Notes from Egypt

My dear E

Having returned from an expedition to the Pyramids yesterday, I hasten to give you a narrative of our proceedings to and from those wonderful structures, and the impression they made on my mind, whilst quite fresh from the visit. Amongst the passengers by the Austrian Lloyds vessel from Trieste, which arrived at Alexandria on the 3rd, was a gentleman with whom I got into conversation at the table d'hote here, and who proved to be an intimate friend and neighbour of Mr. L. V. H — — , and whom I recollect having met at W. D. a few years back. ( He and his son were intending to see the Pyramids if possible before leaving Cairo, and proposed my joining them, an arrangement to which I readily assented, and we agreed to set off the same afternoon, and taking a tent and provisions with us, to bivouack at the Pyramids that night, and rise fresh for their examination at daybreak. Our train consisted of four donkeys for our party of three, and the dragoman, besides a spare donkey, and their attendant drivers, and a horse for carrying the tent, some spare clothing, thick horse cloths instead of mats, a large chest or box for provisions, knives, forks, glasses, &c; the provisions consisting of cold chicken, a cold goose, ditto roast shoulder of mutton, bread, cheese, coffee, sugar and eggs, a few bottles of pale ale, one of water, and another of brandy. We mounted our donkeys about half-past four, a great deal too late in the day for a journey of eighteen miles, which is the distance of the Pyramids from Cairo during the time of high Nile, or the season of inundation; but we had been riding about the city, to the citadel, and elsewhere all the morning, and Mr, W had engagements that detained him till late in the afternoon, leaving us only an hour before sunset, which in this latitude, and in the beginning of November, happens at half-past five o'clock, and the twilight afterwards is not of very long duration. Our route lay through Old Cairo, (which stands on the site of the fortress of Babylon), we then crossed the Nile in a ferry boat to the large and populous village of Geezeh or Ghizeh, (Arabic names are spelt in various ways, and the g is either hard or soft according to the dialect), from whence these Pyramids take their names. The views on the Nile at Old Cairo and Geezeh are very pretty, white houses, on either side of the broad river, being interspersed everywhere with trees, gardens, date groves, and the island of Rhoda, clad in rich cultivation, occupying the centre of the Nile. The way from Old to New Cairo is a fine broad road, planted with trees, and through one continuous garden of olive, fig, mulberry, castor, or prickly pear, &c, beneath which grow all the kinds of esculent vegetables for which Egypt was formerly renowned, as leeks, onions, garlic, lentils, lettuce, beans, melons, and many others. After leaving Geezeh the daylight began to fail us, but the twilight lasted us still for a few miles farther, and when the new moon set, the Evening star shone with such brilliancy as to supply her place nearly as well. The roads at this season of the inundation ran over the broad embankment between the now inundated fields, which give the country the aspect of a vast inland sea or lake, studded with islands^ and intersected with isthmuses and long promontories. The night was beautifully clear, and deliciously cool, and the Pyramids were always in view, seen in deep relief against the sky, but for a long time we never seemed to approach any nearer to them. At length we unexpectedly came to a spot where the weight of the w r ater had forced a passage through the embankment in two places, and made it impossible for our donkeys to proceed further, and we began to fear that we should have to pass the night on this narrow causeway, between two inundated tracts of land; but our dragoman comforted us with the assurance, that by shouting, and shewing our lantern, (which we did by perching the dragoman on the horse's back, and making him a living Pharos), a sailing boat would put off to the breach from the shore beneath the Pyramids, or from a village near at hand, which we could dimly descry. We had, however, to wait about an hour before the boat arrived, during which time the dew fell, and the air began to be chilly; but to this, our half naked Arabs did not appear to be in the least degree sensible. We amused ourselves with getting the provision chest unloaded from the horse, and making a good supper upon the contents, the chest itself serving for table and chairs. When the boat came, we put our tent, clothes, and the above mentioned chest into it, and proceeded with our dragoman, who was also our cook, (Mohammed by name), over inundated fields, destined to become in a few month's time, dry and verdant with the fruits of the East — but now the habitation of innumerable frogs, and myriads of water fowl, — to the landing place beneath the Pyramids, which we reached about ten o'clock, p.m. The horse, donkeys, and donkey boys, remained under the open canopy of heaven at the broken down embank- ment till our return, about two, p.m., the next day, with no other covering than the scanty clothing they had on, which is very frequently not even as much as strict decency requires.

The ascent from the usual landing place towards the Pyramids is long and steep. We arrived at a row of tombs, hewn out of the rock, still much below the Pyramids, close in front of which we soon found ourselves, and pitched our tents on the soil composed of debris of sepulchres, pottery, &c, mixed with sand and stones, and were immediately visited by the Shekh of the village, and his posse of chattering Arabs, whose vociferations never ceased for a moment, till the picturesque guard was set for the night, when they subsided into low gossiping tones that continued audible till I fell asleep on my horse cloth, which with a thick pilot cloth great coat and flannel under garments, in addition to the ordinary upper ones of coat, &c, I found insufficient wholly to ward off the cold of the desert air, even under the shelter of a tent, for the wind blew in upon us from under it all night, though not with any great violence. A French traveller and his party were encamped in another tent near us, having the tri- coloured flag displayed.

The next morning we were up a little before sun-rise, (about half-past six), and saw that luminary emerge, and light up a beautiful and singular landscape, the rich inundated valley of the Nile, with the villages rising like islands out of the watery expanse, which teems with incredible numbers of geese and other water birds at this season. From our elevated position, looking northwards, we distinctly saw Cairo with its lofty citadel, and the magnificent mosque of Mohammed Ali crowning all; the Pyramids were behind us, high above our heads, and even their tops concealed by the steep intervening hills of coarse sand and gravel, stones of all sizes, angular blocks of basalt, reddish granite, and soft white limestone rock on which the Pyramids stand, and of which they are mainly composed, pebbles of agate, rounded by attrition, fragments of pottery, (coarse red earth er ii ware ), ibis vases, human and other bones, and a strange assemblage of debris, belonging to different epochs and formations, amongst which is one having a volcanic appearance like lava or tufa, and very decomposable, whilst portions of the white limestone which is soft enough to be cut with a knife, are a complete mass of shells. I also picked up near the Pyramids of Cephrenes fragments of a hard rock of a violet or even puce colour, of which I saw no block of any size. As soon as the sun had risen we toiled up to the base of the greater pyramid. To say that it came up to, or fell short of, or exceeded my expectations of its magnitude, would not express the impression I received from its contemplation, and that of the whole group, so unlike did I find the reality to all the representations I have seen of these enormous structures. Their exterior is far more rude and rugged, from time and wilful spoliation than I had any conception of; and I can compare them, on a close approach, to nothing so much as to the products of some vast stone quarry, shaped into roughly squared blocks, broken and chipped in the process, and piled into a huge pyramid for convenience of transport, or use upon the spot. So great is their magnitude, that at a very moderate distance, say half a mile or less, the dilapidation of the courses of stone becomes almost invisible, and the pyramidal outline stands forth in all the symmetrical regularity which these structures possessed when their casing was entire, and as they appear in drawings and prints of them taken from a distance. They are chiefly built of a greyish or yellowish white limestone, easily cut with a knife, and approaching in texture to indurated chalk of the Freshwater cliffs, not indeed quite so soft, but almost as white, and of different degrees of hardness, often full of shells. I brought away pieces of the great pyramid of Cheops, and specimens of the mortar or cement used to unite them, which is harder than the stone itself. Mr. W — — , who seems quite an antiquary, could see nothing in the Pyramids but what was matter for wonder and astonishment, and like the rest of his brethren, professed to find deep skill and science in the architectural details. To myself, they seem very inartificial structures, requiring only a knowledge of the common principles of levelling, and the application of the most ordinary mechanical means, to rear them. With the exception of the vast granite blocks that form the entrance and the walls of the interior chambers, the extreme softness of the limestone offered great facility to the workmen employed on that material for the courses; and as to the raising and placing these blocks in situ, I had, long before I saw them, doubted the supposed difficulty of that process, on which people are so fond of expatiating. In this doubt I am more than ever confirmed, by observing on the spot the great inferiority of these blocks in regard to size, to the exaggerated accounts usually given by travellers of their enormous dimensions, which are in truth, no greater than those of similar blocks in ordinary use for our own solid public works, and vastly smaller than the gigantic masses employed in the Breakwater at Plymouth. It would not be fair to charge the manifest inequality of size as a defect in stones intended to be hidden from view by a solid exterior casing, such as there seems no doubt, once encrusted the Pyramids, and of which a part still remains in good preservation about the summit of the second pyramid, or that of Cephrenes; but this casing would appear to have been after all, but a mere coating of stucco or concrete. The cement has worked Out from between most of the blocks, leaving them in a degree disconnected, and numbers of them are displaced wholly or partially, or have fallen to the bottom, and have shivered into those fragments which compose the very soil for a great distance around the base of the Pyramids. No one will contend that there is any beauty whatever in these structures; even when perfect, they could have had none, and yet they must be objects of surpassing interest to any person possessing a spark of imagination.

At first we contented ourselves with such a glance at them as could be got by ascending the steep hill on which that of Cheops and Cephrenes stand; for being on the point of commencing the ascent, the keen morning air reminded us that we had not breakfasted: so in spite of the vociferations of the Arabs who act as guides, and who hovered around us like a swarm of bees, worrying us at every step with their impertinent importunities, we returned to our tent, where we found our trusty Mohammed busily engaged in preparing a substantial breakfast of omelettes and excellent Mocha coffee, which being dispatched, we returned to the great Pyramid to make the ascent in earnest, having before only stood on the lowermost course or two of stones, and satisfied ourselves of the truth of the assertion, that the vast size of the Pyramids is only apparent when you are in actual contact with them; at the distance of even a few hundred yards they lose half of their really gigantic proportions. Another peculiarity about them, and which I have not seen noticed by any traveller, is, that when you approach within a hundred yards or less of the Pyramid, the fore-shortening of the sloping face of the side you are looking on, has the curious effect to the eye of a perpendicular wall of rough masonry, tapering to a point of course, but all idea of its forming one side of a pyramid is dispelled by this illusive appearance. Excepting from their extremely dilapidated condition, the Pyramids convey no impression of antiquity: for in this climate, no moss or lichen seems capable of existing, and the stones might have been piled up within the memory of a child, for any of those indications of age which the lower tribes of vegetation in damper regions impart to masonry through lapse of time; the colour of the stone is as light and fresh as if just quarried.

I had no idea that the Pyramids stood on so elevated a site; I do not know the elevation, but you look down from the table land at their base into the plain of the Nile below, as if from the summit of a very high cliff; indeed, their situation was one of the points on which my pre-conceived notions were completely at variance with the fact, nor have I ever seen any drawings that give a just idea of the position of the Pyramids and the scenery around them. The deeply undulating surface exhibits a scene of utter desolation, not a blade of grass springs upon, nor does the faintest tint of green enliven the pale brownish white waste, composed of debris and coarse sandy gravel, mixed with fragments of pottery, and human bones thrown out from the tombs. The ascent and descent of the great Pyramid has often been described as an arduous undertaking; it is certainly somewhat tiring, but I found both going up and coming down, very far easier than I expected, and excepting perhaps for ladies, it is no achievement at all. With by no means a strong head for climbing dizzy heights, I found I could look down from any part of the ascent without the least feeling whatever of giddiness, and should infinitely have preferred being allowed to scale the Pyramids unattended, and to have taken my own time in the ascent; but that, the officious importunate Arabs would never allow strangers to do, as they would thereby lose a chance of getting Bakscheesh from him, were he simple enough to comply with their demands, which are almost incessant from the moment he arrives, to the instant he leaves the Pyramids. To a person in good health, the chief, if not the only source of fatigue in ascending, consists in the rapidity with which he scrambles to the summit, urged on by the Arabs, who will not allow him a moment's rest, but continue pulling and pushing him up the successive courses of stones; when if he were allowed quietly and deliberately to select his own footing, he might reach the summit nearly as fresh as when he began to mount. The ascent is generally made at the north east angle, and the blocks are mostly so broken and disjointed, that in the space of a few yards of every course, there is seldom wanting a place for the feet to enable the climber to get on to the course next above him, without being obliged to raise himself up the whole height of the block, and wear out his knees in planting them on the top of the range: but the Arabs insist on taking you up partly by this exertion on your own side, partly by the pulling and pushing process on theirs, under the idea that your vanity will be gratified by arriving at the platform before any other of your companions. A considerable portion of the angle is broken away about two-thirds from the top, and here travellers generally halt for a few minutes to take breath, if the guides will let them, before completing the ascent. The descent, often pictured as quite formidable compared with the ascent, I found mere child's play, and arrived at the entrance of the pyramid some minutes before my two companions, by jumping off each course to the one beneath, where a broken part did not present a convenient step for the foot. The day was, as every day has been, uninterrupted sunshine ; the cool season had just set in, and has since continued, after a summer of unpre- cedented heat and duration, up to the present date, (November 8th); a fine north breeze blew freshly the whole day, and my two companions allowed that they felt no fatigue or oppression in several hours rambling on the arid shadeless soil, in the full blaze of the sun, so temperate were his rays.

The view from the top of the great pyramid, lighted up by a bright sun, which is rarely obscured for a moment, is glorious. From north to south, and at our feet, stretched the broad green valley of the Nile, its surface like a sea with promontories and isthmuses, shooting into and across it, with villages, palm groves, and exuberant tracts of cultivation rising from the bright placid surface which is alive with countless multitudes of wild fowl, geese, cranes, ibises, pelicans, &c. over which numerous birds of prey, falcons, kites, and vultures, with which Egypt pre-eminently abounds, are constantly soaring. Beyond the limits of the inundation, and on either side of the river stretched the great Lybian desert, its unbounded and unvaried surface of brownish white sand raised by the wind into long ridges, or broken into shorter undulations, and the whole resembling a vast ocean in every thing but colour, agitated and swelling into billows. I ought however to add, that ranges of hills of white limestone, the same as that of which the Pyramids are built, are visible on the north and south, being part of a chain terminating in the Bed Sea at Suez , and of which the Mokattan hills also behind Cairo are a portion. These hills seem to run parallel with the Nile and its principal branches on the side of the desert, and were possibly at one period its boundaries. We remained on the top for perhaps an hour or more, during all which time our guides would hardly allow us a moment's peace, through the reiterated clamour for Baksheesh, and to have the word given for descending from this, and mounting to the top of the adjoining pyramid of Cephrenes in five minutes, which one of them actually accomplished in four minutes and a half, in our sight. The distance between the two Pyramids, which are of nearly equal height, appears to be about two hundred yards, and the angles of each are exactly opposite one another. Two of our most active Arabs, on promise of a few piastres as Baksheesh, started for the race, running down the angle of the vast incline like cats, and quickly disappeared from view, till on gaining the base, they were again seen coursing over the rough stony ground, during which run, one of them divested himself of every fragment of his scanty clothing, and in a few moments of time was scaling the second pyramid, and was reduced by distance to so pigmy a size that I repeatedly lost sight of him if I took my eyes off him for a moment, and I always had much difficulty to find him again, although he never could for an instant be hidden by any intervening object. The apex of the pyramid is covered with the remains of the original casing, yet over this comparatively smooth surface the man contrived to clamber with the facility of a cat, and a moment after was seen waving his arms on the summit. He then descended the second Pyramid, and re-ascended the first, and as rapidly joined us again on the platform. The extreme softness of the stone offers great facility to those aspirants to such fame as can be secured through after ages by the simple agency of an inscription, and I am ashamed to say that I yielded to the national propensity, and found time to carve in large and deep letters the initials W. A. B. on the face of one of the altar-like blocks that occupy the centre of the platform, but could not add the date before our party proposed descending to view the interior.

The entrance may be perhaps at one third of the total height of the pyramid from the ground, and the descent into the passage leading to the great chamber, and the subsequent ascent to the latter, is the only arduous part of the undertaking, and it may justly be termed so; as for ladies, it is really a serious affair, and rather an awkward one for any person. The descent to the mouth of the passage is itself exceedingly steep and slippery, being composed of huge granite blocks inclining inwards and downwards at a pitch as sharp as the roof of any house, and nothing to hold on by. The first part of the passage is extremely low and narrow, but it widens and increases greatly in height, becoming at the same time, so excessively steep, that the combined support of the guides is required to prevent your sliding back, an event which would prove fatal, as the length of the incline is so great that a light at either end appears to be a star, as in the gallery of a mine, and at the lower extremity of this inclined passage is a sudden perpendicular fall of at least six feet, I should say, seven or eight, with very rugged sides, which I found a nervous business to surmount on returning, as the guides could hardly find footing for themselves whilst having to support each person of our party, and literally to lift him down. In one part of the incline you have to walk along a narrow ledge for several yards, not above a foot wide from the perpendicular face of the wall, and having a deep, rugged, and very slanting way below you on the right hand. On this ledge the Arabs enable you to walk by holding you by the arms, but I could not altogether overcome the feeling of insecurity, as there is not any projection whatever to lay hold of, and the stone you tread on is quite smooth, which with the precipitous character of the ascent, gives the appearance of some danger to the undertaking. I would strongly advise no nervous lady, and perhaps I might add, no nervous man, to attempt visiting the interior of the great pyramid, for after all, there is very little to be seen, and that little can be conveyed by description nearly as well as by a personal view. The lights furnished by our Arab guides were utterly insufficient to show us the size, proportions, and colours of the chamber in which the sarcophagus stands. We could only see by shifting our position, portions of the walls, and a dim discovery of the roof by holding up the candles: all else was one deep black vacuity of darkness; with a stagnant suffocating atmosphere, never under 80°, and never renewed by ventilation: the only changes of air coming in and going out by the same long confined passage, which is the sole entrance to this sepulchral chamber. We found no bats in it, at least if there were any, they did not show that they were at all disturbed by our entrance, and we noticed nothing of their remains, at which I was surprised, having heard that they abounded so much in the interior of the great Pyramid; but we found them in swarms in the adjoining sepulchral grottos hewn in the rock that forms the area around the second Pyramid. We saw so little of the first or lowest chamber, and found the dust and closeness so disagreeable and oppressive, and the incessant importunities of the Arabs for Baksheesh, at this stage of their conductorship, so intolerable, that we agreed not to visit the second or upper chamber, as not likely to repay the toil of the ascent. Whilst looking, or rather, groping about in the chamber, I inadvertently stepped into an opening leading downwards from the floor to some passage below, and had not an Arab guide been most providentially close at my elbow, (no doubt teasing me at the moment for Baksheesh), who caught me by the arm, and just saved me in time, my fall would have been a most serious, if not fatal one. The light held over the spot disclosed a very awkward looking cavity, sloping down at an abrupt angle, which the pitchy darkness prevented me entirely from seeing. I gave the old Arab a special token of my gratitude for his timely succour in the hour of danger ; but from the moment of the accident, till we quitted the pyramid, he showed constant fear that his services would be unrequited^ (as by an Arab, they certainly would have been), and continued to remind me of the aid he had rendered, till I was sick of hearing about it. We made it a rule to reserve all payments and gratuities for our return to the tent, and to the very last moment before striking it, and to shew not even a para to the guides, as their importunities for Baksheesh would have been redoubled at the sight of the smallest coin. As regards robbery by open violence, or even intimidation, there is not the slightest danger in visiting the Pyramids noiv, whatever risk there might have been formerly; the shewing these structures being at the present day carried on in a perfectly systematic manner, the right being a vested one of doing so, and the Shekh, or chief of the village, being answerable to government for the security of visitors; but pilfering may happen, and should be guarded against, by keeping watch on the pockets, and by having a trustworthy dragoman always about the personal baggage, &c. On leaving the great Pyramids of Cheops, we proceeded to view (the exteriors only), those of Cephrenes, Belzoni, and the fourth and far smaller one of Colonel Yyse, a description of which is of course unnecessary. This examination occupied us several hours, and we did not start for Cairo till 2 p.m. The day was heavenly, and though the sun shone out unclouded, not one of us felt his rays, to which we were fully exposed, in the least degree oppressive, even after all our climbing, and disturbed rest the night before.

The Pyramid of Cephrenes stands in the centre of a vast square or court, two sides of which are nearly perfect and form a series of tombs hewn in the solid rock with many curious inscriptions in hieroglyphics, besides bas-reliefs, some of which are in excellent preservation, and the figures of a few, representing oxen and other animals, extremely well designed. The two other sides of the square are distinctly traceable, but much encumbered by mounds of rubbish, and consist of arched tombs and sepulchres of solid masonry, here and there in very good preservation; but the pyramid they surround is in as dilapidated a state as that of Cheops, excepting the small portion of casing which remains at the top tolerably entire. The third pyramid, that called after Belzoni, is of very inferior size, but at the base it is partly cased with red granite in excellent preservation, and around it lie many granite blocks, together with fragments of columns, and sculptured stones, which must have been the remains of some building of wholly different architecture. The interior of this Pyramid has been opened up and examined by Belzoni. The fourth Pyramid is of very much smaller dimensions, and is surrounded by, or at least stands in a court or enclosure of tombs like that of Cephrenes, and its interior, Dr. Abbott tells me, is very interesting in an antiquarian point of view. All around the Pyramids are deep mummy pits, and about mid-way between the Pyramid of Cephrenes and the Sphinx, we saw lying on the sand two lids of sarcophagi sculptured as mummies, one of which was in the most beautiful preservation imaginable, and covered with hieroglyphics: they were both of blue or dove coloured marble, the second somewhat injured. We also saw a very large tomb which had been excavated from the drift sand and rubbish by Colonel Vyse, but we could not gain access to it.

The Sphinx I found with the features much more mutilated than is generally represented in public accounts; indeed, very few lineaments of the human face remain, and viewed from behind, the head has a grotesque, almost ludicrous aspect, like an immense bob wig : but the front view of this wonderful structure is very striking: it is wonderful only however from its colossal size, for the stone is the same with that composing the Pyramids, and extremely soft. I searched carefully for some small memorial of antiquity, a scarabaeus, or mummy of glass or earthenware, but could pick up nothing, although the Arabs have innumerable relics of the kind for sale at very low prices, which Dr. Abbott says are really genuine in most cases, and not, as asserted, manufactured in England on speculation.

Believe me, always, Your affectionate Brother, William Arnold Bromfield.