Queer Things About Egypt | Page 2

riding, and his sailing, in the most perfect winter climate in the world; at the other he can wander through the most extensive ruins of antiquity in the next most perfect climate. If he is satisfied with sunshine, without uniformity of temperature, in Cairo he can have the gayest of winter Society, combined with all sorts of sport and the contemplation of monuments innumerable in a medi?|val Arabian citya���the capital of the Caliphs, against whom the Crusades were waged.
Of all the climates of the world there is none to equal the winter climate of Upper Egypt: it is so dry, so genial, so equable, so wedded to blue skies and pageants of sunrise and sunset.
Such is the call of Egypt's climate. There remains the call of the Motherland.
I do not mean by this that any of usa���except perhaps the not too reputable gipsiesa���are descended from the Ancient Egyptians, or that our countries were colonised by them. Not one inch of Europe was ever included in the Empire of the greatest of the Pharaohs. But civilisation makes us all one country, and civilisation was born in Egypt. There is no historical and attested antiquity to compare with that of Egypt and Chald?|a. The Chinese and Japanese use large figures; but their proofs get shaky no further back than the Middle Ages. The world-power of Babylon was as short-lived as that of Athens. But in Egypt we have documentary proofs for at least five thousand years. We need take nothing from hearsay; for in their marvellous system of hieroglyphics the Pharaohs and their subjects wrote on every temple and tomb the date and circumstances of its erection, the story of its founder, and the uses to which it was to be put. The Carthaginians and Etruscans frankly borrowed their civilisation from the Egyptiansa���many of their tombs might have been hewn out by Egyptian artificers, and they are rich in Egyptian jewels and implements. Through them, as well as direct, the Greeks and Romans felt the influences of Egypt.
Of what character are the remains left by the Pharaohs in the fifty centuries during which they were laying the basis of civilisation? Tombs and temples, and the tiniest minuti?| of household implements and personal ornaments, but hardly one house that was not built of mud. From their houses we learn little except the antiquity of the vaulted ceiling. All we know of their dwellings we learn from their tombs, when they had left off building mountains of stone, and taken to hewing mausoleumsa���some of the dimensions of cathedralsa���out of the living rock. It would be worth while going to Egypt, were it only to see the tombs of the Pharaohs at Thebes, and of their viziers at Memphis, which have the whole life of ancient Egypt illuminated on their smooth limestone walls, and have yielded furniture (put into them for the use of the doubles of the dead) which helps us to picture almost every detail in the domestic life of ancient Egypt.
For perfect preservation the temples of Egypt have no rivals among monuments of high antiquity. If the religion of the Pharaohs were to be revived the Edfu temple would only need the attentions of the upholsterer. For majesty, the ruins of others, such as Karnak's, a mile and a half round, are hard to match, and they possess the extraordinary interest of having all their uses marked in plain figures on their walls. Everything has its hieroglyphic explanation painted on it.
There are few more impressive moments in your life than when you enter for the first time a perfect temple of ancient Egypt, with every foot of its vast interior sculptured and painted with the mythologies of gods and men.
There are somea���and I am one of thema���who feel the call of the City of the Caliphs as strongly as the call of the temples of Karnak and tombs of Thebes. In the Arab city at Cairo you seem to be walking in Bagdad or Granada and back in the Middle Ages. There is such a bewildering succession of antique mosques, tombs, palaces, fountains, and baths, culminating in the domed and minareted tombs of the Caliphs on the edge of the Eastern Desert and the mosque-crowned citadel of Saladin.
That is the white side of the shield. If the Egyptian had as much sense as the Greeka���out of Greecea���there would be no other. The Greek knows when he is well off. He is as willing to live under other people's governments as the Jew, if those governments can ensure him equitable taxation, respect for his property, and good conditions for his commerce. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks were quite willing to put up with the government of the late Sultan of Turkey to be allowed to trade in Constantinople and the Asia Minor ports.
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