Some actually live in the tombs, using the forecourts for their beasts. Where exceptionally interesting wall inscriptions exist in the ancient sepulchres, the Antiquities Department has stepped in and protected them from the risk of being damaged. The evicted tenants then build their homes nearer the cultivation. The one I give as an illustration to this chapter is a fair sample of a modern Theban homestead. The dress of the people has altered slightly from that of their remote ancestors, and the camel was presumably non-existent in pharaonic times; but little else has been changed. The rude bins made of dried mud are of early Egyptian rather than of Saracenic design. The stone in the right-hand corner with which the fellaha grinds the corn, finds its prototype on the walls of many an adjacent tomb.

The farming operations have little changed during this great lapse of time. The scenes depicted on the walls of the tomb of Nakht: the men reaping with sickles, the women gleaning; others packing the ears of corn or measuring the garnered grain—all this can be seen now, in any of these villages, and it is done in the same simple and primitive manner. The types of the labouring people are less changed than their simple garments. The women plucking durra or winnowing the corn in Nakht’s sepulchre might have been drawn from any of the women we now see carrying their pitchers of water from the wells. All are now followers of the Prophet save a few Coptic Christians; the worship of Isis gave way to that of the risen Christ, and the crescent has since replaced the cross. But many a superstition has survived these changes. The mental characteristics of the Upper Egyptian differ very much from those of the true bred Arab; it is therefore rational to believe that these have been transmitted as well as the cast of the features.

Some allowance must be made for the inhabitants of Gurna, the long straggling village at the base of the necropolis. Year after year tourists pass by its hovels, and from a coin thrown now and again to the children, a breed of beggars is replacing an otherwise hard-working people. The demand for ‘antikas’ has caused a supply of false ones, or tempted the men to steal from the temples whenever a favourable chance presents itself. Many have lost the habit of work in consequence of these evil influences; thus, on the whole, the Gurna peasants compare badly with those of less frequented villages.

THE BIRTH COLONNADE IN THE TEMPLE OF HATSHEPSU

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With the exception of a few friends who were connected with the excavations, or an occasional visit from acquaintances who were spending a season in Upper Egypt, I saw few human beings beside the Gurna peasants. I endeavoured to see the best side of their natures, and to make allowances for the centuries of bad government under which they have existed. I found them not quite so bad as they are painted. Their ingratitude, of which I had heard a good deal, can be explained in two ways; firstly, hospitality is a duty of the Mohammedan religion, and hospitality of a kind is expected and taken for granted. We are seldom grateful for what we consider our due. Secondly, many favours conferred by the foreigner are little more than common humanity demands, and he is liable to place too high an estimate on what he may have done. Where too much gratitude was not expected for some service performed, I generally found that the fellah could be as grateful as the peasant nearer home.

Their greed for money is a characteristic which the tourist cannot fail to perceive; but the tourist seldom meets any of the fellaheen save those who live near the frequented ‘sights.’ The annual influx of sightseers has become as a crop, to these peasants, from which a harvest should be gathered. In their eyes the Sauwâhîn are all millionaires, and, according to the oriental mind, the rich man should pay out of the abundance of his riches, and not necessarily in proportion to the services rendered. Our mediæval ‘largess’ was taken in that light by our forebears, and corresponds very much to the fellaheen’s notion of baksheesh. This is not expected of those who live and work amongst them, for ‘How can a man be rich if he works daily with his hands?’ Baksheesh from such as myself would be expected not as largess, but more as a gratuity after a certain period of service.

I remember a man asking where the Beled es-Sauwâhîn was, that is, the ‘Land of the Foreigners.’ On being told that the English, the French and Germans, who were all Sauwâhîn, had each a separate country, my questioner retorted, ‘But surely you are not one of them?’ I told him that as I was an Englishman, I was of course one of them, and I, in my turn asking him a few questions, managed to arrive at his views on the subject. He was aware that there existed beyond the seas a land of the Ingleesi, also one of the Fransowi, and one of the Nemsawi; but besides these there was a land of the Sauwâhîn, a rich people who apparently did no work, and annually migrated to the south to visit the temples and tombs of the ancient Egyptians for some obscure purpose which he had not quite fathomed.