EGYPT, IN ITS SOCIAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL ASPECTS.*
OP the many books descriptive of the Holy Land, the latest will probably, by reason of its excellent illustrations, be not the least popular, and the fourth and concluding volume of Picturesque Palestine, which treats of Sinai and Egypt, is fully equal to its predecessors. Bat, although half this volume is entirely devoted to the latter country, Messrs. Virtue, feeling that the information therein contained would be insufficient to satisfy the popular desire, have added a Supplemental one, in which the social life of Egypt is treated separately. Both the Egypt of Picturesque Palestine and the Egypt of the Supple- ment are by Mr. Lane-Poole, who went thither last year, mainly in order to bring his extensive knowledge of things Egyptian down to the latest developments of their present phase.. To the Oriental student, or even to the reader who is well up in modern literature, these volumes 'may possibly present nothing new, though all must be delighted with the exquisite engravings. The less instructed will, however, find in these pages every- thing they can desire to know regarding the life of the various classes of Egyptians, with as much antiquarian lore also as they • Picturesque Palestine, Vol. 1V. Edited by Sir Charles Wilson, R.E., K.C.B.,, Ltfe in Eppt. A Supplement to "Picturesque Palestine." By Stanley Lane-Poole. Lohdon: J. B Virtue and co. will probably care for, the whole contained in a series of accurate, comprehensive, and very readable pictures. The townsman, the Bedouin, and the agricultural labourer are all brought before us with whatever relates to their religion and political condition, and, of course, the increasing influence of Europe in Egyptian matters comes also under consideration. The five Egyptian chap- ters in Picturesque Palestine may be said to be almost wholly dedicated to ancient remains and the people who built them, although a few characteristic modern sketches also appear. These chapters are respectively headed "The Land of Goshen," "Cairo," "Memphis," "Thebes," " Edfu and Philw," and perhaps the most interesting is that which relates to the "new city" of King Menes, built by him at the head of the Delta in the dim obscurity of six thousand years ago, according to the best modern Egyptologists. Its huge Necropolis affords Mr. Lane-Poole an opportunity for dis- posing in a word of all Pyramid theories, by asserting that these stupendous monuments—which extend forty-five miles along the Libyan desert, built by a people with a profound philosophy, a lofty religion, an individual art, and a refined and complex society—are simply cairns or barrows, constructed as royal sepulchres, the method of building them being such as to admit either of their speedy completion at the early death of the monarch, or of their increase by successive stages from base to summit, in the event of a longer reign. In the gigantic cemetery of Sakkara repose, not the mummies of kings and their retainers, but those of all the sacred bulls of nearly two thousand years, amongst which, as we remember, Mariette dis- covered the still inviolate resting-place of the son of Rameses, who, as high-priest of Apis, was one of the chief dignitaries of Egypt at the time of the oppression of Israel. The land of Goshen, the wonderful store city of Pithom, with its subterranean chambers, the walls of which are nine feet thick; the brick-making, and other matters concerning the Israelites, as well as the manners of the early Egyptians, as -discovered from tomb-pictures and inscriptions, are all suffi- ciently touched upon ; while what, is more interesting just now, namely, the present condition of the Egyptian people, is given in considerable detail. Some fifty pages are devoted to the-towns- folk, and Mr. Lane-Poole is quite right in saying that all who wish to know what they are like, should make acquaintance with the Cairo shopman,—the tradespeople being the Conservative clement in Egypt, keeping up the old traditions, and still walking in the old paths, as far as it may be possible to do so. With these townspeople the readers of Lane's modern Egyptians are already familiar, any change which takes place amongst them being slow indeed. With the agricultural population, however, at least in the Delta, the case is somewhat different, for we hear of farmers joining together here and there to purchase steam-pumps; and it is probable that if their unfortunate position were once rectified, the Egyptian peasantry would adopt some of the im- provements afforded by modern science, and become as they -used to be, small proprietors, every one of whom should be, as Mr. Lane-Poole takes pains to show us, extremely well-off, the yield of an acre of land in Egypt being a third more than that of the same amount of the best land in Great Britain, and the rent and taxes and cost of living very much lower. Scientific irrigation is, however, a sine quil non; and not only is the pre- sent system—if we may even use the term at all—the very opposite of scientific, but, being worked by venal engineers, it is applied almost exclusively to the profit of the rich ; while the lands of the poor man lie barren, to say nothing of the additional loss which he suffers from being compelled to work for two or three months in the .year at the repair of the canals, his tools being merely his own fingers or a basket, for which forced labour he gets neither pay nor rations. As Lord Dufferin has pointed out," the corn& implies the annual withdrawal from agricultural labour of from one hundred thousand to one hundred and thirty thousand men for a period which varies from sixty to one hundred and twenty days ; while organised gangs of workmen, furnished with spades and shovels and wheel-barrows, would do the work much better, and at infinitely less cost,—for the corv0 means nothing less than the pauperisation of the people."
Although, as we have said, steam-pumps have, to a certain extent, made their way into the Delta, the Egyptians as a body continue to water their lands by means of the miserable basket -and pole, called a shaddf, or the better but still very inefficient water-wheel. Now; with the former, it takes six men, toiling .from dawn- till sunset, with very little intermission, to irrigate two acres of barley, or one of cotton or sugar-cane ; with the latter, by means of two or three yokes of buffaloes, managed by two boys, and working day and night, thirteen acres can be watered ; while a ten-horse-power steam-pump will do the same work for a hundred acres for the whole season. It is clear, then, that if the wonderful soil of Egypt is to be utilised, the peasant must be taught, assisted, and protected against the rapacity of those who are above him ; but he has a special enemy, one with whom he is himself in league, namely, the usurer, who lends money on the most extortionate terms, the consequence of which is that the land, which was once parcelled out into small hold- ings, is passing more and more into the hands of large owners, the peasants becoming nothing more than day-labourers, or tenants at rack-rent, on the estates of the great.men, who have robbed them,—a state of things which we as yet have done nothing to amend. Mr. Lane-Poole speaks thus of the Egypiian fellah
"Ground down as he has been for thousands of years, the fellah is yet neither sullen nor vindictive. Grievances he knows he has, but they do not prevent him being happy and merry ; he will sing songs and crack jokes among his fellows, and laugh as the townsman seldom laughs. We cannot expect him to be very intelligent, when the one object of all his rulers, from Menes to Ismail, has been to treat him as a machine, and to do his thinking for him. Yet he is no fool, and sometimes can see as far as most people. He is not, certainly, fit at present to govern himself—it may be doubted whether a purely rustic and agricultural people ever is—and representative institutions will probably remain a mystery to him for a good many lustres to come. He needs nursing and guiding and protecting (against himself, as well as against his oppressors), like a child for many years, until the evil influences of bondage, the terror that breeds lies and deceit ; the reckless despair, in face of oppression and injustice, that leads to borrowing and eviction and ruin ; and the distrust of mankind that comes of centuries of perjured rulers, have had time to vanish front his nature. He has the making of a fine man in him. His physique is splendid, his temper is equable and happy, he is incapable of brutality—you never heard of a fellah kicking his wife, though his treatment of animals might well be improved—and his brain is pro- bably as weighty as the brain of any agricultural class, and as capable of edncatioa. Freed from the burdens that now oppress him, the fellah should bare a prosperous future before him, if our politicians do not try to force him on too fast."
In his chapter on the school and mosque, Mr. Lane-Poole brings out very strongly two noteworthy points in Muslim education,— namely, the reverence and obedience which a son is taught to pay to his father, and the gratuitous training given at the Azhar to every student, however poor. The teaching may be mistaken and obsolete, but the grand fact remains that it is the right of every one to receive the highest education possible to a Muslim, without the payment of a single piastre ; coupled with which, it may also be mentioned that the undergraduate of the Cairo University, instead of pinching his parents to meet tailors' bills, subscriptions to boat clubs, cricket clubs, and more ques- tionable expenses, is content to earn his frugal living for him- self. In contrast to this, however, there is, of course, a dark side to the picture, upon which the author does not hesitate to express himself very strongly,—that fatal spot in Mahom- medanism, the positionof women ; yet, strangely enough, while seeing more clearly, perhaps, than many the dreadful evils re- sulting from the separation of the sexes and the entire absence of moral and intellectual culture in the harems, he is unable to perceive that the remedy is to be found, not in mere secular education, but in the introduction of Christianity, which alone has restored women to the office for which she was created, that of help-meet to man.
We have been so much occupied with Mr. Lane-Poole's work, that we have failed to mention the first portion of Picturesque Palestine, which deals with the peninsula -of Sinai, not that it possesses less merit, but because the Egyptian question is just now one of more prominent interest. The engravings are, how- ever, very beautiful ; and the letter-press, consisting of the account of a desert journey, by the Rev. C. Pickering Clarke, decidedly interesting, albeit over beaten ground ; while the description of the peculiar scenery of the Sinaitic range is remarkably graphic.
Previous page
