Egypt

“ I listen to the childish, quavering voice, twittering almost like a bird, and one word alone came up to me—the word one hears in Egypt from all the lips that speak and sing: from the Nubians round their fires at night, from the little boatmen of the lower reaches of the Nile, from the Bedouins of the desert, and the donkey boys of the villages, from the sheikh who reads one’s future in water spilt on a plate, and the Bisharin with buttered curls who runs to sell one beads from his tent among the sand-dunes. ”

“ And these have constituted in all ages, except the very earliest, the great attractiveness of Egypt. Men are drawn there, not by the mysteriousness of the Nile, or the mild beauties of orchards and palm-groves, of well-cultivated fields and gardens--no, nor by the loveliness of sunrises and sunsets, of moonlit skies and stars shining with many hues, but by the huge masses of the pyramids, by the colossal statues, the tall obelisks, the enormous temples, the deeply-excavated tombs, the mosques, the castles, and the palaces. The architecture of Egypt is its great glory. ”

“ Be greeted, Nile, sacred river, which appearest on this country! Thou comest in peace, to give life to Egypt. O hidden deity who scatterest darkness, who moistenest the fields, to bring food to dumb animals, O Thou the precious one, descending from heaven to give drink to the earth, O friend of bread, Thou who gladdenest our cottages! Thou art the master of fishes; when Thou art in our fields no bird dares touch the harvest. Thou art the creator of grain and the parent of barley; Thou givest rest to the hands of millions of the unfortunate and for ages Thou securest the sanctuary. ”

“ Egypt herself, her splendid barbaric beauty acting like an inspiration upon the craven followers, leads on, foremost in this fierce struggle. Then, the tide turns, and overpowered, they fly before disgrace and defeat. ”

“ Egypt spoke. There was in it the deep muttering as of a thousand drums, as though the desert uttered in prodigious syllables. I listened while my heart of stone stood still. There were two voices in the sky. They spoke tremendously with each other in the dawn:
“So easily we still remain possessors of the land.⁠ ⁠... While the centuries roar past us and are gone.” ”

“ Egypt, baked and shrivelled by the glowing sun into one immense brick, annually sinks beneath the waters of the life-giving river, and emerges from the flood, fresh, radiant, shining, like an emerald, flower-crowned like Ceres of old, and holding in her full hands an ample promise of fruit and sheaf. ”

“ I shall always compare with Egypt—everything else in the world. Other interests and other memories may fade and change, but Egypt, the real Egypt, the enchantment of that land, which is not a land, but a vast processional epic, will never change, and it will not grow dim. I may never visit it again, but I shall see it many times. I shall see the sunrise above the palms, flooding the mountains with amethyst and turning the sky to crimson gold. Again at sunset I shall sit in the vast temple of Luxor and hear once more the Muezzin's call to prayer. I shall race with Laura across the hot desert ”

“ You shall stretch your arm over Egypt and it will rise to you. You shall have paper for plans, and men and money for travel and works-cuttings, and pumps, and sand-bags for banks and barrages. You shall be second in your department—but first in fact, for shall not I, your friend, be your chief? And you shall say ‘Go there,’ and they shall go, and ‘Come here,’ and they shall come. For my soul is with you for Egypt, O friend of the fellah and saviour of the land. Have I not heard of the great reservoirs you would make in the Fayoum, of the great dam at Assouan? ”

“ The size and eternity of Egypt took me easily. There was an overwhelming grandeur in it that elbowed out all present standards. The whole place towered and stood up. The desert reared, the very horizons lifted; majestic figures of granite rose above the hotel, great faces hovered and drove past; huge arms reached up to pluck the stars and set them in the ceilings of the labyrinthine tombs. The colossal meaning of the ancient land emerged through all its ruined details⁠ ⁠... reconstructed⁠—burningly alive.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ A journey into Egypt, with their flocks before,
And peaceful conquests back, an opening door
To vast historic truths, a Niobe
Moaning her children's travail in advance,
A restless nomad people, like the sea,
Stirred by involuntary force, whose billows dance
To music of the spheres, stern Autocrat, and yet a slave to its own mastery.
SOJOURN IN EGYPT.
O Egypt! how shall we approach thy face?
How steal from thy dumb lips one scrap of song?
Thou stand'st alone, and sendest from thy place
One word, that human lips have shaped for thee,
[5] To seal thy mighty arch with "mystery." ”

“ Behold me, gaze on me, O my son Thûtmosis, for I, thy father Harmakhis-Khopri-Tûmû, grant thee sovereignty over the two countries, in both the South and the North, and thou shalt wear both the white and the red crown on the throne of Sibû, the sovereign, possessing the earth in its length and breadth; the flashing eye of the lord of all shall cause to rain on thee the possessions of Egypt, vast tribute from all foreign countries, and a long life for, many years as one chosen by the Sun, for my countenance is thine, my heart is thine, no other than thyself is mine! ”

“ Sunrise, the great symbol of life’s endless resurrection, was at hand. About me, in immense but shadowy array, stood the whole of ancient Egypt, hanging breathlessly upon the moment of adoration. No longer stern and terrible in the splendour of their long neglect, the effigies rose erect with passionate glory, a forest of stately stone. Their granite lips were parted and their ancient eyes were wide. All faced the east. And the sun drew nearer to the rim of the attentive Desert. ”

“ Bird and Sphinx, delicate whimsicality, calm and terrific power! In Egypt the dead men have combined them, and the combination has an irresistible fascination, weaves a spell that entrances you in the sunshine and beneath the blinding blue. At Abydos I knew it. And I loved the columns that seemed blown out with exuberant strength, and I loved the delicate white walls that, like the lotus-flower, give to the world a youth that seems eternal—a youth that is never frivolous, but that is full of the divine, and yet pathetic, animation of happy life. ”

“ Arise, and let us return to our own people, and to the land our nativity, from the sword of the dove.
17 Call ye the name of Pharao king Egypt, a tumult time hath brought.
18 As I live, (saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts,) as Thabor is among the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, so shall he come.
19 Furnish thyself to go into captivity, thou daughter inhabitant of Egypt: for Memphis shall be made desolate, and shall be forsaken and uninhabited.
20 Egypt is like a fair and beautiful heifer: there shall come from the north one that shall goad her. ”

“ Egypt is truly a land of marvels! It has not only, like Assyria and Chaldæa, Greece and Italy, preserved for us monuments by which its historic past may be reconstructed, but it has handed on to us the men themselves who set up the monuments and made the history. Her great monarchs are not any longer mere names deprived of appropriate forms, and floating colourless and shapeless in the imagination of posterity: they may be weighed, touched, and measured; the capacity of their brains may be gauged ”

“ I, in my untaught ignorance, had felt it too; it is undeniable; one is aware of unaccountable, queer things in Egypt; even the utterly prosaic feel them. Dead Egypt is marvellously alive.⁠ ⁠...
I glanced past him out of the big windows where the desert glimmered in its featureless expanse of yellow leagues, two monstrous pyramids signalling from across the Nile, and for a moment⁠—inexplicably, it seemed to me afterwards⁠—I lost sight of my companion’s stalwart figure that was yet so close before my eyes. ”

“ For nearly four hundred years Egypt had been a country politically contemptible, overrun now by Ethiopians, now by Assyrians, now by Babylonians, now by Persians. As the indignities of the present became more and more disagreeable to contemplate, the past and the other world became more splendid to Egyptian eyes. ”

“ One who by the will of the All Powerful, shall in time, rear out of ruins and ashes, out of ignorant, broken-spirited slaves, a great and enduring nation; a people that shall live with the riches of this globe when Egypt is but a faded memory. ”

“ Tell me, are you only a tourist—I was going to say idler, but I know you are not; you have the face of a man who does things—are you tourist or worker here? What does Egypt mean to you? That sounds rather non- conformist, but Egypt, to me, is the saddest, most beautiful, most mysterious place in the world. All other nations, all other races, every person in the world should be interested in Egypt. Egypt is the lost child of Creation—the dear, pitiful waif of genius and mystery of the world. ”

“ I am taken by that sensation of almost trembling magic which came to me when first I saw a mirage far out in the Sahara. But Egypt, though it contains so many marvels, has no longer for me the marvellous atmosphere. Its keynote is seductiveness.
In Egypt one feels very safe. Smiling policemen in clothes of spotless white—emblematic, surely, of their innocence!—seem to be everywhere, standing calmly in the sun. Very gentle, very tender, although perhaps not very true, are the Bedouins at the Pyramids. ”

“ All that is characteristic of Egypt is in sight; to the west, the Libyan hills and the limitless stretch of yellow desert sand; to the north, desert also and the ruined pyramid of Abooroâsh; to the south, that long necropolis of the desert marked by the pyramids of Abooseér, Sakkarah, and Dashoor; on the east, the Nile and its broad meadows widening into the dim Delta northward, the white line of Cairo under the Mokattam hills, and the grey desert beyond. Egypt is a ribbon of green between two deserts. ”

“ My father joined in opinion with those of his brothers who had spoken in favour of Egypt; which filled me with joy. "Say what you will," said he, "the man that has not seen Egypt has not seen the greatest rarity in the world. All the land there is golden; I mean, it is so fertile, that it enriches its inhabitants. All the women of that country charm you by their beauty and their agreeable carriage. If you speak of the Nile, where is there a more wonderful river? ”

“ Behold, I am not a stiff-necked man (or rebel) , nay, I held in honour [the King] , for I knew the land of Egypt and that Rā hath made thy fear to exist everywhere in Egypt, and the awe of thee to permeate every foreign land. I beseech thee to let me enter my native land. I beseech thee to let me return to Egypt. Thou art the apparel of the horizon. The Disk (i.e. the Sun) shineth at thy wish. One drinketh the water of the river Nile at thy pleasure. One breatheth the air of heaven when thou givest the word of command. ”

“ The inhabitants of Egypt found themselves surrounded by a solemn landscape, before fixed and unchanging forms and outlines, in the midst of natural phenomena, recurring with invariable regularity and always in the same succession. Such surroundings and impressions must have stamped on the young life of a ripening nation a settled, stern, and unvarying character. ”

“ Fortunately for Egypt, these men, trained in the best school of irrigation in the world, possessed not only the highest scientific skill and knowledge, but were also animated by the best spirit of the empire-building Englishman. Deep in them lay the earnest wish and determination, far stronger even than their enthusiasm and love for their profession, to alleviate the lot of the unhappy peasantry of Egypt. ”

“ Egypt is endless and inexhaustible; some hint of eternity lies there, an awareness of immortality almost. Today, after a doze of four or five thousand years, subterranean Egypt peeps up again at the sun. ”

“ Apart from its wonderful river, the country itself has no very striking features. It is rather a monotonous land—a long ribbon of green running through a great waste of yellow desert and barren hills. But the great charm that draws people's minds to Egypt, and gives the old land a never-failing interest, is its great story of the past, and all the relics of that story which are still to be seen. ”

“ For the very scenery borrowed of his intensity, the familiar details urged a fraction beyond the normal, as though any moment they must break down into their elemental and essential nakedness. The pungent odour of the universal sand, the dust, the minute golden particles suspended in the flaming air, the marvellous dawns and sunsets, the mighty, awful pylons, and the heat—all these contributed their quota of wonder and mystery to what happened. Egypt inspired it, and was satisfied. ”

“ A father who forgets his son? Or have I committed aught against thee? Have I not marched and halted according to thy command? When he does not violate thy orders, the lord of Egypt is indeed great, and he overthrows the barbarians in his path! What are these Asiatics to thy heart? Amon will humiliate those who know not the god. Have I not consecrated innumerable offerings to thee? Filling thy holy dwelling-place with my prisoners, I build thee a temple for millions of years, I lavish all my goods on thy storehouses, I offer thee the whole world to enrich thy domains.... ”

“ But out there the days swam past in a flood of golden light, and, caught in a procession of ancient splendours, changeless as the leisured Nile, majestic as the desert, and fresh still with the wonder that first created them, you moved with the tide as of some unconditioned world. Egypt steals out and whispers to you in your dreams. Once more you float in an atmosphere of passionate mirages.⁠ ⁠... ”