The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

The archæologists now excavating in Egypt tell me that they frequently find bricks which were undoubtedly made by them, and assert that the sun-dried bricks of to-day are practically the same as those the children of Israel moulded under the lash of their taskmasters.

This is true of the ruins of Bubastis, or the city of the worship of the cat. The remains of this town, which was situated within a stone’s throw of the Zagazig of to-day, are still to be seen. Its many buildings of mud brick have crumbled almost to dust, but here and there the walls are plainly visible. There are several hundred acres of such ruins and I spent an hour or so to-day driving through them.

Bubastis dates back to the times when the Pyramids were young. It is supposed to have been built by the Israelites, and was a great city until it was captured by the Persians about 352 B.C. It was noted for its temples devoted to the cat-headed goddess. This lady had the form of a lioness with the head of a cat and held in one hand a lotus leaf as a sceptre. Herodotus tells of her and of this city, saying that the temples were gorgeous and that the stone road leading to them was one thousand eight hundred feet long. He says that as many as seven hundred thousand worshippers came to the annual festivities. He relates that many of the worshippers were women who often danced and acted “in an unseemly manner.”

Driving out to the Bubastis, I found there a brickyard in full swing. It was situated right on the edge of the ruins, and the fellaheen of to-day were moulding the clay used by the Israelites of the past into building material for the present. As I looked at them my mind went back to the days of the Pharaohs when Moses saw his people toiling under the lash. These men and women I watched were working under taskmasters or overseers. Their half-clad bodies were burnt black by the tropical sun and they looked not unlike slaves. Here they were grinding the mud, there they were moulding it into bricks, while farther over they were piling up those which had been dried in the sun. The bricks were carried by young girls, bossed by a burly negro with a stick in his hand. At his direction the girls took the bricks on their heads and carried them off on the trot. By bribing the negro overseer I got a photograph of this scene, and I doubt not my picture gives a fair idea of what went on in those long-ago days, when Pharaoh drove the Israelites to similar work.

Down through Goshen came Joseph and Mary fleeing with the infant Saviour from the wrath of Herod, the baby killer. This was then on the main highway from Palestine into Egypt, and there is no doubt that they stopped at Bubastis as they went on to Heliopolis. Not far from the obelisk of Heliopolis there is a tree under which Mary and Joseph and the young Jesus are said to have rested. It is about five miles from Cairo and guide books speak of it as one of the chief sights of Egypt. I doubt the reliability of their statements. The tree may be the descendant of one which stood there in the time of Christ. It is an old sycamore gnarled with many years and scarred with the names of tourists. It is on one of the estates of the Khedive, and may be seen through the bars of a fence which has been built around it to keep off the relic hunters. During my visit there I tried to climb the fence in order to get a photograph of it, but some of the Khedive’s servants came up and warned me not to go in. The tree is surrounded by orange orchards which are irrigated by sakiehs worked by water buffaloes with blankets over their eyes.

As I went by I stopped at one of these sakiehs and the men brought me some oranges from the Khedive’s orchard, selling them at the rate of eight for ten cents. They were wonderfully refreshing, and as I sat eating them in the shade of the trees outside the fence I wondered whether Mary and Joseph had not perhaps thus quenched their thirst in the same place nearly two thousand years ago. Any resting place must have been welcome after the long ride through the country to the edge of the great city of the sun.

There are other stories told of the stay of the Holy Family in Egypt. One is that Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus out to the Pyramids, and from there to the Sphinx. It is said that Mary laid Him in the lap of the Sphinx, and that He slept for a night on the paws of that mighty stone beast, half lion, half woman.

As I travel through Egypt, these stories seem more vivid. I went down the other day to the banks of the Nile where the little baby Moses is said to have lain in the bulrushes in his boat of papyrus, and as I stood by the obelisk at Heliopolis I was reminded of the Virgin and the Saviour by a young girl who had a baby in her arms. She must have been about the same age that Mary was then, and the little one laughed and crowed as she rested there under the tropical sun. At the same time a score of other children ranging in age from two to twelve years gathered around me and posed for my camera in front of the obelisk. This great monolith was undoubtedly standing when our Saviour was carried through Egypt, and it was erected long before the baby Moses was rescued from the waters of the Nile. The great stone shaft seemed to tie the past and the present together, and the children of to-day brought to my mind those of the times of the Saviour.

The children were glad to pose for me, but as I snapped the camera they rushed to the front with hands outstretched, begging for baksheesh. I was at a loss how to fee so many, and finally gave twenty-five cents to my coachman and left him, to fight it out with the babies. The little ones mobbed him and he had to threaten them with his carriage whip to keep them away. He finally ended the trouble by giving each two children one half a piastre, so that each received little more than one cent. This made them quite happy.