III
He went first to Gizeh, and wandered about the three pyramids, studying and observing.
From the sands of the Egyptian desert, which are cornelian in hue and strewn with colored pebbles much like fragments of ancient pottery, the pyramids rise as masses of old ivory stone suffused with a certain golden rust; the description is laboured, but the effect is not to be given in a word. Belzoni, trudging the sand, watched the late afternoon light bring out the grey. The second great pyramid, the pyramid of Chephren, had taken his eye, and round it and about he went, now gazing up to the cap of reddish surfacing still in place about the peak, now pausing to study the huge confusion of sand and wreckage washed up about the base like a wave of shattered stone. Was there an opening, and if so, where? Or was the pyramid a solid hill of stone as the Egyptians had told Herodotus twenty-five hundred years before? The French scholars attached to Napoleon’s expedition had sought an entrance in vain, and the Europeans resident in Cairo were meditating a scheme of collecting 20,000 pounds “at various European courts,” and “forcing their way into the centre of this pyramid by explosions.”
“It seems little short of madness,” wrote Belzoni, “to renew the enterprise.” The giant had now grown a fine black beard, and taken to wearing Eastern dress, huge white turban and all. It was the proper thing to do then when travelling in the East.
The entrance to the Great Pyramid being on the north, Belzoni studied with particular care the northern face of the second pyramid, and presently discovered there “three marks” which seemed to offer a clue. Just under the centre of the north face of the pyramid, the bordering wave of débris was high, as if it might possibly lie piled atop some entrance way; the accumulation of stone at the mound seemed less compact than the mass to either side, and the débris had apparently gathered since the removal of the surfacing. There was the place, there would he begin.
Somewhat to his surprise, he got his permission to dig quite easily, the authorities merely insisting that he must not disturb “ploughed ground.” The capital on which he hoped to accomplish his undertaking consisted of a scant two hundred pounds, some of it a gift from Burckhardt, some of it a profit from the sale of “antiquities.”
Early in February, 1818, the adventurer left Cairo quietly, and took up his quarters in a tent by the second pyramid. Alone in his tent he sits, this huge bearded man who has lived so fantastic a life; it is night, and he smokes his long Turkish pipe, and watches the giant Egyptian moon cast the pointed shadow of his pyramid upon sands traced with the paths of naked feet. That monastery in Rome, the bells of other convents heard over the wall as one walked the garden in the cool of the afternoon, the rumble and galopade of a cardinal’s coach over the stones,—how far away and old it all is in that still splendour of the Egyptian night!
At the pyramid all begins well, eighty natives have been secured, and Belzoni has put forty to clearing the ground between the temple and the pyramid, and forty more to clearing the débris at the rise by the northern rim. The plates which accompany his text show the workmen to have worn the short, rolled white drawers and turbans of this earlier day, a costume far more picturesque than the long-skirted nightgown affair and red felt “fez” of modern Egypt. A nimble folk these brown Egyptians; they scramble about the pyramids today with the agility of boys in an easy tree; even so they must have scrambled and chattered for Belzoni. He paid them sixpence English a day, and hired boys and girls to carry away the earth.
The giant sagely explained to his corps that it would be to their advantage to find the entrance to the pyramid, for they would then have another marvel to show to visitors, and thus get more bakshish[3] than ever. The natives began with a will, but for several days their labors promised no indication of success. It was particularly difficult work. The fringe of wreckage had become solidly jammed, and the only tools to be had were spades meant for the cutting of soft ground. There were times when it seemed as if the workmen could scarcely proceed. At the end of a fortnight’s digging, the party working on the ground between the temple and the pyramid had cut through some forty feet of rubbish to a broad pavement which seemed to encircle the pyramid; but the workmen at the north side had uncovered only deeper and deeper layers of débris.
After some sixteen days of this, the workmen began to weary of the task. “The Arabs,” said Belzoni, “continued, but with less zeal. Still I observed that the stones on that spot were not so consolidated as those on the sides of them, and I determined to proceed till I should be persuaded that I was wrong in my conjecture.”
On the morning of February 18th, an overseer of the workmen came across the sand dunes with promising news. A workman of the northern party had perceived “a small chink” between two stones of the newly uncovered lower side of the pyramid. Belzoni returned with the messenger, and found the workers gathered in a talkative group awaiting his coming. Yes, there was a small open slit between two of the great stones, into which the giant was able “to thrust a palm stick to the length of two yards.” The workmen took heart; their night of foolish labour for this incomprehensible European infidel was seemingly ending in a dawn.
The loose stone, torn from its place, revealed a mystery,—a passage some three feet wide choked with smaller stones and sand. Belzoni, in his turban and loose white eastern dress, peered within, while his half naked, dusky workers pushed and peeped and whispered behind that Titan back. Was the mystery of the ages about to be unveiled? Would they presently behold the legendary spirit of the pyramid—an old man with a censer? This attendant guardian was still to be seen at sundown, making the tour of his pyramid at about half way up the sides,—a solemn, priestly figure who swung his censer as he walked. Trickles of sand fell noiselessly from the roof of the opening; they heard the drop of little stones; about them the quiet of the desert seemed to have become intensified.
On being excavated, this passage proved to be wider within, and after five days of clearing, the excavators arrived at an open tunnel leading inward.
“Having made it wide enough,” said Belzoni, “I took a candle in my hand, and looking in, perceived a spacious cavity ... bending its course to the centre. It is evidently a forced passage executed by a powerful hand, and appears intended to find a way to the centre of the pyramid.”
It was less a passage he had discovered than a wound. In ancient times some ruler of the land had attempted to force the pyramid, but the deed and the man had perished from the memory of the world, and the pyramid itself had hidden the deep wound within its side. To make the entrance, huge stones of the outer casing had been cut and sawed; then a ragged tunnel had been pierced directly into the heart of the masonry. The task had certainly taken toll of many lives. It was an awesome place, and exceedingly dangerous. Huge stones, which the piercing of the tunnel had left hanging by a thread, fell down, and every time that Belzoni crawled down its length of a hundred feet, he never knew but what a cry and a muffled crash might announce his living entombment in the dark of the edifice.
Europeans from Cairo now got wind of the giant’s enterprise, and came riding over the sands to see Belzoni at his task. The discovery of the forced passage seems to have impressed them as an interesting failure, an attitude which struck at the giant’s dignity and pride. He paused to mull things over in his mind, and gave the workmen a special holiday.
The false passage ended in a pocket of fallen stone. He would abandon his exploration of it, and continue his search for the real entrance.
Staff in hand, the huge figure, now resumes its trudge about the pyramid. The workmen have gone, the wind over the desert lifts the dust out of the hollows of the dunes, and brings no human sound; sand and ruin prevail. The adventurer wanders over the waste to the great pyramid.
It was then open, and somewhere in the hot, repellent heart of it, rank with the sour-foul odour of multitudes upon multitudes of bats, a typical European adventurer was working simply because the pyramids were his hobby. The name of this enthusiast was Caviglia, and he was the Italian master of a Mediterranean trading vessel flying the British flag. The good sailor had little education, and needed little, for his work was primarily a matter of removing rubbish, and discovering what lay beneath. In later years Colonel Howard Vyse had dealings with him, and found him temperamental. Captain Caviglia, dear excitable Latin, rushed out of his pyramid one morning and hurled on the Colonel’s breakfast table a subsidy of forty pounds done up in an old sock. It appears that he considered the sum quite unworthy of his efforts. The Colonel, however, was equal to the occasion, and after taking out the money, returned the sock with his “best compliments.” Such was the dawn of archæology!
Belzoni returned from his visit to his neighbour and countryman with a new notion in his head. Prompted by certain indications, he had been digging away the rubbish gathered before the centre of the northern face of the second pyramid, whilst the entrance into the Great Pyramid was not in line with the centre of that edifice, but some thirty feet to the east of centre, for the tomb chamber lay in the centre, and the passage entered at the chamber’s eastern end. He would abandon his excavation at the forced passage, and begin again thirty feet to the east.
He went to the spot, and saw, or thought he saw, that the coating of rubbish was there not so thickly piled. Moreover, it appeared sunken as if an entrance below it might have fallen in. “This gave me no little delight,” wrote the giant later, “and hope returned to cherish my pyramidical brains.”
Again work began merrily, for the natives had grown to appreciate the giant’s sixpence a day. But they thought their employer quite mad, and Belzoni heard them whispering it to each other. “Magnoon,” they said as he passed, and again “magnoon,”—the madman! More days of sunlight and scurrying and digging of a tribe of black-brown fellahin. On February 28th, a world of excitement and heart-quickening anticipation; something which looks like an entrance has been reached, for now appears a large granite stone set into the pyramid at the same angle as the passage into the Great Pyramid. The shovels flew that day. On the day following, they have uncovered three great blocks of granite, one on each side and one on top, all “lying in an inclined direction towards the centre.”
It was the entrance at last. By the second of March, the débris in front of the three stones having been cleared away, the long-sought opening was seen. It proved to be a passage, four feet high and three feet six inches wide, which descended at a steep incline into the pyramid. Its granite walls were undisturbed, but the passage itself was full of wreckage which had slid down the incline and piled up to form a barrier.
Provided with torches and candles, Belzoni and a few workmen now followed the passage for a hundred and four feet down into the dark. Whither was it leading them? The giant bulk of Belzoni nearly filled up the passage, as he came crouching almost double and holding a dripping candle light. Suddenly, to their great dismay, the passage came to a blind end at three solid granite walls.
Discouragement fell upon them as heavy as a pyramid. “At first sight,” said Belzoni, “it seemed a fixed block of stone which stared me in the face and said ne plus ultra, putting an end to all my projects as I thought.” Suddenly, a discovery, a catch of the breath; the stone at the end of the passage is not fixed solidly in place; it is a portcullis which can be raised; the barrier stone is already eight inches above the true floor, and rests on surface rubbish. There followed a hurrying back and forth through the passage, a coming of workmen with levers, and a time of hard work in the tiny cubicle of the passageway. The portcullis stone was one foot three inches thick, and rose slowly because the low ceiling permitted only a little play of the levers. At the outer entrance, the workmen had gathered in a chattering and excited crowd; they questioned those who came and went—what of wonders within, and how vast was the treasure?
When the aperture had grown wide enough for a man to pass through, a native squirmed under carrying a candle, and “returned saying that the place within was very fine.” Belzoni, poor Titan, had to wait.
It had chanced that on the day before a fellow countryman of Belzoni’s, the Chevalier Frediani, had come to visit Gizeh; he had proved a pleasant guest, and the giant had invited him to remain for the opening of the pyramid. This second Italian now joined the little group lifting the portcullis. It was now high enough for Belzoni to crawl under, and he did so, followed by the Chevalier.
Over a thousand years, perhaps more, had passed since the tunnels into which they crawled had echoed to the sound of human voices. Belzoni led the way, carrying a light; Frediani, too, had a torch. The huge shadow of Belzoni followed along the walls; the granite twinkled in the first light of ten long centuries. At the end of the passage was an open pit which they descended along a rope, and at the depth of the pit were passages thick with dark and silence. Ghostlike arborisations of nitre hung on these lower walls, some projecting in fantastic ropes. Belzoni went off on one trail, Frediani on another. Presently the giant arrived at the door of the chamber of the tomb.
“I walked slowly two or three paces, and then stood still to contemplate the place where I was. Whatever it might be, I certainly considered myself in the centre of that pyramid which from time immemorial had been the subject of the obscure conjecture of many hundred travellers, ancient and modern. My Torch, formed of a few wax candles, gave but a faint light.”
He heard a sound of footsteps, and Frediani entered with his candles.
But the treasure of the pyramid? The sarcophagus of Khaf-ra, King of Egypt, was cut in the floor, the lid was awry, and the stone coffin “full of a great quantity of earth and stones.” Who had violated it in the long course of history’s four thousand years? No one knows. There is evidence that the Caliph Al Mamun had forced the pyramid, but there is no evidence that he found the mummy in its place. There are old Arabic tales of kings encased in figures of gold, with magical golden snakes on their crowns which spread their hoods in anger, hissed, and struck at the intruders. All is legend and myth. The forced tunnel, however, had certainly once entered the original passages, but later on the violated masonry had fallen in, and barred the way.
Europe of the Dark Ages had never known of the attempt; the East had forgotten. The musing mind sees Al Mamun at the pyramid, mounted on a nervous Arab horse which paws the ancient sand; his mounted attendants and bodyguard have reined up behind him—Arabs with thin dark faces fierce as desert hawks. Captives, Christians for the most part, are digging away at the side of the great mass,—men of Byzantium, fair-haired Norman sailors blown on the African coast by a storm, little Spaniards from the mountain kingdoms which are so valiantly battling the Moors. And King Khaf-ra, whom the Greeks called Chephren, sleeps he within in “the dark house of the counting of the years?”
There were Arabic inscriptions on the walls, written with charcoal, but the characters were nearly imperceptible, and rubbed off into dust at the slightest touch. Belzoni thought he discerned an inscription which may be thus translated, “The Master Mohamed Ahmed has opened them, and the Master Othman attended this, and the King Ali Mohamed at first ... to the closing up.” Sir Richard Burton, however, perhaps the greatest of all Arabic scholars, will have it that the Arabic characters as Belzoni transcribed them are for the most part unintelligible. And there the matter rests.
The Belzonis spent two more years in Egypt, and returned to London in September, 1819.