Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

The donkey-boys, the gamins of Egypt, are a quick-witted and amusing variety of the species. They are never sulky, or stupid. A joke is not lost upon them, and it is pleasing to see their supple features lighting up at its recognition. They often originate something of the kind themselves. The detection of their attempted exactions, and little villanies, is to them a source of merriment that is inexhaustible.

They have picked up some English. What they have acquired they teach each other, and are always on the look-out to add, from the talk they have with their customers, a word or two more to their small store. I was sometimes asked by the bare-legged urchin running by my side to teach him English. At Benihassan, having one of these volunteer scholars who was asking the English for all the objects we passed, I found it was some time before he could pronounce the ns at the end of the word beans, with a single emission of breath. We were passing through a bean-field. He endeavoured to get over his difficulty by the introduction of a vowel, making the word beanis. I had observed that the Arabs at the Pyramids dealt with the word sphinx in precisely the same way, disintegrating the x, and introducing an i, thus making it sphinkis. So the captain of our boat, being unable to utter the letters cl without the intervention of a vowel, changed the name of one of our party from Clark into Kellark. The English expression best known and most used in Egypt is ‘All right.’ With some this represents the whole language, and, with the requisite variations in tone and gesticulation, does duty on all occasions. I heard one evening a sailor on board the boat giving another sailor a lesson in our noble tongue. The whole lesson consisted of the two phrases, ‘All right,’ and ‘D⸺d rogue.’

At Karnak the donkey-boy, who happened one day to be with me, asked me to teach him something. I told him he must first say something himself in English, that I might be able to adjust my instruction to his proficiency. Without a moment’s hesitation he gave the following specimen of his attainments in the language. It may also be taken as a specimen of the progress his youthful wits had made in the civilized art of flattery. ‘English man come see Karnak say, “Very fine! glorious!” French man come see Karnak say, “G— d⸺.”’ Had I been a Frenchman, the national imprecation would have been assigned to its rightful owner.

The following day the youngster whose beast I was riding to the same place, after having endeavoured to palm off upon me some Brummagem scarabs, took from his bosom a half-fledged dove, and holding it up by its wings said with a merry grin, ‘Deso bono antico.’ Italians abound in Egypt, and many of the natives in the towns have picked up these three Italian words. ‘Bono’ and ‘non bono’ are in universal use.

At Thebes, where the rides to the catacombs of the Kings, and in the opposite direction to the tombs of the Queens, are long, and in the hot desert, you will probably be attended, in addition to the donkey-boy, by a girl with a water-jar on her head. The endurance of these little bodies surprises one. The same girl accompanied me two days consecutively, from about 10 A.M. till 4 P.M., running, bare-footed, over the pointed and angular broken stones of the desert, in the blazing sun, keeping up with the donkey, and holding all the time the water-jar on her head with one hand. She had opportunities for resting when we were inspecting tombs, and when we were taking our luncheon. To an European she would have appeared about fourteen years of age, perhaps she was eleven. She would have made a very pretty water-colour figure, with her clear yellow ivory-smooth skin, large liquid black eyes, snow-white teeth, coral lips and necklace of the same; the brown gooleh on her head, and her hand raised to support it. She might have stood for her portrait, either at the moment when, replacing the water-jar on her head with one hand, she was holding out the other, with an imploring smile on her face, for backsheesh; or as, with a grateful and satisfied smile, she was depositing the piastre in her bosom. Her smooth, yellow complexion had in it more of the crocus than of the nut, probably because she had more of old Egyptian than of Arabic blood in her veins, through, perhaps, some sword-converted descendant of those Copts, who had constructed their church in one of the courts of the neighbouring temple-palace of Medinet Habou. As to the water she carried, it had been dipped out of the muddy river, and having been churned all day on her head in the sun, could have possessed no merit beyond that of moistening a parched mouth and throat. As to myself, I had no need of the little body’s water-jar. On these occasions happy is the man whom nature has so compounded, or his manner of life so trained, that he can go a dozen hours together without feeling, or fancying himself, tired, hungry, or thirsty. Those who are always craving for a bottle of beer, and are only made more heated by the draught, are not so much their own masters as they might have been.

I fell in with an amusing specimen of the Arab village girl, at Benihassan. I had been to the tombs that are known by the name of this place. They are cut in the rock of the hill-side, and are as interesting and instructive as any to be found elsewhere in Egypt, both architecturally and pictorially. They contain some arched ceilings, though not of construction, but excavated in that form, and sixteen-sided piers, each face being slightly concaved, and closely resembling the Doric style. The illustrations, on the walls, of Egyptian life in the remote days of the primæval monarchy, to which these paintings belong, are varied and curious. They have unfortunately been somewhat injured, not so much, however, by time, as from the tombs having been used for human habitation. As I was riding back from an inspection of these antique monuments, an Arab girl, not of the crocus, but of the nut-brown tint, attached herself to me, and was very pressing for backsheesh. Having for some time held out against her petition, she suddenly sprang forward a few paces, and threw herself on the ground, exactly in the donkeys path, and became violently convulsed with a storm of uncontrollable agony. In her convulsions she shrieked, and threw dust on her head. I rode on, apparently without taking any notice of the victim of overwhelming disappointment. In a few moments she was up again, and again at my side with the same petition. A few moments later she enacted a second time the scene of distracted agony. But finding that one’s flinty heart was not moved in the way expected by these harrowing performances,

With Nature’s mother-wit, and arts well known before,

for the remainder of the way she ran alongside, still holding out her hand, but now all open sunshine and winsome smiles. Her whole simple being was so entirely bent to the one point of getting a piastre, that the little exhibition had an interest one was unwilling to terminate.

Those who have hitherto seen only the muddy-red skins, and leathery mulattoes of the western world, will be surprised at finding the soft, smooth browns and yellows of the east so pleasing. They may almost come to think that these are the most natural complexions both for man and woman; and that in this matter the white of our lilies is—but such a heresy is inconceivable—rather the defect than the perfection of colour.

The Cairo donkey-boy shows some sense of fun in the names he keeps in store for his donkey. If the man whose custom he desires to secure appears to be an American, the donkey will, perhaps, be recommended under the name of Yankee Doodle: ‘No donkey, sir, like it in all the world.’ If an Englishman, it may become Madame Rachel: ‘a donkey that is beautiful for ever.’ This will be inappropriate to the gender of the beast; but that is a matter of no consequence. If a Frenchman—the French are very unpopular in Egypt—it will assume the name of Bismarck: ‘a very strong donkey that can go anywhere.’ This must be meant to repel a badly-paying customer, or it may be used to attract a German.