(53) In these pages we have carefully followed the last faint traces of the old Egyptian arts and religion, and henceforth the very language begins to fall into disuse. The Arabic portion of the population at once rose into importance. as we before saw the Greek portion rise on the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great. The Coptic manuscripts of the Bible soon had an Arabic translation added on the same page, that while the services of the church were conducted in the ancient language the people might understand it by the help of the Arabic. Greek civilisation and literature, which had flourished in Egypt for nine hundred years, at once came to an end; and the annals of science, of the Coptic church, and of the government, are henceforth to be found only in the Arabic historians. Alexandria then, ceased to be an European colony. As for the Romans, they left no traces of their ever having ruled in the country; for, even before the seat of government was removed from Rome, Egypt was always governed as a Greek province; and afterwards, while the emperors dwelt at Constantinople, they were Roman in nothing but in name, and in the language of the laws and coins. On the fall of Alexandria, Egypt became a part of the great kingdom of the caliphs, and its history a part of the history of Arabia and the Arabs.

(54) It is worth remarking that of the temples and palaces and castles built with so much care in the earlier ages of the world, more have been destroyed by the industrious hand of the stonemason than have fallen to pieces through neglect. Long before this conquest by the Arabs, the Thebaid was going to decay, its population was lessened in numbers, and therefore its temples, though plundered and ill-treated, were left majestic in their ruins to tell their tale to the wondering raveller. Lower Egypt was not so neglected either by its own people or by its conquerors, and therefore far worse has been the fate of the equally grand buildings of that part of the country. The eastern half of the Delta had always been full of Asiatics; and there the Phenician shepherd kings had of old fixed the seat of their garrison, when they made the frightened Egyptians pay them tribute; and there also, and probably nearly on the same spot, the Moslem Arabs now chose a site for their new capital. The Arabic city of Musr was built close upon the city of Babylon, half way between

Memphis and Heliopolis. It was also called Cairo. But a little later a new capital, still called Cairo, was built on a spot yet nearer to Heliopolis; and then Musr received the name of Old Cairo. And as Sais and Naucratis had before been cruelly rifled by Alexandria for building stones, so the temples of Alexandria and Memphis and Heliopolis were one by one pulled to pieces to make the mosques and graceful minarets and citadel walls of Old and New Cairo. There we may count four hundred Greek columns from Alexandria, ornamenting a Turkish mosque. There we may see a slab carved with praises of Thothmosis sawn in half to form a door-step, while another, with an inscription by the sun-worshipping Thaomra, forms part of a garden wall. The doorposts of the mosques are often columns from a temple of Pthah or Serapis. Even the streets in the few places where paving is used are paved with stones which were once most holy. The granite obelisk of Rameses, and the head-stone of the temple portico, carved with the winged sun and sacred asps, together pave the city gateway, and are worn smooth by the busy feet of the Arab's donkey, and the silent tread of his camel.

(55) Thus has been pulled to pieces and levelled with the ground every building of the city of Memphis. The foundations of its walls and the lines of its streets may be traced in the cultivated fields; but little or nothing rises above the plain but the one colossus of Rameses II., so huge that as it lies with its face upon the ground its back may be seen high above the standing corn with which it is surrounded (see Fig. 142). No works of man's hands now remain to us to

R.MILLER

Fig. 142.-Colossal statue of Rameses II.

prove that on this cornfield once stood a crowded city teeming with life, except its tombs upon the neighbouring hills. There the pyramids still stand, scarcely lessened in size and

they rise in height, and their outline becomes more marked: and when he reaches the base of the nearest, he looks up in astonishment and awe. He has had his wonder raised higher every step as he approached it, and when he arrives at its

not the least in grandeur, by the loss of the stone casing which was carried off to Cairo. From Cairo the traveller sees them like specks on the horizon. As he rides towards them over the plain, which was once the city of Memphis,

foot he feels no disappointment, his expectations are fully satisfied. The sublime in art can hardly do more.

(56) When he has climbed to the top of the lofty pile, by means of the steps which remain now that the casing stones have been removed, he looks round upon a landscape as cheerful on one side as it is dreary on the other. On the east he sees a cultivated plain dotted with villages and palm trees. Through this winds the blue river, and beyond it lies the range of Mokattam hills, tipped at one end with the citadel of Cairo. On the west side there is nothing but the dry desert, everywhere the same to the eye, and dreadfully glaring. There are no signs of the once great city of Memphis. There is no longer to be seen a row of priests in mournful procession carrying out a bull, the deceased Apis, embalmed for its burial, nor a troop of dancers and singers following a new Apis that is being brought into the

Fig. 144.

rejoicing city. There is no army of Theban war-chariots entering the southern gate, sent by Rameses to recall the city to obedience; nor Alexander the Great with his lightarmed troops returning from the Oasis after he has been proclaimed a child of the sun. No signs of life are now to be seen at the foot of the pyramid but such as have belonged to the valley as long as the Nile has been known to man, whether governed by a Pharaoh, a Ptolemy, a Cæsar, or a Caliph. You will see nothing more important than a string of camels with their Arab drivers (see Fig. 143) winding over the sands, such as brought Joseph there to be sold as a slave, or, if the fields are at the time covered by the Nile's overflow, a herd of buffaloes coming up out of the water, such as Pharaoh saw in his dream (see Fig. 144).

(57) The children of the men whose doings we have been studying are still to be traced among their ruined

Pickering's

monuments, though driven somewhat southward by the new comers. The country is governed by a handful of Races of Turks from Constantinople, who are of the same race Men. as the Scythians that overran Palestine and frightened Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus I., and against whom Rameses II. had before fought. Under them are the Moslem Arabs, who marched from Medina under Amrou, and wrested the province from the Greeks. They have ornamented their beautiful Cairo with mosques and minarets; and among them are gentlemen, soldiers and scholars. In the ill-paid Fellahs (see Fig. 145) who cultivate the soil and work the

Fig. 145.

boats and water-wheels, who live in mud hovels, wearing very little clothing, we see the unprivileged class, that has laboured under various masters from very early times, unnoticed by the historian. These are the same in the form of skull as the Galla tribe of East Africa, and were probably the earliest inhabitants of the valley. Such were the builders of the pyramids at Memphis, as we learn by comparing their heads with that of the great sphinx. They suffer under the same plagues of boils and blains, of lice and of flies, as in