Egypt (La Mort De Philae)

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EGYPT (LA MORT DE PHILAE)

by Pierre Loti


Translated from the French by

W. P. Baines




CHAPTER I

A WINTER MIDNIGHT BEFORE THE GREAT SPHINX

A night wondrously clear and of a colour unknown to our climate; a place
of dreamlike aspect, fraught with mystery. The moon of a bright silver,
which dazzles by its shining, illumines a world which surely is no
longer ours; for it resembles in nothing what may be seen in other
lands. A world in which everything is suffused with rosy color beneath
the stars of midnight, and where granite symbols rise up, ghostlike and
motionless.

Is that a hill of sand that rises yonder? One can scarcely tell, for it
has as it were no shape, no outline; rather it seems like a great rosy
cloud, or some huge, trembling billow, which once perhaps raised itself
there, forthwith to become motionless for ever. . . . And from out this
kind of mummified wave a colossal human effigy emerges, rose-coloured
too, a nameless, elusive rose; emerges, and stares with fixed eyes and
smiles. It is so huge it seems unreal, as if it were a reflection cast
by some mirror hidden in the moon. . . . And behind this monster
face, far away in the rear, on the top of those undefined and gently
undulating sandhills, three apocalyptic signs rise up against the sky,
those rose-coloured triangles, regular as the figures of geometry, but
so vast in the distance that they inspire you with fear. They seem to be
luminous of themselves, so vividly do they stand out in their clear
rose against the deep blue of the star-spangled vault. And this apparent
radiation from within, by its lack of likelihood, makes them seem more
awful.

And all around is the desert; a corner of the mournful kingdom of sand.
Nothing else is to be seen anywhere save those three awful things that
stand there upright and still--the human likeness magnified beyond all
measurement, and the three geometric mountains; things at first sight
like exhalations, visionary things, with nevertheless here and there,
and most of all in the features of the vast mute face, subtleties
of shadow which show that _it_ at least exists, rigid and immovable,
fashioned out of imperishable stone.

Even had we not known, we must soon have guessed, for these things are
unique in the world, and pictures of every age have made the knowledge
of them commonplace: the Sphinx and the Pyramids! But what is strange is
that they should be so disquieting. . . . And this pervading colour of
rose, whence comes it, seeing that usually the moon tints with blue the
things it illumines? One would not expect this colour either, which,
nevertheless, is that of all the sands and all the granites of Egypt and
Arabia. And then too, the eyes of the statue, how often have we not seen
them? And did we not know that they were capable only of their one fixed
stare? Why is it then that their motionless regard surprises and chills
us, even while we are obsessed by the smile of the sealed lips that seem
to hold back the answer to the supreme enigma? . . .

It is cold, but cold as in our country are the fine nights of January,
and a wintry mist rises low down in the little valleys of the sand. And
that again we were not expecting; beyond question the latest invaders of
this country, by changing the course of the old Nile, so as to water the
earth and make it more productive, have brought hither the humidity
of their own misty isle. And this strange cold, this mist, light as it
still is, seem to presage the end of ages, give an added remoteness
and finality to all this dead past, which lies here beneath us in
subterranean labyrinths haunted by a thousand mummies.

And the mist, which, as the night advances, thickens in the valleys,
hesitates to mount to the great daunting face of the Sphinx; and covers
it with the merest and most transparent gauze; and, like everything
else here to-night, this gauze, too, is rose-colored. And meanwhile the
Sphinx, which has seen the unrolling of all the history of the world,
attends impassively the change in Egypt's climate, plunged in profound
and mystic contemplation of the moon, its friend for the last 5000
years.

Here and there on the soft pathway of the sandhills are pigmy figures
of men that move about or sit squatting as if on the watch; and small
as they are, low down in the hollows and far away, this wonderful silver
moon reveals even their slightest gestures; for their white robes
and black cloaks stand sharply out against the monotonous rose of the
desert. At times they call to one another in a harsh, aspirate tongue,
and then go off at a run, noiselessly, barefooted, with burnous flying,
like moths in the night. They lie in wait for the parties of tourists
who arrive from time to time. For the great symbols, during the hundreds
and thousands of years that have elapsed since men ceased to venerate
them, have nevertheless scarcely ever been alone, especially on nights
with a full moon. Men of all races, of all times, have come to wander
round them, vaguely attracted by their immensity and mystery. In
the days of the Romans they had already become symbols of a lost
significance, legacies of a fabulous antiquity, but people came
curiously to contemplate them, and tourists in toga and in peplus carved
their names on the granite of their bases for the sake of remembrance.

The tourists who have come to-night, and upon whom have pounced the
black-cloaked Bedouin guides, wear cap and ulster or furred greatcoat;
their intrusion here seems almost an offence; but, alas, such visitors
become more numerous in each succeeding year. The great town hard
by--which sweats gold now that men have started to buy from it its
dignity and its soul--is become a place of rendezvous and holiday
for the idlers and upstarts of the whole world. The modern spirit
encompasses the old desert of the Sphinx on every side. It is true that
up to the present no one has dared to profane it by building in the
immediate neighbourhood of the great statue. Its fixity and calm disdain
still hold some sway, perhaps. But little more than a mile away there
ends a road travelled by hackney carriages and tramway cars, and noisy
with the delectable hootings of smart motor cars; and behind the pyramid
of Cheops squats a vast hotel to which swarm men and women of fashion,
the latter absurdly feathered, like Redskins at a scalp dance; and sick
people, in search of purer air; and consumptive English maidens; and
ancient English dames, a little the worse for wear, who bring their
rheumatisms for the treatment of the dry winds.

Passing on our way hither, we had seen this road and this hotel and
these people in the glare of the electric lights, and from an orchestra
that was playing there we caught the trivial air of a popular refrain
of the music halls; but when in a dip of the ground all this had
disappeared, what a sense of deliverance possessed us, how far off
this turmoil seemed! As soon as we commenced to tread upon the sand of
centuries, where all at once our footsteps made no sound, nothing seemed
to have existence, save only the great calm and the religious awe of
this world into which we were come, of this world with its so crushing
commentary upon our own, where all seemed silent, undefined, gigantic
and suffused with rose-colour.

And first there is the pyramid of Cheops, whose immutable base we had
to skirt on our way hither. In the moonlight we could see the separate
blocks, so enormous, so regular, so even in their layers, which lie
one above the other to infinity, getting ever smaller and smaller, and
mounting, mounting in diminishing perspective, until at last high up
they form the apex of this giddy triangle. And the pyramid seemed to be
illumined by some sad dawn of the end of the world, a dawn which made
ruddy only the sands and the granites of earth, and left the heavens,
pricked with their myriad stars, more awful in their darkness. How
impossible it is for us to conceive the mental attitude of that
king who, during some half-century, spent the lives of thousands and
thousands of his slaves in the construction of this tomb, in the fond
and foolish hope of prolonging to infinity the existence of his mummy.

The pyramid once passed there was still a short way to go before we
confronted the Sphinx, in the middle of what our contemporaries have
left him of his desert. We had to descend the slope of that sandhill
which looked like a cloud, and seemed as if covered with felt, in order
to preserve in such a place a more complete silence. And here and there
we passed a gaping black hole--an airhole, as it seemed, of the profound
and inextricable kingdom of mummies, very populous still, in spite of
the zeal of the exhumers.

As we descended the sandy pathway we were not slow to perceive the
Sphinx itself, half hill, half couchant beast, turning its back upon
us in the attitude of a gigantic dog, that thought to bay the moon; its
head stood out in dark silhouette, like a screen before the light it
seemed to be regarding, and the lappets of its headgear showed like
downhanging ears. And then gradually, as we walked on, we saw it in
profile, shorn of its nose--flat-nosed like a death's head--but having
already an expression even when seen afar off and from the side; already
disdainful with thrust-out chin and baffling, mysterious smile. And
when at length we arrived before the colossal visage, face to face with
it--without however encountering its gaze, which passed high above
our heads--there came over us at once the sentiment of all the secret
thought which these men of old contrived to incorporate and make eternal
behind this mutilated mask.

But in full daylight their great Sphinx is no more. It has ceased as
it were to exist. It is so scarred by time, and by the hands of
iconoclasts; so dilapidated, broken and diminished, that it is as
inexpressive as the crumbling mummies found in the sarcophagi, which no
longer even ape humanity. But after the manner of all phantoms it comes
to life again at night, beneath the enchantments of the moon.

For the men of its time whom did it represent? King Amenemhat? The Sun
God? Who can rightly tell? Of all hieroglyphic images it remains the
one least understood. The unfathomable thinkers of Egypt symbolised
everything for the benefit of the uninitiated under the form of
awe-inspiring figures of the gods; and it may be, perhaps, that, after
having meditated so deeply in the shadow of their temples, and sought so
long the everlasting wherefore of life and death, they wished simply to
sum up in the smile of these closed lips the vanity of the most profound
of our human speculations. . . . It is said that the Sphinx was once
of striking beauty, when harmonious contour and colouring animated the
face, and it was enthroned at its full height on a kind of esplanade
paved with long slabs of stone. But was it then more sovereign than it
is to-night in its last decrepitude? Almost buried beneath the sand of
the Libyan desert, which now quite hides its base, it rises at this hour
like a phantom which nothing solid sustains in the air.

*****

It has gone midnight. In little groups the tourists of the evening
have disappeared; to regain perhaps the neighbouring hotel, where the
orchestra doubtless has not ceased to rage; or may be, remounting their
cars, to join, in some club of Cairo, one of those bridge parties, in
which the really superior intellects of our time delight; some--the
stouthearted ones--departed talking loudly and with cigar in mouth;
others, however, daunted in spite of themselves, lowered their voices as
people instinctively do in church. And the Bedouin guides, who a moment
ago seemed to flutter about the giant monument like so many black
moths--they too have gone, made restless by the cold air, which
erstwhile they had not known. The show for to-night is over, and
everywhere silence reigns.

The rosy tint fades on the Sphinx and the pyramids; all things in the
ghostly scene grow visibly paler; for the moon as it rises becomes
more silvery in the increasing chilliness of midnight. The winter mist,
exhaled from the artificially watered fields below, continues to rise,
takes heart and envelops the great mute face itself. And the latter
persists in its regard of the dead moon, preserving still the old
disconcerting smile. It becomes more and more difficult to believe that
here before us is a real colossus, so surely does it seem nothing other
than a dilated reflection of a thing which exists _elsewhere_, in
some other world. And behind in the distance are the three triangular
mountains. Them, too, the fog envelops, till they also cease to exist,
and become pure visions of the Apocalypse.

Now it is that little by little an intolerable sadness is expressed
in those large eyes with their empty sockets--for, at this moment, the
ultimate secret, that which the Sphinx seems to have known for so many
centuries, but to have withheld in melancholy irony, is this: that all
these dead men and women who sleep in the vast necropolis below have
been fooled, and the awakening signal has not sounded for a single
one of them; and that the creation of mankind--mankind that thinks and
suffers--has had no rational explanation, and that our poor aspirations
are vain, but so vain as to awaken pity.



CHAPTER II

THE PASSING OF CAIRO

Ragged, threatening clouds, like those that bring the showers of our
early spring, hurry across a pale evening sky, whose mere aspect makes
you cold. A wintry wind, raw and bitter, blows without ceasing, and
brings with it every now and then some furtive spots of rain.

A carriage takes me towards what was once the residence of the great
Mehemet Ali: by a steep incline it ascends into the midst of rocks and
sand--and already, and almost in a moment, we seem to be in the desert;
though we have scarcely left behind the last houses of an Arab quarter,
where long-robed folk, who looked half frozen, were muffled up to the
eyes to-day. . . . Was there formerly such weather as this in this
country noted for its unchanging mildness?

This residence of the great sovereign of Egypt, the citadel and the
mosque which he had made for his last repose, are perched like eagles'
nests on a spur of the mountain chain of Arabia, the Mokattam, which
stretches out like a promontory towards the basin of the Nile, and
brings quite close to Cairo, so as almost to overhang it, a little of
the desert solitude. And so the eye can see from far off and from
all sides the mosque of Mehemet Ali, with the flattened domes of its
cupolas, its pointed minarets, the general aspect so entirely Turkish,
perched high up, with a certain unexpectedness, above the Arab town
which it dominates. The prince who sleeps there wished that it should
resemble the mosques of his fatherland, and it looks as if it had been
transported bodily from Stamboul.

A short trot brings us up to the lower gate of the old fortress; and, by
a natural effect, as we ascend, all Cairo which is near there, seems to
rise with us: not yet indeed the endless multitude of its houses; but at
first only the thousands of its minarets, which in a few seconds point
their high towers into the mournful sky, and suggest at once that an
immense town is about to unfold itself under our eyes.

Continuing to ascend--past the double rampart, the double or triple
gates, which all these old fortresses possess, we penetrate at length
into a large fortified courtyard, the crenellated walls of which shut
out our further view. Soldiers are on guard there--and how unexpected
are such soldiers in this holy place of Egypt! The red uniforms and the
white faces of the north: Englishmen, billeted in the palace of Mehemet
Ali!

The mosque first meets the eye, preceding the palace. And as we
approach, it is Stamboul indeed--for me dear old Stamboul--which
is called to mind; there is nothing, whether in the lines of its
architecture or in the details of its ornamentation, to suggest the
art of the Arabs--a purer art it may be than this and of which many
excellent examples may be seen in Cairo. No; it is a corner of Turkey
into which we are suddenly come.

Beyond a courtyard paved with marble, silent and enclosed, which serves
as a vast parvis, the sanctuary recalls those of Mehemet Fatih or the
Chah Zade: the same sanctified gloom, into which the stained glass of
the narrow windows casts a splendour as of precious stones; the same
extreme distance between the enormous pillars, leaving more clear space
than in our churches, and giving to the domes the appearance of being
held up by enchantment.

The walls are of a strange white marble streaked with yellow. The ground
is completely covered with carpets of a sombre red. In the vaults, very
elaborately wrought, nothing but blacks and gold: a background of black
bestrewn with golden roses, and bordered with arabesques like gold lace.
And from above hang thousands of gold chains supporting the vigil lamps
for the evening prayers. Here and there are people on their knees,
little groups in robe and turban, scattered fortuitously upon the red of
the carpets, and almost lost in the midst of the sumptuous solitude.

In an obscure corner lies Mehemet Ali, the prince adventurous and
chivalrous as some legendary hero, and withal one of the greatest
sovereigns of modern history. There he lies behind a grating of gold, of
complicated design, in that Turkish style, already decadent, but still
so beautiful, which was that of his epoch.

Through the golden bars may be seen in the shadow the catafalque of
state, in three tiers, covered with blue brocades, exquisitely faded,
and profusely embroidered with dull gold. Two long green palms freshly
cut from some date-tree in the neighbourhood are crossed before the door
of this sort of funeral enclosure. And it seems that around us is an
inviolable religious peace. . . .

But all at once there comes a noisy chattering in a Teutonic tongue--and
shouts and laughs! . . . How is it possible, so near to the great dead?
. . . And there enters a group of tourists, dressed more or less in the
approved "smart" style. A guide, with a droll countenance, recites to
them the beauties of the place, bellowing at the top of his voice like
a showman at a fair. And one of the travellers, stumbling in the sandals
which are too large for her small feet, laughs a prolonged, silly little
laugh like the clucking of a turkey. . . .

Is there then no keeper, no guardian of this holy mosque? And amongst
the faithful prostrate here in prayer, none who will rise and make
indignant protest? Who after this will speak to us of the fanaticism of
the Egyptians? . . . Too meek, rather, they seem to me everywhere. Take
any church you please in Europe where men go down on their knees
in prayer, and I should like to see what kind of a welcome would
be accorded to a party of Moslem tourists who--to suppose the
impossible--behaved so badly as these savages here.

Behind the mosque is an esplanade, and beyond that the palace. The
palace, as such, can scarcely be said to exist any longer, for it has
been turned into a barrack for the army of occupation. English soldiers,
indeed, meet us at every turn, smoking their pipes in the idleness of
the evening. One of them who does not smoke is trying to carve his
name with a knife on one of the layers of marble at the base of the
sanctuary.

At the end of this esplanade there is a kind of balcony from which one
may see the whole of the town, and an unlimited extent of verdant
plains and yellow desert. It is a favourite view of the tourists of the
agencies, and we meet again our friends of the mosque, who have preceded
us hither--the gentlemen with the loud voices, the bellowing guide and
the cackling lady. Some soldiers are standing there too, smoking their
pipes contemplatively. But spite of all these people, in spite, too,
of the wintry sky, the scene which presents itself on arrival there is
ravishing.

A very fairyland--but a fairyland quite different from that of Stamboul.
For whereas the latter is ranged like a great amphitheatre above the
Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora, here the vast town is spread out
simply, in a plain surrounded by the solitude of the desert and
dominated by chaotic rocks. Thousands of minarets rise up on every side
like ears of corn in a field; far away in the distance one can see their
innumerable slender points--but instead of being simply, as at Stamboul,
so many white spires, they are here complicated by arabesques, by
galleries, clock-towers and little columns, and seem to have borrowed
the reddish colour of the desert.

The flat rocks tell of a region which formerly was without rain. The
innumerable palm-trees of the gardens, above this ocean of mosques and
houses, sway their plumes in the wind, bewildered as it were by these
clouds laden with cold showers. In the south and in the west, at the
extreme limits of the view, as if upon the misty horizon of the plains,
appear two gigantic triangles. They are Gizeh and Memphis--the eternal
pyramids.

At the north of the town there is a corner of the desert quite singular
in its character--of the colour of bistre and of mummy--where a whole
colony of high cupolas, scattered at random, still stand upright in
the midst of sand and desolate rocks. It is the proud cemetery of the
Mameluke Sultans, whose day was done in the Middle Ages.

But if one looks closely, what disorder, what a mass of ruins there
are in this town--still a little fairylike--beaten this evening by the
squalls of winter. The domes, the holy tombs, the minarets and terraces,
all are crumbling: the hand of death is upon them all. But down there,
in the far distance, near to that silver streak which meanders through
the plains, and which is the old Nile, the advent of new times is
proclaimed by the chimneys of factories, impudently high, that disfigure
everything, and spout forth into the twilight thick clouds of black
smoke.

The night is falling as we descend from the esplanade to return to our
lodgings.

We have first to traverse the old town of Cairo, a maze of streets
still full of charm, wherein the thousand little lamps of the Arab shops
already shed their quiet light. Passing through streets which twist at
their caprice, beneath overhanging balconies covered with wooden trellis
of exquisite workmanship, we have to slacken speed in the midst of a
dense crowd of men and beasts. Close to us pass women, veiled in black,
gently mysterious as in the olden times, and men of unmoved gravity, in
long robes and white draperies; and little donkeys pompously bedecked in
collars of blue beads; and rows of leisurely camels, with their loads of
lucerne, which exhale the pleasant fragrance of the fields. And when
in the gathering gloom, which hides the signs of decay, there appear
suddenly, above the little houses, so lavishly ornamented with
mushrabiyas and arabesques, the tall aerial minarets, rising to a
prodigious height into the twilight sky, it is still the adorable East.

But nevertheless, what ruins, what filth, what rubbish! How present is
the sense of impending dissolution! And what is this: large pools of
water in the middle of the road! Granted that there is more rain here
than formerly, since the valley of the Nile has been artificially
irrigated, it still seems almost impossible that there should be all
this black water, into which our carriage sinks to the very axles; for
it is a clear week since any serious quantity of rain fell. It would
seem that the new masters of this land, albeit the cost of annual upkeep
has risen in their hands to the sum of fifteen million pounds, have
given no thought to drainage. But the good Arabs, patiently and without
murmuring, gather up their long robes, and with legs bare to the knee
make their way through this already pestilential water, which must be
hatching for them fever and death.

Further on, as the carriage proceeds on its course, the scene changes
little by little. The streets become vulgar: the houses of "The Arabian
Nights" give place to tasteless Levantine buildings; electric lamps
begin to pierce the darkness with their wan, fatiguing glare, and at a
sharp turning the new Cairo is before us.

What is this? Where are we fallen? Save that it is more vulgar, it might
be Nice, or the Riviera, or Interkalken, or any other of those towns
of carnival whither the bad taste of the whole world comes to disport
itself in the so-called fashionable seasons. But in these quarters,
on the other hand, which belong to the foreigners and to the Egyptians
rallied to the civilisation of the West, all is clean and dry, well
cared for and well kept. There are no ruts, no refuse. The fifteen
million pounds have done their work conscientiously.

Everywhere is the blinding glare of the electric light; monstrous hotels
parade the sham splendour of their painted facades; the whole length of
the streets is one long triumph of imitation, of mud walls plastered so
as to look like stone; a medley of all styles, rockwork, Roman, Gothic,
New Art, Pharaonic, and, above all, the pretentious and the absurd.
Innumerable public-houses overflow with bottles; every alcoholic
drink, all the poisons of the West, are here turned into Egypt with a
take-what-you-please.