CHAPTER XLI—THE GREAT PYRAMIDS.—IN THE KINGS’ BURIAL CHAMBERS.
A Visit to the Great Pyramids—A Fellah not a Fellow—Sakkiehs and Shadoofs—A File of Camels and Donkeys—A striking Spectacle—A horde of Arabs—Troublesome Customers—The Great Pyramid—How we climbed it—A Giant Stairway—Dimensions Extraordinary—The lost Arts—Standing on the Summit—The Judge’s Predicament—Arab Cormorants—What we saw from the top of the Great Pyramid—Wonderful Contrasts—Performance of an Arabian Acrobat—A race down the Pyramid Stairs—A perilous Descent—Penetrating the Interior—The King’s Chamber—A dusty Receptacle of Coffins—The Sphinx—A mysterious Statue.
EVERY visitor to Cairo makes at least one journey to the famous pyramids of Gizeh, and generally takes an early opportunity to make it. Until within a few years there was considerable labor and fatigue to the excursion as it was necessary to ride there on donkeys, and the whole trip required not less than five hours of saddle exercise. There was also the necessity of crossing the Nile on a ferry boat, and as there was generally a crowd of men, boys, camels, and donkeys at the ferry, the journey across had a reasonable amount of excitement in it. Now you ride to the Pyramids in a carriage and along a macadamized road, and you cross the Nile over an iron bridge that is a great improvement upon the ferry.
At my first visit we made up a party of twelve and therefore took three carriages for which we paid twenty francs each carriage, quite a reasonable price compared with hack fares in America.
We started about nine o’clock, after crossing the river found ourselves among the fertile fields that produce many of the vegetables consumed in Cairo. Fellahs were at work in these fields, some of them very scantily clad, particularly those who manipulated the sakkiehs or water lifters. A sakkieh is a very primitive machine and consists of a pole and bucket supported like the old fashioned well-sweep of America. The term sakkieh is applied to all the apparatus for raising water, but the proper name for the Egyptian pole and bucket is shadoof. The shadoof is very ancient, as it is represented on the walls of the tombs constructed three or four thousand years ago.