Round the Wonderful World

by G. E. Mitton

The dragoman describes the temple fluently and intelligently, first in English, then in French, and adds a little explanation in German for the benefit of two men of that race who have talked loudly in their own guttural tongue all the time he has endeavoured to make the rest of the party hear. The dragoman does not reel his words off as if he were repeating a lesson, as, alas, so many of the guides at our own cathedrals do. He is a clever man, well educated and capable. It has taken him years to learn all he knows, and it is only the clever boys who can become good dragomans. One of our donkey-boys, a bright little fellow who speaks far better English than most of his companions, tells us, "I am going to be a dragoman." He says it deliberately, with a pause between each word to get them correctly. "Thus I speak always with the English and the Americans. To the English I speak English, which is what I have learned, but when I am with Americans I can talk to them in their own tongue too."

Laughing, we mount and are off again.

We are now penetrating into the great hills of sandstone we saw afar off from the hotel. The road winds into a gorge, and at each turn displays more vivid beauty. We feel a strange joy rising within us, so that we would like to sing or shout at the tops of our voices. The brilliance of the air shows up every line in the great precipices of orange-yellow, streaked with red and purple, which rise against a sky of thrilling blue. There is not a blade of grass or a leaf to be seen in these vast solitudes, only the massive stones, broken and split and scattered, lie in the fierce sun or black shadow. We can imagine these defiles looking much the same when three or four thousand years ago the funeral procession of one of the mighty Pharaohs wound its way into the heart of the mountains, carrying the man who had never known opposition or denied himself his slightest wish. They were very magnificent these processions, composed of hundreds of people who carried all sorts of things—furniture, chariots, boats, animals, fruit and flowers—with tremendous ceremony.

It is a longish ride before we alight again, and leaving the donkeys under a slight straw shelter penetrate into the fastnesses of the hills.

How many of these rock-tombs were made here will probably never be known, but year by year more are uncovered. The first we step into is like a large well-lighted cave cut out of a cliff-side, from it opens another cave-like room, and from that another, each sloping downward and the whole series giving the impression of a series of puzzle-boxes fitting into one another and then drawn out. The walls are covered with pictures, paintings on plaster, not outline pictures like those we saw in the temples, but filled in with blue and green, orange and terra-cotta, laid on thickly, and as fresh as the day they were done. Ever descending we pass on until we reach the last chamber, where the great sarcophagus or coffin of the king was placed right up against the face of the rock. The sarcophagus might be a mighty block of granite, enclosing a wooden case, and that again another case, probably carved and gilt, and finally, as a kernel, there was the body of the king, preserved and dried by spices, lying awaiting the final resurrection. The Egyptians believed in a future world, but they could not imagine a future world without there being human bodies in it such as we have now, so they took infinite trouble in preserving the dead body that it might be ready for its time of call. Most of the sarcophagi from these tombs have been removed and taken to the museum at Cairo, but in one to which we penetrate, hewn out at a slope so steep that we have difficulty in keeping our feet as we slither down, the mummy has been replaced and is left uncovered.

Lit up by electric light we see King Amenhetep ii., with his skin blackened to a parchment, drawn tightly over his chiselled aristocratic features. In the dome-shaped forehead, the Roman nose, and the tightly compressed lips there is an expression of infinite disdain, as if he, in his time the mightiest ruler in the world and the leader of civilisation, knew that now he was exposed to the gaze of a party of outer barbarians whose national histories were but of mushroom growth. This king struck terror into the hearts of his enemies; he raided the land of Syria, slew seven chiefs with his own hand and brought them back to Thebes, hanging head downward from the bows of his boat!

The very day after a king ascended the throne he used to begin hewing out the sepulchre where he should lie. The scenes drawn on the walls show what he expected to find in the other world. We see a pair of scales with the heart of the dead man in one balance and a feather in the other; a monkey sits on the top and adjusts the weight. The heart must weigh the feather exactly, for to be over-righteous was as bad as being wicked! The dead man also had to pass before forty-two judges, who each examined him searchingly as to whether he had committed one particular sin. As one of the party remarked in an awe-struck voice, "And if he did pass them all safely and another started up and asked him if he ever told a lie he'd be done, for no man could deny that he had committed any of the forty-two principal sins and remain truthful!"

To accompany the soul to the other world many things used to be buried in the tombs, clothes and food and utensils and weapons, and, thanks to this custom, numberless things have been saved to show us how the ancient Egyptians lived. These, however, have mostly been taken to Cairo for safe keeping. But here in Amenhetep's tomb one thing has been left. In a small side chamber, with the light falling full upon them, are three mummies, each with a hole in the skull and a gash on the breast, showing that they were the king's slaves, killed in order that their souls might accompany him and serve him beyond the tomb!

They lie there with their hair still on their heads, and even the false hair, they used to increase it, showing; on their faces is a ghastly grin. We wonder if they submitted quietly, proud of having been chosen, or if each fought fiercely for the life which belonged to him and was not any man's to take away.

It is very hot and close down in the rock-hewn chamber, and we are glad enough to stumble up and out again, though we are blinded by the sunshine as we emerge.