The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

than night falls suddenly upon the earth.

To those who gasp with swelled tongues and blackened lips in the last

agonies of thirst, the mirage, like a mocking stream, exhibits lakes of

transparent water and shady trees. But the wells of this desert are scanty,

and the waters found in them are salt.

 

The fugitives concealed the images of the gods, and taking with them the

sacred animals, embarked upon their voyage of suffering and woe. After

many weary days they again sighted land; they arrived on the shores of

Ethiopia, the country of the blacks. Once more their eyes were refreshed

with green pastures; once more they listened to the rustling of the palms,

and drank the sweet waters of the Nile. Yet soon they discovered that it

was not their own dear river, it was not their own beloved land. In Egypt

Nature was a gentle handmaid; here she was a cruel and capricious queen.

The sky flashed and bellowed against them; the rain fell in torrents, and

battered down the houses of the Ethiopians—wretched huts like

hay-ricks, round in body with a cone-shaped roof, built of grass and mud.

The lowlands changed beneath the flood, not into meadows of flowers

and fields of waving corn, but into a pestilential morass. At the rising of

the dog-star came a terrible fly which drove even the wild beasts from the

river banks and destroyed all flocks and herds. At that evil season the

Egyptian colonists were forced to migrate to the forests of the interior,

which were filled with savage tribes. Here were the Troglodytes who

lived under ground. An ointment was their only dress; their language

resembled the hissing of serpents and the whistling of bats. Every month

they indulged in a carouse; every month they opened the veins of their

sheep and drank of the warm and gurgling blood as if it had been

delicious wine. They made merry when they buried their dead, and,

roaring with laughter, cast stones upon the corpse until it was concealed

from view. Here were the root-eaters, the twig-eaters and the seed-eaters,

who lived entirely on such wretched kinds of food. Here were the

elephant-eaters, who, sitting on the tops of trees like birds, watched the

roads, and when they had sighted a herd crept after it, and hovered round

it till the sleepy hour of noon arrived. Then they selected a victim, stole

up to it snake-like from behind, hamstrung the enormous creature with a

dexterous cut from a sharp sword, and as it lay helpless on the ground

feasted upon morsels of its live and palpitating flesh. Here were the

locust-eaters, whose harvest was a passing swarm, for they lit a smoky

fire underneath, which made the insects fall like withered leaves; they

roasted them, pounded them, and made them into cakes with salt. The

fish-eaters dwelt by the coralline borders of the Red Sea; they lived in

wigwams thatched with seaweed, with ribs of whales for the rafters and

the walls. The richest men were those who possessed the largest bones.

There was no fresh water near the shore where they hunted for their food.

At stated times they went in herds like cattle to the distant river-side, and

singing to one another discordant songs, lay flat on their bellies and drank

till they were gorged.

 

Such was the land to which the Pharaohs were exiled,. In the meantime

the Bedouins established a dynasty which ruled a considerable time, and

is known as that of the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings.

 

But those barbarians were not domiciled in Egypt. They could not

breathe inside houses, and could not understand how the walls remained

upright. The camp was their true fatherland. They lived aloof from the

Egyptians; they did not ally themselves with the country gods; they did

not teach the people whom they had conquered to regard them as the

successors of the Pharaohs. Their art of government began and ended

with the collection of a tax. The Shepherd Kings were associated in the

minds of the Egyptian fellahin, not with their ancient and revered

religion, not with the laws by which they were still governed under their

local chiefs, but only with the tribute of corn which was extorted from

them every harvest by the whip. The idea of revolution was always

present in their minds. Misfortune bestowed upon them the ferocious

virtues of the desert, while the vice of cities crept into the Bedouin camp.

The invaders became corrupted by luxurious indolence and sensual

excess, till at length a descendant of the Pharaohs raised an army in

Ethiopia and invaded Egypt. The uprising was general, and the Arabs

were driven back into their own harsh and meagre land.

 

The period which followed the Restoration is the most brilliant in

Egyptian history. The expulsion of the Bedouins excited an enthusiasm

which could not be contained within the narrow valley of the Nile. Egypt

became not only an independent but a conquering power. Her armies

overran Asia to the shores of the Euxine and of the Caspian Sea. Her

fleets swept over the Indian Ocean to the mud-stained shallows at the

Indus mouth. On the monuments we may read the proud annals of those

campaigns. We see the Egyptian army, with its companies of archers

shooting from the ear like the Englishmen of old; we see their squadrons

of light and heavy chariots of war, which skilfully skirmished or heavily

charged the dense masses of the foe; we see their remarkable engines for

besieging fortified towns, their scaling ladders, their movable towers, and

their shield covered rams. We see the Pharaoh returning in triumph, his

car drawn by captive kings, and a long procession of prisoners bearing

the productions of their respective lands. The nature and variety of those

trophies sufficiently prove how wide and distant the Egyptian conquests

must have been, for among the animals that figure in the triumph are the

brown bear, the baboon, the Indian elephant, and the giraffe. Among the

prisoners are negroes of the Sudan in aprons of bulls’ hides, or in wild-beast skins with the tails hanging down behind. They carry ebony, ivory,

and gold; their chiefs are adorned with leopard robes and ostrich feathers,

as they are at the present day. We see also men from some cold country

of the North, with blue eyes and yellow hair, wearing light dresses and

long-fingered gloves, while others clothed like Indians are bearing

beautiful vases, rich stuffs, and strings of precious stones.

 

When the kings came back from their campaigns, they built temples of

the yellow and rose-tinted sandstone, with obelisks of green granite and

long avenues of sphinxes, to commemorate their victories and

immortalise their names. They employed prisoners of war to erect these

memorials of war; it became the fashion to boast that a great structure had

been raised without a single Egyptian being doomed to work. By means

of these victories the servitude of the lower classes was mitigated for a

time, and the wealth of the upper classes was enormously increased. The

conquests it is true, were not permanent; they were merely raids on a

large scale. But in very ancient times, when seclusion and suspicion

formed the foreign policy of states, and when national intercourse was

scarcely known, invasion was often the pioneer of trade. The wealth of

Egypt was not derived from military spoil—which soon dissolves,

however large it may appear—but from the new markets opened for her

linen goods.

 

It is certain that the riches contained in the country were immense. The

house of an Egyptian gentleman was furnished in an elegant and costly

style. The cabinets, tables, and chairs were beautifully carved, and were

made entirely of foreign woods—of ebony from Ethiopia, of a kind of

mahogany from India, of deal from Syria, or of cedar from the heights of

Lebanon. The walls and ceilings were painted in gorgeous patterns

similar to those which are now woven into carpets. Every sitting room

was adorned with a vase of perfumes, a flower-stand, and an altar for

unburnt offerings. The house was usually one storey high, but the roof

was itself an apartment, sometimes covered, but always open at the sides.

There the house-master would ascent in the evening to breathe the cool

wind, and to watch the city waking into life when the heat was past. The

streets swarmed and hummed with men; the river was covered with

gilded gondolas gliding by. And when the sudden night had fallen, lamps

flashed and danced below; from the house-yards came sounds of laughter

and the tinkling of castanets; from the stream came the wailing music of

the boatmen and the soft splashing of the lazy oar.

 

The Egyptian grandee had also his villa or country house. Its large

walled garden was watered by a canal communicating with the Nile. One

side of the canal was laid out in a walk shaded by trees—the leafy

sycamore, the acacia with its yellow blossoms, and the doum or Theban

palm. In the centre of the garden was a vineyard, the branches being

trained over trellis-work so as to form a boudoir of green leaves, with

clusters of red grapes glowing like pictures on the walls. Beyond the

vineyard, at the further end of the garden, stood a summer house or kiosk;

in front of it a pond which was covered with the broad leaves and blue

flowers of the lotus, and in which waterfowl played. It was also stocked

with fish which the owner amused himself by spearing: or sometimes he

angled for them as he sat on his camp-stool. Adjoining this garden were

the stables and coach-houses, and a large park in which gazelles were

preserved for coursing. The Egyptian gentry were ardent lovers of the

chase. They killed wild ducks with throw-sticks, made use of decoys,

and trained cats to retrieve. They harpooned hippopotami in the Nile;

they went out hunting in the desert with lions trained like dogs. They

were enthusiastic pigeon fanciers, and had many different breeds of dogs.

Their social enjoyments were not unlike our own. Young ladies in Egypt

had no croquet, but the gentle sport of archery was known among them.

They had also boating parties on the Nile, and water picnics beneath the

shady foliage of the Egyptian bean. They gave dinners, to which, as in all

civilised countries, the fair sex were invited. The guests arrived for the

most part in palanquins, but the young men of fashion drove up to the

door in their cabs, and usually arrived rather late. Each guest was

received by a cluster of servants, who took off his sandals, gave him

water to wash his hands, anointed and perfumed him, presented him with

a bouquet, and offered him some raw cabbage to increase his appetite for

wine, a glass of which was taken before dinner—the sherry and bitters of

antiquity.

 

The gentlemen wore wigs and false beards, and their hands were loaded

with rings. The ladies wore their own hair plaited in a most elaborate

manner, the result of many hours between their little bronze mirrors and

the skilful fingers of their slaves. Their eyelashes were pencilled with the

antimonial powder, their finger-nails tinged with the henna’s golden

juice—fashions older than the Pyramids which still govern the women of

the East.

 

The guests met in the dining-room, and grace was said before they sat

down. They were crowned with garlands of the lotus, the violet, and the

rose—the florists of Egypt were afterwards famous in Rome. A band of

musicians played during the repast on the harp, the lyre, the flute, and the

guitar. Some of the servants carried round glass decanters of wine

encircled with flowers, and various dishes upon trays. Others fanned the

porous earth-jars which contained the almond-flavoured water of the

Nile. Others burnt Arabian incense or flakes of sweet-scented wood to

perfume the