Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

I am much interested in the Copts. There are about eight hundred and fifty thousand of them in the country. They look very much like the Egyptians and dress in about the same fashion. The women veil their faces, both in public and private, and until about a generation ago the unmarried women wore white veils.

These people believe in the ancient form of Christianity. They are indeed the same Christians that Egypt had in Roman times. They claim St. Mark as their first patriarch and say that he preached the Gospel at Alexandria and started the sect there. They have a patriarch to-day, with twelve bishops and a large number of priests and deacons under him. They have their monks and nuns, who lead rigorous lives; they fast and pray, wear shirts of rough wool, and live upon vegetables.

The Copts believe in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ as his Son. They believe in prayer, and like the Mohammedans, pray five or six times a day. They begin their devotions at daybreak and are supposed to make five separate petitions before dark and to close with a final prayer at midnight. As they pray they recite a Psalm or chapter from the Gospel, and some have rosaries of beads on which they count forty-one times, saying the words:

“Oh! my Lord, have mercy.”

After this they end with a short petition. They wash before praying, and worship with their faces turned toward the east. They believe in baptism and think that an unbaptized child will be blind in the next life. They have fixed times for baptism, a boy baby being baptized at forty days and a girl baby at eighty days after birth.

There are Coptic churches all over Egypt, and I find several here at Asyut. The church usually consists of four or five buildings surrounding a court, and includes a chapel, a hall of worship, the residence of the bishop, and other rooms. The sanctuary proper contains an altar separated from the rest of the rooms by a screen, covered by a curtain with a cross worked upon it. Before this curtain stand the priest, the choir, and the more influential members of the congregation. Beyond them is a lattice work, on the other side of which are the less important men, with the women in the rear. Everyone is expected to take off his shoes when he comes in, and in many of the halls of worship, as there are no seats, the people lean upon sticks while the sermon is preached. The service begins at daybreak and often lasts four or five hours, so that it is no wonder that some of the members of the congregation fall to chatting during the preaching, and discuss business and social matters.

I am told that the Copts do not trust their wives any too much. Each has but one, but he does not make her his confidante, never tells her his business secrets, and pays her much less respect than the native Protestant Christians show their wives. He seldom sees his wife until he is married and is forbidden by his religion to marry any one but a Copt. As among the Mohammedans, marriages are usually a matter of business, with a dowry bargained for beforehand. The favourite wedding time is Saturday night, and the marriage feasts last through the following week. When the marriage contract is made all the parties to it say the Lord’s Prayer three times. Before the ceremonies are completed the bride and the bridegroom go separately to church where the Eucharist is administered to them. Just before her marriage, the bride is given a steam bath, and her finger nails and toe nails are stained red with henna. Immediately before the ceremony she sends the groom a suit of clothing, and a woman from her house goes to him to see that it is delivered properly and that he is taken to the bath. This provision ensures that both start the married life comparatively clean.

CHAPTER XV
OLD THEBES AND THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

All day long I have been wandering about through the tombs of the kings who ruled Egypt three or four thousand years ago. I have gone into the subterranean chambers which the Pharaohs dug out of the solid rocks for their burial vaults, and I have visited the tombs of kings older than they. The last resting places of more than fifty of these monarchs of early Egypt have been discovered, and the work is still going on. Some of the best work of excavation all along the Nile valley is being done by Americans. While at Cairo I found the money of Harvard College and the Boston Museum uncovering the cemeteries of the nabobs and paupers who were buried at the time of King Cheops under the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. The Egyptian Exploration Fund, which is supported by Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, has a small army of workmen operating near Luxor, the University of Pennsylvania has made important discoveries, and a large part of the uncovering of the valley in which these royal tombs lie has been done by the Americans.