A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

The two famed danseuses bore Arabic names, which were translated to us as the Orange-Blossom and the Apple-Blossom. The first was of medium size, with an olive complexion, and regular, though not handsome features. She wore a white dress, fitting like a vest from the shoulders to the hips, with short, flowing sleeves, under which a fine blue gauze, confined at the wrist with bracelets, hung like a mist about her arms. Her head-dress was a small red cap, with a coronet of gold coins, under which her black hair escaped in two shining braids. The Apple-Blossom, who could not have been more than fifteen years old, was small and slightly formed, dark-skinned, and might have been called beautiful, but for a defect in one of her eyes. Her dress was of dark crimson silk, with trowsers and armlets of white gauze, and a red cap, so covered with coins that it nearly resembled a helmet of golden scales, with a fringe falling on each side of her face. Three of the other assistants were dressed in white, with shawls of brilliant patterns bound around the waist. The fourth was a Nubian slave, named Zakhfara, whose shining black face looked wonderfully picturesque under the scarlet mantle which enveloped it like a turban, and fell in long folds almost to her feet. Among the singers was one named Bemba, who was almost the only really beautiful Egyptian woman I ever saw. Her features were large, but perfectly regular; and her long, thick, silky hair hung loose nearly to her shoulders before its gleaming mass was gathered into braids. Her teeth were even, and white as pearls, and the lids of her large black eyes were stained with kohl, which gave them a languishing, melancholy expression. She was a most consummate actress; for she no sooner saw that we noticed her face than she assumed the most indifferent air in the world and did not look at us again. But during the whole evening every movement was studied. The shawl was disposed in more graceful folds about her head; the hair was tossed back from her shoulders; the hand, tinged with henna, held the jasmine tube of her pipe in a hundred different attitudes, and only on leaving did she lift her eyes as if first aware of our presence and wish us “buona sera”—the only Italian words she knew—with the most musical accent of which an Arab voice is capable.

Meanwhile, the voices of the women mingled with the shrill, barbaric tones of the violin, and the prelude passed into a measured song of long, unvarying cadences, which the drums and tambourine accompanied with rapid beats. The Orange-Blossom and one of her companions took the floor, after drinking another glass of arakee and tightening the shawls around their hips. The dance commenced with a slow movement, both hands being lifted above the head, while the jingling bits of metal on their shawls and two miniature cymbals of brass, fastened to the thumb and middle finger, kept time to the music. As the dancers became animated, their motions were more rapid and violent, and the measure was marked, not in pirouettes and flying bounds, as on the boards of Frank theatres, but by a most wonderful command over the muscles of the chest and limbs. Their frames vibrated with the music like the strings of the violin, and as the song grew wild and stormy towards its close, the movements, had they not accorded with it, would have resembled those of a person seized with some violent nervous spasm. After this had continued for an incredible length of time, and I expected to see the Almehs fall exhausted to the earth, the music ceased, and they stood before us calm and cold, with their breathing not perceptibly hurried. The dance had a second part, of very different character. Still with their lifted hands striking the little cymbals, they marked a circle of springing bounds, in which their figures occasionally reminded me of the dancing nymphs of Greek sculpture. The instant before touching the floor, as they hung in the air with the head bent forward, one foot thrown behind, and both arms extended above the head, they were drawn on the background of the dark hall, like forms taken from the frieze of a temple to Bacchus or Pan.

Eastern politeness did not require us to cry “brava!” or “encore!” so we merely handed our pipes to Ali, to be filled a second time. Old Achmet Gourgàr, our Theban guide, however, was so enraptured that he several times ejaculated; “taïb keteer!” (very good indeed!) and Raïs Hassan’s dark face beamed all over with delight. The circle of white turbaned heads in the rear looked on complacently, and our guard, who stood in the moonlight before the open door, almost forgot his duty in his enjoyment of the spectacle. I shall never forget the wild, fantastic picture we saw that night in the ruins of Luxor.

The Apple-Blossom, who followed in a dance with one named Bakhita, pleased me far better. She added a thousand graceful embellishments to the monotonous soul of the music; and her dance, if barbaric, was as poetic as her native palm-tree. She was lithe as a serpent, and agile as a young panther, and some of her movements were most extraordinary, in the nerve and daring required to execute them, and to introduce them without neglecting the rhythm of the dance. More than once she sank slowly back, bending her knees forward, till her head and shoulders touched the floor, and then, quick as a flash, shot flying into the air, her foot alighting in exact time with the thump of the drum. She had the power of moving her body from side to side, so that it curved like a snake from the hips to the shoulders, and once I thought that, like Lamia, she was about to resume her ancient shape, and slip out of sight through some hole in the ruined walls. One of the dances was a sort of pantomime, which she and Bakhita accompanied with their voices—clear, shrill, ringing tones, which never faltered for a moment, or varied a hair’s breadth from the melody, while every muscle was agitated with the exertion of her movements. The song was pervaded with a strange, passionate tremolo, unlike any thing I ever heard before. The burden was: “I am alone; my family and my friends are all dead; the plague has destroyed them. Come, then, to me, and be my beloved, for I have no other to love me.” Her gestures exhibited a singular mixture of the abandonment of grief, and the longing of love. While her body swayed to and fro with the wild, sad rhythm of the words, she raised both arms before her till the long sleeves fell back and covered her face: then opening them in wistful entreaty, sang the last line of the chorus, and bringing her hands to her forehead, relapsed into grief again. Apparently the prayer is answered, for the concluding movement expressed a delirious joy.

We listened to the music and looked on the dances for more than two hours, but at length the twanging of the violin and the never-ending drum-thumps began to set our teeth on edge, and we unfolded our cramped legs and got down from the divan. The lantern was unswung, the candle-ends taken from the empty bottles, the Almehs received their fees and went off rejoicing, and we left the chambers of Luxor to the night-wind and the moon.

The guide of the Eastern bank, a wiry young Bedouin, was in attendance next morning, and a crowd of horses and asses awaited us on the shore. I chose a brown mare, with a small, slender head and keen eye, and soon accustomed myself to the Turkish saddle and broad shovel-stirrups. The temple of Luxor is imbedded in the modern village, and only the front of the pylon, facing towards Karnak, and part of the grand central colonnade, is free from its vile excrescences. For this reason its effect is less agreeable than that of the Memnonium, although of much grander proportions. Its plan is easily traced, nevertheless, and having been built by only two monarchs, Remeses the Great and Amunoph III.—or, to use their more familiar titles, Sesostris and Memnon—it is less bewildering, in a historical point of view, to the unstudied tourist, than most of the other temples of Egypt. The sanctuary, which stands nearest the Nile, is still protected by the ancient stone quay, though the river has made rapid advances, and threatens finally to undermine Luxor as it has already undermined the temples of Antæopolis and Antinoë. I rode into what were once the sacred chambers, but the pillars and sculptures were covered with filth, and the Arabs had built in, around and upon them, like the clay nests of the cliff-sparrow. The peristyle of majestic Osiride pillars, in front of the portico, as well as the portico itself, are buried to half their depth, and so surrounded by hovels, that to get an idea of their arrangement you must make the tour of a number of hen-houses and asses’ stalls. The pillars are now employed as drying-posts for the buffalo dung which the Arabs use as fuel.

Proceeding towards the entrance, the next court, which is tolerably free from incumbrances, contains a colonnade of two rows of lotus-crowned columns, twenty-eight feet in circumference. They still uphold their architraves of giant blocks of sandstone, and rising high above the miserable dwellings of the village, are visible from every part of the plain of Thebes. The English Vice-Consul, Mustapha Agha, occupies a house between two of these pillars. We returned the visit he had paid us on our arrival, and were regaled with the everlasting coffee and shebook, than which there is no more grateful refreshment. He gave us the agreeable news that Mr. Murray was endeavoring to persuade the Pasha to have Karnak cleared of its rubbish and preserved from further spoliation. If I possessed despotic power—and I then wished it for the first time—I should certainly make despotic use of it, in tearing down some dozens of villages and setting some thousands of Copts and Fellahs at work in exhuming what their ancestors have mutilated and buried. The world cannot spare these remains. Tear down Roman ruins if you will; level Cyclopean walls; build bridges with the stones of Gothic abbeys and feudal fortresses; but lay no hand on the glory and grandeur of Egypt.

In order to ascend the great pylon of the temple, we were obliged to pass through a school, in which thirty or forty little Luxorians were conning their scraps of the Koran. They immediately surrounded us, holding up their tin slates, scribbled with Arabic characters, for our inspection, and demanded backsheesh for their proficiency. The gray-bearded pedagogue tried to quiet them, but could not prevent several from following us. The victories of Remeses are sculptured on the face of the towers of the pylon, but his colossi, solid figures of granite, which sit on either side of the entrance, have been much defaced. The lonely obelisk, which stands a little in advance, on the left hand, is more perfect than its Parisian mate. From this stately entrance, an avenue of colossal sphinxes once extended to the Ptolemaic pylon of Karnak, a distance of a mile and a half. The sphinxes have disappeared, but the modern Arab road leads over its site, through fields of waste grass.

And now we galloped forward, through a long procession of camels, donkeys, and Desert Arabs armed with spears, towards Karnak, the greatest ruin in the world, the crowning triumph of Egyptian power and Egyptian art. Except a broken stone here and there protruding through the soil, the plain is as desolate as if it had never been conscious of a human dwelling, and only on reaching the vicinity of the mud hamlet of Karnak, can the traveller realize that he is in Thebes. Here the camel-path drops into a broad excavated avenue, lined with fragments of sphinxes and shaded by starveling acacias. As you advance, the sphinxes are better preserved and remain seated on their pedestals, but they have all been decapitated. Though of colossal proportions, they are seated so close to each other, that it must have required nearly two thousand to form the double row to Luxor. The avenue finally reaches a single pylon, of majestic proportions, built by one of the Ptolemies, and covered with profuse hieroglyphics. Passing through this, the sphinxes lead you to another pylon, followed by a pillared court and a temple built by the later Remesides. This, I thought, while my friend was measuring the girth of the pillars, is a good beginning for Karnak, but it is certainly much less than I expect. “Tāāl min hennee!” (come this way!) called the guide, as if reading my mind, and led me up the heaps of rubbish to the roof and pointed to the north.

Ah, there was Karnak! Had I been blind up to this time, or had the earth suddenly heaved out of her breast the remains of the glorious temple? From all parts of the plain of Thebes I had seen it in the distance—a huge propylon, a shattered portico, and an obelisk, rising above the palms. Whence this wilderness of ruins, spreading so far as to seem a city rather than a temple—pylon after pylon, tumbling into enormous cubes of stone, long colonnades, supporting fragments of Titanic roofs, obelisks of red granite, and endless walls and avenues, branching out to isolated portals? Yet they stood as silently amid the accumulated rubbish of nearly four thousand years, and the sunshine threw its yellow lustre as serenely over the despoiled sanctuaries, as if it had never been otherwise, since the world began. Figures are of no use, in describing a place like this, but since I must use them, I may say that the length of the ruins before us, from west to east, was twelve hundred feet, and that the total circumference of Karnak, including its numerous pylæ, or gateways, is a mile and a half.