The World and Its People Part 63

The ride to Heliopolis will take us through a growing suburb where a large number of beautiful houses have quite recently been erected. The road then emerges into a highly cultivated plain. This was once barren sand, but is now nourished and fertilized by the waters of the Nile, which have been carried to it.

We pa.s.s at intervals extensive buildings, a military school, numbers of old tombs, an astronomical observatory where the calculations are made for the yearly Mohammedan almanac, the palace of Zafforan, built by the late khedive for his mother, and also the palace occupied by the present khedive. This is situated in the midst of a fine plantation.

Just before reaching Heliopolis we dismount to step aside into a garden where stands an ancient sycamore tree, under whose shade the Holy Family is said to have rested on their flight into Egypt. This tree, which is crooked and gnarled, has its trunk and limbs covered with names, which travelers have cut in the bark.

So zealous have thoughtless travelers been to secure mementoes, that the owner of the tree has been obliged to fence it in, so that it might not be carried away in chips by the desecrating hands of would-be wors.h.i.+ppers.

The obelisk at Heliopolis is the only object of interest. It is built of red granite, and stands sixty-six and one-half feet above the pavement on which it rests. Its base is rather more than six feet square. The inscription, which is alike on all four sides, is in large hieroglyphics. The lines are as sharply defined as if cut but yesterday.

The pavement upon which the obelisk stands is about six feet below the level of the surrounding plain.

Strabo described the city as standing on a raised site; hence it is apparent that both the river and the alluvial plain have been raised to a considerable extent during the last two thousand years.

Very few of the Egyptian obelisks are to be found on their original sites. Some have been removed to Rome and Alexandria, others transported to places at still greater distances. Cleopatra's Needle, in Central Park, New York City, was brought to America in 1885, at great expense and with much difficulty, from its site under Egyptian skies. It was a gift to the United States from the Khedive of Egypt.

Its counterpart, a gift to England, lay prostrate in the sands of Alexandria for many years, but was finally taken to London and placed on the banks of the Thames. Curious hieroglyphics upon it prove that it was originally in the Temple of the Sun, at Heliopolis.

Heliopolis was renowned for its fine literature, its beautiful temples, and its great priesthood. It was the University City, and was to Egypt what Cambridge is to England.

Starting out by carriage from Heliopolis, we soon are beyond its limits and in the open country. At once we are transported to the customs of Bible times. Nothing seems to have changed in the s.p.a.ce of four thousand years. Here are the hewers of wood, the drawers of water, and the old mode of plowing the soil and of thres.h.i.+ng the grain.

On all sides we notice the great fertility of the soil. Work and water seem the only agents lacking to render the country the garden of the world in the course of a few years.

Heliopolis was at one time counted among the wonders of the world.

Little remains of its former glory. Gone are the avenues of sphinxes, the groves of statues, and the renowned Temple of the Sun. One solitary obelisk--the sheik of obelisks, the Egyptians call it--remains just where hands which now rest from all labor placed it four thousand years ago.

The hands which planted Mary's tree have long since crumbled and mingled with the dust of eighteen hundred years, yet the tree, of immense size, still stands, and is likely to live for centuries.

We cannot leave Egypt without having viewed the magnificent ruins of Thebes, the ancient capital of Upper Egypt. Both at Thebes and Karnac we may behold the glories of ancient ruins. Imagination finds it difficult to picture the beauties of the ancient palaces and halls when they were in their early splendor.

"Thebes must have been the greatest and most magnificent city in Egypt.

Almost as old as the flood, situated in a fertile valley, where it expanded to a vast and splendid amphitheater, and adorning both banks of the Nile, it was, in extent, wealth, and architectural glory, the flower and crown of ancient civilization."

Homer sang the praises of its hundred gates nearly a thousand years before Christ. Some of the sacred prophets speak of it as containing a "mult.i.tude" of people. We cannot gaze on its wondrous ruins, nor linger among its splendid mausoleums of kings and princes, without receiving lasting impressions of its former grandeur and beauty.

The Thebes of the present and of the past come before the imagination in sharp contrast, and we find it difficult to reconcile the ever present fact of Arab filth and squalor with visions of former glory.

We vainly wish for some magic wand that could cause this ancient city to stand again as in the days of its early magnificence. It may not be.

Both Thebes and Karnac are too remote from the path of commerce, too far removed from the great trade centers, in too close proximity to the burning sands of the desert, for us ever to hope to see them restored to the ranks of modern life, moved by its spirit of progress.

About a mile and a half north of Luxor we find the ruins of Karnac.

This was the grandest temple in Egypt, possibly in the whole world. We have but to visit it in the early evening to enjoy as glorious a sunset as mortals could desire. Who shall say what varied scenes, what gorgeous pageants, what centuries of glory and of ruin the great sun has looked upon in past ages!

We shall find it hard to give any adequate description of Karnac. Its magnitude and beauty bewilder and delight us. Its marvelous array of gates, towers, columns, obelisks, and statues astonish and enchant us.

How shall we describe a temple of such magnificent proportions! If we include its various halls and apartments, it measures twelve hundred feet in length and about five hundred feet in width. Its ma.s.sive walls seem like palisades, its immense pillars like forests. Avenues lead to it from each point of the compa.s.s. Double rows of colossal sphinxes cut from gray, red, and black granite are ranged for miles along many of these avenues.

Each monarch in his reign enlarged the proportions of the temple from those which it had reached under his predecessors, whom he was anxious to excel, till the temple is said to have finally occupied seventy-five acres.

In the grand hall we find over a hundred columns still standing. They measure from nine to twelve feet in diameter; many of them are over sixty feet in height.

These columns are covered with hieroglyphical sculptures and paintings, in which the coloring is still brilliant, notwithstanding the centuries that have elapsed since they first saw the light of day. Many of these sculptures and paintings depict scenes recorded in sacred history.

Chronicles of the storied past, these realistic groups depict many a stray chapter in the life history of the old Egyptian kings and their captive hosts. Lost in meditation, we stand before these silent verifiers of the records of sacred history, and with grateful hearts acknowledge the blessings of home and country and the advantages to be derived from an enlightened century, rich in science, philanthropy, and Christianity.

THE END.