Queer Things About Egypt | Page 6

miles away on the other side of Cairo. In the 'mounds'
which cover the ruins of Fustat just outside its gates, little dumps of
ancient Egyptian antiquities are found. I myself picked up a tiny image
of Knum, the Ram-headed god, there, when I was howking for remains
of Arab pottery. The Egyptian Babylon still has its Roman walls and
one great Roman gate, as fine as those of Rome.
Inside it is a beehive of Copts. The Coptic Babylon is almost an
underground city. The Copts built right over their streets as if they were
bees, though now they are beginning to leave a little more of them open
to the sky. And to reach their churches you always have to dive under a
house. These churches are very, very ancient, and go back to the days
when the churches were the particular object of Moslem persecution
and insult. They are always, moreover, enclosed in a fortress. Those

which are not in the ancient Roman citadel, are in ders1—or little
citadels of their own.
1 In Egypt the word Der generally signifies one of the old fortified
convents. But Mr. Ball, one of the most distinguished members of the
Survey Department of Egypt, in his report on the great Oasis points out
that the word is also applied by the natives to the Roman forts of the
Oasis, which possess no trace of ever having been used as convents.
One of them, called the Mo'allaka, or hanging church, because it is
built on to a Roman bastion, is among the most beautiful churches in
the world; it can be mentioned in the same breath as St. Mark's at
Venice or the Royal Chapel at Palermo, for the richness and perfect
harmony of its decorations. The original entrance, through an
underground passage, which the most savage persecutor would hesitate
to enter for fear of a stab in the darkness, is no longer used. In more
tolerant times the church has been given an approach of great beauty. In
the high wall near the entrance is a white marble Coptic stoup. You
enter an octagonal hall with old carved benches round its walls which
leads into a gracious courtyard, with a fountain like an old Sicilian
monastery and a pergola of vines. At its end are a noble flight of steps
and a handsome porch opening into a delightful inner court, like the
patios built at Tunis by the exiled Moors of Granada, light and bright,
throwing into high relief the old church to which it admits.
You open the door and are almost stunned by the effect. The Mo'allaka
is large for a Coptic church, especially when you consider the character
of its decorations, for it is lined all round with the most perfect Coptic
screens. Kait Bey, the chief builder of mediæval Cairo, four hundred
years ago had one imitated on a mosque pulpit. Even in his day this
cost him a thousand pounds. These Coptic screens are made of old dark
wood, whose polished surface is inlaid with discs of ivory, ebony, and
mother-of-pearl. Here they are extremely ancient, and their ivory discs
are carved as delicately as the ivory crucifixes and reliquaries in the
great days of Byzantine art. These old screens, which have Moresque
arches inserted at a later date to lead to the sanctuary, have the mellow
lines of antiquity. I suppose the chapels behind the beautiful screens

which back on the entrance wall are in theory for the women, who are
separated from the men in Coptic churches, for the Mo'allaka has not
the usual place allotted to women. One of the chapels contains a very
beautiful Byzantine Madonna painted before the Byzantines had lost
the roundness and softness of ancient Roman pictures.
This little old church has wonderful grace as well as wonderful softness
of colouring, and in its centre is a tall, long, narrow pulpit, made of old
marble, which would be like the ambones of the Aracoeli at Rome if it
were not supported on fifteen antique marble colonnettes instead of a
base, panelled with porphyry and serpentine. In the chapel to the right
of the sanctuary is an altar with a rich antique baldachin, a rare feature
in Coptic churches, and behind the screens on the right is another
antique church, less richly decorated, formed out of a room in the
Roman bastion.
I have seen seven antique Coptic churches in and around this Babylon.
The most perfect and important is Abu Sargeh, in whose crypt are
shown the vaults in which the Holy Family lay concealed during their
flight into Egypt. The most interesting is Abu Sefen, which preserves
the features of a primitive basilica. Babylon contains also the most
ancient Greek cathedral, well restored, built into another Roman
bastion, with