INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21090, 16 July 1938, Page 9

INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

By

H. V. MORTON

CllAl'THlt 2 THE SEVENTH WONDER 1 called on a man in Alexandria wno has studied the history and the antiquities ol the city. •'ls it possible to say where the Pharos oi Alexandria stood?’ I asked him. •‘Yes, 1 believe it is." he replied. "Archaeologists used to quarrel about this but it is now generally agreed that the Pharos stood on the site ol Qait Bey Fort. I’ll take you there to-morrow morning." Well, there were still a few hours oi daylight left, and perhaps you can imagine that 1 was sorely tempted to set off by myself the: and there for the Pharos of Alexandria, the Seventh Wondei oi the ancient world, has fascinated me since I was a schoolboy it was the father of all lighthouses, and has given its name to a lighthouse tn many European languages In Latin the word is pharus; in French it is phare; in Spanish and Italian it is taros, and the word pharos only recently disused in English is still to be found in most good English dictionaries. The Pharos was built at the entrance to the great harbour of Alexandria about 250 years before Christ, and ancient writers say that ships could pick up its beam nineteen miles out at sea As everyone who has sailed to Alexandria knows, the coast-line oi Egypt is so flat and low that you are almost on top of land before you see it: therefore the Pharos must have been high and its beam powerful. Lt is a pity that classical writers were so eager to admire the Pharos that they never explained very clearly how it was constructed. 1 suppose they thought that everyone knew this and they could not visualise a time when not one stone of it would be left upon another AH civilisations, except perhaps the present, find it difficult to imagine their extinction 1 think it is probably easier for a citizen oi London Paris or Berlin to imagine his city a heap oi ruins than it was for a citizen in the time oi Pliny to imagine a desolate Alexandria From the meagre details which

have come down to us, we believe that the Pharos was a 600 feet high building oi stone, formed of four or eight towers, each one smaller than the one below. It must have looked like a New York skyscraper standing in the sea. The cross oi St. Paul’s Cathedral is only 365 feet from the pavement, and the Flat-Iron Building in New York is only 290 feet high. But the country which produced the pyramids was obviously capable of building a skyscraper that would have astonished even this age of steel and concrete. There were said to be three hundred rooms in the Pharos for the accommodation ol the lighthouse staff and the garrison, and the whole building was magnificently decorated. The stones were held together, not with cement, but with molten lead An inclined railway led to the lower half of the building, up a slope so gradual that chariots could be driven along it. This was for donkeys laden with the resinous wood which was burned day and night on the top tower. It seems that when the fuel was unloaded it was taken to the summit of the building by machinery. Was this an ordinary windlass or was it the first recorded lift? But the most interesting problem about the Pharos is this: did the Alexandrians understand the use of the lens? When the Arabs conquered Egypt in the seventh century, the Pharos was still in working order. Their chroniclers write with maddening vagueness of the wonders oi the “great mirror’’ at the top of the buildings in which, they said, everything that happened at sea could observed, even as far off as Constantinople. This is obviously a story put about by someone in Egypt who wished someone in Constantinople to feel that he was under observation! ’’’he end of the Pharos came in this way. During the 9th century a Christian spy was sent from Constantinople to wreck the Pharos, because of its usefulness to Mohammed :n ■'hipping. He set about his task in a way which leaves no doubt about his nationality; he - eviuendy a countryman cf Ulysses. Having insinuated himself into the confidence of the Caliph Al-Walid,

he said that a great treasure of gold was concealed the lighthouse. There has never been a surer way of wrecking a building in the East! When the Arabs had almost demolished the Pharos, they appear to have detected the hoax. They tried to rebuild it in brick, but were unable to lift the great mirror back into position. This precious relic, whose existence to-day would have solved the mystery of the Pharos, fell from a great height and was shattered to pieces. Although neglected for centuries, the remains of the Pharos were visible m 1375. and if an earthquake had not tumbled them into the sea, they might still be in existence to-day.

In the morning my friend took me to Qait Bey Fort. It is a Mameluke fort standing on a rocky promontory to the east of the old harbour. It was built in the fift.enth century by Sultan Qait Bey. But there is another Arab story which says that the enormous mirror at the summit of Pharos could be turned to catch the sun’s rays and directed so as to burn ships at sea. The mirror was reported to be oi "transparent stone," which was surely glass. Putting these stories together, we seem to have a description of a telescope and a lens. When the Pharos was built, this rock was an island lying some way out in the sea The builders ol the lighthouse connected it with the mainland by a causeway which has now grown into a peninsula on which stands one of the most thickly populated districts of Alexandria. We walked through dusty, cavernous rooms in the old fort, peered through embrasures where cannon used to stand, and descended stone stairs, hearing every now and then the crash of waves on the north wall, which faces the open sea. We explored the vaults of the fort, where a series of ancient arches face the sea. and my companion pointed to the solid rock on which the fort is built. "I have no doubt that we are standing on the exact sport on which the Pharos was built," he said.. “Some of these huge stones may even have belonged to it. The Diamond rock, which lies over there to the north-east, and is now under the sea, was never large enough, as some have believed, to have held the Pharos. Soundings have proved that this must be the site.

“If we had a boat, I could show you Luge chunks of Aswan granite lying in the water, and built into the breakwater. These are remains of the granite columns which we know for certain formed a feature of the

lighthouse." Although Qait Bey Fort is not impressive in its decay, and few people ever visit it, I shall never forget the time I spent there, gazing down into the sea for a trace of the world’s Seventh Wonder.

It some rich Greek of Alexandria ev.r aches, as Greeks sometimes do, to erect a memorial, he might do worse than erect one to the work oi his distant countryman, the architect

Sostratus. who built the Pharos, and kindled a light which burns to-day on all the oceans of the world.

SONS OF THE PHARAOHS If you listened to the wireless relay from Cairo last month, during the wedding of the King of Egypt, you heard the chanting of the Koran from one of the great mosques of the city. There are more than eighty mosques in Cairo. Every week, on Friday, the words of Mohammed are intoned in them before a kneeling congregation, which prostrates itself until every man’s forehead touches the ground. For thirteen centuries Egypt has been a Mohammedan country. There are probably people who do not know that it was ever a Christian country When the Arabs invaded Egypt, in A.D. 639, they heard church bells ringing along the Nile Valley and across into Abyssinia. The whole land was covered with churches and monasteries; for the people of the Pharaohs had deserted their old gods, and had embraced Christianity with fervour. The huge temples, which had been built for the worship of the weird animal-headed deities of Egypt, were already falling into ruin in the third century. In some of them, it is true, the ancient faith lingered. A few old priests, unable to understand their own incantations, lived in deserted temples, feeding the sacred crocodiles from force of habit, and now and then bearing to the mouldering sanctuary some poor offering to place on the altar of the half-forgotten god. But in most of the temples up and down the Nile a space had been marked off, and the mighty sculptured columns plastered over to hide the stiff figures of the old gods; and in these churches Egyptian priests said Mass. The founder of the Church in Egypt was St. Mark, author of the earliest of the four Gospels. His life is clear at times, but is often tantalisingly obscure. It has been suggested that he was the son of Mary, who appears in the Gospels as “mother of Mark.” It is possible that it was in the upper chamber of her house in Jerusalem that the Last Supper was held John Mark may have been the young man with “a linen cloth cast about his naked body” who fled during the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. If he were not, why should he have mentioned this incident so graphically in Mark, Chapter 14, verses 51-52?

We know that St. Mark accompanied St. Paul and St. Barnabas on their first missionary journey. He left them at Perga, in Asia Minor, to return home for some reason which has never been discovered. This annoyed St. Paul, but does not seem to have affected St. Barnabas. Later on, when plans were being made for St. Pauls second journey. St. Barnabas suggested that they should again take St. Mark with them, but St. Paul would not agree. The Apostle felt so keenly about this that he parted company from his old friend and fellow worker. St. Paul chose a new assistant, Silas, and went into Asia Minor, while St. Barnabas and St. Mark journeyed to Cyprus. In Cyprus, St. Barnabas was murdered by the Jews of Salamis, but what happened to St. Mark is unknown. The Egyptians say that he took a ship to Alexandria, and founded a church there. He then accompanied St. Peter to Rome, and gleaned from him those vivid eye-witness touches which distinguish the Gospel according to St. Mark. It was in Rome, either at this

time or at some later period, that he was reconciled to St. Paul, who was then an old man, and near his death The later life of St. Mark is obscure. He is said to have returned to Alexandria, and to have been martyred there by being dragged over cobbled streets at the end of a rope He was killed by the enraged followers of the god Sera pis. \.ao objected to his denunciation of a forthcoming festival. The date of his martyrdom is given as April. A.D. 63 The body of St. Mark was buried on the sea-shore at Alexandria. In course of time a cathedral of St. Mark rose on the spot, but nothing is left to-day of this church, and even its site has been forgotten. During the Arab invasion of A.D 639 the cathedral was burned down, but was rebuilt later, in A.D. 838. It seems that the caliph plundered the church, and threatened to disturb the grave of the saint. There happened

to be a Venetian galley in the port Two Venetian merchants, Buono Malaniocco and Rustico de Torcello. hearing o£ the threat, persuaded the priests to allow them to take away the body of St. Mark in order to save it from desecration. The story goes that they placed the body in a large basket covered with herbs and pork, which the Moslems, of course, abhorred, and shouting out ■Pork!” at intervals, carried the relics of St. Mark safely aboard their galley They hoisted sail and made for Venice, where the body of the Evangelist was buried. The great Cathedral of St. Mark, which is the glory of Venice, was built over his grave. The seed sown by St. Mark bore rapid fruit. Egypt became a Christian country from the Delta to the Sudan. When the Arabs invaded the country, they were at first considerate to the Egyptians, whom they called Copts. This word should really be spelt Gypt. tor it is merely an Arable version of the Greek word for Egpyt. Copt (or Gypt) Is the word Egypt without the first syllable.

The Arabs found their Christian subjects useful as architects, craftsmen and book-keepers. They used the Copts, as the Turks used the Greeks when they captured Constantinople, to help them run the country, even opening to them some of the highest positions in the State. Persecution of the Copts broke out later, and continued for centuries. No Copt was allowed to ride a horse or a mule. AU Copts were forced to wear ridiculous clothes, and at one period they had to appear in public with huge crosses tied round their necks Large numbers of Copts renounced Christ and accepted Mohammed, and. marrying with the invaders, introduced into Arab veins a strain ot genuine ancient Egyptian blood. But there were always Copts who preferred death to a betrayal of the Faith These huddled together secretly in the Moslem cities, rarely marrying outside their own race;

they worshiped in dark little churches which were built with blind walls, in order to conceal them from the eyes of persecutors. As centuries went on, the Coptic majority became a small minority. One of the most interesting things about modern Egypt is that this small minority of Coptic Christians still exists; and perhaps less has been written about them in English than about any other Christian sect. At present there are about 14 million Moslems in Egypt and less than a million Copts. There is nothing outwardly to distinguish one from the other. I am sure that many people pay brief visits to Egypt, and never realise that there is any difference. Copts and Moslems wear the same kind of clothes, and both Arabic. Only by their names, and oy a small blue cross which is sometimes tattooed on the left wrist can you. detect Copts from Moslems. Once a week, however, their ways part. On Friday the Moslems go to the mosque; on Sunday the Copts go to their dark little churches where, with clouds of incense rising over the

altar, with choirs in white surplices beating triangles and clashing cymbals, these descendants of the people converted by St. Mark observe their ancient rites. And the Coptic language in which part of their service is spoken is the last relic of the language spoken oy the Pharaohs It is heard nowhere out in the Coptic churches on Sunday. The 900,000 odd Copts no- living in Egypt are more or less pure-blooded sons of the Pharaohs. Any ancient Egyptian blood claimed by the Moslem inhabitants of Egypt comes only through inter-marriage with Copts Thus the Copts of Egypt are me oldest race in the world to-day. with a continuous and unbroken history. Few of them are aware of this The Coptic Church, whose spiritual revival is many centuries overdue is sunk in lethargy and ignorance be-

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