The ascent of the Pyramids is sometimes very amusing. Travellers generally climb only one—Cheops, or the “great pyramid.” Each visitor is provided by the Sheik in charge with three or four of his Arabs; and as they are daily so employed, many of them can speak English sufficiently well to be understood. The sides consist, of course, of large stones, forming in fact a series of steps which only a giant could walk upon, being about the height of a table. The method of climbing, therefore, is this:—Two of your Arabs jump up by aid of their arms; and then, seizing hold one of each of your hands, pull you up, while one assists you by pushing from below. The speed is good, but the tugging is so vigorous that one very soon tires of it, and learns to jump up, without much assistance, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the over-zealous helps. Half-way up a rest is made ostensibly for the purpose of viewing the scene below, and for refreshing the traveller with a draught of water. Our Arabs had all the while been singing, screaming, and laughing, as only an Arab can. Frequently it was scraps of nursery rhymes and comic songs, the meaning of which they seemed somewhat ignorant of, but travellers had taught them by rote, and they had picked up the words with singular quickness. They have great tact in finding out the nationality of their clients, and so becoming complimentary thereon. To an American it is, “American gentlemans good,”—“Yankee doodle,” with a screaming chorus of half a dozen words. To one of our party, “Anglais good, ver good,”—“Jack and Gill went up the hill.” Assuring them we were not Anglais nor French, but from Scotland, “Ah! Scotland gentlemans good, ver good,”—“Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle;” and so on—“Scotland good,”—“Rickety dickety dock, the mouse ran up the clock.” Here they were at fault, having forgotten the next line of the rhyme. On being reminded by us, their joy seemed boundless,—“The clock struck one, and down the mouse ran, rickety dickety dock.” This rhyme, we learned, had been told them the previous year by a Scotch lady, but they had forgotten most of it. Now, however, it was all at once an immense favourite, and twenty times over the air rang with it, sung by a dozen Arab voices, and with all the excitement and boisterousness of their tribe just as over a recovered treasure. Surely they are “children of a larger growth.”
Upon inquiry, we learned that one of them had two wives, and would soon be able to obtain another; one had only one wife; a third—the youngest—had none, but was presently negotiating for one. A lady from our hotel here astonished them with the information that the principal of our party—although a very “rich man”—had only one wife, and that another of us, although with grey locks, had not got even one! They all looked surprised. One seriously expressed his regret that our unfortunate bachelor friend was not rich enough to obtain a wife; another looked quite incredulous, and, putting his finger upon the gold watch-chain he wore, suggested that there were riches quite sufficient to buy one wife at least. I doubt whether a merrier day has often been passed upon the grand pyramid of Cheops. Bakshish, of course, formed a subject of importunity afterwards; but we escaped pretty well by referring all to our “purse-bearer”—Josef the guide—who awaited us below.
When on the top, the celebrated “flying Arab” exhibited his surprising agility by actually running down at full speed, and nearly as rapidly running up to the top of the adjacent pyramid—almost as high. He became gradually smaller every moment as the distance between us increased, and he appeared to climb the opposite height very much like a rabbit in its motions, and did not look very much larger. Of course one false step in his downward race would have been instantly fatal, because it consisted of a continuous succession of short rapid leaps.
The top is by no means an apex, as it seemed from a distance, but a rough flat space, of about twenty feet square. The pyramids are solid masses of mason work, built of largo size stones with lime or cement of excellent quality. The stones on the top are covered over with initials of visitors, so that there is scarcely room for more. To an Arab who, with a large nail and hammer, offered to cut mine, I said it was quite unnecessary, because I could point out the letters of it as already cut several times, which quite stopped his importunity. Several of the pyramids have had their “steps” built up with rubble and cement, making their sides quite smooth surfaces, and probably all were so originally.
There was a slight breeze of wind—quite bracing indeed—and we took ample time to enjoy the scene spread out below. The minarets of Cairo are numerous and lofty, and with the citadel formed the most prominent features in the city. Fronting westward is the bare rock and parapet over which leaped on horseback the desperate Mameluke soldier, to escape that awful massacre of his splendid company of cavalry by Mahomed Ali in 1811.
The Nile divides Grand Cairo from the much more ancient city of Old Cairo on its west bank—a locality occupied by the lower class of Arabs. It is built of black mud or sun-burnt brick, like all the villages we had seen in our journey from Alexandria. The population is not considerable, and I think is included in the 350,000 generally given as the population of Cairo. Egypt has about 500 miles of railway centring in Cairo, but the lines are scarcely traceable from this pyramid. Our descent was quite as amusing, and almost as exciting, as our ascent had been, and I think neither more easy nor more rapid.
On the north side of the pyramid is an opening, cut at an elevation of about forty feet from the ground. It leads by a channel (so small that we could not walk in it) in a downward, sloping direction; then it ascends by another channel, leading into a chamber in the heart of the pyramid. Here is a granite sarcophagus empty, supposed to have contained the mummy of the King Cheops, but some say the real coffin was deeper down, cut into the solid rock over which the pyramid was built, and that it was originally approached by a long shaft, now choked up. We did not go in far, as it is dark, and not pleasant in any way.
Note B, [page 28].—The Sphinx.
Most of the pictures and photographs I have seen of this Sphinx seem caricatures, and I think all of them are failures, with one remarkable exception, and that one was a cartoon in Punch many years ago, in which the very ideal of the original appears reproduced. The sculptor of the Sphinx and the artist of that cartoon were brothers in genius, although separated in time by forty centuries.