Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ vigilant, still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Egypt. I can never believe that anything else so majestic as this Pair has been conceived of by the imagination of Art. Nothing even in nature certainly ever affected me so unspeakably; no thunderstorm in my childhood, nor any aspect of Niagara, or the great Lakes of America, or the Alps, or the Desert, in my later years. I saw them afterwards, daily, and many times a day, during our stay at Thebes: and the wonder and awe grew from visit to visit. Yet no impression exceeded the first; and none was like it. Happy the traveller who sees them first from afar; that is, who does not arrive at Thebes by night!

      We had not thought of stopping at Thebes on our way up the river: but we were delighted to find that the Rais wanted to have his head shaved, and Alee to buy a sheep and some bread. We drew to the El-Uksur (Luxor) shore, and ran up to the ruins. The most conspicuous portion from the river is the fourteen pillars which stand parallel with it, in a double row: but we went first to the great entrance to the temple. I find here in my journal the remark which occurs oftener than any other; that no preconception can be formed of these places. I know that it is useless to repeat it here: for I meet everywhere at home people who think, as I did before I went, that between books, plates, and the stiff and peculiar character of Egyptian architecture and sculpture, Egyptian art may be almost as well known and conceived of in England as on the spot. I can only testify, without hope of being believed, that it is not so; that instead of ugliness, I found beauty; instead of the grotesque, I found the solemn: and where I looked for rudeness, from the primitive character of Art, I found the sense of the soul more effectually reached than by works which are the result of centuries of experience and experiment. The mystery of this fact sets one thinking, laboriously – I may say, painfully. Egypt is not the country to go to for the recreation of travel. It is too suggestive and too confounding to be met but in the spirit of study. One's powers of observation sink under the perpetual exercise of thought: and the lightest-hearted voyager, who sets forth from Cairo eager for new scenes and days of frolic, comes back an antique, a citizen of the world of six thousand years ago, kindred with the mummy. Nothing but large knowledge and sound habits of thought can save him from returning perplexed and borne down – unless, indeed, it be ignorance and levity. A man who goes to shoot crocodiles and flog Arabs, and eat ostrich's eggs, looks upon the monuments as so many strange old stone-heaps, and comes back »bored to death with the Nile«; as we were told we should be. He turns back from Thebes, or from the First Cataract, perhaps without having ever seen the Cataract, when within a mile of it, as in a case I know; and he pays his crew to work night and day, to get back to Cairo as fast as possible. He may return gay and unworn: and so may the true philosopher, to whom no tidings of Man in any age come amiss; who has no prejudices to be painfully weaned from, and an imagination too strong to be overwhelmed by mystery, and the rush of a host of new ideas. But for all between these two extremes of levity and wisdom, a Nile voyage is as serious a labour as the mind and spirits can be involved in; a trial even to health and temper such as is little dreamed of on leaving home. The labour and care are well bestowed, however, for the thoughtful traveller can hardly fail of returning from Egypt a wiser, and therefore a better man.

      There is something very interesting in meeting with a fellow-feeling in ancient travellers so strong as may be found in the following passage from Abdallatif with that of some modern Egyptian voyagers. The passage is almost the same as some entries in my journal, made when I had never heard of the Bagdad physician. He speaks of Memphis, as seen in his day, and as, alas! one fears it will be seen no more. »Notwithstanding the immense extent of this city, and its high antiquity: notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of the different governments under which it has passed: notwithstanding the efforts that various nations have made to destroy it in obliterating the minutest traces, effacing its smallest remains, carrying off the materials, even to the very stones of which it was constructed; laying waste its edifices, mutilating the figures which adorned them; and notwithstanding all that four thousand years and more have been able to add to such causes of destruction, these ruins yet offer to the eye of the spectator such a combination of wonders as confounds his understanding, and as the most eloquent man would vainly attempt to describe. The longer he contemplates, the more admiration he feels: and each returning glance at these ruins causes new ecstasy. Scarcely has the spectacle suggested one idea to the mind of the spectator, when it overpowers it by a greater; and when he thinks he has obtained a perfect knowledge of what is before him, he presently learns that his conceptions are still far below the truth.«¹⁴ A yet older traveller, Herodotus, says the same thing more briefly. »I shall enlarge upon what concerns Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country; and because there is no other country where we may see so many works which are admirable, and beyond all expression.«¹⁵

      It is not the vastness of the buildings which strikes one first at El-Uksur, vast as they are; it is the marvel of the sculptures with which they are covered – so old, so spirited, and so multitudinous. It is Homer, alive before one's eyes. And what a thought it is, to one standing here, how long this very sculpture has been an image and a thought to great minds placed one far behind another in the stages of human history! Herodotus, who here seems a modern brother-traveller, stood on this spot, and remembered the Iliad as we were now remembering it. He spoke of Homer, his predecessor by four hundred years, as we speak of those who lived in the crusading times. And Homer told of wars which were the same old romance to the people of his time as the Crusades are to us. And at the time of these wars, this Thebes was a city of a thousand years; and these battle-pictures now before our eyes were antiquities, as our cathedrals are to us. Here we were standing before one of the »hundred gates« through which Homer says the Theban warriors passed in and out; and on the flanks of this gateway were sculptured the achievements of the ancestors of these warriors. There are the men and horses and chariots, as if in full career – as full of life as if painted, and painted in a modern time! The stones of the edifice are parting in many places; and these battle-figures extend over the cracks, almost uninjured by the decay. These graven epics will last some time longer, though the stone records will give way before the paper.

      The guardian colossi are mighty creatures, with their massive shoulders and serene heads rising out of the ground. A third helmet is visible; and among the Arab huts near, a fourth. We saw here for the first time columns with the lotus-shaped capitals; the capitals being painted, and the blossoms, buds, and leaves which filled up the outline being very distinct. One test of the massive character of the work was curious. A huge block of the architrave has fallen from its place, and rests on the rim of the cup of the lotus, without breaking it. We were now introduced to some of the details of Egyptian architecture, and to some of its great separate features: but all unity of impression was obviated by the intrusion of the mud huts which are plastered up against the ruins throughout their range. When we came down the river, and had become familiar with the structure of Egyptian temples, we could make out the plan of this, and somewhat discharge from view the blemishes which spoiled everything now. But at present we were not qualified, and we carried away a painful impression of confusion as well as ruin.

      As we sailed away, I obtained another view of the Pair; and I watched them till I could hardly tell whether it was distance or the dusk which hid them at last.

      The wind carried us on well: too well; for a stay of the foremast gave way; and this hindered our progress. The calm and pathetic-looking Rais rushed towards us, vociferated, and pulled Mr. E. by the wrist to the forepart, to see the crack, – of which Mr. E., with all his experience in such matters, thought little. The Rais. however, is responsible for the condition of the boat, and he feared that the owner would »cut his neck off« if anything was carried away, So we moored to the bank, and some little nails were driven in, so as to do no good whatever; and then it came out that the Rais wanted to stop here for the night. We so protested against this that he appeared to yield; but at the end of a mile or so, he drove us decisively into the eastern bank.

      As I was walking the deck before tea, I saw two lights moving up under the opposite bank; and supposed them to be from Selim Pasha's boats. They crossed the stream, however; and the boats they belonged to drove into the bank so immediately behind us as to lift our rigging. It was our Scotch friends, and the American party. The gentlemen immediately exchanged visits; and our СКАЧАТЬ