a crowded audience at St. Josi ph's Hadl on Wednesday evening by the Rev. D. J. O'Sullivan, de la Societe dea Mission Africanes de Leon, Auostolic j Missionary of the Delta of Egypt. I Briefly introduced by the Rev. Father Coffey, the rev. father announced that he did not pose as a professional lecturer, I but as a man who had lived in Egypt. [ Coming as he did from Egypt, he could I assure them that any pictures- or words . could' not describe it. The lecturer went I on with the add of Lantern slides to describe i the Nile Valley, the Fellaheen, the oldJ fashioned systems of irrigation, and the unutterable spell of the corpse-like desert. to be compared only to a, ruined world | which has come to its judgment. Passing to city scenery, he described j Cairo with its 500 mosques with their ! domes and minarets, the alabaster mosque, ' the great bridge, and the railway station, one of the most imposing and besti equipped in the world. Alexandria, with its 350,000 people, was built on only a ' very small part of the area occupied by the ancient city, which 2000 years ago was the university of the whole world. The rov. father dissipated a popular illusion with regard to Pompey's Pillar. ! a monolite 95 feet hisrh, which was not , built by Pompey at all. but was the sole I remaining pillar of the great granite temple of Cerberus. A likeness of Cleopatra, was shown chiselled by her , own sculptor. Heliopolis, 50 miles north of Cairo, was next dealt with. Here Moses I passed his youth. Here the Blessed Virgin tarried" after the flight into Egypt, making garments for the ladies of Heliol>olis, while St. Joseph made wooden I ploughs for the agriculturists. Near j here it was that the prophet Jeremiah had I been stoned to death, and his prophecy i that the four great pillars should be ' broken and scattered 1 had been fulfilled. One of them now stood on the Thames Embankment. i From this period the lecturer went back to the long-buried past— to the Egypt of 6000 years ago, when the people had attained a degree of excellence in art, science, and greatness unsurpassed since in the history of the world. Here lived the Coptic Hierarchy of the present day; the descendants of the men who built the Pyramids. Out of the 11 millions in Egypt only one million, were Christians, and Egypt might how be said to be Mohammedan from end j to end. 1 The lecturer then turned" to the little 1 monasteries which are dotted here and there on the fringe of the desert, and then came to the Pyramids, the tombs of the ] . kings and nobles of Memphis. To give an idea of the age of these immense quad- , rangular masses of masonry, the lecturer _ stated that when the Patriarch Abraham

visited Egypt the Pyramids were already hoary with age. They stood on the edge of the Lybian deserts and extended in group after .group for 70 miles. Memphis itself, with its two million inhabitants, had stooo' between; them and the Nile. Mem- : phis was 2? ntiles from end to end, and it took the Greel- historian Herodotus on« whole day to get from one end of the city to. the other. The pyramids were 'the tje-naa-ins of tfie cemetery of Memphis, and here were buried those who died during the 5000 years Memphis existed. Memphis in 700 B.C. was the last stronghold of .Christianity, but in- the eleventh century it - was destroyed ; the Ni'e broke down its embankment wali^apd? smothered k in mud ; ' and' now cleep. Beneath the roots of palm trees liss-._r.-uured Memphis, thus fulfilling yet an'aJlbjSrjprophecy of Jeremiah, to the 9f£ect tjbst Idwmphis should not only ijeeome uninhabited^ buf -unmhabi table. Some wonderful pictures "were shown of certam relics is tRe- National Museum a.t Cairo — mummies thousailds -of years" old, the- jld kings and rulera Egypt. Seme of the ladies, -.said the * lecturer, were laughing at. the features of Rameses I, but he could assure them that after they had been dead 4000 years they would not be half so good-looking. The rev. father then went on to the tesques, the massive and .wonderful ruins, beam* of granite weighing ~3o tons capp-'ng 70 feet high. Pictures of the granite, alabaster, marble, and porphry quarries Were shown, together, with the amazing painted interiors of tor&bs, anr? the missive Sarcophagi. A vivid wordpicture was painted of the Sphinx as it used to be — a human head on a crouchinsr lion's body. The huge face and claws were painted a splendid crimson, and as the Sphinx faced the east the effect of sunrise thereon must have been indescribably grand. A Mohammedan fanatic, fearing that the people might worship th<? I Sphinx as a god, erected a scaffolding and mutilated the features.

The- lecturer described his ascent of the largest Pyramid and what he saw and thought ait the top in a fine piece- of oratory. Cain, we know, fled* a«nd- took unto nimself a wife of the people of the Land of Nod. This passage was recalled, perhaps unconsciously, „by the lecturer, who remarked that the builders of these Pyramids had possibly spoken with Adam, and beard from his own lips the sad story of hie fall. The lecture contained a happy vein of anecdote, which relieved it somewhat of that awfulness which is attached to any lecture on Egypt by one who knows his subject. Pictures were shown of the mighty ancient -Egyptians and their Works. Then another slide was switched on. " And these," said- the rev. father. " are the present Egyptians. See what 1300 years of Mohammedan ram hns done for them." And there was the cringing fellah — weakmouthed and degenerate ; the dirty, veiled woman smirking through her fin are rs; and the opthalmic child with the fly-bitten Ayelids.

At Rotorua most of the boacdingrhouses have been well patronised since September. A long and heavy tourist season i« anticipated, ,especially yin view of the increased' excursion facilities that will be available from Australia until April next. I