Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

CHAPTER X.

Ruined Monastery in the Necropolis of Thebes—"Mr. Hay's Tomb"—The Coptic Carpenter—His acquirements and troubles—He agrees to show the MSS. belonging to the ruined Monastery, which are under his charge—Night visit to the Tomb in which they are concealed—Perils of the way—Description of the Tomb—Probably in former times a Christian Church—Examination of the Coptic MSS.—Alarming interruption—Hurried flight from the Evil Spirits—Fortunate escape—Appearance of the Evil Spirit—Observations on Ghost Stories—The Legend of the Old Woman of Berkeley considered.

On a rocky hill, perforated on all sides by the violated sepulchres of the ancient Egyptians, in the great Necropolis of Thebes, not far from the ruins of the palace and temple of Medinet Habou, stand the crumbling walls of an old Coptic monastery, which I was told had been inhabited, almost within the memory of man, by a small community of Christian monks. I was living at this period in a tomb, which was excavated in the side of the precipice, above Sheick Abd el Gournoo. It had been rendered habitable by some slight alterations, and a little garden was made on the terrace in front of it, whence the view was very remarkable. The whole of the vast ruins of Thebes were stretched out below it; whilst, beyond the mighty Nile, the huge piles of Luxor and Carnac loomed dark and mysterious in the distance, which was bounded by the arid chain of the Arabian mountains, the outline of their wild tops showing clear and hard against the cloudless sky. This habitation was known by the name of "Mr. Hay's tomb." The memory of this gentleman is held in the highest honour and reverence by the villagers of the surrounding districts, who look back to the time of his residence among them as the only satisfactory period of their miserable existence.

One of the numerous admirers of Mr. Hay, among the poorer inhabitants of the neighbourhood, was a Coptic carpenter, a man of no small natural genius and talent, who in any other country would have risen above the sphere of his comrades if any opportunity of distinguishing himself had offered. He could read and write Coptic and Arabic; he had some knowledge of astronomy, and some said of magic also; and he was a very tolerable carpenter, although the only tools which he was able to procure were of the roughest sort. In all these accomplishments he was entirely self-taught; while his poverty was such that his costume consisted of nothing but a short shirt, or tunic, made of a homespun fabric of goat's hair, or wool, and a common felt skull-cap, with some rags twisted round it for a turban. With higher acquirements than the governor of the district, the poor Copt was hardly able to obtain bread to eat; and indeed it was only from the circumstance of his being a Christian that he and the other males of his family were not swept away in the conscription which has depopulated Egypt under the present government more than all the pillage and massacres and internal feuds of the followers of the Mameluke Beys.

On those numerous occasions when the carpenter had nothing else to do, he used to come and talk to me; and endeavour to count up, upon his fingers, how often he had "eat stick;" that is, had been beaten by one Turkish officer or another for his inability to pay the tax to the Pasha, the tooth-money to some kawass, the forced contribution to the Nazir, or some other expected or unexpected call upon his empty pocket,—an appendage to his dress, by the by, which he did not possess; for having nothing in the world to put in it, a pocket was clearly of no use to him. The carpenter related to me the history of the ruined Coptic monastery; and I found that its library was still in existence. It was carefully concealed from the Mahomedans, as a sacred treasure; and my friend the carpenter was the guardian of the volumes belonging to his fallen church. After some persuasion he agreed, in consideration of my being a Christian, to let me see them; but he said I must go to the place where they were concealed at night, in order that no one might follow our steps; and he further stipulated that none of the Mahomedan servants should accompany us, but that I should go alone with him. I agreed to all this; and on the appointed night I sallied forth with the carpenter after dark. There were not many stars visible; and we had only just light enough to see our way across the plain of Thebes, or rather among the low hills and narrow valleys above the plain, which are so entirely honeycombed with ancient tombs and mummy pits that they resemble a rabbit warren on a large scale. Skulls and bones were strewed on our path; and often at the mouths of tombs the night wind would raise up fragments of the bandages which the sacrilegious hand of the Frankish spoilers of the dead had torn from the bodies of the Egyptian mummies in search of the scarabæi, amulets, and ornaments which are found upon the breast of the deceased subjects of the Pharaohs.

Away we went stumbling over ruins, and escaping narrowly the fate of those who descend into the tomb before their time. Sometimes we heard a howl, which the carpenter said came from a hyena, prowling like ourselves among the graves, though on a very different errand. We kept on our way, by many a dark ruin and yawning cave, breaking our shins against the fallen stones until I was almost tired of the journey, which in the darkness seemed interminable; nor had I any idea where the carpenter was leading me. At last, after a fatiguing walk, we descended suddenly into a place something like a gravel pit, one side of which was closed by the perpendicular face of a low cliff, in which a doorway half filled up with rubbish betokened the existence of an ancient tomb. By the side of this doorway sat a little boy, whom I discovered by the light of the moon, which had just risen, to be the carpenter's son, an intelligent lad, who often came to pay me a visit in company with his father. It was here that the Coptic manuscripts were concealed, and it was a spot well chosen for the purpose; for although I thought I had wandered about the Necropolis of Thebes in every direction, I had never stumbled upon this place before, neither could I ever find it afterwards, although I rode in that direction several times.

I now produced from my pocket three candles, which the carpenter had desired me to bring, one for him, one for his son, and one for myself. Having lit them, we entered into the doorway of the tomb, and passing through a short passage, found ourselves in a great sepulchral hall. The earth and sand which had been blown into the entrance formed an inclined plane, sloping downwards to another door sculptured with hieroglyphics, through which we passed into a second chamber, on the other side of which was a third doorway, leading into a magnificent subterranean hall, divided into three aisles by four square columns, two on each side. There may have been six columns, but I think there were only four. The walls and columns, or rather square piers which supported the roof, retained the brilliant white which is so much to be admired in the tombs of the kings and other stately sepulchres. On the walls were various hieroglyphics, and on the square piers tall figures of the gods of the infernal regions—Kneph, Khonso, and Osiris—were portrayed in brilliant colours, with their immense caps or crowns, and the heads of the jackal and other beasts. At the further end of this chamber was a stone altar, standing upon one or two steps, in an apsis or semicircular recess. As this is not usual in Egyptian tombs, I have since thought that this had probably been altered by the Copts in early times, and that, like the Christians of the West in the days of their persecution, they had met in secret in the tombs for the celebration of their rites, and had made use of this hall as a church, in the same way as we see the remains of chapels and places of worship in the catacombs of Rome and Syracuse. The inner court of the Temple of Medinet Habou has also been converted into a Christian church; and the worthy Copts have daubed over the beautifully executed pictures of Rameses II. with a coat of plaster, upon which they have painted the grim figures of St. George, and various old frightful saints and hermits, whose uncouth forms would almost give one the idea of their having served for a system of idolatry much less refined than the worship of the ancient gods of the heathen, whose places they have usurped in these gigantic temples.

The Coptic manuscripts, of which I was in search, were lying upon the steps of the altar, except one, larger than the rest, which was placed upon the altar itself. They were about eight or nine in number, all brown and musty looking books, written on cotton paper, or charta bombycina, a material in use in very early times. An edict or charter, on paper, exists, or at least did exist two years ago, in the museum of the Jesuits' College, called the Colleggio Romano, at Rome: its date was of the sixth century; and I have a Coptic manuscript written on paper of this kind, which was finished, as appears by a note at the end, in the year 1018: these are the oldest dates that I have met with in any manuscripts on paper.

Having found these ancient books we proceeded to examine their contents, and to accomplish this at our ease, we stuck the candles on the ground, and the carpenter and I sat down before them, while his son brought us the volumes from the steps of the altar, one by one.

The first which came to hand was a dusty quarto, smelling of incense, and well spotted with yellow wax, with all its leaves dogs-eared or worn round with constant use: this was a MS. of the lesser festivals. Another appeared to be of the same kind; a third was also a book for the church service. We puzzled over the next two or three, which seemed to be martyrologies, or lives of the saints; but while we were poring over them, we thought we heard a noise. "Oh! father of hammers," said I to the carpenter, "I think I heard a noise: what could it be?—I thought I heard something move." "Did you, hawaja?" (O merchant), said the carpenter; "it must have been my son moving the books, for what else could there be here?—No one knows of this tomb or of the holy manuscripts which it contains. Surely there can be nothing here to make a noise, for are we not here alone, a hundred feet under the earth, in a place where no one comes?—It is nothing: certainly it is nothing;" and so saying, he lifted up one of the candles and peered about in the darkness; but as there was nothing to be seen, and all was silent as the grave, he sat down again, and at our leisure we completed our examination of all the books which lay upon the steps.