My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

For myself I prefer day to night, and abounding sunshine to the most generous moonlight; there is always some disappointment in the night effect in ruins, under the most favorable conditions. But I have great deference to that poetic yearning for half-light, which leads one to grope about in the heavy night-shadows of a stately temple; there is no bird more worthy of respect than the round-eyed attendant of Pallas-Athene.

And it cannot be denied that there is something mysterious and almost ghostly in our silent night ride. For once, our attendants fall into the spirit of the adventure, keep silent, and are only shades at our side. Not a word or a blow is heard as we emerge from the dark lanes of Luxor and come out into the yellow light of the plain; the light seems strong and yet the plain is spectral, small objects become gigantic, and although the valley is flooded in radiance, the end of our small procession is lost in dimness. Nothing is real, all things take fantastic forms, and all proportions are changed. One moves as in a sort of spell, and it is this unreality which becomes painful. The old Egyptians had need of little imagination to conjure up the phantasmagoria of the under-world; it is this without the sun.

So far as we can see it, the great mass of stone is impressive as we approach—I suspect because we know how vast and solid it is; and the pylons never seemed so gigantic before. We do our best to get into a proper frame of mind, by wandering apart, and losing ourselves in the heavy shadows. And for moments we succeed. It would have been the shame of our lives not to have seen Karnak by moonlight. The Great Hall, with its enormous columns planted close together, it is more difficult to see by night than by day, but such glimpses as we have of it, the silver light slanting through the stone forest and the heavy shadows, are profoundly impressive. I climb upon a tottering pylon where I can see over the indistinct field and chaos of stone, and look down into the weird and half-illumined Hall of Columns. In this isolated situation I am beginning to fall into the classical meditation of Marius at Carthage, when another party of visitors arrives, and their donkeys, meeting our donkeys in the center of the Great Hall, begin (it is their donkeys that begin) such a braying as never was heard before; the challenge is promptly responded to, and a duet ensues and is continued and runs into a chorus, so hideous, so unsanctified, so wretchedly attuned, and out of harmony with history, romance, and religion, that sentiment takes wings with silence and flies from the spot.

We can pick up again only some scattered fragments of emotion by wandering alone in the remotest nooks. But we can go nowhere that an Arab, silent and gowned, does not glide from behind a pillar or step out of the shade, staff in hand, and stealthily accompany us. Even the donkey-boys have cultivated their sensibilities by association with other nocturnal pilgrims, and encourage our gush of feeling by remarking in a low voice, “Karnak very good.” One of them, who had apparently attended only the most refined and appreciative, keeps repeating at each point of view, “Exquisite!”

As I am lingering behind the company a shadow glides up to me in the gloom of the great columns, with “good evening”; and, when I reply, it draws nearer, and, in confidential tones, whispers, as if it knew that the moonlight visit was different from that by day, “Backsheesh.”

There is never wanting something to do at Luxor, if all the excursions were made. There is always an exchange of courtesies between dahabeëhs, calls are made and dinners given. In the matter of visits the naval etiquette prevails, and the last comer makes the first call. But if you do not care for the society of travelers, you can at least make one of the picturesque idlers on the bank; you may chance to see a display of Arab horsemanship; you may be entertained by some new device of the curiosity-mongers; and there always remain the “collections” of the dealers to examine. One of the best of them is that of the German consul, who rejoices in the odd name of Todrous Paulos, which reappears in his son as Moharb Todrous; a Copt who enjoys the reputation among Moslems of a trustworthy man—which probably means that a larger proportion of his antiquities are genuine than of theirs. If one were disposed to moralize there is abundant field for it here in Luxor. I wonder if there is an insatiable demoralization connected with the dealing in antiquities, and especially in the relics of the departed. When a person, as a business, obtains his merchandise from the unresisting clutch of the dead, in violation of the firman of his ruler, does he add to his wickedness by manufacturing imitations and selling them as real? And what of the traveler who encourages both trades by buying?

One night the venerable Mustapha Aga gave a grand entertainment, in honor of his reception of a firman from the Sultan, who sent him a decoration of diamonds set in silver. Nothing in a Moslem's eyes could exceed the honor of this recognition by the Khalif, the successor of the Prophet. It was an occasion of religious as well as of social demonstration of gratitude. There was service, with the reading of the Koran in the mosque, for the faithful only; there was a slaughter of sheep with a distribution of the mutton among the poor; and there was a fantasia at the residence of Mustapha (the house built into the columns of the temple of Luxor), to which everybody was bidden. There had been an arrival of Cook's Excursionists by steamboat, and there must have been as many as two hundred foreigners at the entertainment in the course of the evening.

The way before the house was arched with palms and hung with colored lanterns; bands of sailors from the dahabeëhs sat in front, strumming the darabooka and chanting their wild refrains; crowds of Arabs squatted in the light of the illumination and filled the steps and the doorway. Within were feasting, music, and dancing, in Oriental abandon. In the hall, which was lined with spectators, was to be seen the stiff-legged sprawling-about and quivering of the Ghawazees, to the barbarous tum-tum, thump-thump, of the musicians; in each side-room also dancing was extemporized, until the house was pervaded with the monotonous vulgarity, which was more pronounced than at the house of Ali.

In the midst of these strange festivities, the grave Mustapha received congratulations upon his newly conferred honor, with the air of a man who was responding to it in the finest Oriental style. Nothing grander than this entertainment could be conceived in Luxor.

Let us try to look at it also with Oriental eyes. How fatal it would be to it not to look at it with Oriental eyes, we can conceive by transferring the scene to New York. A citizen, from one of the oldest families, has received from the President, let us suppose, the decoration of the Grand Order of Inspector of Consulates. In order to do honor to the occasion, he throws open his residence on Gramercy Park, procures a lot of sailors to sit on his steps and sing nautical ditties, and drafts a score of girls from Centre-street to entertain his guests with a style of dancing which could not be worse if it had three thousand years of antiquity.