In a few days the plain beneath our camp wore an animated appearance. The Mudhir (governor) of the province came, with a magnificent train, and a great flock of under-officers and servants, and pitched his varied camp at the foot of the mountain. We interchanged visits of politeness, and conversed upon the event. The Mudhir told me at once that the actual thieves would never be discovered, at least never brought to confession, as each one knew that it would cost him his neck. But the second day the sheikhs of Saqâra and Abusir, with a number of suspected persons, were brought up to be judged. Neither confrontation nor examination succeeded in obtaining any decision, as it was expected. The punishment was therefore summarily executed; one after the other they were shut in the stocks, with their faces down and their soles up, and pitifully beaten, often to fainting, with long whips, called kurwatch, the thongs of which are strips of hippopotamus skin. It was in vain that I represented that I really saw no reason for punishing these persons precisely, and I was still more astonished when our reverend old friend the sheîkh of Saqâra, for whose innocence I had pledged my strongest belief, was led down and laid in the dust like all the others. I expressed my surprise to the Mudhir, and protested seriously against it, but received for answer that the punishment could not be spared him, for though we had not been exactly upon his soil, yet we had received our guides from him, who had run away, and until now had not returned. With much difficulty I obtained a shortening of the proceeding, but he was already scarcely sensible, and he had to be carried to the tent, where his feet were bound up. The whole matter ended with an indemnification in money for the worth of the stolen things, which I purposely estimated at a large sum, as every loss in money remains for years in the memory of the Arab, while he forgets his thrashing, or, indeed, exults in it, when he no longer feels it. “Nezel min e’ semmâ e’ nebût, bárakah min Allah,” say the Arabs, i.e. “Down came the stick from heaven, a blessing of Allah.” Even at the proportioning of the fine, the sum we had asked was so divided that the rich sheikh of Saqâra had to pay a much larger share than he of Abusir, a partiality in which the request of the respected old Turk of Abusir, from the Turkish mudhir, no doubt had its due weight.
As soon as the money was counted out, I went to our sheîkh of Saqâra, whose unmerited ill-fortune seriously discomforted me, and returned him publicly the half of his money, with the confidential assurance that the rest should be restored on the departure of the Mudhir. This was so unexpected on the part of the reverend sheikh, that he long stared at me incredulously, then kissed my hands and feet, and called me his best friend on earth,—I, who had just been at least the indirect cause of his stately beard having been mingled with the dust, and of his feet being beaten into week-enduring pain. His surprised pleasure did not, however, so much have me for its object as the unexpected sight of the money, that never fails in its magical effects on the Arab.
There is in the Arab a remarkable mixture of noble pride and low avarice, which is at first quite incomprehensible to the European. His free, noble carriage and imperturbable rest seem to express nothing but a proud feeling of honour. But against the least prospect of profit this melts like wax in the sun, and the most debasing usage is of no consideration when money is at stake, but is creepingly borne. One of these two natures appears at first to be but apparent or delusive; but the contradiction comes back in every shape, in little things and great, too often not to cause the conviction that it is characteristic of the Arab, if not of the whole cast. The Egyptians had so degenerated already in the Roman æra, that Ammianus Marcellinus could say of them, “Erubescit apud eos, si quis non infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat;” just in the same way the Fellah to-day points to his red weals with a contented smile as soon as the tax-gatherer had departed, minus a few of his desired piastres, notwithstanding his instruments of torture.[27]
LETTER IX.
Cairo.
April 22, 1843.
A severe cold, which has for some time stopped my usual activity, has brought me hither from our camp near Saqâra. The worst of it is, that we are obliged to postpone our journey, although we should all have liked to quit Saqâra. Certainly everything that such a place offers is of the highest importance; but its wealth almost brings us into a dilemma here. To the most important, but most difficult and time-occupying pursuit, belongs that of Erbkam, our architect. He has the great task allotted him of making the detailed plans of the desert coasts, in about the centre of which we lie. This extent of country embraces the almost unbroken chain of tomb-fields, from the pyramid of Rigah to those of Dahshûr. The single plans of the northern fields of Abu Roash, Gizeh, Zauiet el Arrian, are already completed. The sketches of Perring, useful as they are, cannot be compared with ours. Whole Necropolis, with the pyramids belonging to them, have been discovered, partly by myself, partly by Erbkam. Some of the hitherto unknown pyramids are even now from eighty to a hundred feet in height, others are almost worn away, but were originally of considerable size, as is shown by the extent of their ground plans. My return to Saqâra will, it is to be hoped, be the signal of our departure.
We shall proceed by land to the Faiûm, that province branching into the wilderness. The season of the year is still most beautiful, and the desert journey will no doubt be more conducive to our health than the Nile passage, which we formerly intended.
My health will, it is to be hoped, not long detain me here, for with every day my impatience increases to leave the living city of the Mamelukes, for the solemn Necropolis of the ancient Pharaohs. And yet it might give you more pleasure, perhaps, could I picture to you, in colours or words, how it looks from this my window.
I live on the great place of the Ezbekîeh, in the most handsome and populous part of the city. Formerly there was a large lake in the middle, but it is now transformed into gardens. All around run broad streets, parted off for riders and walkers, and shaded by high trees. There the whole East flits by me with its gay, manifold, and always picturesque forms; the poor with blue or white tucked-up dresses, the rich with long garments of the most various stuffs, with silken kaftans, or fine clothes in delicate broken colours, with white, red, green, or black turbans, or with the noble but little-becoming Turkish tarbush; then Greeks with their dandified fustanellas, or Arabian sheîkhs in their wide, antiquely-draped mantle: the children quite, or half, naked, with shaven heads, from which a single lock stands up on their bare polls like a handle; the women with veiled faces, whose black-rimmed eyes glance ghostly from out the holes cut in the covering. All these and a hundred other indescribable forms go, creep, dash by on foot, on asses, mules, dromedaries, camels, horses, only not in carriages; for they were employed much more in the Pharoahic times than now. If I look upward from the street, I see on one side a prospect of magnificent mosques with their cupolas and slender minarets shooting into the air, with long rows of generally carelessly-built, but now and then richly-ornamented houses, distinguished by artistically-carved lattices, and elegant balconies; on the other side my view is bounded by green palmtrees, or leaf-wealthy sycamores and acacias. In the far back-ground at last, beyond the level roofs and their green interruptions, there come forth on the Libyan horizon the far-lighting sister-pair of the two great pyramids, sunny amidst the fine æther in sharply-broken lines. What a difference to the mongrel Alexandria, where the oriental nature of the country and the mightily progressed culture of Europe still strive for the mastery. It seems to me as if I had already penetrated to the inmost heart of the East of the present.