That day, as she returned to the village, her step, I can think, was lighter than usual. Perhaps she did not observe the mischief the locusts were doing to her father’s little plot of wheat.
A few days afterwards, we were riding across the hills from Bethlehem to Solomon’s Pools. Our path lay by the side of the rude old aqueduct. This is merely a trough of undressed stone, sunk to the level of the surface of the ground, on the sides of the hills it winds its way among, for about five miles, from the Pools to the town. The sinking of the aqueduct just to the level of the surface, was a way of saving it from the risks of being knocked over, or of falling to pieces, that was as wise as it was simple. If it had been raised above the ground, or buried in it, whenever it got out of order, the repair of damages would have been difficult and costly. Originally it was carried on, five miles further, to Jerusalem. We had, in our ride, reached the spot where the large-hearted king (who, like Aristotle, Bacon, and Humboldt, had seen that all knowledge was connected) had, probably, his Botanical Gardens, in which he cultivated some of the plants he wrote about; and the genius loci had just brought into my mind, his request, suggested to him, perhaps, by the interest he took in the fruit he was growing up here, ‘To be comforted with apples, for that he was sick of love,’ when we came suddenly on a party of women washing clothes. If the daughters of Bethlehem were as good-looking in Solomon’s time as they are in ours, it, we can imagine, must have strengthened his favourable disposition towards the place; and may go some way towards accounting for the aqueduct. Though, indeed, this seems a little inconsistent with his preference for apples. That, however, may have been only a temporary feeling, or, it may have been the expression of his latest and more matured experience.
But, as to those daughters of Bethlehem now in the flesh, whom we had come upon, while so usefully and creditably employed. They were much amused, as it appeared, at having been caught in such an occupation, and were laughing merrily. My young friend, as might have been expected of him, endeavoured to increase the merriment; this he did by leaning over his saddle, and saying, ‘Ateeni bosa.’ Had he spoken in English—though, of course, nothing of the kind could ever have been said by him in our downright tongue—the words would have been ‘Give me a kiss.’ The one, to whom he appeared more particularly to address himself, blazed up with instantaneous indignation, just like the girl of Bethany. With angry glance, and fierce tone, she exclaimed, ‘May your lips be withered first.’ But now I felt no apprehensions. My only thought was, that if we came back the same way, and should, by accident, find her alone, she would then, perhaps, hold out her hand, and say, ‘Your lips are a garden of roses: give backsheesh.’
CHAPTER VI.
ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTER OF THE PYRAMID CIVILIZATION.
The riddle of the world.—Pope.
That the three great Pyramids of Gizeh were erected by Chufu, Schafra, and Menkeres, the Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus of Herodotus, we now know with as much certainty as that we owe the Pantheon to Agrippa, and the Coliseum to the Flavian Emperors. We also know with equal certainty that they were built between five and six thousand years ago. From these Pyramids to the Faioum extends along the edge of the desert a region of Pyramids, and of circumjacent Necropoleis. Not far from an hundred Pyramids have been already noted. These were the tombs of royalty. The uncrowned members of the royal family, the ministers of state, the priests, and the other great men of the dynasties of the Old Monarchy, lie buried around. Their tombs, excavated and built in the rock, are innumerable. Some of them reaching seventy feet, or more, back into the mountain (the tombs of the New Monarchy at Thebes were several times as large), are constructed of enormous pieces of polished granite, most exquisitely fitted together. Some are covered with sculptures and paintings, traced with much freedom, and a grand and pleasing simplicity. They describe the offices, occupations, and possessions, and the religious ideas and practices of those for whom they were constructed.
Great was the antiquity of Thebes before European history begins to dawn. It was declining before the foundations of Rome were laid. Its palmy days ante-dated that event by as long a period as separates us from the first Crusade. But the building of the great Pyramids of Gizeh preceded the earliest traditions of Thebes by a thousand years.
In this Pyramid region, and its Necropoleis, we have a chapter in the history of our race, the importance of which every one can comprehend. It is a history which, while in the main it omits events, gives us fuller, and more genuine and authentic materials than any written history could give, for a complete understanding of the everyday life, and arts of the people. And the time for which it gives us this information is so remote, that there is no contemporary history of any other people, which we can compare with it, or with which we can in any way bring it into connexion. It has nowhere any points of contact. It is a rich stream of history that runs through a barren waste of early time, like the Nile itself through the Libyan Desert, with a complete absence of affluents.
Having, then, made out the position of this epoch with respect to general history, the next point is to ascertain as distinctly as we can what were the arts, the knowledge, the manners, the customs of the period, that is of those who were buried in these Pyramids and Necropoleis. When they lived, and what they were, give to them their historic interest and importance.