I have no picture of the broken bottle school of barber; but I painted one of the craft, at a recent date, plying his trade in a street in Cairo. He had a pair of scissors to take off the main crop, and a dry shave (where no blood was spilt) followed with a razor. He got through his job very much quicker than the amateurs at Der el-Bahri, but he did not do it as cleanly. While I painted my street corner, I noticed several heads the worse for the razor, and though some talk as to the charge for the operation usually preceded it, there were seldom any complaints about the cuts in the scalps.
CHAPTER XVII
DER EL-BAHRI—(continued)
FROM the middle of January till the beginning of March not a day went by but some parties of visitors passed through Der el-Bahri to see Hatshepsu’s temple. They usually went to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings first, and then crossing over the mountain which separated us from that valley, we would see them defiling down the steep incline which leads to Cook’s rest-house. After lunch the guide would rush them through Hatshepsu’s shrine, and then start them off to see the tombs of Sheykh Abd-el-Gurna; the Ramesseum would then be visited, and with hardly a pause for breath every one would remount their donkeys or get into their litters to be rushed off to Medinet Habu. The Valley of the Tombs of the Queens might then be visited, and a long ride, with a short halt at the Colossi of Memnon, would take them to the Nile, to be crossed after sunset, before the Luxor hotels could be reached.
I have no doubt that most of these good people were thankful when so fatiguing a day was well over, and vowed that no power on earth would ever induce them to go through it again. A week would barely suffice to get more than a cursory glance of all the sights which are crowded into this one long day. The following day is usually devoted to ‘doing’ the Luxor temple, and being rushed through the ruins of Karnak. These people who do their sights at such a giddy speed usually take part in a tour up the Nile organised by some travelling agency. A few well-advised ones remain at Luxor till the steam dahabieh, which has taken them so far, picks them up on its return trip from Assuan. This gives them time to see at their ease that which the ill-advised ones had merely been rushed through.
It was amusing, after some months of solitude, to see my fellow-creatures again, but before the tourist season was over I longed to get back to the usual quietude of our valley. The trippers would arrive in batches of from one to two hundred, and add to this an equal number of donkeys and their drivers—Der el-Bahri on those occasions became a veritable pandemonium. Fortunately they generally swept down on us at about the same hour of the day—in time to lunch at the rest-house opposite my hut; by three o’clock they were driven off, by the guide in charge of the party, to see the Ramesseum. I had to rearrange my day and feed when they fed, and take a ‘siesta’ until the temple was empty once more. Until the tripper season we were almost flyless, being sufficiently far in the desert to be away from that pest. The donkeys and the débris of the picnickers brought the usual swarms of flies with them, and work in any of the temples was as bad in that respect as in the bazaars at Cairo.
The smaller parties who dropped on us unawares were most to be feared. I might be making some studies in one of the tombs, which are airless enough at the best of times, and be suddenly aware that a party was approaching by hearing, ‘Dis way, ladies and shentlemens, to de Tomb of Rekmaré.’ There would be no help for it but to pack up my traps and be off. If I returned after the crowd had been rushed off somewhere else, the air would be unbreathable, both from the numbers who had been there, and from the extinguished tapers or magnesium wire.
By the end of March I, and possibly some artist friend, would again reign supreme at Der el-Bahri. It is a hot valley, for it is shut off from the northerly breezes, and the cliffs throw back the rays of the sun. By rearranging our days we managed to avoid the worst of the heat. We breakfasted at daybreak, and we took our midday meal about eleven, and from twelve till four we would sleep in some recess where the sun’s rays had never penetrated. After that, and a cold bath and some tea, we could get to work till sundown. The hut became unbearable in April, for it had no double roof. The coolest spot I could find for the midday rest was in the Ptolemaic sanctuary in Hatshepsu’s temple. This is cut deep into the overhanging cliffs, and in the hot season would be some twenty degrees cooler than my hut. I put an Arab bed in here, and by lying with my head to the entrance, there was just light enough to be able to read myself to sleep.
There was no fear of trippers now, and the few visitors who remained on in Luxor would only arrive before or after the heat of the day. On first entering my temporary boudoir nothing would be visible on the dark walls; but on getting accustomed to the dim light, rows of gods and goddesses would appear. The hawk-headed Homs, jackal-laced Anubis, and the unspeakable Min of Koptos were all here; also the rounded forms of Euergetes’s Queen, and Maat, the goddess of truth. The tiger-headed Sekhmet, Bellona’s prototype, and Sobk with his crocodile snout made a foil to the rounded features of Hathor and Isis.
A squeaky sound somewhere above would make me aware that I was not the only living tenant of this sanctuary. Bats have long since discovered that it is fairly cool here in summer, and not too cold in winter. A noise like gentle taps from a hammer would draw my eyes to a wide crack in the wall, and around two shiny little beads I would make out the form of a large lizard. The little beads would stare at me for some time, and if I just moved my head they would disappear into the depths of the wall. The bats like myself only used this place as a shelter from the heat, and would venture out towards night to find a living; but what could this lizard (a gecko, I believe, it is called) find here to subsist on? Flies kept away from this dark sanctuary, and except the water I had in my water-bottle no moisture finds its way here.