Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water / The Journal of a Tour Through the British Empire and America

by Ethel Gwendoline Vincent

The entrance to the pyramid is a little way up in the centre of one side. The steps here are sunk in sideways, so as to form a slanting platform to a small aperture. Over this there are two enormous blocks of marble laid pent-ways, to form an arch in the pyramid, and to support its weight on the roof of the passage. You slip and slide down the steep passage, feeling you are going down into the bowels of the earth, "the entrails of the Great Pyramid," and a last long slide brings you into the chamber. Here you see the material of which the Pyramids are constructed, a rock called nummulite limestone, often containing fossil remains. In one place it is rough and glistening, in another smooth and polished, as if worn away—by what means is not known. In the roof there is a recess, where the sarcophagus is supposed to have stood, but none was found when it was opened for the first time, as was supposed. In reality the tomb had been opened and sacked, probably not such an untold number of years after the death of Cheops.

Then we walked ankle-deep in sand a quarter of a mile away to the south-east of the Great Pyramid, to where the Sphinx stands. Her whereabouts is only decided by a mass of rock that looks at first sight (please excuse the familiar simile) like the Toadstool Rock at Tunbridge Wells, for it is only a mass of rock supported on a column. As we approach, however, and finally stand under the Sphinx, we begin to understand the fascination she exercises.

We see the Egyptian helmet with the long flaps, under which are the protruding ears, so very distinct. Then we notice the eyes, the forehead, the broken, flattened nose, and the thick lips. It is in the lips lies the expression of the Sphinx, the disdainful, haughty look, or anon the smile that parts them. The remainder of the face follows the mood expressed on the lips. But at all times the Sphinx is unsympathetic, cold as the stone she is carved in. With face turned towards the rising waters of the Nile, she changes not with the ruddy glow of sunset, nor the blush of morning, reflected from its waters. She is human, but relentless. The animal body of the Sphinx is again buried in the sand—for once, a century ago, excavation revealed it. Between the front paws it was then found there was an altar, where sacrifices must have been offered under the very head of the Sphinx herself, and a sanctuary with some tablets was discovered under the breast.

Stanley said, "Its situation and significance are worthy of the Sphinx; if it was the giant representative of royalty, then it fitly guards the greatest of royal sepulchres, and with its half-human and half-animal form is the best welcome and the best farewell to the history and religion of Egypt."

Connected as it was supposed to be with her worship, the Temple of the Sphinx is peculiarly appropriate to her in its massidity. The enormous blocks of granite and alabaster, laid lengthways across other blocks, on which we look down, gives to it the appearance of the crypt of a cathedral.

The two remaining pyramids have no special interest, nor yet the two or three others, very small ones by comparison, lying about the greater. The latter are evidences of a very short reign, or perhaps were only intended to serve as a monument of sufficient height, to ensure their never being sunk or overwhelmed with the sand typhoon of the desert.

On Friday afternoon, the Sabbath of the Moslems, we went to see the religious service held by the sect of Howling Dervishes.

Passing through a quiet court where the musicians were taking their places, through an outer room, we came into a whitewashed mosque, whose unornamented dome, as we shall presently see, has a splendid echo. A goat-skin mat is arranged round in a circle, on which the twenty or thirty worshippers enter one by one and kneel. The sheik squats in the kibla or niche, and we sit on chairs ranged round the wall.

The priest or sheik intones some prayers, to which they all respond, the echo lingering and repeating the sonorous tones of the response, till it forms an accompaniment to the following prayer.