Among those modern travellers who have prosecuted these researches, one of the most eminent is the learned Tischendorff, whose labours in the field of Biblical criticism have become known to all readers in that line. This accomplished traveller directed his attention especially to the monasteries of the Natron Lakes. He visited them by joining himself to a caravan proceeding from Cairo to the Italian settlement, Castello Cibara.—“Shortly after daybreak,” he says, “we saw in the distance upon the left, in the middle of the Desert, a lofty stone wall, and still further on, a second. These were two of the Coptic monasteries. Presently afterwards one of the salt lakes glittered in the distance, with its obscure reddish blue waters, and a flock of flamingoes sprung out of its reeds. Upon the right was the Castello Cibara; in the background the low Libyan hills formed a dark-red border to the whole scene. About nine in the morning we reached our destination, and I found in the midst of the Desert a hospitable hearth.” What follows, although not closely related to our immediate subject, is not very remotely connected with it; and a few sentences further may be cited.
“In the afternoon we made an excursion to the fields and lakes of nitre. What a singular scene! In the midst of this sandy waste, where uniformity is rarely interrupted by grass or shrubs, there are extensive districts where nitre springs from the earth like crystallized fruits. One thinks he sees a wild, overgrown with moss, weeds, and shrubs, thickly covered with hoar frost. And to imagine this winter scene beneath the fervid heat of an Egyptian sun, will give some idea of the strangeness of its aspect.
“The existence of this nitre upon the sandy surface is caused by the evaporation of the lakes.... The nitre lakes themselves, six in number, situated in a spacious valley, between two rows of low sandhills, presented a pleasing contrast, in their dark blue and red colours, to the dull hues of the sand.... There are four Coptic monasteries at the distance of a few leagues apart. Ruins and monasteries, and heaps of rubbish, I observed scattered in great numbers throughout the district. I was told that there were formerly about three hundred Coptic monasteries in this desert.... Both externally and internally, these monasteries closely resemble one another. Sometimes square, at others in the form of a parallelogram, they are enclosed by walls tolerably high, and usually about one hundred feet long. From their centre a few palms frequently peer forth, for every monastery has a small garden within its circuit, and is also furnished with a tower slightly elevated above the walls, and containing a small bell.... Within the walls are seen nothing but old and dilapidated ruins, amongst which the monks find a habitation. The tower I have just described is insulated from the body of the monastery, and approachable only by means of a drawbridge supported on chains, offering thus an asylum against enemies, who may have mastered the monastery. This tower commands the entrance. The interior consists of a chapel, a well, a mill, an oven, and a store-room, all required in the event of a long siege, and the apartment assigned to the library.... Here and there, in the mural structure of the entrances to the cells and chapelries, we obtain a glimpse of the fragment of a marble pillar, or of a frieze, or some similar decoration. Thus has the sordid present been built out of the splendour and grandeur of the past.”
The scattered fragmentary remains of the architectural magnificence of a remote age may properly be regarded as so many attestations of those incidental notices of these same establishments which occur in the writers of that age; and thus it is that the literary evidence, touching the decaying and almost forgotten ancient manuscripts that have lately been dragged forth from their concealments, is found to consist well with the visible history of the structure wherein they have been so long conserved.
The learned traveller from whose journal the above citations have been made, had been anticipated in his search for manuscripts by several European scholars; and therefore it was little that he found available for his immediate purpose—the collation of manuscripts of the New Testament. What we are just now concerned with are those characteristics of Oriental stagnation and motionless decay, and of monastic persistence, which have been the very means of ensuring an undisturbed custody of literary treasures through the stormy passage of many centuries. The decrepit inmates of these ruins cherish the traditions of a more stirring time, and they are aided in doing so by the pictures of the saints and founders of those times. Some of these pictures are manifestly of great antiquity, and they have been conserved, with reverential regard, by each successive series of abbots and monks. Thus says Tischendorff:—
“The chief pictorial representations, in all the four monasteries (those visited by him), were those of St. Macarius and St. George. In the third, which bears the name of the Syrian, or the Virgin of the Syrians, St. Ephraim (Ephrem Syrus, whose voluminous writings are extant) is held in high honour. A tamarind-tree was there shown me, which had miraculously sprouted forth from the staff of St. Ephraim, who, upon entering the chapel, had stuck it into the ground outside. In the second, St. Ambeschun was represented as the patron. In the fourth, besides St. George, St. Theodore was represented on horseback, with the vanquished dragon beneath his feet.”
In speaking of the main object of his journey, the author says:—
“The special locality set apart for the library (in these buildings) is the tower chamber, which is accessible only by means of the drawbridge. No spot in the monastery could be safer from the visits of the fraternity than this. Here are seen (I speak of the first monastery) the manuscripts heaped indiscriminately together. Lying on the ground, or thrown into large baskets, beneath masses of dust, are found innumerable fragments of old, torn, and destroyed manuscripts. I saw nothing Greek; all was either Coptic, or Arabic; and in the third monastery I found some Syriac, together with a couple of leaves of Ethiopic. The majority of the MSS. are liturgical, though many are Biblical. From the fourth monastery (presently to be mentioned) the English have recently acquired an important collection of several hundred manuscripts for the British Museum, and that at a very small cost. The other monasteries contain certainly nothing of much consequence; yet much might be found to reward the labour of the search. The monks themselves understand extremely little about the matter. Not one among them, probably, is acquainted with Coptic, and they merely read mechanically the lessons of their ritual. The Arabic of the olden MSS. but few can read. Indeed, it is not easy to say what these monks know beyond the routine of their ordinary church service. Still their excessive suspicion renders it extremely difficult to induce them to produce their manuscripts, in spite of the extreme penury which surrounds them. Possibly they are controlled by the mandate of their patriarch. For my own part, I made a most lucky discovery of a multitude of Coptic parchment sheets of the sixth and seventh centuries, already half destroyed, and completely buried beneath a mass of dust. These were given to me without hesitation; but I paid for the discovery by severe pains in the throat, produced by the dust I had raised in the excessive heat.... The monks (taught at length to think much of the value of their literary treasures) are too much accustomed to the visits and to the gold of the English.”
Among these “English” whose visits and whose gold have spoiled the good monks of the Egyptian desert, one of the most noted is the Hon. Robert Curzon, jun., whose entertaining volume, published about ten years ago, has brought his amusing adventures to the knowledge of most people who read at all. Notwithstanding the notoriety of this distinguished traveller’s discoveries and his successes in the desert, it would be an omission of what is very pertinent to our argument, not to cite a few paragraphs from his account of his “Visits to Monasteries in the Levant.”
Preserved—a contradiction, as it may seem—by the very means of the neglect and ignorance, the stupidity and the recklessness, of those in whose custody they have been—the most valuable manuscripts have often been converted to the meanest purposes. A learned traveller, mentioned by Mr. Curzon, in inquiring for manuscripts, was told that there were none in the monastery; but when he entered the choir to be present at the service, he saw a double row of long-bearded holy fathers, shouting the Kyrie eleison, and each of them standing, to save his bare legs from the damp of the marble floor, upon a great folio volume, which had been removed from the conventual library, and applied to purposes of practical utility in the way here mentioned. These volumes, some of them highly valuable, this traveller was allowed to carry away with him, in exchange for some footstools or hassocks, which he presented to the monks.