Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

Every other Englishman you meet in Cairo, and it is more or less so throughout the East, has some story to tell you of the rapacity, and roguery of the bazaars. The complaint is made somewhat in the following style:—‘What do you think of that slippered, and turbaned old villain, of whom I bought this amber mouthpiece, and this kafia, having had the conscience to ask me four napoleons for each of them? I was not going to be done in that way, so I said to him, “You shocking cormorant, I’ll give you four napoleons for the two: not one para more. Four napoleons is my figure.” “Four napoleons!” he said, with a shudder, “I give you the things for nothing. Take them away with you.” And he pretended to put them into my hand. But I showed him the money. He could not stand the sight of the gold; and so you see I have got the amber, and the silk, at a fair price?’ Well: perhaps you have; or, perhaps, you have given too much for them, after all. But your story is no proof that the old fellow in slippers and turban was a rogue. It is you who do not know the circumstances and the customs of the country: and in this matter theirs differ from ours. With us there is so much competition in trade, that all the leaning is the other way. Every trader wishes to attract by the lowness of his prices. But still, here as there, the rule is to buy as cheap, and sell as dear as you can. This is the rule on which the slippered, and turbaned old fellow acts. He knows, though it is very hard for him to admit the idea—yet he admits it without understanding how it can be so—that you are travelling for your amusement. He, therefore, infers that you must have plenty of money to spare: otherwise you could not be travelling in this way. You want this kafia, or mouthpiece. There is no regular market-price, where there is so little competition. So he will try to get for it as much as he can. Small blame to him for that. When you command the market at home for any article, what do you do yourself? You ask for it what you can get, without reference to cost price. You sell a good weight-carrying hunter at a fancy price. You sell a piece of land to a neighbour at an accommodation price. If you can’t get what you asked at first, you abate something, and take less. He does the same.

You go into a shop anywhere in Italy, say a bookseller’s, and ask the price of a book. ‘So many lire,’ he replies: several more than he intends to take. He will receive it, if you give it; but he does not expect you to give it. He is very fond of a little talk; and to have a little talk with you is an agreeable addition to the pleasure of selling the book. You call this, contemptuously, chaffering; or, angrily, cheating. It is detestable to you, but the reverse of detestable to the Italian bibliopole. You are annoyed at it. He can’t understand why.

But to go back to our friend in the slippers and turban. The seat he invites you to take, and the coffee and pipe he offers to you, imply that he supposes you will not give what he asks at first; and that the price ultimately agreed upon will be the result of a long negotiation. He is in no hurry; nor, as I can show, is he without conscience. I bought a pair of bracelets of one Mohammed Adamanhoury, in the Khan Khaleel. I had liked the appearance of the bracelets, and I had asked the price. It did not occur to me at the moment that I was in Cairo, or perhaps what was the regular practice in transactions of this sort in Cairo. Perhaps I had fallen into this temporary oblivion, because the conversation and bearing of Mohammed were pleasant. I had brought him a little souvenir from an Englishman who had travelled throughout Syria with him, and knew his many estimable qualities. Mohammed’s beard was just beginning to be grizzled with age, so he had had time to see the world, and to know it. His complexion was fair for Egypt, a pale yellowish brown. His features, singly, and in their general expression, were good. His shawl-turban, and shawl-sash, and all his get up were unexceptionable. His voice and manner were as smooth as oil. His style of conversation perceptibly flowery and complimentary; but that is the manner of his people. I should myself of all things have liked to have travelled through the East with him. It would have been very pleasant at the time; and not unpleasant afterwards to be one’s self remembered, and talked of, as he talked of my friend whom, a year or two back, he had accompanied in his wanderings. But about the bracelets: I had given, without hesitation or comment, what he asked. A friend, I was travelling with, finding me at his shop, and seeing what I had bought, would like to have a pair of the same kind of bracelets. He asked the price. I told him. ‘No,’ interposed Mohammed, addressing himself to my companion, ‘your friend gave all I asked; and, therefore, I must name a less price to you.’ Conscience is then not extinguished utterly in those who ask, at first, for the goods they are selling more than the cost price, plus the legitimate profit (if there be such a thing as legitimate profit). Mohammed Adamanhoury of the Khan Khaleel is my demonstration.

CHAPTER LIX.
THE CANALIZATION OF THE ISTHMUS.

Sic vos non vobis.—Virgil.

I went from Cairo to the Suez Canal by the new branch railway from Zakazeek to Ismailia. The original direct line from Cairo to Suez has been abandoned on account of the expense both of working the inclines over the intervening high ground, and of supplying a line through the desert with water, a great part of which had to be carried in skins on camels’ backs.

As you pass along the rails you see, in the occurrence, here and there, of patches of alluvial soil in the desert, indications of former cultivation. This cultivable soil must have been created by the water of the old Bubastis Canal. You see, also, that cultivation is now re-establishing itself all along the Sweet Water Canal, which supplies the towns and stations of the Suez Canal with drinking water as it did, from the first and throughout its excavation, the army of fellahs that was employed on the work. The fact is that there is a great deal of argillaceous matter in what appears to be merely the grit, and siliceous sand, of the desert: all, therefore, that is requisite, in many places, for at once rendering it fertile is a sufficiency of water.

The history of the canalization of the desert is full of interest. The earliest attempt of the kind with which we are acquainted is that ascribed to the Great Rameses. That first Canal was between fifty and sixty miles in length. It left the Nile at Bubastis, and reached the neighbourhood of Lake Timsah. Upon it Rameses built his two treasure cities Pithom, and Ramses, mentioned in the first chapter of Exodus. By treasure cities is probably meant strongly-fortified places, in which were caravanserais for the trade with Asia, and large depôts of the warlike materials kept in store by the king for his Asiatic campaigns. That they could have been treasure cities, in the ordinary acceptation of the word treasure, is impossible. That would not have been kept on the most exposed border of the kingdom; and the treasury of Rameses must have been at Thebes, his capital, at the other extremity of Egypt. Herodotus, and others mention Pithom. The site of Ramses, though its name occurs nowhere, excepting in Exodus, has been ascertained by the discovery of a granite statue of Rameses, between the figures of the two gods, Ra and Atmu, with the name of the king several times repeated in the inscription upon it. This was found at the time of the French expedition. Rameses must have been worshipped in his own city; and his being placed between these two gods, in this piece of sculpture, shows that it belonged to a temple. The mound, therefore, of rubbish from which was disinterred this group of figures in which the king is presented as an object of worship, must be the débris of the city of Ramses. There is no doubt about the site of Pithom.

Especial interest is attached to these cities. We know that the Israelites were employed in building them: and, as it seems probable that the cities and Canal were parts of a single plan, we may suppose that the Israelites were forced to labour in the construction of the Canal also. Of this a part, that near Bubastis, still remains in use. With how much interest then does it become invested, when we feel that we may regard it as the possible, even as the probable, work of the people Moses led out of Egypt. At all events we can stand on the ruins of the cities they built with the certainty that here was the scene of their labours. But something more remains to be said. We have in this first chapter of the history of the canalization of the isthmus an ascertained date, which enables us to fix the date of the exodus. The oppression took place in the reign of the Pharaoh who preceded the one to whose reign the exodus belongs. As then the oppression took place in the reign of the builder of Pithom and Ramses, the exodus must have occurred in the reign of his son, and successor, Menophres.