“My son is the superintendent,” said the old man, displaying a grotesque pattern of wrinkles that was meant for a smile. “Follow Maghmoód.”
The son, an affable young Frenchman attired in the thinnest of white trousers and an open shirt, was bowed over a small stone covered with hieroglyphics. I made known my errand.
“Work?” he replied, “No. Unfortunately the society allows us to hire only natives. I wish I might have a few Europeans to superintend the excavations. But I am always pleased to find a workman interested in the antiquities. You are as free to go inside as if you had a ticket. But it is midday now. How do you escape a sunstroke with only that cap? You had better sit here in the shade until the heat dies down a bit.”
I assured him that the Egyptian sun had no evil effects upon me and he stepped to the door to shout an order to the sleek gatekeeper just out of sight over the hill. That official grinned knowingly as I appeared, unlocked the gate, and, fending off with one hand several elusive urchins, admitted me to the noonday solitude of the forest of pillars.
As the shadows began to lengthen, a flock of “Cookies” invaded the sacred precincts, and, stumbling through the ruins in pursuit of their shepherds, two dragomans of phonographical erudition, awoke the dormant echoes with their bleating. With their departure, came less precipitous mortals, weighed down under cameras and notebooks. Interest centered in one animated corner of the enclosure. There, in the latest excavation, an army of men and boys toiled at the shadufs that raised the sand and the water which the sluiceways poured into the pit to loosen the soil. Other natives, naked but for a loin-cloth, groped in the mud at the bottom, eager to win the small reward offered to the discoverer of each archæological treasure.
One such prize was captured during the afternoon. A small boy, half buried in the ooze, suddenly ceased his wallowing with a shrill shriek of triumph; and came perilously near being trampled out of sight by his fellow-workmen. In a twinkling, half the band, amid a mighty uproar of shouting and splashing, was tugging at some heavy object still hidden from view.
They raised it at last,—a female figure in blue stone, some four feet in length, which had suffered downfall, burial, and the onslaughts of the Arab horde without apparent injury. The news of the discovery was quickly carried to the shanty on the hill. In a great pith helmet that gave him a striking resemblance to a walking toadstool, the superintendent hurried down to the edge of the pit and gave orders that the statue be carried to a level space, about which a throng of excited tourists lay in wait with open notebooks. There it was carefully washed with sponges, gloated over by the aforementioned tourists, and placed on a car of the tiny railway system laid through the ruins. Natives, in number sufficient to have moved one of Karnak’s mighty pillars, tailed out on the rope attached to the car, and, moving to the rhythm of a weird Arabic song of rejoicing, dragged the new find through the temple and deposited it at the feet of the aged Frenchman.
As evening fell, I turned back to the Hotel Economica. Several “comrades” had gathered, but neither they nor Pietro could give me information concerning the land across the Nile, which I proposed to visit next day. The Greek knew naught of the ruins of Thebes, save the anecdote of a former guest, who had attempted the excursion and returned wild with thirst, mumbling an incoherent tale of having floundered in seas of sand.
“For our betters,” said Pietro, in the softened Italian in which he chose to address me. “For the rich ladies and gentlemen who can ride on donkeys and be guarded by many dragomans, a visit to Thebes is very well. But common folk like you and I! Bah! We are not wanted there. They would send no army to look for us if we disappeared in the desert. Besides, you must have a ticket to see anything.”
I drew from my pocket the folders of the Egyptian tourist companies. A party from the Anglo-Saxon steamer, tied up before the temple of Luxor, was scheduled to leave for an excursion to Thebes in the morning. What easier plan than to shadow these more fortunate nomads?