But the question again arises:—If King Chephren be here represented, why does it not bear his name? On the contrary, it is named Har-em-chu, “Horus in the horizon,” that is to say, the Sungod, the type of all kings, and Harmachis, in a Greek inscription found before the Sphinx. It does not seem at all unlikely to me, that upon this rests the fable of Pliny, according to which a King Amasis (Armasis? Ἅρμαχις) lies interred within the Sphinx;[20] for in a real burial there can be no belief. Another consideration is that I have not found the representation of the Sphinx in those most ancient times of the pyramid builders; but that must not be accepted as conclusive, as the Sphinx is not often found in the inscriptions and representations of the new empire.[21] In short, the Œdipus for this king of all Sphinxes is yet wanting. Whoever would drain the immeasurable sand-flood which buries the tombs themselves, and lay open the base of the Sphinx, the ancient temple path, and the surrounding hills, could easily decide it.
But with the enigmas of history there are joined many riddles and wonders of nature, which I must not leave quite unnoticed. The newest of all, at least, I must describe.
I had descended with Abeken into a mummy pit, to open some newly-discovered sarcophagi, and was not a little astonished, upon descending, to find myself in a regular snow-drift of locusts, which, almost darkening the heavens, flew over our heads from the south-west from the desert in hundreds of thousands to the valley. I took it for a single flight, and called my companions from the tombs where they were busy, that they might see this Egyptian wonder ere it was over. But the flight continued; indeed the work-people said it had begun an hour before. Then we first observed that the whole region near and far was covered with locusts. I sent an attendant into the desert, to discover the breadth of the flock. He ran for the distance of a quarter of an hour, then returned and told us that, as far as he could see, there was no end to them. I rode home in the midst of the locust shower. At the edge of the fruitful plain they fell down in showers; and so it went on the whole day till the evening, and so the next day from morning till evening, and the third; in short, to the sixth day, indeed in weaker flights much longer. Yesterday it did seem that a storm of rain in the desert had knocked down and destroyed the last of them. The Arabs are now lighting great fires of smoke in the fields, and clattering and making loud noises all day long to preserve their crops from the unexpected invasion. It will, however, do little good. Like a new animated vegetation, these millions of winged spoilers cover even the neighbouring sandhills, so that scarcely anything is to be seen of the ground; and when they rise from one place, they immediately fall down somewhere in the neighbourhood; they are tired with their long journey, and seem to have lost all fear of their natural enemies, men, animals, smoke, and noise, in their furious wish to fill their stomachs, and in the feeling of their immense number. The most wonderful thing, in my estimation, is their flight over the naked wilderness and the instinct which has guided them from some oasis over the inhospitable desert to the fat soil of the Nile vale. Fourteen years ago, it seems, this Egyptian plague last visited Egypt with the same force. The popular idea is, that they are sent by the comet which we have observed for twelve days in the south-west, and which, as it is now no longer obscured by the rays of the moon, stretches forth its stately tail across the heavens in the hours of night. The zodiacal light, too, so seldom seen in the north, has lately been visible for several nights in succession.
At this place have I first been able to settle my account with Gizeh, and to put together the historical results of the investigation. I have every reason to rejoice at the consequences; the fourth and fifth dynasties are completed all except one king.
I have just received the rather illegible drawing of a stone in a wall at the village of Abusir, which presents a row of kings of the fourth and fifth dynasties, and, as it would seem, in chronological order. I am on the point of riding over to see the original.
LETTER VIII.
Saqâra.
April 13, 1843.
I hasten to inform you of an event which I should not like to be first communicated to you from other quarters, and perhaps with distorted exaggeration. Our camp was attacked and robbed a few nights since by an armed band, but none of our party have been seriously hurt, and nothing has been lost that is not to be replaced. The matter is past, and the consequences can only be favourable to us; but I must first go back a few days in my report.
On the 3rd of April, H.R.H. Prince Albrecht returned from Upper Egypt to Cairo; next day I went to town and submitted a portion of our labours to him, in which he took the more lively interest as he had already seen more of the wonder-land than we, and had only omitted to visit the pyramid fields. On his former arrival in Cairo I was absent with Abeken and Bonomi on a journey of several days’ duration in the Faiûm. The Prince came just in time for some Mohammedan festivals, which I should have neglected but for his presence. On the sixth was the entrance of the solemnly-welcomed caravan of pilgrims from Mecca, and a few days later, the birthday festival of the prophet “Mulid e’Nebbi,” one of the most original feasts throughout the Orient. The principal parts fall to the share of the Derwishes, who arrange processions during the day, and in the evening exhibit their terrible dance named Sikr in the gaily-lighted tents erected among the trees of the Ezbekîeh; thirty to forty of this religious sect place themselves in a circle, and begin to move their bodies backward and forward, according to the time, first slowly, and then more violently, at last with the most cruel strains upon the nerves; at the same time they repeat their maxim rhythmically with a loud howling voice, “Lâ ilâha ill’ Allah” (no God but Allah), gradually lowering and softening the tone until it is resembles a faint snore: at length, their powers wholly exhausted, some fall down, others withdraw reelingly, and the broken circle, after a short pause, is replaced by another.
What a fearful, barbarous worship, which the astounded multitude, great and small, gentle and simple, gaze upon seriously and with stupid respect, and in which it not unfrequently takes a part! The invoked deity is manifestly much less an object of reverence than the fanatic saints who invoke him; for mad, idiotic, or other psychologically-diseased persons, are very generally looked upon as holy by the Mohammedans, and treated with great respect. It is the demoniacal, incomprehensibly-acting, and therefore fearfully-observed power of nature, that the natural man always reveres when he perceives it, because he is sensible of some connection between it and his intellectual power, without being able to command it; first in the mighty elements, then in the wondrous but obscure law-governed instincts of animals, and, at last, in the yet more overpowering exstatical, or generally abnormal mental condition of his own race. We must decidedly look upon the Egyptian animal-worship, as far as it was not the covering for deeper and more refined doctrines, as resting upon the same idea of a worship of nature;[22] and the reverence occasionally manifesting itself among some nations of mentally-diseased men may be regarded as a curious branch of the same feeling. Whether such conditions really exist, or whether, as with the derwishes, they are artificially produced and purposely fostered, is not criticised by the masses, and it is much the same in individual cases. In such a presence one would feel oneself overcome by a mysterious feeling of dread, and would not care to express repugnance, or even to manifest it by signs, or by a token of having even observed anything, for fear of diverting to oneself the storm of brute passion.