Queer Things About Egypt

Queer Things About Egypt
By Douglas Sladen
1911
PREFACE The Call of Egypt
CONTENTS
Queer Things About Egypt
INTRODUCTION
Cairo an Arab City of the Middle Ages
* PART I ANECDOTES ILLUSTRATING THE EGYPTIAN
CHARACTER
* CHAPTER I English as She is Wrote in Egypt
* CHAPTER II On the Humours of the Suffragi, the Egyptian Servant
* CHAPTER III How Foreigners Live in Cairo
* CHAPTER IV Queer Things About Cairo Society
* CHAPTER V The Woes of the Egyptian Housekeeper
* CHAPTER VI More about Agenoria's Servants
* CHAPTER VII Doing Business with Egyptians
* CHAPTER VIII The Pasha1
* CHAPTER IX The Naughty Princess

* CHAPTER X Chips from the Court
* CHAPTER XI The Man About Town in Egypt
* CHAPTER XII The Humours of the Country Egyptian
* CHAPTER XIII The Gyps at Home
* CHAPTER XIV On the Humours of Egyptian Hotels
* CHAPTER XV The Egyptian's Idea of Serving His Country
* CHAPTER XVI Of the Humours of Egyptian Donkey-boys
* CHAPTER XVII On the Most Interesting Things to Buy in Egypt if
you have not much to Spend
* PART II THE LIFE AND CITIES OF THE NILE: FROM
ALEXANDRIA TO ASSUAN
* CHAPTER XVIII Landing at Alexandria EXTRACT FROM "THE
SPHINX," JANUARY 16, 1909
* CHAPTER XIX Some Reflections on the Forgotten Cleopatra THE
END OF CLEOPATRA
* CHAPTER XX The Egyptian State Railways
* CHAPTER XXI Damietta
* CHAPTER XXII Rosetta
* CHAPTER XXIII Abûkir and the Battle of the Nile
* CHAPTER XXIV A Visit to the Fayum, the Land of a Thousand
Days
* CHAPTER XXV Assyut and Abydos

* CHAPTER XXVI Crossing the Libyan Desert to the Great Oasis
* CHAPTER XXVII The Marvels of the Great Oasis
* CHAPTER XXVIII Cleopatra's Temple of Denderah
* CHAPTER XXIX Luxor, the City of the Lotus-eater
* CHAPTER XXX The Tombs of the Pharaohs at Thebes
* CHAPTER XXXI Hundred-pyloned Thebes 1
* CHAPTER XXXII Three Great Temples—Esna, Edfu, and
Komombo
* CHAPTER XXXIII Assuan, the City of the Idle Wealthy
* CHAPTER XXXIV The Great Dam of Assuan
* CHAPTER XXXV Elephantine
* CHAPTER XXXVI Philæ the Melted Pearl
* CHAPTER XXXVII The Humours and the Beauties of the Nile as
seen from Cook's Steamers
* CHAPTER XXXVIII Life at Luxor
* CHAPTER XXXIX The Ruins of Karnak
* CHAPTER XL APPENDIX Pierre Loti's Mistakes about Egypt
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

QUEER THINGS ABOUT EGYPT
By DOUGLAS SLADEN

AUTHOR OF "EGYPT AND THE ENGLISH; "THE TRAGEDY OF
THE PYRAMIDS"; "THE SECRETS OF THE VATICAN"; "THE
JAPS AT HOME"; "QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN," ETC., ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTY-FIVE INTIMATE PICTURES OF
COUNTRY LIFE IN UPPER EGYPT FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY
THE AUTHOR AND A MAP
PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY LONDON: HURST
& BLACKETT, LIMITED 1911
THE BANNER OF THE PROPHET AT THE FEAST OF BAIRAM.
Frontispiece.
DEDICATED TO MARK BARR WHO CARRIES A BATON IN HIS
KNAPSACK
PREFACE The Call of Egypt
EGYPT has two calls—one for England and one for all the world. To
England she is a brand snatched from the burning. A century and more
ago, in the two battles of Abûkir, by land and sea, Nelson and
Abercromby saved her from becoming an Algeria; and less than a
generation ago English blood and treasure rescued Egypt from rebellion,
rapine, and massacre, in a long-drawn series of battles from Alexandria
to Omdurman and Omdebrekat.
To the land it had rescued the Pax Britannica gave the priceless gifts of
security of person and property, and unfailing and equitably distributed
water, till the whole land smiled as it had never smiled since it lost the
Pax Romana.
Therefore Egypt has an interest for the Briton beyond other nations.
But Egypt has also a double call for all the world—the call of an
enchanting climate, and the call of the Motherland. The expulsion from
Eden has fallen most heavily upon Europe, for there winter stalks in its
naked ferocity (except on the playground of Switzerland), and there the

millions exposed to its malignity are people of sensitive organisations,
which expand like flowers in the sunshine. In Canada the cold is crisp,
with unsullied skies; in Northern Asia mankind is satisfied with a
sufficiency of food and a stove to sleep on. For the Englishman and the
Frenchman, to winter in Egypt is to winter in Paradise—to a few of
them it is only in Egypt that they can live through the winter at all,
without the fear of tropical scourges before their eyes.
Assuan is on the northern horizon of the tropics; Herodotus thought it
stood on the tropic line, having been shown a deep, deep well, still to
be seen, where the sun was said to shine to the very bottom at the noon
of a certain day. Yet Assuan has