TROOPS CLIMB A PYRAMID

Southland Times, Issue 24106, 20 April 1940, Page 6

TROOPS CLIMB A PYRAMID

New Zealanders In Egypt REACHING TOP OF FLAT WORLD (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service) EGYPT, March 7. “Well, I suppose that taught him that you can’t play around 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 cf Egypt, had conceived the idea of making a gun emplacement there. But the steep sides of this enduring monument to an ancient civilization had defied his army’s efforts todrag the gun into position. And we, who stood there nearly a century and a-half later found it pretty easy to realize 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. >. A 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 cf 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 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 cf massive stone blocks. The thing seems to grow and grow until it fends to frighten you off. Yet the 450feet ascent takes comparatively 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 to within stone’s throw of the Pyramid, for although the route to the top is well worn it is considered quite easy to go astray. The fellow we picked bounded ahead of us like an 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. CARVING NAMES 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. “Guidebook stuff” it might be, but this was something to write home about! Our guide, by the way, must have been wise to this human failing, for he was prompt in inviting us to add our names to the thousands already carved in the stone. “See!” he cried. “General Gordon . . .

and over there, King Edward.” 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 over 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. “Bonjour, Madame!” 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 how 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 cf earth. He lived too close to the Pyramids not to know what “backsheesh” (money for nothing) means, and he

took our half-piastre—about l:*d —more or less as a matter of course. Still it was worth a few hours’ wages to him CEMETERIES VISITED There was interest of a deeper kind for us in a visit we paid to one of the several Cairo cemeteries in which lie I many of New Zealand’s Great War dead. We were more than gratified at the surroundings 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. We were reminded by those graves of the Empire cameraderie which the spirit of 1914-18 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 Tutankhamen. 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!