Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

I took a donkey for my ride to the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and went clear around the huge mass, climbing again up the stones. As I sat on the top I could see the work going on in the sands below me, and I repeopled them with the men now being dug up under the superintendence of our Americans. In my mind’s eye I could see them as they toiled. I could see them dragging the great blocks over the road of polished stone, which had been made for the purpose, and observe the sweat rolling down their dusty faces in this blazing sun of Egypt as, under the lashes of their taskmasters, the great pile grew.

Most of the great stone blocks of which the Pyramid was built weigh at least two tons, while some of the larger ones which cover the King’s Chamber inside the structure weigh sixty tons. It is estimated that the Great Pyramid contains nearly ninety million cubic feet of limestone. This is so much that if it could be split into flags four inches thick, it would furnish enough to make a pavement two feet wide reaching over sea and land clear around the globe.

When Cheops completed this great structure he faced the exterior with limestone and granite slabs. The sides were as smooth as glass and met in a point at the top. The length of each side was eighteen feet greater than it is now. Indeed, as the bright sun played upon its polished surface the Pyramid must have formed a magnificent sight.

As it is to-day, when one views it from afar, the Great Pyramid still looks like one smooth block of stone. It is only when he comes closer that he sees it is made of many blocks. The Pyramid is built of yellow limestone and conglomerate. The stones are piled one on the other in regular layers. There is no cement between them, but they are chinked with a rough mortar which has withstood the weather for all these ages. I dug at some of this mortar with my knife, but could not loosen it, and went from block to block along the great structure on the side facing the western desert, finding the mortar everywhere solid.

And this huge pile was built over forty centuries ago. It seems a long time, but when you figure out how many lives it means it is not so old after all. Every one of us knows one hundred men who have reached forty years. Their aggregate lives, if patched together, would go back to the beginning of this monument. In other words, if a man at forty should have a child and that child should live to be forty and then have a child, and the programme of life should so continue, it would take only one hundred such generations to reach to the days when the breath from the garlic and onions eaten by those one hundred thousand men polluted this desert air.

Indeed, the world is not old, and it is not hard to realize that those people of the past had the same troubles, the same worries, and the same tastes as we have. I can take you through tombs not far from Cairo upon the walls of which are portrayed the life work of the men of ancient Egypt. You may see them using the same farm tools that the fellaheen use now. They plough, they reap, and thresh. They drink wine and gorge themselves with food. In one of the tombs I saw the picture of a woman milking a cow while her daughter held the calf back by the knees to prevent it from sucking. In another painting I saw the method of cooking, and in another observed those old Egyptians stuffing live geese with food to enlarge their livers. They were making pâté de foie gras, just as the Germans stuff geese for the same purpose to-day.

Leaving the Pyramid of Cheops, I crossed over to take a look at the other two which form the rest of the great trio of Gizeh, and I have since been up to the site of old Memphis, where are the Pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. Along this plateau, running up the Nile, are to be found the remains of a large number of Pyramids. There are also some in the Faiyum, and others far up the river in ancient Ethiopia. The latter are taller in proportion to their bases than the Egyptian Pyramids, and they generally have a hall with sculptures facing the east to commemorate the dead.

Most of the stones of the Pyramids here came from the plateau upon which they stand or from the Mokattam hills about twelve miles away on the other side of the Nile. There was an inclined plane leading to the river, on which are still to be seen the ruts in the stone road cut out by the runners of the sledges carrying these great blocks. There are pictures on some of the monuments which show how the stones were drawn on sledges by oxen and men. In one of the pictures a man is pouring oil on the roadbed. On the Island of Madeira, where the natives drag sleds by hand up and down the hills, they grease their sled runners, but the ancient Egyptians greased not only the runners but the roads as well.

I was much interested in the interior of the Great Pyramid. The mighty structure is supposed to be solid, with the exception of three chambers, connected with the outside by passageways and ventilated by air-shafts. These chambers undoubtedly once contained great treasures of gold and silver, but they were robbed in the first instance over three thousand years ago and it is known that the Persians, the Romans, and the Arabs all tried to dig into them to find the valuables they were supposed to hold.

It was with three half-naked Bedouins that I climbed up to the entrance which leads into old Cheops. There is a hole about forty-five feet above the desert on the north side. Going in here, we came into a narrow stone passage so low that I had to crawl on my hands and knees. The passage first sloped downward and then up, and finally, pushed and pulled by my dark guides, I got into a great narrow hall. After passing through this, I entered again the room where old Cheops, the king, rested undisturbed for a thousand years or so before the looters came.