40

THEIR STRUCTURE AND AGE.

labour and heavy cost, the result exhibited merely the weakness of the foiled attempt.

Of the smaller pyramids of inferior elevation, I was chiefly interested in the ruins of that which was built by the royal daughter of Cheops with the gold of her lovers. This reflection occurred to me: "What might in this age be built by such sacrifices?" Such antediluvian gallantry presupposes antediluvian attractions as well as equally gigantic darts of love. What imagination can construct sufficiently colossal images of it? The text of Herodotus is an interesting contribution to the lost giants' chronicle of antiquity.

Whether Herodotus is right in attributing the queen of the pyramids to Cheops, or Manetho, who ascribes it to Pharaoh Suphis, archaeologists have not yet determined, although, in a recently discovered chamber, the name of the latter has been deciphered from inscribed hieroglyphics. Still it is gratifying to consider, like Herodotus, the three great pyramids as having a family connection, for Cephren was the brother of Cheops, and Mykerinos Cheops' son. To these may further be added the partially destroyed lovers' pyramid of the daughter of Cheops.

Herodotus has furnished us with a highly interesting memorandum of the cost of the building of the pyramid of Cheops, which, in his time, was still found inscribed upon the flat marble covering of that pyramid. According to this, a hundred thousand men, during a period of thirty years, were occupied in its construction, and consumed in that time 600 talents' worth (somewhat more than 225,000l.) of onions, cabbages, and radishes.

What the positive age of its construction may be, whether the 30th century before Christ or the 40th, or still earlier.* Bunsen and Lepsius will, doubtlessly, soon determine from the most satisfactory data yet extant.

The hieroglyphics of the pyramids, even those only of the two largest, which Abd Allatif says, probably with Oriental exaggeration, would have filled in their transcription ten thousand leaves, although, subsequently, they have been so frequently overlooked, will also, it is expected, be opened to the learned world by these, the most recent inquirers.

It was simple, yet natural, for pious pilgrims to have very early considered the pyramids as the granaries of Joseph. Gregory of Tours, in the 6th century, even explained their mode of structure from this designation of their uses. Thus, he says, they are built narrow above, that the grain should be thrown in through a narrow aperture, whereas, below, they had capacity to contain vast quantities. Even science itself seemed to substantiate the conjectures of piety; for the Greek word, pyros, which signifies wheat or corn, recurs in the word pyramid.

THE COLOSSAL SPHINX.

41 I must mention here a surprise I met with at the very entrance of the pyramid of Cheops. There, in gay colours, flaunts the hieroglyphic inscription with which Lepsius and his coadjutors recently celebrated the birthday of King Frederic IV. of Prussia. It is a most appropriate embodiment of a festal idea. Germany may be as proud, as it will naturally rejoice, if the expectations of the results of the Prussian expedition be realised; if a light, at once clear and remarkable, shall be thrown upon the mysteries of a former world, here upon the banks of the Nile, through the liberality of a German prince, and the skill of patient German investigation. Then will this inscription be viewed by the latest ages with gratitude and respect.

It

After walking round the pyramid (which took me a quarter of an hour to accomplish), I inspected the colossal Sphinx, which the sand of the Desert has swallowed with its voracious jaws, excepting only the head. This genial creation forms a worthy terinination to the groups of architectural wonders: it should not, however, be viewed too closely ; for then the mutilations, especially the missing nose, disturb the harmony of the whole. We cannot now repeat, with Abd Allatif, seems to smile and to look kindly down upon us." Yet, in spite of all these disfigurements, we can yet comprehend the admiration which even Denon, the most competent of critics, has bestowed upon the Sphinx, and especially upon the graceful and gentle expression of the entire head, as well as the life-like delicacy and loveliness of the mouth. To the question, What was the most wonderful of all that he had seen? Abd Allatif might well reply, "Abu'Chaul's face." And even Denon says, that, at the period of such a work, art must have attained a high degree of perfection, and that it is unjust to regard the colossal size of this statue with astonishment merely, for the perfection of its details is even still far more admirable.

The head of this gigantic statue, hewn out of a single block, is about 20 feet long. According to Pliny, King Amasis is entombed within it; but, according to the inscription in hieroglyphics, its originator was Pharaoh Thotmes IV., in the 15th century before Christ, whom it was intended also to represent. That in fact between it and the pyramids there was a subterranean connection which was made available for oracular purposes by the priests, who thereby could get into its head, future inquiries will make more apparent.

The endeavour made by the French expedition to free this colossus from its sandy grave would have been long since renewed, were it not to be apprehended that the Desert would again, speedily, inexorably reclaim its prey.

*It is thus that the Arabs call this Sphinx. of astonishment, or properly, father of astonishment.

Abu'Chaul means worthy

Intending to make my visit to the southern group of pyramids, as well as to the ruins of Memphis, a special excursion, I now returned direct to Cairo. My dragoman, who had been so frequently to the pyramids, led me through a high wheat-field, in ignorance of the proper way, and this he excused with the observation that the paths changed yearly in consequence of the inundations of the Nile.

But I have forgotten my leave-taking of my guides the Bedouins. I paid five of them. They had scarcely quitted us when they sat themselves down to gamble. My dragoman informed me that it was their custom to gamble on until all the perquisites fell to the share of one individual.

Early in the afternoon I was again at my Casa Pini. The following day I felt extremely fatigued in my lower extremities, occasioned, I believe, by nothing more than the importunate and officious services of my Bedouins, which led me to make very unnecessary haste. My dragoman, who followed after more slowly and without help, felt no similar inconvenience.

The day before my excursion on the Nile to Terraneh I met with a little adventure. I called to visit Mr. von L., who was not at home; but his little mis-shapen crafty sister-in-law played the joke of conducting me to the apartment of his wife, who sat in the midst of eight Oriental and indeed purely Levantine females. M. von L. had previously told me that he himself durst not visit the apartment of his wife when she received the harem of a Pasha or any other grandee. I was therefore not a little surprised to be introduced suddenly into this circle, and was still more so when, upon my entrance, these ladies rose simultaneously from the divan where they were sitting with crossed legs, and stepped down to receive me standing. I subsequently learnt that this courtesy is a general rule. I call it courtesy, but it is in intimate connection with the profound respect which both by law and custom, woman pays to man in the East.

Amongst these ladies there were several very pretty faces. The full contour of their forms reminded me of the much-praised Rebecca, whose significant name (fat) in the taste of the East even yet indicates charms of a peculiar character. The one sitting nearest to me understood a little Italian. I expressed to her my astonishment that the ladies received me unveiled. She replied that they had nothing to fear from us Franks, they regarded us as well behaved persons. I did not know exactly if this was intended to be a flattering compliment. "Look," continued she, "there is one who has already veiled herself; but she is the ugliest of all:" and this was really the case.

With what splendour were these ladies dressed! All of them wore diamonds, and I was especially attracted by a crescent which

HABITS OF THE LADIES.

43

glittered upon a beautiful brow. She who wore it hastened to take it off that I might more closely admire it.

Thus the Mahometan women wear their crescent as the Christians do their cross, and as Jewesses wore their golden crown in the form of the city of Jerusalem; hence we see that the vain ornaments of women have been every where made to resemble their most significant religious symbol.

The long tresses of these ladies, which are braided in broad plaits, were no trifle. On each of them more than a thousand gold pieces were suspended. When the seis, gallant as he ought to be, throws his arm around the lady as she sits upon the ass, it is not at all surprising that he casts a sly side glance upon the head of the gentle rider; indeed, one of these very ladies whom I met at M. von L.'s lost several of these coins upon her ride homewards. These tresses are not always false or artificial. It is well known that Oriental ladies devote the most careful attention to their long and beautiful hair. I might refer in confirmation to the testimony of a most authentic witness, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who assures us that she has nowhere seen handsomer heads of hair than in the East. She says, with emphasis, "I counted upon one lady a hundred and ten long tresses, and all of them natural." She also adds, that all kinds of beauty are more general in the East than with us. Opinions, however, upon this point will differ.

We may, nevertheless, observe in the rich ornaments with which both the beautiful and the ugly adorn themselves in the East, that the misery wherein they pine is at least a splendid one; for the ladies of abolitionist Germany would doubtless consider the social position of the ladies of this country a misery.-I speak especially of the ladies of the harem, in their prison-like exclusion from public life, from intellectual cultivation, and even from the light of the sun. But nothing can well be a greater source of wretchedness than their being constrained to share the possession of their husband with others. Woman will sacrifice her all not to have a rival; and if she spring from a more distinguished family than her husband, she binds him by the fear of her relatives' revenge. It must not, however, be thought that here even two or more wives dwell together in a harem ; so far the arrangement does not extend. People of the lower classes, when, as is not often the case, they have more than one wife, are always anxious to obtain for them separate apartments.

Notwithstanding all this, the women in the East have perhaps greater power over their husbands than with us. We know how the Oriental clings to enjoyment, how he dreams away his most agreeable hours in the sanctuary of his domestic dwelling-this unapproachable asylum, and how he seeks to enhance the splendour

44

WOMEN IN THE EAST.

of his establishment in nothing more than in the splendour of his harem and the ornaments of his women. Wives have here also certain legal rights, with regard to their husbands, which cannot be made so legally valid elsewhere; and at the present moment married plaintiffs possess here their main stay in the daughter of Mehemet Ali, the widow of that notorious defterdar whom his own father-in in-law caused recently to be poisoned whilst governor of Señaar.*

Whilst the Mahometan has considerable doubts if he may ascribe as rational a soul to woman as to himself, he thinks himself the more bound to mark with consideration her corporeal eidolon: whence it happens that even upon dismissing their harem, as Mehemet Ali recently proposed doing, they by no means require that the ladies should remain unmarried. It presents a strong contrast to our manners, that it should be considered a high honour to obtain a wife from the harem of Mehemet Ali. It was a matter of honourable competition amongst the grandees of his court.

Every Oriental would give Madame de Staël the same answer as Napoleon, who, when she asked him who was the first woman in the world, the reply was, "She who is most frequently a mother." As it was in the East four thousand years ago, at the time of the tendereyed Leah and the beautiful Rachel (Gen. xxix. 17), so is it now. The beautiful but unfruitful Rachel is unhappy, and envious of Leah's maternity, in spite of her "tender eyes" (Gen. xxx. 1). Besides, Oriental wives, and especially those of the Bedouins and the Fellahs, enjoy an enviable privilege in escaping the fulfilment of the threat delivered to Eve, "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children" (Gen. iii. 6). They therefore know nothing of European childbed. It is nothing extraordinary for a female, with a new-born infant in her

* I heard many stories told of this remarkable man, Mohammed Bey, usually spoken of as the defterdar. He generally had as companions at Cairo upon his divan, a lion and a tigress, both unchained. His features are said also to have closely resembled those of a tiger. His visiters he likewise received in this uncomfortable society, which necessarily led to more than one adventure.

His heartless ferocity towards one of his black wives, whom he shot with the pistol at his girdle on account of some trivial neglect, produced a very dangerous mutiny of his black body-guard. They would have laid instant hands upon him, had he not escaped by a side-room, whence he called into the garden for help. Ibrahim Pasha helped him out of the difficulty with a battalion of soldiers; but not one of the guard yielded before he was shot down.

I must give an instance of his justice. A milk-woman complained of a soldier who denied having drunk a glass of her milk. The defterdar asked when the soldier had drunk the milk; and hearing that it was but a few minutes since, he ordered the soldier's body to be ripped open. The milk was found, and the woman was paid. This is, indeed, making an example.