F. Barham Zincke

“ You do not go through Egypt without comparing the village Achmed, who is so often at your side, with poor Hodge, whom you left at home, but who, nevertheless, is often in your thoughts. You ask which of the two is better off; and which is, after all, the better man? And you ask yourself these questions not without some misgivings, for you are pleased with Achmed, and now that you are free from work and care, and with the glorious world unfolding itself before you, you are disposed, when you are reminded of him, to feel more pity than usual for poor Hodge. ”

“ The winged insect bursting from the cerements of its suspended, into the happy freedom of its new aërial life, was a type, addressed by nature to the eye, and through the eye to the understanding, to prefigure the soul of man, at last emancipated from all earthly and fleshly hindrances, soaring to the empyrean regions of eternal day, for the full enjoyment of its predestined glory, for which—all that had gone before having been the long and troublous discipline—it is now completely equipped. ”

“ They even recurred to the worship of the bull Mnevis, the divinity of Heliopolis—Joseph’s On—at the very foot of Sinai. Everything, therefore, that could recall Egypt and its religion, everything that might present a point of contact between the thoughts, the worship, the lives of the new people and of their old masters, was to be studiously avoided. The dividing lines must everywhere be deep and sharp—there must be no bridges from one to the other. So it must be. But the doctrine of the future life was the very kernel—the heart itself—of the religion of Egypt. ”

“ Something perhaps might be said in extenuation of the fault of this poor frail one, whose punishment, if it were not greater than her fault, was still the extremest man can inflict. What agonizing moments must those last ones have been when, not weakened by slow disease, nor broken by days spent in long imprisonment, but fresh from her home, in the flower of youth and Nature’s pride of strength, with the blood quick and warm, she was being dragged away to the dark river, and by those God had made nearest and dearest to her. ”

“ What is needed is not something that will separate peoples, but something that will bring them to act together. The instinct of exclusiveness, of repulsion, will lead only to troubles, to hostile tariffs, to wars. No good, but only evil, can come of it. Whatever will promote friendliness and intercourse, and prevent their interruption, must be cherished. The old instinct of exclusiveness has now become a mistake, an anachronism, a nuisance, a sin. Everybody sees that what is wanted is the sentiment of universal brotherhood. ”

“ To think, when you are entering Nubia, that a building in the neighbourhood of Cairo, so many hundred miles away, is still towering nearly 240 feet above your head, and that it has been there from an antiquity so remote that, in comparison with it, the most ancient monuments of Europe are affairs of yesterday, an antiquity that is separated from our own day by more than 5,000 years, makes one feel that those old Egyptians understood very well what they were about, when they undertook to set for themselves a mark upon the world, which should stand as long as the world endured. ”

“ He carried the arms of Egypt to the utmost limits they ever reached. As one stands at Karnak, Thebes, and Abydos, before the sculptures he set up, and reads in them the records of his achievements, and of the thoughts that stirred within him, the mind is transported to a very distant past—but though so distant, we still may, by the aids we now possess, recover much of its form and features. Let us then endeavour to construct for ourselves some conception of his great expedition from the materials with which the monuments and history supply us.
Egypt is very flourishing. ”

“ LUNCHEON AT THE PYRAMIDS—KÊF.
Mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the landscape round it measures.—Milton.
On our first visit to the Pyramids we had our luncheon in the large granite tomb a little below, and to the south-east of the Sphinx. One feels that there is an incongruity, a kind almost of profanation, in using a tomb, particularly such a tomb, for such a purpose. Its massiveness, at all events, makes you conscious of a kind of degeneracy in the present day. A sense of unworthiness and littleness comes over you. ”

“ The Hyksos had again come down into the old Nile land; but this time they came not to oppress, not to exact tribute, but to break bonds, and to enrich, and to place men on a higher level than they had occupied before. This was an invasion to which Egypt, in all its thousands of years of national life, had never yet been exposed. Invasions of this kind can be very rare in the history of nations, and in the history of the human race; but if, when they do come, minds are prepared for them, they are irresistible. ”

“ This is, I believe, very much a question of religion.
In the world of spirit a religion is a real, organic, living, acting entity. It animates, it subdues, it pervades, it colours, it guides men’s minds and hearts. They breathe it. They feed upon it. They are what it makes them. Now our religion is characterized by liberty. It leaves men to construct their own polities, and to devise for themselves the laws they are to live by. It obliges them to understand that they are the arbiters and the architects of their own fortunes. ”

“ A sense of loathing sickens you as you see them. But we must not be hard on the helpless brute: is it not more shocking that man, endowed with large discourse of reason, with sovereign power to distinguish wrong from right, the lord, the soul, the very blossom of this visible world, bid to look with the inward eye, as he has been enabled to do with the bodily eye, onwards and upwards, should, notwithstanding, still make himself a hog, morally a scavenger? And this position has been forced by necessity on the swine of the East—they did not turn to it from choice. ”

“ It was built at the culminating point of Egyptian art and greatness. The conception was an inspiration of a consciousness of excellence and power. Everything here is grand, even for Egypt; the lofty propylons, the Osirid court, the great halls, and, above all, the colossal statue of the king seated on his throne, a monolith of red granite, weighing nearly 900 tons, and which is now lying on the ground in stupendous fragments, its overthrow having been probably the work of the vengeful Persians. Nothing can exceed the interest of this grand structure. ”

“ Just as the interest of Alexandria belongs to what we call antiquity, so does Cairo derive the whole of its interest from existing sources. I say what we call antiquity, for by that word we mean the classical period of Greece and Rome; but this classical period is, in reality, only the connecting link between our modern world and the old primæval world of Egypt; it is thus the true middle ages of universal history; while true antiquity is the domain of Pharaohnic Egypt. But as to Cairo: El Islam is of the things that now are, and Cairo was never anything but a Mahomedan city. ”

“ Strange is it to find yourself in the midst of such an incomprehensible mass of humanity, and yet at the same time in the midst of a most ornate scene of natural objects—water, trees, turf. Just as in the Egyptian scenes, where the interests of its history are brought to a focus, the preponderant objects presented to the eye are graves and temples in the desert, which tell us of how religious and sombre a cast was the thought of the Egyptians, who could see nothing in the world but God, and could regard life only in connexion with death ”

“ The fortunes and the future of the Christian idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind, which gave the new doctrine so much of its power to overthrow the wisdom of old Egypt, interests and concerns us all. From the days of its first triumphs down to our own day it has been actively at work in Europe. Through all these centuries it has been gaining strength. The first logical deduction from it which, like its parent, becomes a sentiment as well as an idea, is that of universal equality, for if all are brothers, then none is greater or less than another. ”

“ The money spent in building the utterly useless Mosk of Mohamed Ali in the citadel would have put into repair all these monuments, which abound not more in exquisite work than in historical interest; and which, then, would have been secured to the world for some centuries longer at least. But nothing of this kind can be expected of Orientals. To repair and maintain the monuments of past generations is not an idea that has ever commended itself to their minds. People build there to show forth their own greatness, and to perpetuate their own names. ”

“ What is here is contemporary history, presented in such a form that it is the actual pressure and embodiment of the heart and mind of each individual. Here are the occupations he delighted in, the sentiments that stirred him, the business that was the business of his life, the clothes he wore, the furniture he used, the forms religious thought had assumed in his mind, the forms social arrangements had assumed around him. No people have ever so written their history. ”

“ Beyond the river, at the distance of eight or nine miles, on the lower stage of the Libyan range, stand the Great Pyramids of Gizeh. Further off, at about double the distance from you, stand the older Pyramids of Abouseir. Seen from no other point are the Pyramids so impressive. There they stand, at the entrance of the valley, and have stood for more than five thousand years, to tell all who might come down into Egypt of its greatness and glory. They have none of the forms, or features, of architecture. They are mountains, escarped for monuments, by Titan’s hands. ”

“ No one can see anything in Egypt except what he takes with him the power of seeing. The mysterious river, the sight of which carries away thought to the unknown interior of the great Continent, where solar heat, evaporation, and condensation are working at their highest power, giving birth abundantly to forms of vegetable and animal life with which the eye of civilized man has yet to be delighted, and instructed; the lifeless desert which has had so much effect in shaping, and colouring, human life in that part of the world ”

“ Can the oriental mind be roused into new life and activity? Can it be made more fruitful than it has proved of late, in what conduces to the well-being of communities, and of individuals? I see no reason why Egypt and Syria should not, in the future, as they did in the past, support populous, wealthy, and orderly communities, which might occupy a creditable position, even in the modern world, in respect of that moral and intellectual power, which is the distinguishing mark of man. ”

“ As you ascend the river you are never long without seeing a camel, or a string of camels, on the bank. As you look up at them, for at the season when you are in Egypt the river has subsided many feet, their long legs and long necks, seen from your boat against the sky, appear longer than they have been really made by nature, and you think that you are looking upon some arachnoid creatures, of the megatherium epoch, moving along the bank. At Siout, where the caravan road from Darfur, through the great Oasis, strikes the Nile, I saw a whole kafileh of camels that had just arrived. ”

“ How can it be argued that the State does rightly and wisely in neglecting the one means which stands first in the order of nature, and which is emphatically the most efficient, for bringing about its great paramount object? To deny that the means for doing this duty are within its sphere, is to deny that it has any duty at all, except that of punishing. Possibly such means may not be within the sphere, as some define it, of the political Economist. But, though a Statesman ought to be a political Economist, he ought to be something besides. ”

“ Every one of them would think it a folly to entertain the idea of building another palace. But every Khedivé of Egypt, just like every King of Nineveh, must build a new one.
Private houses in Cairo appear to be in the same predicament as the Mosks. None are kept in a state of repair. Everything is either being built, or is falling into decay.
Every other Englishman you meet in Cairo, and it is more or less so throughout the East, has some story to tell you of the rapacity, and roguery of the bazaars. ”