While making the ascent, the Hakem of the Arab tribe, which supplies guides and assistance to travellers, took the opportunity of a pause for breath to press upon me the purchase of some old coins. I told him I would look at them when we had done with the Pyramid. ‘I am satisfied:’ he replied; ‘an Englishman’s word is as good as his money.’
Many people shrink from ascending the Pyramid from a fear of becoming dizzy and confused on seeing, as they fancy they must, that they are up so high without anything to hold on by. This sight need never be seen. You are going up against the face of the mountain; attend then to what you are doing. Look where you are putting your feet, which you must do, each step being three feet high, more or less and you will never see once, from the bottom to the top, how high you are above the earth, or that you have no supports, except when you turn round on sitting down to get breath, and when you reach the summit. The same is true to a great extent even of the descent, although your back is then turned to the mountain. Attend to what you are about—that is, to the place where you are going to set your foot—and there will be nothing at all to make you dizzy.
One of the exhibitions of the place is that of an Arab climbing from the bottom to the top and coming down again, in what appears to the spectators, an incredibly short space of time. The charge for the performance is a few francs. As they are slim, long-legged, active fellows, they are well-adapted for this kind of thing. One who was proud of what he could do in this way was challenged by my young friend to a foot-race for half-a-crown. There was not an Arab present but thought it would be a hollow thing. It was not a hollow thing at all. But their man it was who came in second, Harrow winning by a few yards.
CHAPTER XII.
LUNCHEON AT THE PYRAMIDS—KÊF.
Mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the landscape round it measures.—Milton.
On our first visit to the Pyramids we had our luncheon in the large granite tomb a little below, and to the south-east of the Sphinx. One feels that there is an incongruity, a kind almost of profanation, in using a tomb, particularly such a tomb, for such a purpose. Its massiveness, at all events, makes you conscious of a kind of degeneracy in the present day. A sense of unworthiness and littleness comes over you. What business have we, who send our dead to heaven, and have done with them, to disturb the repose of those on whose sepulchres a fortune was spent, if not by their relatives, at all events by themselves? But on this occasion there was little choice. Outside the sun was scorching, and the wind was high, and the only alternative was the hotel. But that was impossible: to be shut up in a hideous, plastered, naked room of yesterday, within a few yards of the Great Pyramid. One would rather go without one’s luncheon for six months together than have to bear the stings of conscience for having so outraged the memory of Cheops and Chephren. And so we took our luncheon that day in the tomb of one of the great officers of the court of those old times.
It was formed entirely of enormous blocks and monolithic piers of polished granite. I do not know of how many chambers it consisted, for being considerably below the level of the surrounding sand-drift, and the roof having been entirely removed, a few hours’ wind must always completely fill and obliterate it. The Arabs then have to clear it out again. When we were there four chambers were open. These are all long narrow apartments. The one by which we entered runs from west to east. At right angles to this are two other apartments, their axes being from north to south. The fourth we saw was at right angles to the north end of these two parallel chambers. It was in the southern extremity of the westernmost of the two parallel chambers that our party took their places. The comestibles were laid on a cloth spread on the sand, with which the floor, to the depth of some inches, was covered; the party reclined on the sand around, or sat on blocks of granite arranged for seats. The hungry Arabs perched themselves on the brink of the tomb, waiting for the fragments of the feast, like vultures. The pert popping of the champagne corks again disturbed ones sense of the fitness of things.
How was it possible to be there, and not feel the genius loci? The whole of this edge of the desert, from Gizeh to the Faioum, is one vast Necropolis. The old primæval monarchy lies buried here; at Gizeh, Sakkara, Dashour, Abusseir, and throughout all the spaces between and beyond, to the Faioum. No other empire has been so buried.