The Ship Dwellers Part 31

He bowed with easy grace.

"I will accompany you myself," he said.

Now, I already knew the custom of Egypt, and I began to make a hasty estimate of my ready money, wondering if I had sufficient for a baksheesh of this rank. It was by no means certain. However, there would be ship-dwellers about: I could borrow, perhaps.

I decided presently that whatever the duty imposed, it was worth it.

With that big uniformed fellow at our side we were immune to all that hungry horde of Arab vultures. We walked through unscathed. Our protector procured the entrance tickets for us; he selected two strong men to push and pull us up the long, dark, gla.s.sy-slick pa.s.sage that leads to the sepulchre of Khufu in the very heart of the Pyramid; he went with us himself into that still mysterious place, explaining in perfect English how five or six thousand years ago the sarcophagus of the great king was pushed up that incline; he showed us the mortises in the stone where uprights were set to hold the great granite coffin when the laborers stopped to rest. It was a weird experience in the cool, quiet darkness of that mightiest of tombs with the flaring candles and eager sure-footed Arabs; it seemed to belong in Rider Haggard's story of _She_. Then, after we had seen the old black sarcophagus, which is empty now, and had remained a little in that removed place, trying to imagine that we were really in the very centre of the big Pyramid, we made our way out again to light and the burning desert heat. I settled with our Arabs with little or no difficulty, which is worth something in itself, and when we had found a quiet place I thanked our guardian and tendered him what I thought a liberal honorarium--fairly liberal, even for America.

He drew back a little.

"Oh no," he said, "I beg your pardon."

I had not made it large enough then. I glanced about for some of the party who would have funds.

"I am sorry," I began, "it is not more. I will--"

"I beg your pardon," he repeated, "but I could not accept anything for what is but my duty. I am only very glad to do what I may for you. I will do something more, if you wish."

Then, of course, I knew it _must_ be a dream, and that I would wake up presently in Shepheard's Hotel to find that we hadn't started for the Pyramids yet. Still, I would keep up the blessed trance a moment longer.

"You mean that you will not allow me to acknowledge your great favor to us?" I said in that polite manner for which our ship is justly famous.

"Not in money," he said. "The Government pays me a salary for my work and this is only part of my work. It has also given me pleasure."

I surrept.i.tiously pinched myself in certain tender places to see if I couldn't wake up. It was no use. He persisted in his refusal, and presently produced an ancient corroded coin, Greek or Roman, such as is sometimes found among the debris.

"I should like to offer you this," he said. "I found it myself, so I am sure it is genuine."

Ah, this was the delicate opportunity.

"You will let me buy it, of course."

But no, he declined that, too. He wished us only to remember him, he insisted. He added:

"I have two scarabs at home; I should like to bring them to your hotel."

It was rather dazing. The seller of scarabs--genuine or imitation--will not let a prospective purchaser get out of sight. I wondered why we should be trusted in this unheard-of way; I also wondered what those two scarabs were likely to be worth. Could he come to-night? I asked; we should be sight-seeing to-morrow and leaving for Upper Egypt in the afternoon.

But no, he would not be home in time. He would wait until we returned from Upper Egypt.

So it was we had parted, and in the tumult of sight-seeing up the Nile I had forgotten the matter altogether. Now, here he was. I counted up my spare currency, and waited.

He had on his best smile as he entered, also a brand-new uniform, and he certainly made a handsome figure. He inquired as to our sight-seeing up the Nile, then rather timidly he produced two of those little Egyptian gems--a scarab and an amulet, such as men and women of old Egypt wore, and took with them to their tombs.

"I got them from a man who took them from a mummy. They are genuine. I want to give them to you and the little lady," he said.

"But you must not _give_ them to us--they are too valuable," I began.

He flushed and straightened up a little.

"But that is why I wish you to have them."

Now, of course, no one who knows Cairo can ever believe that story. Yet it all truly happened, precisely as I have set it down. He was just a young Egyptian who had attended school in Alexandria, and he spoke and wrote English, French, Italian, and the dialects of Arabic. The Egyptian acquires the lore of languages naturally, it would seem, but that this youth should acquire all those things, and such a standard of honor and generosity, here in a land where baksheesh is the native G.o.d, did seem amazing. When we left, he wrote down our address in the neatest possible hand, requesting permission to send us something more.

NOTE.--As my reputation for truth is already gone I may as well add, a year later, that he has since sent two presents--some little funerary figures, and a beautiful ivory-handled fly-whip.

XLIV

SAKKARA AND THE SACRED BULLS

One begins and finishes Egypt with Cairo. Starting with the Sphinx and Pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty, you work down through the Theban periods of the Upper Nile and then once more at Cairo, leap far back into the First period in a trip to Memphis, the earliest capital of Egypt, the beginning of all Egyptian things. After which, follows the Museum, for only after visiting localities and landmarks can that great climax be properly approached.

I think we were no longer very enthusiastic about ruins, but every one said we must go to Sakkara. There was yet another very wonderful statue of Rameses there, they said, also the oldest pyramids ever built, and the Mausoleum of the Sacred Bulls. It would never do to miss them.

I am glad now that I did not miss them, but I remember the Memphis donkeys with unkindness. The farther down the Nile the worse the donkeys. We thought they had been bad at Abydos, but the Abydos donkeys were without sin compared with those of Sakkara. Mine was named "Sunrise," and I picked him for his beauty, always a dangerous a.s.set. He was thoroughly depraved and had a gait like a steam-drill. The boat landed us at Bedrashen and I managed to survive as far as the colossal statue of Rameses, a prostrate marvel, and the site of the ancient city of Menes--capital of Egypt a good deal more than six thousand years ago--that is, before the world began, by gospel calculation. I was perfectly willing to stay there among the cooling palms and watch the little children gather camel-dung and pat it into cakes to dry for fuel, and I would have done it if I had known what was going to happen to me.

It is a weary way across the desert to the pyramids and the tombs of those sacred bulls, but I was not informed of that. When I realized, it was too late. The rest of the party were far ahead of me beyond some hills, and I was alone in the desert with that long-eared disaster and a donkey-boy who stopped to talk with the children, beset by a plague of flies that would have brought Pharaoh to terms. It was useless to kick and hammer that donkey or to denounce the donkey-boy. Sunrise had long ago formulated his notions of speed, and the donkey-boy was simply a criminal in disguise. When we pa.s.sed a mud village, at last, and a new brigade of flies joined those I had with me, I would have given any reasonable sum to have been at Cairo with the Reprobates, in the cool quiet of Shepheard's marble halls.

Beyond the village was just the sand waste, and not a soul of the party in sight. I didn't have the courage to go back, and hardly the courage to go on. I said I would lie down by the trail and die, and let them find me there and be sorry they had forsaken me in that pitiless way.

Then for the sake of speed I got off and walked. It was heavy walking through the loose sand, with the sun blazing down.

Presently I looked around for my escort. He was close at my heels--on the donkey's back. I said the most crushing things I could think of and displaced him. Then we settled down into the speed of a ram-headed sphinx again. Everything seemed utterly hopeless. It was useless to swear; I was too old to cry.

I don't know when we reached the first pyramid, but the party had been there and gone. I did not care for it much. It might be the oldest pyramid in the world, but it was rather a poor specimen, I thought, and could not make me forget my sorrow. I went on, and after a weary time came to the Tomb of Thi, who lived in the Fifth Dynasty and was in no way related to Queen Thi of Tell al-Amarna, who came along some two thousand years later. There was an Englishman and his guide there who told me about it, and it was worth seeing, certainly, with its relief frescoes over five thousand years old, though it is not such a tomb as those of the Upper Nile.

I overtook the party at the Tomb of the Sacred Bulls. By that time I had little enthusiasm for bulls; or for tombs, unless it was one I could use for Sunrise. The party had done the bulls, but when I got hold of Gaddis and laid my case before him, he said he would find me a new donkey and that the others would wait while we inspected the bulls. So everything was better then, and I was glad of the bulls, though I was still warm and resentful at Sunrise and his keeper, and even at Gaddis, who was innocent enough, Heaven knows.

In the tomb of the bulls everything unpleasant pa.s.sed away. It was cool and dark in there, and we carried lights and wandered along those vast still corridors, which are simply astounding when one remembers their purpose.

This Serapeum or Apis mausoleum is a vast succession of huge underground vaults and elaborate granite sarcophagi, which once contained all the Apis or Sacred Bulls of Memphis. The Apis was the product of an immaculate conception. Lightning descended from heaven upon a cow--any cow--and the Apis was the result. He was recognized by being black, with a triangular spot of white on his forehead and a figure of an eagle on his back. Furthermore, he had double hairs in his tail and a beetle on his tongue. It was recognized that only lightning could produce a bull like that, and no others were genuine, regardless of watchful circ.u.mstance.

Apis was about the most sacred of the whole synod of Egyptian beasts.

Even the Hawk of Horus and the Jackal of Anubis had to retire to obscurity when Apis came along, mumbling and pawing up the dust. When he died there were very solemn ceremonies, and he was put into one of those polished granite sarcophagi, with a tablet on the walls relating the story of his life, and mentioning the King whose reign had been honored by this bellowing bovine aristocrat. Also they set up a special chapel over his tomb, and this series of chapels and tombs eventually solidified into a great temple with pylons approached by an avenue of sphinxes.

The Serapeum dates from about 1500 B.C. and continued in active use down to the time of the Ptolomies. The Egyptian Pantheon was breaking up then, and Apis was probably one of the first deities to go. A nation's G.o.ds fall into disrepute when they can no longer bring victory to a nation's arms, and a sacred bull who could not beat off Julius Caesar would very likely be asked to resign.

There are sixty-four vaults in the part of the Serapeum we visited, and twenty-four of them contain the granite sarcophagi. The sarcophagi are about thirteen feet long by eleven feet wide, and eight high--that is to say, the size of an ordinary bedroom--and in each of these, mummified and in state, an Apis slept.

He is not there now. Only two of him were found when these galleries were opened in modern times. But I have seen Apis, for one of him sleeps now in a gla.s.s case in the Historical Library in New York City. I shall visit him again on my return, and view him with deeper interest and more respect since I have seen his tomb.