I have been led to believe from various circumstances, that this new discovered continuation of the entrance passage was opened in the time of the Khalif who opened the pyramid, and that it has been choaked up ever since. If I am to believe Sherif Edrys, the author of a history of the Pyramids, a book, I believe, unknown in Europe, and which I have lately purchased here, the interior of the pyramid is full of passages and rooms, and several sarcophagi are yet to be discovered. This author wrote in the twelfth century, and himself minutely examined the pyramid.
I cannot dismiss the subject of Egyptian antiquities, without saying a word of Mr. Drovetti’s collection. It is certainly at present the finest of all those extant, in Italy, France, and England. There are few large statues, but great numbers of middle sized, and an innumerable series of idols, scarabees, medals, intaglios, and other articles illustrative of the religion and domestic life of the Egyptians, their dress, furniture, &c. &c. His rolls of papyrus are particularly valuable. He has ten quite entire, three of which are, I believe, the largest ever found in this country, together with a great number of smaller ones; and a large Coptic manuscript, written upon gazelle skin, found in the island of Omke, above the cataract of Wady Halfa. Many large specimens of Egyptian sculpture may yet be obtained, but it will be long before so complete a collection of smaller articles will be collected by one person. Mr. Drovetti has been for twelve years a person of great influence, and even power in Egypt; and his great object has been, to augment his collection, for which purpose he employed people in every part of the country. As it often happens in the Levant, with Europeans, long settled there, mercantile and pecuniary interests have at last got the better of his love for antiquity, and Mr. Drovetti having now turned corn-dealer, is desirous of converting his collection into cash. It would certainly be most desirable to have the collection in England. I believe that it has cost him about fifteen hundred pounds, and is certainly worth three or four times that sum in Europe.
I am in anxious expectation of a caravan for Lybia, and I have been long prepared to start at the shortest notice; I shall now leave Egypt with the more pleasure, because I shall not have to regret the abandoning of my journals in a rude state, which would have been the case if I had departed last year; for it will afford me no small consolation in my future travels, to think that whatever may be my fate, some fruit has been reaped from my pursuits, and that the Association is now in possession of several journals, containing new information upon very interesting countries.
Cairo, March 23d, 1817.
If any thing can give me pleasure, it is the information which you give me, that my employers are contented with me, and I beg you to assure them, that as long as I shall have the honour to be in their service, no efforts shall be left untried by me to deserve their approbation. I fully appreciate the permission they have given me, to pass so long a time out of the intended direction of my labours. If some credit be due to me for the manner in which I have spent this time, no less is due to their liberality, in affording me the means of applying my exertions to countries and subjects, that fell not within the immediate scope of my mission; although I flatter myself, that the purposes of the latter were at the same time considerably advanced.
It affords me much satisfaction to understand that what I have written on the Bedouins has been found of interest. My last additions to those papers, which complete all the information I possess on that nation, have perhaps not reached you. I have illustrated their manners, laws, and character, with much pleasure, because I hold them to be infinitely superior to their neighbours the Turks. They have happily escaped the corruption of Levantine manners and morals, and this alone entitles them to the attention of the European public, although few travellers have thought them worth noticing, otherwise than as a nation of bloody, savage, and faithless robbers.
When you ask me whether I know Antar, you probably forget that the first knowledge I gained of that author, was from an odd volume in your own library.i[14] I fully agree with you in your sentiments concerning it; it has certainly every characteristic of an epic poem; it is throughout of high interest, and often sublime. I have attentively read little more than one twelfth part of it; the copy I bought at Aleppo is among the MSS. which I sent to England from Syria. Its style is very remarkable; without descending to the tone of common conversation, as the One Thousand and one Nights often do, it is simple, and natural, and clear of that bombast, and those forced expressions, and far-fetched metaphors, which the Orientals admire even in their prosaists, but which can never be to the taste of an European critic. The poetry appears almost every where to be the effusion of real sentiment, and the heroic strain of Antar’s war and love songs, his satires and bursts of self-praise, are as exalted as they are natural. You are no doubt informed that this same Antar was one of the poets of the Moallakat, and that Osmay, who relates his life in this work, occupied a high rank among the poets at the court of Haroun er-Rashid, and his son Mamoun. I believe Sir William Jones was the first to call the attention of the public to this romantic poem, in his Comment. Poes. Asiat. He possessed only one or two volumes of it, yet enough to convince him of the excellence of the whole performance, of which he speaks in terms of the highest praise.
Having occasion to write to your brotheri[15] not long since, I suggested to him the expediency of making some abridgement, in case of his publishing a translation of any part of Antar, for there are many repetitions, in which the Arabs delight, but which lessen the general interest of the work. I am confident that the translation of the abridged Antar would extremely gratify the public, and nothing would give me greater pleasure, than to see the noble Bedouin romance ushered into this world.
Cairo, 18th May, 1817.
By the present opportunity I transmit to Sir Joseph Banks, my journal in the peninsula of Sinai, and to you, a volume of proverbs and popular sayings current at Cairo. I am afraid the Committee will be startled at all the Arabic it contains, and exclaim that the writer was sent to these countries not to become a translator but a discoverer. I can only say in excuse, that as my stay in this city has been unfortunately, but necessarily, so much prolonged, I thought that with a view to forward my future designs, I could not do better than pursue my study of Arabic, and in so far I can assure you, that I have derived essential benefit from this compilation, while at the same time I hope that a knowledge of the Arab nation, and of their present language, may be somewhat advanced by it, and facilitated to others. In translating and explaining these sayings, I have been actuated by another motive; I wished to leave a memorial with my employers, as well as with the public, that I had acquired a competent knowledge of the vulgar dialect of the people whom I have described in my journals. The simple assurance to that effect, would go very little way with those, who know that for the last fifty years few Europeans have published their travels among Arabs, without pretending to be familiar with their language, and at the same time giving proofs of gross ignorance of it. It is true that from the perusal of my journals, and from the information which I collected in the course of my travels without the help of interpreters, the reader will probably infer that I must have understood something of this language; but he would still be left in utter ignorance whether that acquaintance was such, as to confirm or detract from the veracity of the stated facts; the latter being often applicable to those, who hear and understand only by halves, yet enough to make them believe that they are not in want of a Dragoman. I have therefore thought it incumbent upon me, to give some clear proof how far I really possess that knowledge, and cannot help flattering myself that by this little work I have given a greater degree of authenticity to my journals. If I am not able to display the learning of a profound Arabic scholar, I trust at least that those who take the trouble to peruse this volume, will give me credit for understanding the language of the bazar, and of the peasants, and that is all I wish for at present.