The holy month of the Mohammedans, the Ramadan, was just beginning, during which they take no sustenance throughout the day, nor do they drink water or “drink smoke;” and accept no visits, but begin all the business of life after sundown, and thus interchange day and night, which caused us no little trouble on account of our Arab servants. Our Khawass (the honorary guard of the Pasha that had been given us), who had missed the time for embarking at Alexandria, joined us here. As our Prussian Vice-consul was unwell, I addressed myself to the Austrian Consul, Herr Champion, to whom I had been recommended by Ehrenberg, regarding our presentations to the representative of the Pasha at this place. He interested himself for us with the greatest alacrity and zeal, and obtained us a good reception everywhere. The official visits, at which Erbkam and Bonomi mostly accompanied me, had to be made in the evening at about 8 o’clock, on account of the Ramadan. Our torch-bearers ran first, then came, on donkeyback, first the Dragoman of the Consul and the Khawass of the Pasha, and lastly ourselves in stately procession. We nearly traversed the whole town, through the Arab-filled streets, picturesquely lighted by our firebrands, to the citadel, where we first visited Abbas Pasha,[6] a grandson of Mahomet Ali; he is the governor of Cairo, though seldom in residence. From him we proceeded to Sherif Pasha, the lieutenant of Abbas, and then to the war minister, Ahmet Pasha. Everywhere we were received with great kindness.
The day after my arrival I received a diploma as an honorary member of the Elder Egyptian Society, of which the younger one, that had sent me a similar invitation while in London, was a branch. Both had meetings, but I could only attend the sittings of one, in which an interesting memoir by Krapf, on certain nations of Central Africa, was read. The particulars had been given him by a native of the Enarea country, who had travelled into the Doko country in commercial pursuits, and who described the people in much the same way that Herodotus does the Libyan dwarf-nation, after the narrations of the Nasamoneans, viz., as little people of the size of children of ten or twelve years of age. One would think that monkeys were spoken of. As the geographical notices of the till now almost unknown Doko country are of interest, I have had the whole paper copied, to send it, together with the little map that belongs to it, to our honoured friend Ritter.[7]
On the 13th of October we made a trip to the ruins of Heliopolis, the Biblical On, whence Joseph took his wife Asnath, the daughter of a priest. Nothing remains of this celebrated city, which prided itself on possessing the most learned priesthood next to Thebes, but the walls, which resemble great banks of earth, and an obelisk standing upright, and perhaps in its proper position. This obelisk possesses the peculiar charm of being by far the most ancient of all known obelisks; for it was erected during the Old Empire by King Sesurtesen I., about 2,300 B.C.; the broken obelisk in the Faîum near Crodilopolis, bearing the name of the same king, being rather an obelisk-like long-drawn stele. Boghos Bey has obtained the ground on which the obelisk stands as a present, and has made a garden round it. The flowers of the garden have attracted a quantity of bees, and these could find no more commodious lodging than in the deep and sharply cut hieroglyphics of the obelisk. Within the year they have so covered the inscriptions of the four sides, that a great part has become quite illegible. It had, however, already been published, and our comparison of it presented few difficulties, as three sides bear the same inscription, and the fourth is only slightly varied.
Yesterday, the 15th of October, was His Majesty’s birthday. I had determined on this day for our first visit to the great pyramid. There we would hold a festival in remembrance of our king and country with a few friends. We invited the Austrian Consul Champion, the Prussian Consul Bokty, our learned countryman Dr. Pruner, and MM. Lieder, Isenberg, Mühleisen, and Krapf to this party, at which, however, it is to be regretted that some were not able to assist.
The morning was indescribably beautiful, fresh, and festal. We rode in long procession through the quiet streets, and along the green alleys and gardens that are planted outside it. Almost in every place where there were well-tended plantations, we found that they had been laid out by Ibrahim Pasha. By all accounts, he appears to adorn and repair every portion of the country.
They were incomparable minutes, those, when we came forth from among the dates and acacias; the sun rising to the left behind the Moqattam Mountains, and illumining the heads of the pyramids opposite, that lay before in the plain like giant mountain crystals. All of us were enraptured by the glory and greatness of this morning scene, and solemnly impressed by it. At Old Cairo we were ferried across the Nile to the village of Gizeh, whence the larger pyramids receive the name of Háram el Gizeh. From here one may ride to the pyramids in the dry season in a direct line for an hour of little more. As, however, the inundation is now at its highest point, we were obliged to make a great circuit upon long embankments, coming almost up to Saqâra, and did not arrive at the foot of the great pyramid for five and a half hours.
The long and unexpected ride gave a relish to the simple breakfast that we immediately took in one of the tombs cut in the rock here about five thousand years ago, in order to strengthen us for the ascent. Meanwhile a spacious gaily-decked tent came down, which I had hired in Cairo. I had it pitched on the north side of the pyramid, and had the great Prussian standard, the black eagle with a golden sceptre and crown, and a blue sword, on a white ground, which had been prepared by our artists within these last few days, planted before the door of the tent.
About thirty Bedouins had assembled around us in the interval, and awaited the moment when we should commence the ascent of the pyramid, in order to assist us with their powerful brown arms to climb the steps, about three to four feet in height. Scarcely had the signal for departure been given, ere each of us was surrounded by several Bedouins, who tore us up the rough steep path to the apex like a whirlwind. A few minutes afterward our flag floated from the top of the oldest and highest of all the works of man with which we are acquainted, and we saluted the Prussian eagle with three cheers for our king. Flying toward the south, the eagle turned its crowned head homeward to the north, whence a fresh breeze was blowing, and diverting the effects of the hot rays of the noontide sun. We too, looked homeward, and each remembered, aloud, or quietly within his own heart, those whom he had left behind, loving and beloved.
Next, the prospect at our feet enchained our attention. On one side is the valley of the Nile, a wide ocean of inundated waters, which, intersected by long and serpentine embankments, broken now and then by island-like high-lying villages, and overgrown tongues of land, filled the whole plain of the vale, and reached to the opposite mountain chain of Moqattam, on the most northerly point of which the citadel of Cairo rises above the town lying beneath. On the other side, the Libyan desert, a still more wonderful ocean of sand and desolate rock-hills, boundless, colourless, soundless, animated by no beast, no plant, no trace of human presence, not even by graves; and between both is the desecrated Necropolis, the general plan and the particular outlines of which unfolded themselves sharply and plainly, as upon a map.
What a landscape! and with our view of it what a flood of reminiscences! When Abraham came to Egypt for the first time, he saw these pyramids which had been built many centuries before his arrival; in the plain before us lay ancient Memphis, the residence of those kings on whose graves we were standing; there lived Joseph, and ruled the land under one of the mightiest and wisest Pharaohs of the New Empire. Farther on, to the left of the Moqattam Mountains, where the fertile plain borders the eastern arm of the Nile, on the other side of Heliopolis, distinguishable by its obelisk, begins the fruitful country of Goshen, whence Moses led his people forth to the Syrian wilderness. Indeed, it would not be difficult to recognise from our position, that ancient fig-tree, on the way to Heliopolis, by Matarîeh, beneath the shade of which, according to the legends of the land, Mary rested with the Holy Child. How many thousands of pilgrims from all nations have sought these wonders of the world before our days,—we, the youngest in time, and yet only the predecessors of many thousands more who will come after us, and behold, and climb these pyramids, with astonishment. I will describe no farther the thoughts and feelings that came flooding in at those moments; there, at the aim and end of the wishes of many long years, and yet at the actual commencement of our expedition; there, on the apex of the Pyramid of Cheops, to which the first link of our whole monumental history is fastened immoveably, not only for Egyptian, but for universal history; there, where I saw beneath the remarkable grave-field whence the Moses-rod of science summons forth the shadows of the ancient dead, and lets them pass before us in the mirror of history, according to rank and age, with their names and titles, with all their peculiarities, customs, and associations.