Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

THE PYRAMIDS

For those who have fair eyesight the pyramids of Gizeh are a part of Cairo; their gray triangles against the sky are visible from so many points that they soon become as familiar as a neighboring hill. In addition, they have been pictured to us so constantly in paintings, drawings, engravings, and photographs that one views them at first more with recognition than surprise. "There they are! How natural!" And this long familiarity makes one shrink from arranging phrases about them.

One thing, however, can be said: when we are in actual fact under them, when we can touch them, our easy acquaintance vanishes, and we suddenly perceive that we have never comprehended them in the least. The strange geometrical walls effect a spiritual change in us; they free us from ourselves for a moment, and unconsciously we look back across the past to which they belong, and into the future, of which they are a part much more than we are, as unmindful of our own little cares and occupations, and even our own small lives, as though we had never been chained to them. It is but a fleeting second, perhaps, that this mental emancipation lasts, but it is a second worth having!

One drives to the pyramids in an hour, over a macadamized road. The perennial stories about trouble with the Bedouins belong to the past. Soldiers and policemen guard the sands as they guard the Cairo streets, and the proffer of false antiquities is not more pressing, perhaps, than the demands of the beggars in town. These three pyramids of Gizeh are those we think of before we have visited Egypt. But there are others; including the small ones and those which are ruined, seventy have been counted in twenty-five miles from Cairo to Meydoom, and pyramids are to be seen in other parts of Egypt. The stories concerning Gizeh and the travellers who, from Herodotus down, have visited the colossal tombs, are innumerable. I do not know why the one about Lepsius should seem to me amusing. This learned man and his party, who were sent to Egypt by King Frederick William of Prussia in 1842, celebrated that king's birthday by singing in chorus the Prussian national anthem in the centre of Cheops. The Bedouins in attendance reported outside that they had "prayed all together a loud general prayer."

In connection with the pyramids, the English may be said to have devoted themselves principally to measurements. The genius of the French, which is ever that of expression, has invented the one great sentence about them. So far, the Americans have done nothing by which to distinguish themselves; but their time will come, perhaps. One fancies that Edison will have something to do with it. In the meanwhile modernity is already there. There is a hotel at the foot of Cheops, and one hardly knows whether to laugh or to cry when one sees lawn-tennis going on there daily.

But no matter what lies before us—even if they should pave the desert, and establish an English tramway (or a line of American horse-cars) to the Sphinx—these mighty masses cannot be belittled. There is something in the pyramids which overawes our boasted civilization. In their presence this seems trivial; it seems an impertinence.

THE COPTS

The most interesting of the Coptic churches are at Old Cairo, a mother suburb, where the first city was founded by the conquering Arabian army. Here, ensconced amid hill-like mounds of rubbish, concealed behind mud walls, hidden at the end of blind alleys, one finds the temples of these native Christians, who are the descendants of the converts of St. Mark. The exterior walls have no importance. In truth, one seldom sees them, for the churches are within other structures. Some of them form part of old fortified convents; one is reached by passing through the dwelling-rooms of an inhabited house; another is up-stairs in a Roman tower. You arrive somehow at a door. When this is opened, you find yourself in a church whose general aspect is rough, and whose aisles are adorned with dust and sometimes with dirt. But these temples have their treasures. Chief among them are the high choir screens of dark wood, elaborately carved in panels, and decorated with morsels of ivory which have grown yellow from age. The sculpture is not open-work; it does not go through the panel; it is done in relief. The designs are Saracenic, but these geometrical patterns are interrupted every now and then by Christian emblems and by the Coptic cross. The style of this wood-carving is unique; no other sculpture resembles it. If it does not quite attain beauty, it is at least very odd and rich. There are also carved doors representing Scriptural subjects, marble pulpits, singular bronze candlesticks, brass censers adorned with little bells, silver-gilt gospel-cases, embroidered vestments, silver marriage-diadems, ostrich eggs in metal cases, and old Byzantine paintings, often representing St. George, for St. George is the patron saint of the Copts.

These people esteem themselves to be the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, as distinguished from the conquering race of Arabians who have now overrun their land. It is a comical idea, but they call upon us to note their close resemblance to the mummies. Early converts to Christianity, they have remained faithful to their belief amid the Mohammedan population all about them. It must be mentioned, however, that they had been pronounced heretics by the Council of Chalcedon before the Arabian conquest; for they had refused to worship the human nature of Christ, revering His divine nature alone. They are the guardians of the Christian legends of Egypt. In a crypt under one of their churches they show two niches. One, they say, was the sleeping-place of Joseph, and the other of the Virgin and Child, during the flight into Egypt. Near Heliopolis is an ancient tree, under whose branches the Holy Family are supposed to have rested when the sunshine was too hot for further travelling.