EGYPT. BY CHARLES WHIBLEY. WHEN the traveller, visiting always been. You may see Egypt for the first time, arrives at Port Said, he comes not merely to another continent but to another world. He sees nothing on the road from Port Said to Cairo that is not fresh and strange. He finds himself in the land of the swaying camel and the white donkey. On every side he hears the note, harsh and grating, of the hoopoe. What shadow there is is cast by the palmtree, and the water-wheel creaks as it has always creaked. The new-comer's earliest impression is that he is in the oldest country upon the earth. As he looks out from the window of his train he sees beyond the railway line few signs of material civilisation. Even the Suez Canal, when he catches a glimpse of it, makes no parade of M. Lesseps' marvellous achievement. It seems as though it would, if it could, escape notice, and the traveller must perforce believe, on a first impression, that Egypt is unaltered and unalterable. While other historians count in centuries, the historian of Egypt counts in thousands of years. What Moses and Herodotus have written about the Egyptians is still weighted with authority. In truth, this " land of black and crumbling earth" remains to-day what it has the same peasants going along the high-road on the same quest as were to be seen thousands of years ago. The same mud huts, brittle and unroofed, which afforded shade, if not shelter, to the subjects of the Pharaohs - huts which appear to us better fitted for beasts than for men,—are still the dwelling-places of the people." The Egyptians are the only people," says Herodotus, "who keep their animals with them in the house"; and as you travel southward by the Nile, you cannot but think that what Herodotus said is still true of them, even though their custom is not unshared. If the Egyptians, who work in the fields, patiently watching the water wheels which bring them prosperity, seem still contemporary with Herodotus, or even with with Moses, there have grown up in the country here and there flourishing centres of what to us means civilisation. In Cairo, for instance, the new and the old, the West and the East, are inextricably blent. In that strange city of many thoughts and many races you may find, so to say, an epitome of history. The main thoroughfare, where the hotels, the famous Shepherds' and the rest, are packed with gallant adven turers or idle trippers, belongs of human life. They seem less to Europe, and recalls the boulevards of Brussels or Paris. There you will seek, not in vain, what you might find at home, and encounter your familiar friends on the same errand of curiosity which has tempted you. And jostling your friends are "intellectual Egyptians, tarboosh on head and seditious newspaper in hand, or swarthy Nubians, white-robed, willing to do any service which will win them baksheesh. And if the races are mingled in Cairo, so are the centuries. Escape from the cosmopolitan throng into a back street and you will find yourself in the atmosphere of the Thousand and One Nights. Or if the bazaar tempt you, you may chaffer over coffee and a cigarette for the jewels and carpets and perfumes of the East. Then there are the mosques of eternal beauty and of infinite variety; and if you climb to the citadel you will have an unsurpassed vision of a city of towers and minarets, a city through which flows the majestic Nile, at once the highway and the fertiliser of Egypt. The monumental art of Egypt, austere and hieratic as it is, is too vast in design to be shut up in museums. The temples, the monoliths, and the colossal statues, which are its pride, are seen in the open air and beneath a burning sun. They astonish by their size rather than by their beauty. They go far beyond the scale the products of art than of science. How did they come to their final resting-place? How were they set up, and by what machinery? These are the questions that come to your mind as you look upon them, and the answer to them is to be found in the gangs of slaves who were forced to obey the commands of the Egyptian kings. When Rameses II. returned victorious to Egypt, "he found work," says Herodotus, "for the multitude which he brought with him from the countries which he subdued. It was these who dragged the great and long blocks of stone which were brought in this king's reign to the temple of Hephaestus." To those who have seen the immense obelisk lying in the quarries at Assouan, still undetached on its lower side, it might appear impossible that monuments vast as this should be moved and set up by the brute strength of unskilful gangs. Yet Queen Hatasu ordered the tallest obelisk known to the Egyptians to be cut out of the granite at Assouan, carved, carried down the Nile, and put in its place at Karnak in a mere seven months. It was not till the time of Cheops, however, that the worst tyranny of labour was imposed upon the suffering Egyptians. Now Cheops, as Herodotus says, "brought the people to utter misery. For first he shut up all the temples, so that none could sacrifice in them; and next, he com pelled all the Egyptians to work for him, appointing to some to drag stones from the Arabian mountains to the Nile; and the stones being carried across the river in boats, others were charged to receive and drag them to the mountains called Libyan. They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months. For ten months the people were afflicted in making the road whereon the stones were dragged, the making of which road was to my thinking a task but a little lighter than the building of a pyramid." Thus was built the great pyramid at Gizeh; thus were built the vast temples which express the pride and arrogance of Egypt's rulers. And they bear upon them all the marks of an art contrived not by men but by gangs of men. There is no individuality discernible in these well-organised monuments. You cannot distinguish in them the mark of this man's style or that man's. In construction and design they obey certain rules; they conform to certain prejudices; they tell us a vast deal of the vainglory of the monarch, who thus called attention to himself; they tell us little or nothing of the skill and taste of the craftsman who saw to their fashioning. When you are tired of these heavy loads of masonry, go to the Cairo museum and take delight in the wooden statuette of the famous Shekh el-Beled, a masterpiece of the Fifth Dynasty, carved at a period when the Egyptian artists looked with their own eyes upon the world, and thought it right that a portrait should be faithful to nature, a period when the art of sculpture had not been reduced to a formula of magnificence. How many colossal statues would I not give in exchange for the one living image of the Shêkh! Rameses II., the king who laid the heaviest loads upon his native soil, has been described as the grand monarque of Egypt. In his long reign of sixty-seven years he exulted alike in the arts of war and peace. His courage equalled his pride, and he put beneath his conquering heel all the nations which dared to oppose the power of Egypt. The first great war of his reign-against the Hittites-has made him for ever famous. There it was at Kadesh-that he fell into an ambush, and cut his way through the hosts of his enemies, defeating thousands by the sole might of his right arm. This was the gallant feat celebrated by Pentaur, the Homer of the Egyptians, in verse imperishable as the stone upon which it was cut. "There was no chief with us," says the bard, speaking with the voice of Rameses, "no marshal, no captain of archers, no officers; fled were my troops and horse. I was left alone to fight the foe." If the just pride of Rameses were satisfied with his glorious achievement, he assuaged his vanity by seeing the enthusi astic verse of Pentaur inscribed upon the walls of the temples at Luxor, Karnak, and AbuSimbel. He never wearied of inventing the glorious legend of himself and his exploits. From the tombs of his predecessors he obliterated their once honoured names and substituted his own. He would, if he could, have stood forth in the memory of man as the greatest -the only-hero of all time. It irked him that another, either before or after, should be commemorated. Even the bricks which he set the captive Jews to make must be impressed with his own stamp, lest at any corner of the world forgetfulness should overtake him. And he has succeeded beyond the most of kings and heroes in calling attention to himself. The great temples which he built are but so many pæans in stone to his glory and honour. No iteration seems to have daunted him. Everywhere there is the same tale to tell. The colossal statues at Memphis, at Luxor, and elsewhere bear enduring testimony to his worth and valour. In his eyes size seemed necessary to do him honour, and his many statues are still the largest known to man. When he grew tired of statues, he brought to his temples gigantic monoliths cut out of the granite quarried at Syene, and on them he had inscribed again the twice-told tale of his unconquerable prowess. His monuments increase in magnificence the farther south they are found. If the great temple at Karnak, the noblest ruin in Egypt, were built by other hands, it was turned to his own purpose by the arrogant Rameses. It is still possible to gain a clear impression of its vastness and splendour, and to distinguish the additions made by the great king to the original building. The avenue of sphinxes-an avenue because one sphinx was not enough to symbolise his grandeur-was the invention of Rameses. His also were the two obelisks, which commemorated his names and titles, the two colossal statues, of which but one remains, and many of the columns in the immense hall. Few monarchs have ever set up for themselves so sumptuous a memorial as this. And yet Karnak must give the palm of greatness to AbuSimbel. This temple, which was built to celebrate the victory which Rameses gained over the Hittites, is solemn and grandiose beyond them all. From the face of the rock were cut four statues of Ramesesone was not sufficient for his ambition,-each of them 66 ft. high. By such vain and monstrous repetitions did Rameses succeed in perpetuating his name, which can die only when the memorials of his pride perish in the dust. As I steamed away from Abu-Simbel and caught a last glimpse of the heroic temple, a shrewd bagman turned to me and said with a just irony, as though he were speaking about one of his own craft, The slogan of Rameses II. was it pays to advertise '"'; and who shall say that the comment is unfair? At Medinet-Abu there stands the only surviving palace of ancient Egypt. The kings, who themselves took infinite care for their posthumous fame, did not design for perpetuity the houses in which they lived. No sooner did they come to the throne than they seem to have turned their thoughts to death and to the dwellingplaces of their mortal remains. They sacrificed the pride of life to the pride of death. Though they hid the places of their interment they did not spare the cost and ingenuity of their graves. They surrounded themselves in their palatial tombs with the elegant furniture and rich treasure which in life ministered to their luxury. They spared neither gold nor alabaster in the resolve that their life after death should be fit tingly adorned. The City of the Dead in Cairo, the tombs of the kings across the river from Luxor, attest the general desire of the Egyptians that, whatever befell them in life, they should be handsomely housed after death. And they clung desperately to this vanity, not that they should dazzle the eyes of others but that they might give satisfaction to themselves in the grave. Alas! they reckoned not with the riflers of tombs. The work of burglary began more than a thousand years before Christ. In 1125 B.C. some "servants of the High Priest of Amen were charged with robbing the tomb of King Sebekemsaf, and here is their confession, translated by Professor Newberry : "We opened the coffins and their wrappings, which were on them, and we found the noble mummy of the king. There were two swords, and many amulets and necklaces of gold on his neck; his head was covered with gold. We tore off the gold that we found on the noble mummy of this god. We found the royal wife also. We tore off all that we found from her mummy likewise, and we set fire to their wrappings. We took their furniture of gold, silver, and copper vases which we found with them." These servants of the High Priest had robbed the tomb with delight, and describe their booty with gusto. Their success, which was rivalled by the success of many others, explains how many treasures have been lost in the Valley of the Kings, and proves the best justification for those who of late have opened the tombs and have preserved for all time the treasure found within. It was but a stroke of good fortune that has preserved for us the far- famed tomb of Tutenkhamen. The riflers of the royal graves were for once baffled in their search after gold, and thus the treasure of one insignificant king is to-day preserved in the museum at Cairo. From the beauty and splendour of this treasure, which |