Aside from the monuments above mentioned, there is little else to connect it with a glorious past except the catacombs on the outskirts, which are of the same general character as those at Rome. These catacombs possess a weird interest wherever they exist. They abound in one form or another in Egypt, and are found in many other countries where, for their extent and curious architecture, they rank as wonders.
Those lately unearthed in the vast Necropolis of Memphis, and called the Serapeion, were the burial place of the Egyptian God Apis, or Serapis, the supreme deity represented by the bull Apis. This sacred bull was not allowed to live longer than twenty-five years. If he died before that age, and of natural causes, he was embalmed as a mummy and interred in the Serapeion with great pomp. Otherwise, he was secretly put to death and buried by the priests in a well. In the Serapeion are some magnificent sarcophagi in granite, and inscriptions which preserve the Egyptian chronology from 1400 B.C. to 177 B.C.
The great catacombs at Rome were the burial places of the early Christians. It was supposed they were originally the quarries from which the building stone of the city had been taken. But while this is true of the catacombs of Paris, it is now conceded that those of Rome were cut out for burial purposes only, less perhaps to escape from the watchfulness of despotic power, than in obedience to a wish to remain faithful to the traditions of the early church which preserved the Jewish custom of rock or cave sepulture. These catacombs are of immense and bewildering proportions. Their leading feature is long galleries, the sides of which are filled with niches to receive the remains. At first these galleries were on a certain level, twenty to thirty feet below the surface. But as space was required, they were cut out on other levels, till some of the galleries got to be as much as three hundred feet below the surface. There are some attempts at carving and statue work about the remains of illustrious persons, and many inscriptions of great historic value, but in general they have been much abused and desecrated, and we are sorry to say chiefly by Christian peoples, mostly of the time of the Crusades, who found, or supposed they would find, rich booty, in the shape of finger rings and other precious things laid away with the dead. MacFarlane, in his book upon the catacombs, tells of a company of gay young officers of the French army who entered them on a tour of inspection. They had plenty of lights, provisions, wine and brandy, and their exploration became a revel. They finally began to banter one another about venturing furthest into the dark labyrinthine recesses. One, as impious as he was daring, refused to leave the crypts till he had visited all. Darting away, torch in hand, he plunged into gallery after gallery, until his torch began to burn low and the excitement of intoxication left him. With great difficulty he found his way back to the chapel where he had left his companions. They were gone. With still greater difficulty he reached the entrance to the catacomb. It was closed. He shouted frantically, and madly beat upon the railings with a piece of tombstone. But it was night and no one could hear. In desperation he started back for the chapel. He fell through a chasm upon crackling, crumbling bones. The shock to his nerves was terrible. Crawling out, he reached the chapel, amid intolerable fear. He who had many a time marched undauntedly on gleaming lines of bayonets and had schooled himself to look upon death without fear, was not equal to the trials of a night in a charnel house. His thirst became intolerable. He stumbled upon a bottle left by his companions and, supposing it contained water, drank eagerly of its contents. In a few moments the drink acted with violence and, in his delirium, he became the victim of wild visions. Spectres gathered around him. The bones of the dead rose and clattered before him. Fire gleamed in eyeless skulls. Fleshless lips chattered and shrieked till the caves echoed. Death must soon have been the result of this fearful experience had not morning come and brought fresh visitors to the catacombs, who discovered the young officer in a state of stupor and took him to the hospital. For months he lay prostrate with brain fever. He had been taught the weakness of man in that valley of the shadow of death, and ever after gave over his atheistic notions, and lived and died a christian.
You may leave Alexandria by canal for the Nile, and then sail to Cairo. You will thus see the smaller canals, the villages, the peasantry, the dykes of the Nile, the mounds denoting ruins of ancient cities. You will see the wheels for raising water from the Nile by foot power, and will learn that the lands which are not subject to annual overflow must be irrigated by canals or by these wheels. You will see at the point where the Nile separates into its Damietta and Rosetta branches, the wonderful Barrage, or double bridge, intended to hold back the Nile waters for the supply of Lower Egypt without the need of water wheels. It is a mighty but faulty piece of engineering and does not answer its purpose. From this to Cairo the country gets more bluffy and, ere you enter the city, you may catch glimpses of the Pyramids off to the right.
But the speediest route from Alexandria is by rail. You are soon whirled into the Moslem city. Cairo is not an ancient city, though founded almost on the site of old Egyptian Memphis. It is Saracen, and was then Kahira (Cairo) “City of Victory,” for it was their first conquest under Omar, after they landed and took Pelusium. It was greatly enlarged and beautified by Saladin after the overthrow of the Califfs of Bagdad. It dates from about A.D. 640.
It is a thickly built, populous (population 327,000) dirty, noisy, narrow streeted, city on the east bank of the Nile. Its mosques, houses, gardens, business, people, burial places, manners and customs, tell at a glance of its Mohammedan origin. Its mosques are its chief attraction. They are everywhere, and some of them are of vast proportions and great architectural beauty. The transfer of the Mameluke power in Egypt to the present Khedives was brought about by Mohammed Ali, an Albanian. The Mamelukes were decoyed into the citadel at Cairo and nearly all murdered. One named Emim Bey escaped by leaping on horseback from the citadel. He spurred his charger over a pile of his dead and dying comrades; sprang upon the battlements; the next moment he was in the air; another, and he released himself from his crushed and bleeding horse amid a shower of bullets. He fled; took refuge in the sanctuary of a mosque; and finally escaped into the deserts of the Thebaid. The scene of this event is always pointed out to travelers.
It is a city divided into quarters – the European quarter, Coptic quarter, Jewish quarter, water carriers’ quarters, and so on. The narrow streets are lined with bazaars – little stores or markets, and thronged by a mixed populace – veiled ladies, priests in robes, citizens with turbaned heads, peddlers with trays on their heads, beggars without number, desert Bedouins, dervishes, soldiers, boatmen and laborers.
Abraham sent Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. Matrimonial agents still exist in Cairo in the shape of Khatibehs, or betrothers. They are women, and generally sellers of cosmetics, which business gives them opportunity to get acquainted with both marriageable sons and daughters. They get to be rare matchmakers, and profit by their business in a country where a man may have as many wives as he can support.
Your sleep will be disturbed by the Mesahhar who goes about the city every morning to announce the sunrise, in order that every good Moslem may say his prayers before the luminary passes the horizon.
There is no end to the drinking troughs and fountains. Joseph’s well, discovered and cleaned out by Saladin, is one of the leading curiosities. It is 300 feet deep, cut out of the solid rock, with a winding staircase to the bottom.
West of the Nile and nearly opposite Cairo, is the village of Ghiseh, on the direct road to the pyramids, mention of which introduces us to ancient Egypt and the most wonderful monuments in the world.
Menes, “the constant,” reigned at Tini. He built Memphis, on part of whose site Cairo now stands, but whose centre was further up the Nile. The Egyptian name was Mennofer, “the good place.” The ruins of Memphis were well preserved down to the thirteenth century, and were then glowingly described by an Arab physician, Latif. But the stones were gradually transported to Cairo, and its ruins reappeared in the mosques and palaces of that place.
Westward of the Nile, and some distance from it, was the Necropolis of Memphis – its common and royal burying ground, with its wealth of tombs, overlooked by the stupendous buildings of the pyramids which rose high above