PART II

EXCURSIONS

I. THE PYRAMIDS OF GHIZEH

Routes.-The usual way of "doing" the Pyramids is to take the electric tram after an early breakfast, and return to Cairo in time for lunch. Fare 15s. or 16s. This includes two to three hours' stay, but only gives time for a climb to the summit of the Pyramid of Cheops, and a glance at the Sphinx, and possibly a hasty visit to the interior of the Great Pyramid. Such a hurried visit is, however, most unsatisfactory. A better way and not much more expensive is to go by the electric tram to the Pyramids in the evening and sleep at the Mena House Hotel, at the foot of the Pyramids. By this means the Pyramid can be climbed in comfort and comparative privacy early the next morning before the usual horde of tourists arrive from Cairo. Then one can return to Cairo by the Mena House coach, which usually leaves after lunch. The total cost of this excursion need not exceed £1, 10s. or £1, 15s.

A very economical, as well as comfortable, method of doing the Pyramids, which can be recommended to the active tourist, is simply to hire a good donkey at Cairo for the day for twenty-five or thirty piastres, devote the morning to the ascent and interior of the Great Pyramid, then lunch at Mena House Hotel, and in the afternoon visit the Sphinx and other monuments in the Pyramid plateau. It should be observed, however, that for some reason, taking a donkey for the Pyramid excursion is considered by the Cairo guides and dragomans a decidedly heterodox method of doing the excursion, but the seasoned traveller is not likely to mind this.

It may be mentioned that Messrs. Cook will undertake this trip, providing a comfortable carriage and pair for a party of not less than three, at a charge of twelve shillings a head, which includes the fee to the Sheik of the Pyramids.

So much for the various methods of doing this trip. The visitor, even if he has only a few days to spare for Cairo, is strongly advised to give a whole day to the excursion, and a start should be made early in the morning, so as to finish the climb (which, though presenting no danger or difficulty, is extremely tedious) before the sun gets too hot. Of course the Pyramids can be done, and often are, in one morning, but in such a hurried excursion a

great deal of the interest and pleasure usually afforded by the trip would be lost. There certainly would be no time to enjoy the magnificent view from the top. Tourists in Egypt seem often to enter upon the work-hard labour, indeed-of sight-seeing, as if anxious to emulate the feat of the Chicago millionaire, who used to boast that he had "done all the picture galleries of Europe in a fortnight."

The carriage drive to the foot of the Great Pyramid, along a well-made road ten miles in length, and shaded with lebbek trees all the way, takes about an hour and a half. The official tariff is 77 p. for the return journey, a stay of three hours being allowed.

But since the construction of the electric tramway extension from the Kasr-en-Nil Bridge to the Pyramids, this means of locomotion is more usually employed.

Perhaps there is no ancient monument in existence which has been so much written about and which has formed the subject of so much controversy as the Great Pyramid. The wildest and most extravagant theories have been ventilated in an attempt to solve the meaning and account for the object of these remarkable structures.

Many writers, however, content themselves with attributing a merely symbolical origin to the pyramids. Perhaps the most original idea was that

of a French savant who maintained that the Pyramids were built as a barrier to protect the cities on the banks of the Nile from sand-storms. Now, happily, the fables and speculations to which these structures have given rise are, for the most part, exploded. The overwhelming weight of evidence, the fruit of the exhaustive researches of trained observers and scientists, is in favour of their having simply been used as royal tombs.

Besides, the mere fact that each of the sixteen identified pyramids, out of the seventy in the great pyramid field which extends from Ghizeh to Medûm, is indisputably a tomb, should alone be a sufficient answer to these absurd speculations.

It is scarcely necessary to do more than recapitulate here the popular information about the Pyramids. Every Egyptian traveller is aware that these buildings were built by the sovereigns of the fourth dynasty, that they are probably the oldest monuments in tolerable preservation in Egypt, dating from a period so remote that almost as many centuries separate them from the famous temples of Abydos, Thebes, and Abou Simbel as separate these famous ruins from the great buildings of the Ptolemies. We all know that the pyramids were built of limestone from the Mokattam quarries on the other side of the Nile, and cased with polished granite slabs,