[152] Quis est tam vecors, qui ea quæ tanta mente fiunt, casu putet posse fieri?—Who is so silly as to believe that things so wisely ruled can be the effect of chance?
UP THE NILE.
I.
When Philip’s son, on his way to the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the African desert, selected the abode of the fabulous Proteus for his future city, the gods encouraged their much-loved child with a favorable omen. For whilst Dinocrates, the architect, was marking out the lines upon the ground, the chalk he used was exhausted; whereupon the king, who was present, ordered the flour destined for the workmen’s food to be employed in its stead, thereby enabling him to complete the outline of many of the streets. An infinite number of birds, says Plutarch, of several kinds, rising suddenly like a black cloud out of the river and lake, devoured the flour. Alexander, troubled in mind—as the workmen, no doubt, were both in mind and body, although the historian does not so relate—consulted the augurs. These discreet men, who read the divine Mind in their own fashion, advised him to proceed, by observing that the occurrence was a sign the city he was about to build would enjoy such abundance of all things that it would contribute to the nourishment of many nations. The workmen having swallowed their indignation in place of their food, the work proceeded, and Alexander, before continuing his journey, witnessed the commencement of his flourishing city, B.C. 323. Thus rose up Alexandria, the gate of the Orient. Centuries are as naught in its calendar; nay, thousands of years give but a feeble idea
of the length of its civilized existence. Enter the portals of the Alexandria of to-day. What a new world spreads out before you! Is it not all a masquerade? These strange boatmen with their bright-colored robes, their magpie chattering—are they real? Color—color everywhere: the cloudless blue sky above, the green waters beneath, the dark complexions, the red, green, yellow of their garments, the endless confusion of colors in, around, and about. Close the eyes, or they will be dazzled. Struggle now, or see, those fellows will tear you apart and carry you in pieces to the shore, head in one boat, legs in another—happy you if even both legs are in the same boat. Fight hard now to retain your entire individuality. Well done! Now follow this handsome Arab; he is a dragoman and will protect you. Take his olive-green suit and bright red fez for a guide. See how he strikes right and left; and, by Allah! down go a score of boatmen. Are they hurt? No matter; they are only Arabs, and menials at that. He has you in his own boat now—sound, too, nothing wanting; feel, if you are in doubt—yes, head, arms, legs, body, all here; and he stands in the stern and smiles complacently. He will talk to you in any language, unintelligibly perhaps, but then with such grace and dignity; you must pretend to understand him. He will give you any information, from the cost of building the pyramids to the price of
donkey-hire; will take you anywhere—to Pompey’s Pillar, Assouan, the Mountains of the Moon. And when you timidly inquire where the mountains are, thinking you might like to make a short visit, he smiles patronizingly, and waves his hand gracefully to the south. Up there!—three thousand miles or more. But what is that to him? You are surprised that he should have creditors, a man of his appearance; but you are relieved, for he pays his debts, and the custom-house officials smile, place their hands on their hearts, and bow your luggage out of the custom-house. You are already beginning to feel proud at being the friend of so great a man. That famous flirt Cleopatra lived here, and toyed with the hearts of men—some of them real men, too; not the Egyptian fops of the day, the Greek society men, or the Roman swells, but such men as Antony, who lost half the world for her at Actium. She it was who amused herself by swallowing pearls, and finally left this world to avoid the honor of adorning the triumph of Octavius. The augurs were right. Alexander’s city did contribute to the nourishment of many nations, physically and intellectually. Its sails whitened every sea, bearing to the capital and provinces of the empire the treasures of Egypt, Arabia, and India. Students flocked to its schools; its great library contained over seven hundred thousand volumes. Even as late as A.D. 641, when Amru captured the city after a siege of fourteen months, in his letter to Omar he tells him that he found there four thousand palaces, as many baths, four hundred places of amusement, and twelve thousand gardens. Amru was inclined to spare the library, being urged to do so
by John Philopanus; but Omar sent orders: “If the books contain the same matter as the Koran, they are useless; if not the same, they are worse than useless. Therefore, in either case, they are to be burnt.” Even in their destruction they were made useful; for Abdollatiff says there were so many books that the baths of Alexandria were heated by them for the space of six months. Those mystical enigmas of Western childhood—Cleopatra’s Needles—turn out to be but obelisks after all, and not of the best. They stood originally at Heliopolis, but Tiberius set them up in front of the Cæsarium in honor of himself. Those old emperors were fond of raising monuments to themselves, that future generations might wonder at their exploits, which many times were performed in imagination only. One has fallen, and is a white elephant on the hands of England. The English do not know what to do with it. Mohammed Ali gave it to them, and even offered to transport it free of expense to the shore and put it on any vessel sent to remove it. Possibly he thought it reminded the people too much of Tiberius, and wanted to set up one for his own glorification. No vessel was sent, and here it remains, half covered with débris. Pompey’s Pillar is a column of highly-polished red granite ninety-eight feet nine inches in height, twenty-nine feet eight inches in circumference, erected by another of those modest Roman emperors—Diocletian by name—for the same purpose that Tiberius set up the old obelisk. It is a wonder that some of these unpretentious rulers, with their characteristic modesty, did not carry out the idea proposed to Alexander by Dinocrates, and have Mount Athos cut into a statue of themselves,
holding in one hand a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and from the other pouring a copious river into the sea. Perhaps they thought this city would be deserted, the inhabitants fearing that natural instinct would cause the hand to close and grab up everything, people and all. What a motley mass of humanity throng its narrow streets—Greeks, Jews, Turks, and people of almost every nation in Europe, but few Copts, the descendants of the old Egyptians. When Cambyses made his trip to Egypt, 524 B.C., he persuaded most of them to leave the Delta and retire to the Thebaid, where their descendants are found to this day. It is hard to understand the Copt. In other parts of the world a man who can trace his pedigree a few centuries back carries that fact in his face, and considers himself, and is considered, above other men. Here we talk in an off-hand, familiar way with Copts living in the same place where their ancestors have lived for six thousand years or more—men who can trace their ancestry through a long roll of illustrious names to the world’s conquerors, the Rameses and Ositarsens; and they were not proud of it—in fact, they did not seem to know anything about it. Perhaps it was such an old, old story that it had been forgotten ages before.