by Grant Allen
The heavens bespangling with dishevelled light.”
This pretty story, which has been immortalized by Catullus, is as follows: — When Ptolemy Euergetes left for his expedition to Syria, his wife Berenice vowed to dedicate her hair to Venus Zephyrites should her husband return safe and sound. Her prayer was answered, and in fulfilment of her vow she hung within the Temple of Arsenoe the golden locks that had adorned her head. Unfortunately they were stolen by some sacrilegious thief. The priests were naturally troubled, the King was enraged, and the Queen inconsolable. However, the craft of Conon, the Court astronomer, discovered a way by which the mysterious disappearance could be satisfactorily explained, the priests absolved of all blame, and the vanity of the Queen gratified. The wily astronomer-courtier declared that Jupiter had taken the locks and transformed them into a constellation, placing it in that quarter of the heavens (the “Milky Way”) by which the gods, according to tradition, passed to and from Olympus. This pious fraud was effected by annexing the group of stars which formed the tail of the constellation Leo, and declaring that this cluster of stars was the new constellation into which Berenice’s locks had been transformed. This arbitrary modification of the celestial system is known by the name of Coma Berenices, and is still retained in astronomical charts.
“I ‘mongst the stars myself resplendent now,
I, who once curled on Berenice’s brow,
The tress which she, uplifting her fair arm,
To many a god devoted, so from harm
They might protect her new-found royal mate,
When from her bridal chamber all elate,
With its sweet triumph flushed, he went in haste
To lay the regions of Assyria waste.”
A few miles northwest of Ramleh, at the extremity of the western horn of Aboukir Bay, lies the village of Aboukir. The railway to Rosetta skirts that bay of glorious memory, and as the traveller passes by those silent and deserted shores which fringe the watery arena whereon France and England contended for the Empire of the East, he lives again in those stirring times, and the dramatic episodes of that famous Battle of the Nile crowd upon the memory. That line of deep blue water, bounded on the west by the rocky islet, now called Nelson’s Island, and on the east by Fort St. Julien on the Rosetta headland, marks the position of the French fleet on the 1st of August, 1798. The fleet was moored in the form of a crescent close along the shore, and was covered by the batteries of Fort Aboukir. So confident was Bruèys, the French Admiral, in the strength of his position, and in his superiority in guns and men (nearly as three to two) over Nelson’s fleet, that he sent that famous despatch to Paris, declaring that the enemy was purposely avoiding him. Great must have been his dismay when the English fleet, which had been scouring the Mediterranean with bursting sails for six long weeks in search of him, was signaled, bearing down unflinchingly upon its formidable foe — that foe with which Nelson had vowed he would do battle, if above water, even if he had to sail to the Antipodes. “By to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey,” were the historic words uttered by the English Admiral when the French fleet was sighted, drawn up in order of battle in Aboukir Bay. The soundings of this dangerous roadstead were unknown to him, but declaring that “where there was room for the enemy to swing, there must be room for us to anchor,” he ordered his leading squadron to take up its position to the landward of the enemy. The remainder of the English fleet was ordered to anchor on the outside of the enemy’s line, but at close quarters, thus doubling on part of the enemy’s line, and placing it in a defile of fire. In short, the effect of this brilliant and masterly disposition of the English fleet was to surround two-thirds of the enemy’s ships, and cut them off from the support of their consorts, which were moored too far off to injure the enemy or aid their friends. The French Admiral, in spite of his apparently impregnable position, was consequently out-manœuvred from the outset, and the victory of Nelson virtually assured.
Evening set in soon after Nelson had anchored. All through the night the battle raged fiercely and unintermittently, “illuminated by the incessant discharge of over two thousand cannon,” and the flames which burst from the disabled ships of the French squadron. The sun had set upon as proud a fleet as ever set sail from the shores of France, and morning rose upon a strangely altered scene. Shattered and blackened hulks now only marked the position they had occupied but a few hours before. On one ship alone, the Tonnant, the tricolor was flying. When the Theseus drew near to take her as prize, she hoisted a flag of truce, but kept her colors flying. “Your battle flag or none!” was the stern reply, as her enemy rounded to and prepared to board. Slowly and reluctantly, like an expiring hope, that pale flag fluttered down her lofty spars, and the next that floated there was the standard of Old England. “And now the battle was over — India was saved upon the shores of Egypt — the career of Napoleon was checked, and his navy was annihilated. Seven years later that navy was revived, to perish utterly at Trafalgar — a fitting hecatomb for the obsequies of Nelson, whose life seemed to terminate as his mission was then and thus accomplished.” The glories of Trafalgar, immortalized by the death of Nelson, have no doubt obscured to some extent those of the Nile. The latter engagement has not, indeed, been enshrined in the memory of Englishmen by popular ballads — those instantaneous photographs, as they might be called, of the highest thoughts and strongest emotions inspired by patriotism — but hardly any great sea-fight of modern times has been more prolific in brilliant achievements of heroism and deeds of splendid devotion than the Battle of the Nile. The traditions of this terrible combat have not yet died out among the Egyptians and Arabs, whose forefathers had lined the shores of the bay on that memorable night, and watched with mingled terror and astonishment the destruction of that great armament. It was with some idea of the moral effect the landing of English troops on the shores of this historic bay would have on Arabi’s soldiery, that Lord Wolseley contemplated disembarking there the English expeditionary force in August, 1882.
On the eastern horn of Aboukir Bay, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, and about five miles from its mouth, lies the picturesque town of Rosetta. Its Arabic name is Rashid, an etymological coincidence which has induced some writers to jump to the conclusion that it is the birthplace of Haroun Al Rashid. To some persons no doubt the town would be shorn of much of its interest if dissociated from our old friend of “The Thousand and One Nights;” but the indisputable fact remains that Haroun Al Rashid died some seventy years before the foundation of the town in A. D. 870. Rosetta was a port of some commercial importance until the opening of the Mahmoudiyeh Canal in 1819 diverted most of its trade to Alexandria. The town is not devoid of architectural interest, and many fragments of ruins may be met with in the half-deserted streets, and marble pillars, which bear signs of considerable antiquity, may be noticed built into the doorways of the comparatively modern houses. One of the most interesting architectural features of Rosetta is the North Gate, flanked with massive towers of a form unusual in Egypt, each tower being crowned with a conical-shaped roof. Visitors will probably have noticed the curious gabled roofs and huge projecting windows of most of the houses. It was from these projecting doorways and latticed windows that such fearful execution was done to the British troops at the time of the ill-fated English expedition to Egypt in 1807. General Wauchope had been sent by General Fraser, who was in command of the troops, with an absurdly inadequate force of 1,200 men to take the strongly-garrisoned town. Mehemet Ali’s Albanian troops had purposely left the gates open in order to draw the English force into the narrow and winding streets. Their commander, without any previous examination, rushed blindly into the town with all his men. The Albanian soldiery waited till the English were confined in this infernal labyrinth of narrow, crooked streets, and then from every window and housetop rained down on them a perfect hail of musket-shot and rifle-ball. Before the officers could extricate their men from this terrible death-trap a third of the troops had fallen. Such was the re
sult of this rash and futile expedition, which dimmed the lustre of their arms in Egypt, and contributed a good deal to the loss of their military prestige. That this crushing defeat should have taken place so near the scene of the most glorious achievement of their arms but a few years before, was naturally thought a peculiar aggravation of the failure of this ill-advised expedition.
To archæological students and Egyptologists Rosetta is a place of the greatest interest, as it was in its neighborhood that the famous inscribed stone was found which furnished the clue — sought in vain for so many years by Egyptian scholars — to the hieroglyphic writings of Egypt. Perhaps none of the archæological discoveries made in Egypt since the land was scientifically exploited by the savants attached to Napoleon’s expedition, not even that of the mummified remains of the Pharaohs, is more precious in the eyes of Egyptologists and antiquarians than this comparatively modern and ugly-looking block of black basalt, which now reposes in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum. The story of its discovery is interesting. A certain Monsieur Bouchard, a French Captain of Engineers, while making some excavations at Fort St. Julien, a small fortress in the vicinity of Rosetta, discovered this celebrated stone in 1799. The interpretation of the inscription for many years defied all the efforts of the most learned French savants and English scholars, until, in 1822, two well-known Egyptologists, Champollion and Dr. Young, after independent study and examination, succeeded in deciphering that part of the inscription which was in Greek characters. From this they learnt that the inscription was triplicate and trilingual: one in Greek, the other in the oldest form of hieroglyphics, the purest kind of “picture-writing,” and the third in demotic characters — the last being the form of hieroglyphics used by the people, in which the symbols are more obscure than in the pure hieroglyphics used by the priests. The inscription, when finally deciphered, proved to be one of comparatively recent date, being a decree of Ptolemy V., issued in the year 196 B. C. The Rosetta stone was acquired by England as part of the spoils of war in the Egyptian expedition of 1801.
At Rosetta the railway leaves the coast and goes south to Cairo.
If the traveller wishes to see something of the agriculture of the Delta, he would get some idea of the astonishing fertility of the country by merely taking the train to Damanhour, the center of the cotton-growing district. The journey does not take more than a couple of hours. The passenger travelling by steamer from Alexandria to Port Said, though he skirts the coast, can see no signs of the agricultural wealth of Egypt, and for him the whole of Egypt might be an arid desert instead of one of the most fertile districts in the whole world. The area of cultivated lands, which, however, extends yearly seawards, is separated from the coast by a belt composed of strips of sandy desert, marshy plain, low sandhills, and salt lagunes, which varies in breadth from fifteen to thirty miles. A line drawn from Alexandria to Damietta, through the southern shore of Lake Boorlos, marks approximately the limit of cultivated land in this part of the Delta. The most unobservant traveller in Egypt cannot help perceiving that its sole industry is agriculture, and that the bulk of its inhabitants are tillers of the soil. Egypt seems, indeed, intended by nature to be the granary and market-garden of North Africa, and the prosperity of the country depends on its being allowed to retain its place as a purely agricultural country. The ill-advised, but fortunately futile, attempts which have been made by recent rulers to develop manufactures at the expense of agriculture, are the outcome of a short-sighted policy or perverted ambition. Experience has proved that every acre diverted from its ancient and rational use as a bearer of crops is a loss to the national wealth.
That “Egypt is the gift of the Nile” has been insisted upon with “damnable iteration” by every writer on Egypt, from Herodotus downwards. According to the popular etymology, the very name of the Nile (Νεῖλος, from νέα ἰλὺς, new mud) testifies to its peculiar fertilizing properties. The Nile is all in all to the Egyptian, and can we wonder that Egyptian mythologists recognized in it the Creative Principle waging eternal warfare with Typhon, the Destructive Principle, represented by the encroaching desert? As Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole has well observed, “without the Nile there would be no Egypt; the great African Sahara would spread uninterruptedly to the Red Sea. Egypt is, in short, a long oasis worn in the rocky desert by the ever-flowing stream, and made green and fertile by its waters.”
At Cairo the Nile begins to rise about the third week in June, and the beginning of the overflow coincides with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star. The heavens have been called the clocks of the Ancients, and, according to some writers, it was the connection between the rise of the Nile and that of the Dog Star that first opened the way to the study of astronomy among the ancient Egyptians, so that not only was the Nile the creator of their country, but also of their science. The fellahs, however, still cherish a lingering belief in the supernatural origin of the overflow. They say that a miraculous drop of water falls into the Nile on the 17th of June, which causes the river to swell. Till September the river continues to rise, not regularly, but by leaps and bounds. In this month it attains its full height, and then gradually subsides till it reaches its normal height in the winter months.
As is well known, the quality of the harvest depends on the height of the annual overflow — a rise of not less than eighteen feet at Cairo being just sufficient, while a rise of over twenty-six feet, or thereabouts, would cause irreparable damage. It is a common notion that a very high Nile is beneficial; whereas an excessive inundation would do far more harm to the country than an abnormal deficiency of water. Statistics show conclusively that most of the famines in Egypt have occurred after an exceptionally high Nile. Shakespeare, who, we know, is often at fault in matters of natural science, is perhaps partly accountable for this popular error:— “The higher Nilus swells, the more it promises,” he makes Antony say, when describing the wonders of Egypt to Cæsar.
The coast between Rosetta and Port Said is, like the rest of the Egyptian littoral, flat and monotonous. The only break in the dreary vista is afforded by the picturesque-looking town of Damietta, which, with its lofty houses, looking in the distance like marble palaces, has a striking appearance seen from the sea. The town, though containing some spacious bazaars and several large and well-proportioned mosques, has little to attract the visitor, and there are no antiquities or buildings of any historic interest. The traveller, full of the traditions of the Crusades, who expects to find some traces of Saladin and the Saracens, will be doomed to disappointment. Damietta is comparatively modern, the old Byzantine city having been destroyed by the Arabs early in the thirteenth century, and rebuilt — at a safer distance from invasion by sea — a few miles inland, under the name of Mensheeyah. One of the gateways of the modern town, the Mensheeyah Gate, serves as a reminder of its former name. Though the trade of Damietta has, in common with most of the Delta sea-ports, declined since the construction of the Mahmoudiyeh Canal, it is still a town of some commercial importance, and consular representatives of several European powers are stationed here. To sportsmen Damietta offers special advantages, as it makes capital headquarters for the wild-fowl shooting on Menzaleh Lake, which teems with aquatic birds of all kinds. Myriads of wild duck may be seen feeding here, and “big game” — if the expression can be applied to birds — in the shape of herons, pelicans, storks, flamingoes, etc., is plentiful. In the marshes which abut on the lake, specimens of the papyrus are to be found, this neighborhood being one of the few habitats of this rare plant. Soon after rounding the projecting ridge of low sand-hills which fringe the estuary of the Damietta Branch of the Nile, the noble proportions of the loftiest lighthouse of the Mediterranean come into view. It is fitted with one of the most powerful electric lights in the world, its penetrating rays being visible on a clear night at a distance of over twenty-five miles. Shortly afterwards the forest of masts, apparently springing out of the desert, informs the passenger of the near vicinity of Port Said.
There is, of course,
nothing to see at Port Said from a tourist’s standpoint. The town is little more than a large coaling station, and is of very recent growth. It owes its existence solely to the Suez Canal, and to the fact that the water at that part of the coast is deeper than at Pelusium, where the isthmus is narrowest. The town is built partly on artificial foundations on the strip of low sand-banks which forms a natural sea-wall protecting Lake Menzaleh from the Mediterranean. In the autumn at high Nile it is surrounded on all sides by water. An imaginative writer once called Port Said the Venice of Africa — not a very happy description, as the essentially modern appearance of this coaling station strikes the most unobservant visitor. The comparison might for its inappositeness rank with the proverbial one between Macedon and Monmouth. Both Venice and Port Said are land-locked, and that is the only feature they have in common.
The sandy plains in the vicinity of the town are, however, full of interest to the historian and archæologist. Here may be found ruins and remains of antiquity which recall a period of civilization reaching back more centuries than Port Said (built in 1859) does years. The ruins of Pelusium (the Sin of the Old Testament), the key of Northeastern Egypt in the Pharaonic period, are only eighteen miles distant, and along the shore may still be traced a few vestiges of the great highway — the oldest road in the world of which remains exist — constructed by Rameses II., in 1350 B. C., when he undertook his expedition for the conquest of Syria.
To come to more recent history. It was on the Pelusiac shores that Cambyses defeated the Egyptians, and here some five centuries later Pompey the Great was treacherously murdered when he fled to Egypt, after the Battle of Pharsalia.
To the southwest of Port Said, close to the wretched little fishing village of Sais, situated on the southern shore of Lake Menzaleh, are the magnificent ruins of Tanis (the Zoan of the Old Testament). These seldom visited remains are only second to those of Thebes in historical and archæological interest. It is a little curious that while tourists flock in crowds to distant Thebes and Karnak, few take the trouble to visit the easily accessible ruins of Tanis. The ruins were uncovered at great cost of labor by the late Mariette Bey, and in the great temple were unearthed some of the most notable monuments of the Pharaohs, including over a dozen gigantic fallen obelisks — a larger number than any Theban temple contains. This vast building, restored and enlarged by Rameses II., goes back to over five thousand years. As Thebes declined Tanis rose in importance, and under the kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty it became the chief seat of Government. Mr. John Macgregor (Rob Roy), who was one of the first of modern travellers to call attention to these grand ruins, declares that of all the celebrated remains he had seen none impressed him “so deeply with the sense of fallen and deserted magnificence” as the ruined temple of Tanis.
