Another native, who had been watching a chimpanzee with awful interest for some time, asked the keeper what manner of diet was provided for animals of that kind. The keeper having told him, the visitor smiled, and, taking his arm, drew him aside. “Now that nobody can hear what we are saying,” he whispered, “tell me truly: do you not feed them on the flesh of criminals who die in the city prisons?” As a deterrent to crime it might have been as well had the keeper admitted that such was the case.
Egyptians will believe stories of the wildest kind, which in Europe only a child would accept. For example, when the Aswân Dam was built, many natives declared that the English had only undertaken the work in order to convey the water of the Nile in pipes to England for the benefit of the British farmer. Many of the peasants believe that England is inhabited solely by men who spend one half of the year in digging through perpetual ice and snow for the gold which lies below, and the other half of the year in spending the proceeds in Egypt, which is obviously the hub of the universe.
This credulity is so general that the native peasant, believing the English official to be similarly minded, often invents, and even acts out, the most absurd story by which to conceal the actual facts of a case. It recently happened that two brothers were followed home one night through the streets of their village by a watchman who regarded them as suspicious characters. Entering their house and shutting the door, the two men observed through the crack that the watchman took up his stand outside. One therefore suggested to the other that they should get him into trouble by accusing him of some unjustified act of violence against themselves; and it was finally agreed that the elder brother should shoot the younger in the leg, and that they should then declare that the officious watchman was the aggressor. The family gun was procured, the younger brother held out his leg, and the elder fired at him. Unfortunately, however, he was not a good shot, and the wretched victim, receiving the whole charge in his stomach, promptly died. The watchman was at once accused of the crime, and was sent to prison on a charge of manslaughter. He also had a brother; and this man, thirsting for revenge, went to the enemy’s house, and there shot himself in the leg, declaring to the people who rushed in that he had been the victim of a murderous assault. His story, however, was not believed, and at length the whole tale came out.
A year or two ago some natives who were harvesting in their fields sent one of their women down to the river for water. As she was returning with the water-jar upon her head, a boy of about fifteen years of age belonging to another family asked her to let him drink from the jar. This she refused to do, there was a quarrel, and the woman received a knife-wound from which she died. The boy’s family at once handed him over to the relatives of the victim, and made no attempt to shield him from the consequences of his act. The aggrieved party, however, were by no means satisfied. “This is all very well,” they said, “but you have killed one of our finest women, and you offer us a miserable little boy as the murderer. That will not do at all.” They therefore accused the headman of the offending family, and concocted their story so well that he was found guilty and sent to penal servitude.
In conclusion I must relate one more story in order to illustrate the peculiar manner in which tragedy and comedy go hand in hand amongst the children of Egypt. A well-known robber was arrested at a small station in the Sudân during the time when martial law was still in force; and he was promptly sentenced to death. The solitary English officer in charge of the post refrained from attending the execution, the arrangements for which were left to the discretion of his Egyptian colleagues. A gibbet was erected, and about nine o’clock on the next morning the condemned man was driven up to it in a mule-cart. The rope was passed round his neck, the mule was whipped up, and the cart passed from under the feet of the victim, who was left swinging in mid-air. The officer, however, had forgotten to tie the man’s hands; and he promptly swarmed up the rope to the crossbeam, there seating himself comfortably in the piping hot sunshine, while the troops stood gaping around him, the officer mopping his forehead in an ecstasy of heat and vexation. Nobody knew what to do. They could not shoot the man, for their orders were to hang him; and, on the barren sandy ground, no stones could be found to throw at him in order to dislodge him. The Egyptian officer therefore entered into friendly conversation with him, begging him to come down and be hanged like a man, instead of sitting up there swinging his legs like a monkey. This the robber totally refused to do, and he declared that nothing short of a free pardon would induce him to descend. The officer therefore endeavoured to appeal to the man’s better feelings. “Look here,” he said, “it is all very nice for you, sitting up there in the breeze, but down here it is dreadfully hot; and, you know, none of us have yet had our breakfasts, and we are feeling extraordinarily faint and uncomfortable. Please do come down and be hanged properly, or I, for my part, will most certainly be sick.”
The robber, however, refused to move; and at last the English officer was sent for, who, acting in accordance with an unwritten law, pardoned him there and then, thereby enlisting the faithful services of a scout who has since done very valuable work.
CHAPTER XV
AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN POEM
A century ago, when the hieroglyphical script of the Ancient Egyptians first began to be deciphered, it would hardly have been believed possible that scholars would one day find themselves possessed of such a vast literature as is now at the disposal of Egyptologists; nor would it have been dreamed that the subtilties of the language, the idioms, or even the grammatical structure, would ever be so fully understood as they are at the present day. Thanks mainly to the diligent work of a group of painstaking German Jews, and to the brilliant labours of a handful of European and American scholars, we can now translate the many hieroglyphic or hieratic texts which have come down to us, with a degree of accuracy almost equal to that obtained in our renderings of Greek and Latin. Poems, prayers, tales serious and comic, historical narratives, satires, and letters, are now able to be put into modern language with the full certainty that the meaning has been grasped; and the wealth and variety of the material thus presented to us is astonishing.
One of the most remarkable documents of all those which have come down from Pharaonic times is that which records the dialogue between a man about to commit suicide and his own soul, composed somewhere about the year B.C. 2000. The papyrus upon which it is written is now preserved in Berlin; and the text has been translated by Professor Erman and Professor Breasted, whose renderings I have, in the main, here followed. The man is supposed to be weary of his mortal life, owing, it would seem, to the fact that his body has been disfigured by some dreadful mutilation, perhaps inflicted by his enemies; and the burden of the flesh has become intolerable to him. His soul, however, enjoys its sojourn upon earth, and has no desire to be launched into another sphere. The distinction between soul and body is somewhat difficult for us to understand, but actually it may be supposed that the dialogue represents the battle in the unfortunate man’s mind between the desire for freedom from bodily pain on the one hand, and the dread of death on the other.
“Recollect,” says the life-loving soul, “that burial is lamentation and a bringer of tears, causing a man to be full of sorrow. It is taking a man from his home and casting him out upon the heights (of the desert). But you will not be going up there that you may see the sun. There are those who build (their tombs) in red granite, who construct their sepulchres within a pyramid; there are those who (lie) splendidly in splendid structures.... But their memorial altars are as forsaken as are (the bodies of) those weary-ones who, without a surviving relative, die on the pathway across the inundation, the flood taking hold of them on the one side, the heat (of the sun) on the other, and to whom (alone) the fish along the brink of the water speak. Hearken to me!—pursue the gladness of the day and forget sorrow.”