In Pastures New

by George Ade

CHAPTER XVII

IN AND AROUND LUXOR, WITH A SIDE
LIGHT ON RAMESES THE GREAT

Until we arrived at Luxor we did not know the total meaning of the word "old." The ruins, which are the stock in trade of this ancient City of Thebes, date so far back into the dimness of Nowhere that all the other antiquities of earth seem as fresh and recent as a morning newspaper.

"Old" is merely a relative term, after all. I remember in my native town we small boys used to gaze in reverent awe at a court house that was actually built before the Civil War. We would look up at that weather-beaten frame structure, two stories high, with a square bird cage on top of it, and to us it had all the historic interest of a mediæval castle. Later, in Chicago, when the special writer on the newspaper ran short of topics he would dish up an illustrated story on the oldest building in town. It was constructed away back in 1833.

When a man from the West goes East for the first time and sees Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he takes off his hat and tries to grasp the overwhelming fact that the building stood there even in the far distant Colonial period. When he travels to London and walks through St. Paul's or stands in the Henry VII. Chapel at Westminster he begins to get a new line on the meaning of "old." Later he sees the Forum at Rome and declares to himself:—"At last I have found something really ancient."

But when he arrives at Luxor and rambles among the elephantine ruins and sits in the deep cool shade of temples that had been standing a good many centuries before anyone thought of laying out the Forum in Rome he will begin to understand how everything else in the world is comparatively hot from the griddle. One day we were in the shop of Mouhammed Mouhassib, in Luxor, and the old antiquarian reached under the counter and lugged out a mummy. The body was well preserved, and the embalming cloth in which it was wrapped and cross-wrapped still retained a definite texture.

"This mummy dates back beyond any of the dynasties of which we have a record," said the dealer. "There were no inscriptions on the mummy case, because when this gentleman lived it was not the custom to inscribe the cocoon. You will observe, however, that he was buried in a sitting posture, and we know that this manner of burial was discontinued about 6000 B.C."

As we stood there gazing into the calm features of the unidentified has-been and realised that he had been sitting in that easy attitude for eight thousand years waiting for us to come along and be presented to him, we began to get a faint inkling of what the word "old" really means.

Goodness knows I am not going to attempt any detailed description of the stupendous ruins which make Luxor the most interesting spot in Egypt. Anyone who is going to describe Luxor needs a new box of adjectives every few minutes, and, besides, to repeat over and over again that the columns and cavernous sanctuaries at Karnak are "gigantic," and "colossal," and "huge," and so on, cannot bring the reader to any actual conception of the barbaric massiveness of these ancient structures.

The rulers who built the main temple of Karnak, a section at a time, thought they were not doing themselves credit unless they piled up columns about the size of the redwood trees in California and guarded each entrance with statues as big as the Goddess of Liberty in New York Harbour, and when they made a wall to enclose a courtyard, they put up something to resemble a mountain range. The ordinary 150 pound mortal edging his way through the corridors and under the vast shadows of these overwhelming uplifts of masonry feels about as large and as important as a gnat.

Everywhere about these temples there are uniformed guards whose duty it is to protect the remains against the vandal and the relic hunter. The guard follows a few feet behind you as you roam through the many acres of toppling ruin. He is afraid that you will steal something. Inasmuch as the smallest fragment of one of these huge statues, or obelisks, would weigh probably six hundred pounds, we felt that he was not justified in suspecting us. But he followed along and then, when we were leaving, he calmly came forward and indicated that he was ready to take a money insult. This move on his part was most characteristic of the Egyptian attitude toward visitors in general. Every native expects to get something out of a traveller for the simple reason that he needs the money. Suppose that a suspicious character should arrive in an American city and the chief of police sent out a detective to shadow him and see that he did not blow open any safes or crawl into any second stories. The detective, having followed the suspect all day, approaches him at nightfall and says, "Look here; you have put me to a lot of trouble. I have been on my feet all day watching you for fear that you were going to commit a burglary, and I think it is only right that you should pay me something."

Every time we visited an antiquity these guards tagged at our heels, watching us like hawks, and invariably they tried to hold us up for a piece of silver before we departed. There is a Masonic understanding among the natives that the tourist is to be fleeced. For instance, although the copper coins are in common use among the natives, and in the cheaper shops the prices are usually reckoned in milliemes, it is almost impossible for a traveller to get any of these copper coins because the natives want him to bestow his gratuities in piastres. A millieme is worth one-half cent, and then the millieme is further subdivided into fractional coins, some of which are about the size of the mustard seed and worth about as much as a share of mining stock.

Egyptian money is very easily understood by Americans. The piastre is the same as our five-cent piece or nickel. The silver five piastre piece resembles our quarter and has the same value. The ten piastre piece is the same as our half-dollar. The 100 piastre bill is worth five dollars. Inasmuch as many of the prices sound large and important when quoted in piastres, the dealers have learned to demand English pounds sterling or American dollars. That is, they name their first prices in sovereigns and dollars and then gradually work down to piastres. I saw a native trying to sell a scarab to a tourist. His first price was £7, equivalent to $35. After a half-hour of haggling he had cut it to 7 piastres, or 35 cents, and the deal was consummated.

The old city of Thebes was a huge and hustling metropolis, surrounded by a high wall of a hundred gates, with countless regiments of soldiers marching out to conquer distant lands and bring back slaves in little batches of 80,000 or so. This was along about 2000 B.C. The city began to lose some of its importance a few centuries before the Christian era and dwindled in size until twenty years ago it was a mere village of huts nestling in the shade of the great temples. Then the tourist travel set in very heavily, and to-day Luxor is a hustling city with large hotels and fancy shops and a general air of prosperity. The magnificent temple of Luxor is in the very heart of the new city. The rambling temple of Karnak is a short donkey ride to the north, and across the river, some three miles to the west, there are more temples and shattered statues and the wonderful tombs of the kings. In olden days there was a broad avenue leading north to Karnak and thence west to the valley in the desert, where the kings were buried, and this boulevard was guarded on either side, for the entire distance, by huge recumbent Sphinxes carved out of granite. Can you imagine a double row of gigantic figures crouched on each side of the street and about twenty feet apart all the way up Broadway to Central Park and then through the Park to Riverside Drive and up the drive to the distant suburbs? If so, you will understand to what an extent these old rulers "went in" for sphinxes. Labour cost nothing and time did not count for anything and if a king wished to build an avenue of sphinxes leading to his private temple or tomb all he had to do was to give the word.

As soon as a king mounted the throne he began making his funeral preparations, and ordered the entire staff of stone cutters to chisel out hieroglyphs explaining that he was great and good and just, and that he never took off his hat to anyone except the gods, and then not ordinary picayune gods, but only those of the very first magnitude. According to the hieroglyphs, every king that ruled in Egypt was as wise as Solomon, as brilliant in military strategy as Napoleon, and as hard on the evildoer as our own beloved T.R.

This unanimous outpouring of eulogy is largely explained by the fact that every memorial in honour of a ruler was erected and supervised by that ruler himself. It's a fact! Of all the countless temples and obelisks and godlike granite figures and festal tomb chambers remaining in Egypt to testify to the majesty and splendour of the ancient dynasties, every one was built under the personal supervision of the man who gets all of the glory out of the inscriptions. The succeeding generation never got up subscription lists to build monuments to statesmen or military commanders. The dutiful and loving son never ordered a memorial in honour of his illustrious father. He was too busy carving his own biography on the sandstone and depicting himself as pursuing the enemy or taking afternoon tea with haughty three-headed gods.

In old Egypt every king was his own press agent. These rulers could have written some great "personal recollections" for the magazines, because they remembered all the incidents that brought them to the centre of the stage with the calcium turned on, and wisely forgot all details calculated to injure their standing with posterity.

In old Egypt every king was his own press agent

You take Rameses the Great. He is regarded as perhaps the king pin of all the rulers during Egypt's long period of national splendour. Have you ever heard anyone say a word in criticism of Rameses' fiscal policy, his treatment of the rebate system, management of the Senate, or his social relations with the dark emissaries that came up from Nubia? No! Everyone has a good word for Rameses. The writers of ancient history extol him, and the guide books print his name in big black letters, and the travellers to Egypt gather about his glass-covered coffin in the Ghizeh Museum at Cairo and try to trace noble lineaments in the shrunken features. They sigh over his departure and look down at him mournfully, with their hats in their hands, as if they had lost him this spring, instead of 3164 years ago this spring. They say:—"Well, he certainly was a grand character and it's too bad we haven't got some rulers of his calibre nowadays."

They look down at him mournfully

It is not my desire to attack Rameses, but I feel it my duty to submit to students of history and archæologists a very interesting papyrus, which came into my possession at Luxor. If this document is accepted as authentic and the statements are believed, then it would appear that Rameses was the champion advertiser of ancient times. If Rameses were alive to-day he would own all the billboards in America. He would take a full page in every Sunday paper and have his picture on free calendars. He would give Lawson cards and spades.

In all accepted records discovered up to this time Rameses has received nothing but praise. Why? Because all the records were doctored by Rameses himself. He was the great builder of Egypt and all over the walls of every building that he erected he had his picture and tales of his mighty achievements blazoned forth in bright colors like the row of banners in front of a side show. Wherever in Egypt he could find a large smooth-faced rock he would engage a member of the Royal Academy to sculp something about Rameses, and he would always stand and look over the sculptor's shoulder to make sure that the king didn't get the worst of it. If the army of Rameses suffered a defeat at the hands of the Hittites, did any mention of the fact find its way into the inscriptions? Most assuredly not. Rameses had the hieroglyphs report that he made a masterly manoeuvre in order to develop the strength of the enemy and then retired to a new and more strategic position.

To make sure the King didn't get the worst of it

We cannot discover from the old inscriptions that any Egyptian army ever suffered defeat, and yet it has been learned from other sources that now and then an invading army had the whole native population running foot races up and down the Nile. However, it was not considered good form for historians to mention these painful incidents. The rate of mortality among those who criticised the administration was exactly 100 per cent. It is because all of the familiar records are known to have been under censorship that the papyrus discovered by me at Luxor possesses a most startling interest.

As a cold matter of fact, I discovered this manuscript by proxy. That is, I bought it from the man who said he had found it concealed in the funeral vestments of a mummy uprooted near Thebes in the month of February. I cannot give the name of this Egyptian for the reason that all valuable antiquities discovered in Egypt are supposed to belong to the government, and anyone concealing an art treasure or some document of rare value may be severely punished. I can say this much, however—the native from whom I bought the papyrus assured me that he was an honourable and truthful guide, and he gave me his personal guarantee that he had removed the document from the mummy's undergarment with his own hands and had been waiting an opportunity to offer it to a traveller who was really a connoisseur of antiquities and a reverent student of ancient languages. All this he told me while we were out on the desert together, and after looking apprehensively in all directions to make sure that no human being was within three miles of us, he pulled a tin cylinder from under his robe and carefully removed from it the time-stained but still intact roll of papyrus. I must say that I never saw a more convincing document. The hieroglyphs looked as Egyptian as anything could be, and as soon as I saw them I had a burning curiosity to know what message to future generations this poor mummy had been hugging in his bosom through all these centuries. I asked regarding the mummy on which the papyrus had been found and learned that the inscription on his outer coffin indicated that he had been an officer assigned to the royal palace of Rameses II., the type of courtier who must bend the supple knee and wear the smiling face, at all times concealing his real opinion of things in general.

The guarantee which accompanied the papyrus was so heartfelt and altogether emphatic that I made the purchase. The price was large, but I felt justified in paying it, for the native assured me that I could sell it to the British Museum at any time for twice as much. I promised faithfully that I would never mention his name in connection with the deal, and this promise was easily kept, because he had a name that no one could have remembered for two minutes.

For obvious reasons I did not show the document to my travelling companions. I knew that if people heard of my discovery and got to talking about it I might not be permitted to take it out of the country. When we arrived at Cairo I went to Mr. Ralph Blanchard, an American who is noted as an antiquarian, Egyptologist, and mummy collector, and after a few cautious preliminaries told him that I had a document in hieroglyphics of which I desired a translation. I begged him not to inquire where or how I had obtained the papyrus. All I wanted him to do was to tell me what the fool thing meant.

Blanchard was startled as soon as he looked at the document. I could see that. He said he had deciphered a good many acres of hieroglyphics, but this record was unique and the most interesting that had ever come under his observation. He spent two days on the translation, so as to be absolutely accurate regarding every fine point and get not only the cold words but also the literary style and the real spirit of the original communication.

The original papyrus

Let the translation speak for itself. I must confess that when it was completed I was overwhelmed. Not only had a flood of light been let in upon a most important epoch, but there were also surprising revelations as to the origin of valued words and phrases. Here is the translation:—

Rameses Second is a Smooth Citizen. His Foxy Scheme is to bunko Posterity. His Soldiers go out and put up a hard Scrap and do up the enemy and he hires a Stonecutter to give an Account of it on a Granite Rock and hand all the Bouquets to Rameses. He is building many Temples. The Architects draw the Plans. The Labourers do the Work. The Public foots the Bill. Rameses and the Local Deities are the only ones who butt into the Inscriptions. He has the future doped out as follows:—Three thousand years from now, when Cook's Tourists see my Pictures all over the Shop, they will conclude that I must have been the real Works and they will call me Rameses the Great.

Translation of the Rameses papyrus

This revelation in regard to the self-advertising proclivities of the great monarch, coming, as it did, from one who had been intimately associated with him, was so vastly important that Mr. Blanchard thought it better to verify the translation. He took a copy of the document to several eminent Egyptologists, and they agreed with him on every point. They said there was no getting away from "scraps" and "butt in" and "dope out" and other characters which seemed to me to have somewhat of a modern flavour.

After a man has been universally respected for nearly three thousand two hundred years it does seem a low down trick to show him up. And, possibly, the anonymous writer was prejudiced because he had failed to secure an appointment. Did the papyrus really come from the bosom of the mummy? Who knows? Sometimes it is the duty of the traveller to record facts as they come under his observation and not to draw hasty conclusions.

The documentary evidence is submitted herewith—first a copy of the original papyrus and then the translation, word for word and phrase by phrase. The testimony should convince any who are disposed to be sceptical. My only hope is that it will not entirely blast the reputation of Rameses.