SECTION III.
FROM THE SQUARE TO THE SOUTHERN QUARTERS.
Route:—By the Place St. Catherine and Pompey’s Pillar to the Mahmoudieh Canal, taking the Karmous Tram (Green Lozenge). The Ragheb Pasha Tram (Red Crescent) and the Moharrem Bey tram (Red Circle) also go from the Square to the Canal. There is also the “Circular” Tram (Green Triangle) which crosses the three lines just mentioned, on its course from Cairo Railway Station to the Docks. There is a carriage road along the Canal.
Chief points of Interest:—Pompey’s Pillar, Kom es Chogafa Catacombs, the Canal.
The Southern Quarters are neither smart nor picturesque. But they include the site of Rhakotis, the nucleus of ancient Alexandria, and preserve some remarkable antiquities (see pp. 7, 18). Here too are the churches and schools of the various religious and political bodies (see p. [211]).
We start from the south side of the Square, and immediately reach the Place St. Catherine, a triangular green. Here is the traditional site of St. Catherine’s martyrdom, whence she was transported to Mount Sinai by angels. But the legend only dates from the 9th cent. and it is unlikely that the saint ever existed (see p. [46]). Franciscans settled here in the 15th cent. and built a church that has disappeared. In 1832 Mohammed Ali granted land to the Roman Catholics, and the present Cathedral Church of St. Catherine was begun. It fell down while it was being put up, but undeterred by the omen the builders persisted, and here is the result. Gaunt without and tawdry within, the Cathedral makes no attempt to commemorate the exquisite legend round which so much that is beautiful has gathered in the West; St. Catherine of Alexandria is without grace in her own city. The approach to the church has however a certain ecclesiastic calm.—Behind (entered from Rue Sidi el Metwalli) is the Catholic Archbishop’s Palace; the wayside tomb of the Mohammedan Saint Sidi el Metwalli, a prior arrival, abuts into his Grace’s garden.
Left of the Cathedral is another in equally bad taste—the Cathedral of the Greek Community (Greek Orthodox) dedicated to the Annunciation. The Schools of the Community are close to it.
Left, after leaving the Place St. Catherine:—Rue Sidi el Metwalli, following the line of the ancient Canopic Way; it leads past the Attarine Mosque, which is worth looking at. In the past, buildings of greater importance stood on this commanding site. Here was a church to St. Athanasius, dedicated soon after his death (4th cent.). In the Arab Conquest (7th cent.) the church was adapted into a great mosque, square in shape like the Mosque of Ibn Touloun at Cairo, and stretching some way to the north of the present building; travellers mistook it for the tomb or the palace of Alexander the Great. In it stood an ancient sarcophagus, weighing nearly seven tons. The English, informed that Alexander had once lain here, took the sarcophagus away when they occupied Alexandria in 1801. (see p. [88]). The French protested, and the sheikhs of the Mosque, deeply moved, came down to the boat to bid the relic farewell. The sarcophagus is now in the British Museum, and has proved to belong to the native Pharaoh Nekht Heru Hebt. B.C. 378.—The present Mosque is wedge shaped with a minaret at the point; a good little specimen of modern Mohammedan architecture. It has a second facade in the Rue Attarine, (Scent Bazaar) whence its name. Inside is the Tomb of Said Mohammed (13th cent.), a friend of Abou el Abbas (p. [126]).—Beyond it the road becomes the Rue Rosette (see Section I); right is the American Mission Church and the Cairo Station.
Right after leaving the Place:—district inhabited by the Armenian community (see p. [212]). Their church is simple and rather attractive, and has the projecting western vestibule characteristic of Armenian architecture, e.g. of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Etchmiadzine. In the grave yard are monuments of Nubar Pasha by Puech (see p. [155]), and of Takvor Pasha. In the grounds of the school, a black basalt sphinx.
Straight ahead after leaving the Place: is the Rue Abou el Dardaa. In a turning out of it to the right (Rue Prince Moneim) in the grounds of a florist named Mousny, are some remains of the Old Protestant Cemetery.—The burials are of a later date than those at St. Saba (p. [106]). The most interesting is the Tomb of Henry Salt. Salt, a vigorous but rather shady Englishman with an artistic temperament, first came to these parts in 1809, when he was sent on a mission to Abyssinia. Six years later he became Consul General and fell in with the financial plans of Mohammed Ali (p. [90]), and acquiesced in his illegal monopolies. He was an ardent archaeologist of the commercial type and got concessions for excavating in Upper Egypt, offering the results, at exorbitant rates, to the British Museum. After much haggling the Museum bought his collection in 1823. He died near Alexandria in 1827. The quaint inscription on his tomb says:—
His ready genius explored and elucidated the Hieroglypics (sic) and other antiquities of this country. His faithful and rapid pencil and the nervous originality of his untutored senses conveyed to the world vivid ideas of the scenes that had delighted himself.
Some of the tombs are hidden among plants and ferns. The Cemetery was once much larger; the road has cut through it.
At the end of the Rue Abou el Dardaa, where the tram turns, is the Mosque of Amr. Here probably stood the Mosque of Mercy which the conqueror Amr ordered to be built where he had sheathed his sword after the recapture of the city in 643 (see p. [57]).
We turn right for a few yards, along a road that follows the line of the vanished Arab Walls (p. [81]). Then to the left by the big Italian schools. The tram has now entered the ancient district of Rhakotis.
“POMPEY’S PILLAR” and the TEMPLE OF SERAPIS.
Pompey’s Pillar etc.
As often happens in Alexandria, history and archaeology fail to support one another. Ancient writers do not mention “Pompey’s Pillar,” but they tell us a great deal about the buildings that stood in its neighbourhood and have now disappeared. This shapeless hill was from early times covered with temples and houses. Long before Alexander came it was the citadel of Rhakotis (p. [7]). Osiris was worshipped here. Then with Ptolemy Soter it leaps into fame. Osiris is modified into Serapis (p. [18]), and the hill, encased in great bastions of masonry was built up into an acropolis on whose summit rose the God’s temple. Under Cleopatra it gained additional splendour. The great library of Alexandria had been burnt in the Caesarian war, and the queen began a new collection which she attached to the Serapeum. Here for four hundred years was the most learned spot on the earth. The Christians wiped it out. In 391 the Patriarch Theophilus (p. [50]) led a mob against the temple, sacked it, and broke the statue of the God. It is impossible that the books should not have perished at the same time: they were arranged in the cloisters that surrounded the temple (see below) so that the mob had to pass them to reach its central prey. The monks now swarmed over the hill and built a church to St. John the Baptist in the gutted shrine. Here were the head quarters of Theophilus’ nephew, Cyril (p. [51]) and hence his supporters issued to murder Hypatia at the other end of the town (415). With the invasion of the Arabs the darkness increases. The library had already disappeared (the legend accusing them of burning it has the flimsiest foundations), but they did plenty of harm in other ways: one of the Arab governors threw a quantity of columns into the sea in the hope of obstructing a hostile fleet. When the Crusaders visited Egypt (15th cent.) the original scheme of the Acropolis had vanished, and their attention was caught by this solitary pillar. The Crusaders were no scholars but they had heard of Pompey, so they called the pillar after him, and said that his head was enclosed in a ball on the top. (see Belon’s View p. [83]). The error has been perpetuated and the visitor must remember, firstly that the pillar has nothing to do with Pompey and secondly that it is a subordinate monument that the accident of time has preserved: it is a part and a small one of the splendours of the Temple of Serapis.
The following remains can be visited (see Plan 144).
(i). “Pompey’s Pillar.” 84 feet high and about 7 thick; made of red granite from Assouan. An imposing but ungraceful object. Architecture has evolved nothing more absurd than the monumental column; there is no reason that it should ever stop nor much that it should begin, and this specimen is not even well proportioned. The substructure is interesting. It is made up of blocks that have been taken from older buildings. On the eastern face (nearest turnstile) is a block of green granite with an inscription in Greek in honour of Arsinoe, the sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus (p. [14]). On the opposite face (upside down in a recess) is the figure and hieroglyph of Seti I (B.C. 1350), suggesting the great age of the settlement on Rhakotis.
Why and when was the pillar put up?
Probably to the Emperor Diocletian, about A.D. 297. There is a four line Greek inscription to him on the granite base on the western side, about 10 feet up. It is illegible and indeed invisible from the ground. Generations of scholars have worked at it with the following result:—
“To the most just Emperor, the tutelary God of Alexandria, Diocletian the invincible: Postumus, prefect of Egypt.”
The formidable Emperor (p. [46]) had crushed a rebellion here and was a god to be propitiated; the pillar, erected in the precincts of Serapis, would celebrate his power and clemency and presumably bore his statue on the top.—There is another theory: that the column was dedicated after the triumph of the Christians in 391 and glorifies the new religion; if this is so it must itself have previously been pagan, for by this date the Alexandrians had not the means or the power to erect a new monument of such a size.
(ii). The Temple of Serapis. West of the Pillar, reached by a staircase, are long subterranean galleries, excavated in the rock and lined with limestone. These were probably part of the Serapeum—basements of some sort—and enthusiastic visitors have even identified them with the library where the books were kept; in them are some small semi-circular niches of unknown use. Some marble columns stand on the ground above.—South of the Pillar, near the Sphinxes, are more passages, lined with cement; these too may have been part of the temple. All is conjectural, and the plan of the Serapeum, as we gather it from classical writers, can in no way be fitted in with existing remains. According to them, it was rectangular, and stood in the middle of a cloister, with each of whose sides it was connected by a cross-colonnade. The temple consisted of a great hall and an inner shrine. The architecture was probably Greek; certainly the statue was—made of blue-black marble (p. [19]), the work of Bryaxis.
(iii). The Temple of Isis. Isis, wife of Osiris, was equally united to his successor Serapis, and had in Ptolemaic times her temple on the plateau. North of the Pillar are some excavations that have been identified with it.
(iv). Two Sphinxes. Found in the enclosure and set up south of the Pillar. Of Assouan granite.
(v). Fragments of a Frieze. These, magnificently worked in granite, lie on the slope east of the Pillar; we pass them on the way up. Date:—about 1st cent. A.D. They may have belonged to the great entrance gate of the temple enclosure. He who meditates on them for a little may recapture some idea of the shrine. Note the Pillar itself so suggests vanished glory and solidity.
This concludes the remains. They are disappointing for so famous a site, but there is one satisfaction: this is the actual spot. Long in doubt, it has been identified by the statues and inscriptions that have been found here; they are now in the Museum; see Rooms 6, 12, and 16.
Just beyond the enclosure of Pompey’s Pillar we leave the tram route and turn to the right, reaching in ten minutes the Kom es Chogafa Catacombs.
CATACOMBS OF KOM ES CHOGAFA.
Through the turnstile (5 piastres) is modern asphalt laid down to preserve the subterraneans from wet. Left, four fine sarcophagi of purplish granite. Above, the original level of the hill, which has been cut down by quarrying and excavations; in its slopes are some cemented passages, antique but uninteresting. On the top of the hill, a mosaic of black and white stones, much broken away. The entrance to the catacombs is down the larger of the two glassed well-shafts.
The Catacombs of Kom es Chogafa (“Hill of Tiles”) are the most important in the city and unique anywhere: nothing quite like them has been discovered. They are unique both for their plan and for their decorations which so curiously blend classical and Egyptian designs; only in Alexandria could such a blend occur. Their size, their picturesque vistas, their eerie sculptures, are most impressive, especially on a first visit. Afterwards their spell fades for they are odd rather than beautiful, and they express religiosity rather than religion. Date—about the 2nd cent., A.D. when the old faiths began to merge and melt. Name of occupants—unknown. There is a theory that they began as a family vault which was developed by a burial syndicate. They were only discovered in 1900.
The scheme should be grasped before descending; there are three stories, the lowest is under water. (See Plan p. [148]).
Kom es Chogafa - Plan of Chief Chambers
First Story .............
Second Story _________
A Well Staircase
B Vestibule
C Rotunda
D Banquet Hall
E Staircase
F Vestibule
G i ii iii Central Tomb
H Passage
I Tomb Chamber
J Gallery
K Square Well
L Hall of Caracalla
M Gallery of Painted Tomb
The Staircase (A) is lit from a well, down which the dead bodies were lowered by ropes.—It ends at the Vestibule (B). Here are two semi-circular niches, each fitted with a bench and elegantly vaulted with a shell—a classical motive unknown to the art of ancient Egypt. Close by is the Rotunda (C): in its centre is a well, upon whose parapet stand 8 pillars, supporting a domed roof. A circular passage runs round the well.—Left from the Rotunda is the Banquet Hall (D), where the friends and relatives ate ceremonially in memory of the dead. It is a gloomy scene. Here, cut out of the limestone, are the three couches where they reclined upon mattresses; the table in the middle has disappeared; it was probably of wood. Pillars support the roof.—From the Rotunda a Staircase (E) goes down to the second story; the amazing Central Tomb is now revealed; weird effects can be got by adjusting the electric lights. The Staircase is roofed by a shell ornament; half-way down, it divides on each side a thing that looks like a prompter’s box; this masks yet another staircase that descends to the third story, now under water.
THE CENTRAL TOMB.
In the Vestibule (F) the Egyptian note predominates. In front, two fine columns with ornate capitals and two pilaster with square papyrus capitals—the four supporting a cornice adorned with the winged Sun (Ra), and guardian falcons. Inside the Vestibule, to right and left, are white limestone statues of a man and woman—the proprietor and his wife, perhaps. On the further wall the religious and artistic confusion increases. Two terrific bearded serpents guard the entrance to the Tomb Chamber, and each not only enfolds the pine-cone of Dionysus and the serpent-wand of Hermes, but also wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Above each serpent is a Medusa in a round shield. Over the lintel of the inner door is the winged Sun and a frieze of snakes.
The Tomb Chamber (G) contains three large sarcophagi, all cut out of the rock. They are classical in style—decorated with festoons of fruit or flowers, Medusa Heads, Ox skulls, &c. The lids do not take off; the mummies would have been pushed in from the passage behind (see below). But as a matter of fact none of three sarcophagi have ever been occupied; it is part of the queerness of Kom es Chogafa that its vast and elaborate apparatus for mourning should culminate in a void.
In the niche over each sarcophagus are bas reliefs, Egyptian in style but executed with imperfect understanding.
Centre niche (G.i). A mummy on a lion shaped bier: the lion wears the crown of Osiris and has at its feet the feather of Maat, goddess of truth. Behind the bier, Anubis as the god of embalming; at its head Thoth with the symbol of immortality; at its foot, Horus; beneath it three “Canopic” deities—vases for the intestines—there ought to be four.—Lateral relief: Left, a man with a priest, right a woman with a priest.
Right-hand niche (G.ii). Graceful design of a prince, who wears the double crown of Egypt, offering a collar to the Apis Bull, who, with the Sun between his horns stands on a pedestal. Behind Apis, Isis, holding the feather of truth and stretching out her protective wings with good decorative effect.—Lateral reliefs: Left, a king before a god (Chons?); right, two “Canopic” deities, one ape headed, one a mummy.
Left-hand niche (G.iii).—Similar to right hand, except that on the right lateral wall one of the “Canopic” deities has the head of a hawk.
On either side of the entrance door stands an uncanny figure. Right, (as one goes out) is Anubis, with a dog’s head, but dressed up as a Roman soldier, with cuirass short sword lance and shield complete. Left, the god Sebek, who though mainly a crocodile is also crushed into military costume with cloak and spear. Perhaps the queer couple were meant to guard the tomb, but one must not read too much into them or into anything here; the workmen employed were only concerned to turn out a room that should look suitable for death, and judged by this standard they have succeeded.
Surrounding the central tomb is a broad Passage (HHH) lined with cavities in two rows that provided accommodation for nearly 300 mummies. Where the passage passes behind the central tomb one can see the apertures through which the three grand sarcophagi were hollowed out, and through which the mummies would have been introduced. Leading out of this passage is another tomb chamber (I) and, to the left, a big Gallery (JJJJ), fitted up with receptacles in the usual style.
All the above chambers form part of a single scheme. We now return to the Rotunda (C), and enter, through a breach in the rock, an entirely distinct set of tombs. They are lighted by a square Well (K) and were reached by a separate staircase now ruinous. The Hall (L) is fancifully called the Hall of Caracalla because that emperor massacred many Alexandrian youths whom he had summoned to a review, and because many bones of men and horses have been found intermingled on its floors; it is lined with tomb cavities on the usual plan.—The Gallery (M) contains rather a charming tomb: it was once covered with white stucco and delicately painted. In the niche above the sarcophagus are Isis and her sister Nephtys, spreading their wings over the mummy of Osiris. More figures on the lateral walls. Above, on the inner wall, the soul as a bird. Above the entrance, the Sun and golden Vase on either side of which is a sphinx with her paw on a wheel.
We now ascend the staircase (A). View of Mariout. Those who are not tired of empty tombs will find plenty more to the right, down a stairway cut in the rock.
Immediately below Kom es Chogafa flows the Mahmoudieh Canal, made by Mohammed Ali (for the circumstances see p. [91]). There is a road along it which leads, right, into the region of cotton warehouses. (Section VI).—To the left one can walk or drive all the way to Nouzha (Section IV). The route is partly pleasant partly not. It crosses, at Moharrem Bey, the Farkha Canal, which leaves the Mahmoudieh Canal at right angles and which went all the way to the sea.—Further on, there is a shady tract called the “Champs Elysées” it resembles, neither for good or evil, its Parisian original.