THE TOMB OF SHEYKH ABD-EL-DEYM

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Our countrymen who are guiding the destinies of Egypt, and who are honestly working for the betterment of its people, are not primarily responsible for the unsuitable planning of the modern Cairo. Ismael Pasha’s boast, ‘L’Egypte fait partie de l’Europe,’ came after the remodelling of Alexandria, and since the time when Clot Bey drew the plans of a northern city to be built in a semi-tropical country.

From what I hear, this unfortunate example is being followed in Khartúm, which is well inside the tropics. The wide sun-baked streets may be pleasant to those who only visit it during the short winter; but they who have to remain there during the long summer months may long for the shady lanes which wind amongst the habitations of the ancient parts of Cairo. The well-to-do in the mediæval city were not obliged to migrate to Europe during the hottest season, as the clients of our modiste feel now constrained to do.

CHAPTER IX
THE COPTIC CONVENTS OF WADI NATRUN

AMONGST the guests who halted at the Villa Victoria, it was my good fortune to make the acquaintance of Mr. Palmer-Jones, an enthusiastic architect who had measured up some of the early Coptic convents, and had also reconstructed on paper dynastic buildings of which little but the plan is at present traceable. He was making preparations for a journey to Wadi Natrun to continue his work at the old convents which are dotted about that valley.

During a stay in Professor Garstang’s camp at Abydos, a few years ago, my interest in what concerns the Copts had been considerably excited, while I painted in the Coptic settlement which is a mile or two distant from Seti’s temple. Although these convents are of recent date compared to far-off pharaonic times, a period of fifteen centuries has nevertheless elapsed since many of them have been built. They also have this, which gives them a human interest above the earlier shrines, and that is their preservation of the uses for which they were founded. Many are now no more than a heap of ruins; but there yet remains a good number still inhabited by monks, and where the Christian liturgy of the early centuries is still repeated in the chapels.

When Mr. Jones kindly proposed that I should join him in his expedition, I was not long in making up my mind to do so. His preparations took longer than mine, for he had to procure a camp outfit for a stay in the desert, a good distance from the rest-house where he and I proposed to spend a week together. I could not afford the time to accompany him further afield, and a week of desert air I hoped would suffice to shake off the evil effects of a touch of influenza.

It took over a week to get an answer from the manager of the Salt and Soda Company, in whose rest-house we proposed to stay, although he wrote by return of post telling us we could come. The distance was within a hundred miles from Cairo; but postal arrangements are not expeditious in the desert.