And so must a great deal else.
The Greek and Roman Museum hard by the Rue Rosette is hard to find, retiring into a side-street with a true classical unobtrusiveness. It is less famed than the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, but more interesting. Most people have at least a nodding acquaintance with the history of the classical occupation of Egypt—and here are the relics of it; whereas Egyptian history is not popularly read, even in a cursory fashion. In any case, for the inveterate Egyptologist there is a small mummified Egyptian section. The Cleopatra relics are well preserved, and especially a magnificent bust of the Siren. Mural and portal decoration of Roman and Greek houses are there in fine fragments, and there is a legion of vases and other ornaments from the living-rooms. Probably the most significant specimens, historically, are the coins; of them there is an enormously large collection. And the priceless papyri lie near at hand. Of sepulchral emblems there are a great many, but none beautiful except the laurel-crowned cinerary urns.
The museum is small but highly charged with meaning. There is a courtyard attached for the preparation (and restoration) of specimens, and it has some Roman monuments and gateways too huge for the interior.
The faithful Soudanese are the janitors and the conductors. Here, again, they are ignorant and English-less, and you sigh for a well-informed, well-paid, and intelligible informant. Only within the last fifteen months has a catalogue been compiled; and that is in French—though in that there is hardly any legitimate ground for complaint.
Most Australians at home will have heard of the Nouzha Gardens lying along the Canal Mahmoudieh: the gardens in whose café their men have sat listening to the band and drinking afternoon beer and watching the youngsters romp—and even joining in the sport; and finding a welcome, too. But few Australians will know of the Jardin Antoniadis, beyond Nouzha, and only half as large; but finer, which is a bold saying. It's the garden of a rich Greek Bey who has attained almost the splendour of the Hanging Gardens. He employs sixty men. In theory, you cannot enter without a pass—to be obtained, Heaven knows where; perhaps "at the warehouse." But five piastres in the palm of the trusty sa'eda at the gate passes you through, and you wander amazed for a couple of hours amongst those flowers and lawns, fountains and nymphs, ghouls and fauns and satyrs and dryads, and centre about the master's palace buried in the heart of the garden. It is gardening on a scale of magnificence and ingenuity—so it is said. Any public map of Alexandria will show the Jardin Antoniadis in bold letters. The afternoon we paid a visit we were puzzled to know the motive which could have obliged a dozen stalwart gardeners to stand at intervals of a dozen yards beating tins and howling at the sky. When questioned, they pointed alternately at the heavens and the freshly planted lawn, and we thought they must be calling primevally upon the water-gods for rain. But on consideration the unromantic conclusion prevailed: merely scaring birds or locusts from the springing grass.
The fine drive is from Nouzha round the shore of Lake Mareotis and back to the Square by way of Ramleh—the Toorak of Alexandria. You are defied to conceive a suburb better bred. To drive through it in a gharry is to put yourself in the dress-circle.
If you are back in time—that is, by 6.30—you may perhaps go to the weekly organ-recital at St. Mark's. Nothing will bring Home before you more vividly than the tones of a pipe-organ. But you must close your eyes, for almost everything else in the church tears you back to war. There's more khaki than tweed in the pews, and most of the women present are Sisters from the hospitals. And the organist is a private who plays at an Edinburgh church when peace is on, and the soloist (and well he can sing) is an A.M.C. Sergeant. The "Gyppo" hired servant is even here—as he is everywhere—creeping up and down the aisle in his incongruous colours: none the less incongruous for his brushing against the Cambridge graduate's gown of the Assistant-Chaplain, distributing programmes. Music of Handel and Bach sends you aching back to your hotel. That night you do not want to go into the Arab quarter.