DONKEYS AND DONKEY-BOYS. 175 witnessing, for once; after which, I would advise all travellers to provide themselves with a good, stout koorbág,* which is made of the hide of the hippopotamus, and forms a staple article of commerce with the inhabitants of Upper Nubia, and on the Blue River; it is the only remedy for an Alexandrian ass-boy. As soon as we were fairly seated, the boys set the animals off at a most dashing pace, through the narrow streets, over breadstalls, old women, and all the various merchandize that strew the floor of an eastern bazaar. They kept goading the donkeys with a sharp stick, and shouting to the people, "Riglac, riglac, darick,""Get out of the way,"-and cursing in tolerably plain English. It was quite impossible to stop, or hold up against this vis a tergo. I nearly came in collision with several enormous camels; ran foul of various Egyptian officers, naval and military; and narrowly escaped upsetting numerous blind people at every turn, besides trampling over whole hosts of halfstarved dogs, that are always lurking about the bazaars. To attempt to reason with our drivers was out of the question: the more we attempted to pull up, the more they shouted and urged on the animals; and to turn in the narrow, crowded streets was impossible. The boys laughed, and seemed to enjoy it of all things, beating the unfortunate dogs most unmercifully whenever they came across them. After many hair-breadth escapes of camels, old women, water-carriers, and buffaloes, we arrived safe at our boat, and were heartily glad to get ourselves on board again, after the noise and bustle we had just left. We were rather surprised to see one of the Basha's coaches-and-four! parading the streets. The donkeys of Egypt are a small but well-made and active race, and are all closely shaven except the legs. The saddle is a high pad, somewhat like that used in Galicia, but it does not project so much forward. They are the only mode of conveyance at Alexandria, and are ridden by all persons, even those of rank; you can have one with its attendant for about five piastres, or twelve pence halfpenny, a day-formerly they were the only animals Christians were allowed to ride. 15th. On our landing this morning we were instantly beset by *Generally pronounced by Europeans Corbatch. 176 CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLES. at least two dozen of our last night's persecutors, who were anxiously waiting our arrival, and through whom we had absolutely to fight our way; nevertheless they followed us through the town, determined to capture us at all hazards-every now and then running with their donkeys before us, exclaiming "him best dunkey"—" you Inglese no walk”—“ him kick highest”"him dum fine Jock-ass"-" me show you catacomb." After several fruitless efforts to get rid of them, we had to strike-further resistance was vain-indeed I deem it the part of prudence to adopt the prevailing creed of the country, and bow to your inevitable fate; the only way to escape the assault of a multitude is at once to mount the first that comes up, and belabour your way through the rest. Having paid his respects to his consul, one of the first visits a European makes on his arrival at Alexandria is to Cleopatra's needles and Pompey's pillar, and thither we now bent our steps. These magnificent obelisks, to which authors have assigned the ridiculous name of Cleopatra's needles, are situated outside the present town, near the shore of the new harbour, amidst heaps of rubbish, drifted sand, and pitfalls-the debris of the former citywhich extends a great distance all round, including that part on which Pompey's pillar stands, and even as far as the shores of the lake Mareotis. The poorer people are constantly at work amongst its ruins, as the scarcity of stones here is very great, and they obtain much from the foundations of the old walls scattered about, some ten or twelve feet below the present surface-for it is written, "her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted." As these were the first objects of Egyptian grandeur and antiquity we had seen, we were greatly struck with them. All who have travelled themselves will, I think, acknowledge how very difficult it is to convey by words, a description of objects such as these; or, without an appearance of affectation, to embody in language the feelings that their recollections will arouse. Blocks of stone of such magnitude must ever excite wonder ;-how much more so when we know that they contain a record of some of the mysteries of the religion of the most extraordinary, the most enlightened, as well as the most ancient people in the world. They are generally supposed by antiquaries to have decorated the entrance to the palace of the Ptolemies in the days of Egyp THE PROSTRATE OBELISK. 177 tian grandeur, for which purpose they must have been carried down the Nile from the quarries of Upper Egypt. The one nearest the town is prostrate, lying with its base towards the shore, and imbedded to about half its depth in the sand and rubbish. It is sixty-three feet in length from the round of the mortice to the bevel of the top, the extreme end of which is broken off; the whole measurement from out to out is seventy feet, by six and a half feet in breadth at the base. The hieroglyphics with which it is covered are sharper and in better preservation than those of the one still standing, on the eastern side of which they are much defaced, probably by the action of the prevailing wind, which, blowing from the desert for centuries, loaded with particles of fine siliceous sand, has had this powerful effect. Both of them undoubtedly stood on pedestals, and are composed of the most beautiful rose-coloured granite, somewhat brighter in colour than that of Pompey's pillar. The sand and accumulating rubbish has covered up the entire pedestal of the standing one, and a considerable portion of its base. The prostration of the obelisk has been erroneously attributed to the French, during their occupation of Egypt; a modern writer, however, first refers its downfall to an earthquake, but in a subsequent note says, "I afterwards learned it had been thrown down by Chiandi, an Italian engineer, in the service of the Básha, the pedestal having been blown up, and the fragments used in constructing a fort close at hand. In the same manner the obelisk itself was to have been disposed of; but this fine monument of antiquity was saved for the time by the interference of the English consul, it being the property of Great Britain." The French generally assign its downfall to the English, and in this they are joined by one of the last writers upon Egypt-an American traveller, who states, when speaking of the standing one, or that generally denominated Cleopatra's needle, "by its side, half buried in the sand, lies a fallen brother of the same size and about the same age, said to have been taken down by the English many years ago, for the purpose of being carried to England, but the Basha prevented it." Now, that this obelisk must have been in its prostrate condition for some centuries, we learn from the work of the accurate and erudite Sandys, who, speaking of Alexandria, in 1610 says, "Of antiquities there are few remainders, only one hieroglyphical N 178 THE PROSTRATE OBELISK. obelisk, of Theban marble, as hard, well nigh, as porphyry, but of a deeper red, and speckled alike, called Pharaoh's needle, standing where once stood the palace of Alexandria, and another lying by, and like it, half buried in the rubbish." And again, from the following passage in the rare and curious old work of Frere Nicole Lestuen, published in 1517, we may conclude it was prostrate in his day, as he mentions but one standing: : "De la on est mene an grant lieu on estoit la sale marence et encore est une grat coulonne toute dune pierre de merueilleuse haulteur en memoire dn faictaiat ung capital agu: et semble a une tour qui la usit de loing. Ceste coulonne est de couleur rouge et maintes lettres sont faictes a lentour: ríus haulte a merueille que nest icel le qui est a romme aupres de síanct pierre ; laqlle estoit a upres de ceste icy en Alexandrie; et est apportee a romme.” Indeed we might have conjectured its remaining for a long time in a condition similar to the present, from the fact of the greater sharpness of the hieroglyphics on all sides; for there are excavations or tunnels made under it, in two places, to obtain building materials, that enabled me to decide upon this point; yet, when standing, it must have been exposed to the same injurious influences as its neighbour. The removal of one or other of these obelisks to England has been long contemplated, and the delay has never been satisfactorily accounted for; for they are ours by right of conquest and presentation.* The moment we arrived at the obelisks, our attendant dragoman and the donkey boys commenced a most destructive attack upon each of their corners and angles, with great stones, hammering away to procure us specimens to take with us, and did not at all understand our desiring them to desist, and saying we did not wish them to be broken; at which they laughed most heartily. * In an article published in the "Dublin University Magazine" for May, 1839, I proposed to have this prostrate obelisk conveyed to England, and with some sphinxes and other memorials of Egyptian conquest, erected as the Nelson testimonial in Trafalgar-square. For the particulars of that paper, and the letters I have received on the subject, see Appendix H. THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 179 I should imagine the height of Cleopatra's needle to be, if cleared, about eighty feet, the height of the obelisk at Rome. A traveller of 1819 very gravely informs us that there are no eyes in Cleopatra's needles !!! It is interesting to notice, in connection with this obelisk, the fact put forward by Sir G. Wilkinson, and other antiquaries, that it was constructed in the reign of Thothmes III., the Pharaoh generally supposed to have been destroyed in the Red Sea. Professor M'Cullagh has demonstrated chronologically, and particularly from the catalogue of Eratosthenes, that this Pharaoh of the Exodus was "a king named Achescus Ocaras, who reigned only one year; preceded by a king named Apappus, who reigned a hundred years, and succeeded by queen Nitocris, who reigned six years.' Арарpus, he states to have beena foreigner in Lower Egypt, of Theban origin, and therefore a "new king, who knew not Joseph." Moses was born in the twenty-first year of his reign, and was saved by the king's young daughter, a girl about ten years old." Moses having fled to the land of Midian, returned to Egypt on the death of Apappus, during the short reign of his successor, Ocaras, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. "On the night of the passover, the king lost his first-born, perhaps his only son," continues Mr. M'Cullagh, "and this may be the reason that he was succeeded by his sister Nitocris. The short reign of Ocaras (a single year) might be explained by supposing that he was drowned in the Red Sea; but as there is nothing in the sacred narrative which obliges us to admit that the king perished in this manner, we may adopt the account of Herodotus, that he was murdered by his subjects. We may imagine that some of his nobles remained with Pharaoh on the shore, and that when they saw the sea return and swallow up all that had gone in after the Israelites, they murdered the king, whose obstinacy had brought such calamities on his people, and then placed his sister Nitocris on the throne." Herodotus (Euterpe, s. C.) asserts that the Egyptians, having slain her brother, who was then sovereign, she was appointed his successor, and that afterwards to avenge his death, she destroyed by artifice a great number of the Egyptians, by inviting them to a festival in a large * Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. I. p. 66. 1837. |