INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21186, 5 November 1938, Page 9

INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

By

H. V. MORTON

CHAPTER lb

WHERE DONKEYS EAT DATES

Until lecently it took fourteen days to reach Siwa from Cairo, but fey people ever went there because it is not much fun to be shot up at the end of such a journey. Now, however, that civilisation, in the form of desert patrol cars, can reach Siwa in two or three days, the once fierce Siwans are more or less tame. These curious people—there are about 5,000 of them—whose ancestors have for centuries been cut off from the world in this remote oasis, have at last realised that it is no good resisting the march of events. I found them remarkably polite. The first morning, when I looked out on Siwa from the verandah of the Government Rest House, I said to myself that I had never seen a more idyllic spot. Miles of green date palms stood motionless in the sunlight. Two brown boys were driving a herd of black goats across the sand to one of the springs. A flock of white pigeons suddenly rose from a palm grove and flew towards the town.

About a mile away stood the old town of Siwa, the craziest and most picturesque mud town you can imagine. The houses, built one on top of the other, climb the slopes of a conical hill. Their outside walls tower to a height of 200 feet. It is a curious African parody of a group of skyscrapers, though Siwa’s “mansion flats" are older than anything in New York. It was the custom in Siwa for a married son to build his house on top of his father’s house, so that each generation added a new layer to the town. This principle, carried out in mud for centuries, has resulted in a mound that looks like a bee-hive or an anthill. The streets wind up and round mostly in total darkness, like shafts in a coal mine. There were nine gates to the town, guarded by day and locked at night. With the coming of dusk, all the bachelors were turned out to spend the night in the unmarried quarters outside and were not admitted again until morning. Some years ago the old rabbit warren was condemned as unsafe, and its inhabitants were reluctantly persuaded to desert it and to build a new town round about. But the old hill rises in the middle, a relic of the curious social customs of this remote desert people. The Mamur, the chief Government

official, called to show the oasis to me. He was a tall, broad-shouldered Egyptian wearing a sun hat and a suit of drill. We set off across the sand in his car, and as we passed through the mud streets I asked him why so many bones, skulls and black pots were built into the walls and stuck up over the doors.

“That is to avert the Evil Eye,” he replied. "Everybody believes in it, and it is thought that anything unusual, such as a skull or a donkey’s leg-bone, or even a pot, will distract the attention of anyone with the Evil Epe." The men of Siwa are tall, slim and different in appearance from Egyptians, Bedouin or Sudanese. They are believed to be a Berber race that came in from the west many centuries ago. They have a secret language of their own, which is said to" be a Berber language. The women and children speak no other language, but the men can also speak Arabic.

There are numbers of Sudanese who were originally slaves, and some of the Siwans seem to have intermarried with them.

We crossed the wide central place, a blaze of sunlight, and visited the little market, where, under a palm leaf canopy, about twenty merchants squat with their modest stocks of merchandise spread on the ground in front of them. Most remarkable feature of Siwa is the water system. More than 200 springs come bubbling out of the earth. It is believed that an underground river, flowing from Central Africa, shoots water into Siwa through fissures in the rock. Some of these springs are fresh water, some salt, some sulphur; some are cold, some are warm. There is one that is supposed to be cold in morning and warm at midnight. We went to look at the most famous of the springs, the Fountain of the Sim, which was mentioned by Herodotus. It lies in the heart of a palm grove with brilliant orange-coloured dragon flies darting over it. It is a circular hole in the earth about fifty feet in diameter and about forty feet deep. The beautiful blue water is alive with silver air bubbles that come slowly to the surface from a bed of blue and green stalagmites. The masonry which lines the well—and all the springs are lined with massive stones —is of Roman date.

We visited many of the other springs, some of which gushed from the earth with great vigour. The overflow from every. spring is carried in water channels to irrigate the

groves and gardens. An elaborate system of water control has been perfected in the course of centuries. Each spring has its Guardian, a man with a book, who times the water that is allowed to run into the various gardens served by his spring. If you buy land in Siwa the waterright is included, but you can also buy water-rights without land. One of the most beautiful of the springs is called Tamousy. It rises in a grove of luxuriant tropical trees. It is the custom for a Siwan bride to swim in this spring on Her 'wedding eve. She walks through the palm groves with a group of twenty or thirty girls who solemnly group themselves round the dark pool. The bride then takes from her neck the “Virginity Disc,” which all young

girls wear until marriage. This is a heavy silver neck-ring with a pendant disc of thin silver attached to it about the size of a saucer. Disc and neck-ring are flung into the water and as soon as they have sunk to the bottom, the bride takes off her garments and dives into the spring. One small boy is generally allowed to be present at suchzceremonies. As soon as the ritual is over, he dives down and retrieves the “Virginity Disc,” which is preserved for the bride to hand on to her daughter. Siwa possesses nearly 200,000 of the best date palms in Egypt. The Mamur explained to me that the dates have various names, and are of different varieties. Some Siwans are so expert in date culture that

they can tell almost from which tree, certainly from which garden, a particular date has come. In the old days the dates were sold in a huge open market and sent to Egypt by Camel. It is a tradition that anyone can enter this market during the date harvest and eat as many dates as he likes. But he must not put one in his pocket! This market is still the great sight of Siwa, but the dates are dispatched no longer by camel, but by motor-lorry. One might say that the date is to Siwa as the olive is to the Mediterranean. The poorer people live almost entirely on dates. The trunks of the date palm provide the builder with wood. Palm wood is used as fuel. Fences are made of palm fronds and houses and huts are roofed with them. From

the fibre of the palm tree the women make beautiful closely woven mats and baskets. At a certain time of the year the date palms are tapped for sap, from which a potent drink called “Lubki” is made. The Siwan donkeys, which are remarkable for their strength and size, are said to owe their perfect condition to a diet of dates! It is curious to see these animals eating their daily rations of dates with obvious enjoyment.

THE HIDDEN SHRINE

About a mile from the town of Siwa is a village called Aghourmi which, like the old town of Siwa itself, is a mass of mud houses rising one above

the other. Like a huge mastless brown ship, the village lifts itself above a green sea of palm trees. I was anxious to explore it because its houses are built over the ancient temple of the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon, so famous of ancient times. It was here that the rr m-headed god pronounced on human affairs those judgments whose wisdom drew some of the most celebrated men of antiquity across the seas from Greece, and across the Libyan desert to the remote shrine. I had mentioned to the Mamur that I should like to see Aghourmi and, just as I was setting off one morning, a young man came riding on a donkey to say that the Sheik of Aghourmi was ready to conduct me round the village. A short drive through palm groves, where half-naked men climbed like monkeys among the crested tree-tops, brought me to the hill of Aghourmi. A man of middle age, wearing a white outer garment which is a survival of the Roman toga, and is to be seen all along the north-western shores of Egypt, was waiting in front of a mud house, obviously that of the big man of the village. And he was obviously the big man. We shook hands, and he politely motioned me towards the door of his house. Through the corner of my eye I caught sight of his women-folk excitedly peering down through a half-shut window; but I pretended not to notice them. Married women are more carefully guarded and are less visible in this oasis than in any part of Egypt.

We ascended a flight of mud stairs and emerged on a square roof exposed to the full blaze of the sun. The house reminded me of the tomb drawings and tomb models of the houses of Ancient Egypt. Several doors led from the roof to rooms built around it, and in one of them, whose shutters were drawn against the sun, we found a table covered with food. There were biscuits, sweet limes, pomegranates, a soft delicious kind of date, called Shengbel, which must be eaten straight from the tree, bananas and little plates of nuts. Two or three young men came in, th? sons of the house, and, after sitting for some time making polite conversation about nothing, I was asked to help myself to dates and pomegranates, while the Sheik performed the solemn ritual of tea making. Unlike the. Arabs and the Egyptians, who love coffee and drink it at all hours of the day and night, the Siwans love geen tea. The making of this tea is a stately ritual. It is a qpmpiment to be asked to pour *4 the

tea, but it is not etiquette for a newcomer to accept; he must throw up his hands in feigned dismay and say that he is unworthy to du so. The man who makes the tea is called the “Sultan,” and when Siwans gather together on social occasi ms they elect one of their number to be the “Sultan” of the party. Every “Sultan” believes that he is the best tea-maker in Siwa.

The Sheik first rinsed little glasses in boiling water from a kettle that stood on a brazier of charcoal. He then opened a chest that contained several compartments. One was full of green tea, one full of black tea, a third full of soft sugar and a fourth full of mint. He carefully and judiciously measured a small quantity of green tea, added a pinch or two of black tea and poured a little boiling water into the pot. He smelt the aroma and poured the whole brew away. His next effort was more successful. He added boiling water and the tea, which he sipped critically once or twice. At the first sip he appeared doubtful, and I half expected to see him pour it away again, but his second sip reassured him, and, with a grave nod of the head, he handed me a little glass full of the scalding liquid. I told him that it was delicious, although it was really too bitter to be pleasant. As soon as I had drunk the tea, the ceremony was repeated. A second glass was given to me, and this time the tea was sickly-sweet with sugar; When, with many compliments, I had drunk this, the tea-making took place for the third time. The third- glass was not only sweet but was flavoured with mint. It is etiquette always to drink at least three glasses. You must never refuse. Sometimes the host will offer six glasses or nine. (I am glad to say that this never happened to me!) The Siwans believe that tea is good for you; but should you feel ill, they recommend the eating of sweet limes. I was glad when the Sheik eventually led the way towards Aghourmi. The village, like Siwa, was found to be unsafe some years ago and is no longer occupied. It towered above us like an ant-hill or like something made of crumbling brown pie-crust. We ascended a path that led up to the one gate of the village, an entrance that for centuries was guarded day and night. The main street wound its way upwards between mud walls, losing itself now and then in an incredible ratrun of narrow tunnels leading to dark little cavelike houses inhabited now only by jackals and snakes. We emerged on

the ramparts where we had a superb view of the oasis. The feathery heads of date palms lay below us mile after mile, and beyond them the Libyan desert stretched to the horizon like a pale gold ocean. What interested me more than the warren of deserted houses were the remains, to be seen in the lowest stratum, of the temple of Jupiter Ammon. Where walls have collapsed, the splendid stones of an Egyptian temple are visible covered with smoke-blackened hieroglyphs and figures of gods a J goddesses. Some of these stones are as large as the stones of the Pyramids of Gizeh. I had forgotten to take an electric torch with me, but by the light of matches I managed, by mounting on the mass of rubble, to examine the stones. They looked to me like the remains of a Ptolemaic temple, but I am not sure of this. It is impossible to say how much of the temple lies hidden by the enormous mass of houses built all over and on top of it. No competent archaeologist has, I believe, ever examined these remains, and it would be worth while for the Egyptian Government to send someone to look at them. What remains of the temple of Jupiter Ammon has been untouched and invisible since the end of the Roman period. It may be that beneath this now deserted village are the remains of the shrine in which Alexander the Great put his questions to the Oracle, and, if so, their discovery would be one of the great Archaeological romances of our time. The Sheik told me that there are local stories of secret passages running from Aghourmi to the nowdestroyed temple at Omm Beyda, about a quarter of a mile away, w’here the Fountain of the Sun, which was mentioned by Herodotus, is still the most famous of all Siwa’s springs. There was a legend in antiquity that black sightless fishes lived in this deep spring and had some connection with the temple worship. I left the village of Aghourmi with the conviction that a more interesting and speculative site for excavation does not exist in Egyptian territory. Nothing is known about the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon except a few stray references scattered about ancient literature. The fanaticism of the inhabitants and the remoteness of Siwa made it impossible to examine the remains until recent times. Now that the evacuation of Aghourmi is complete, fame may await the archaeologist who is able to tear down the mud houses and find whatever may lie beneath them. (To be continued next week)

NEW INVENTIONS USED IN CAPRA FILM The candid microphone is the newest appliance in Hollywood’s motionpicture making. This latest development in wide-angle sound receiving was used for the first time in recording the Frank Capra production, “You Can’t Take It With You.” Its use was kept secret until the Raaio Corporation of America, whose engineers perfected what they term the “baby undirectional mike,” could manufacture instruments to meet the demand of other studios. The candid microphone “hears” every sound within an angle of 180 degrees—in other words, everything in front of it from extreme left to extreme right And this imaginary lateral line is a “well” of silence, behind which no sounds are recorded. Standard present-day microphones pick up sound within a narrow wedge, usually of about 60 degrees, and are sensitive to sounds behind them to varying extents. The candid microphone increases recording precision, and lessens microphone manipulation for dialogue spoken during lively action. While undirectional microphones are not new, the previous model was a ponderous object, weighing nearly nine pounds, and could be used only on huge sets. The candid microphone weighs less than two pounds and can be used on any type of picture set

FILM ASPIRANT’S BOGUS “FAN CLUB”

In its search for an actor to take the leading part in “Golden Eoyf’ Columbia has uncovered the unique plan of an amateur to secure the role by fair methods or foul. Several hundred letters poured into the studio urging the selection of a certain young player. The letters came from practically every section of America. But it happened he had been interviewed and informed that hs lacked the physical requirements of the prize-fighting violinist. Nevertheless there was a persistent widespread movement to have him cast for the leading role of Clifford Odets play. An investigation revealed that this player had organised a “fan club,” the enthusiasm of the members of which many a film luminary might envy. Despite their enthusiasm the player still has not the required physique, and studio officials, though pleased with the intense interest, have regretfully eliminated him as a “Golden Boy” candidate.