The village was typical. I would have reported a man who kept his dog in such a kennel. Small mud hovels, roofed with cornstalks, looked as if they had been flung down at random on the ground. These huts are clustered around an inner courtyard, where the cooking is carried on; there is a fire, a stone for grinding corn, a few storage jars, and that is all. The women spin, or grind, or nurse their infants. The men sit. Children, chickens, and dogs tumble about in an indiscriminate mass, equally dirty, equally unclad; and yet the children are pretty little things when they are not disfigured by flies and disease.
When we appeared, the village seethed as if someone had stirred it with a stick. We were besieged by outstretched hands- some empty, begging for the inevitable backsheesh; some holding objects for sale- antiquities, stolen from the tombs, or manufactured by enterprising merchants to delude the unwary. It is said that some Europeans and Americans
Evelyn recoiled with a cry as an indescribably horrid object was thrust under her very nose. At first it appeared to be a bundle of dry brown sticks wrapped in filthy cloth; then my critical gaze recognized it for what it was-a mummy's hand, snapped off at the wrist, the dried bones protruding; black from the bitumen in which it had been soaked in ancient times. Two tawdry little rings adorned the bony fingers, and scraps of rotten wrappings were pushed back to display the delicacy in all its gruesome reality.
The seller was not at all put off by our mutual exclamations of disgust; it required Michael's added comments to convince him that we would not own such a repulsive object. Many travelers buy such mementos, even entire mummies, which are exported from the country like bundles of wood instead of human remains.
Evelyn's sensitive face was pensive as we went on. 'How strange and pitiful,' she said musingly. 'To reflect that that horrid object was perhaps once clasped ardently by a husband or lover! It was very small, was it not, Amelia-a woman's hand?'
'Don't think about it,' I said firmly.
'I wish I could stop thinking about it. My reflections should dwell on the frailty of the flesh, on human vanity, and the other precepts of Christian faith… Instead I shudder at the horror of what is, after all, only a bit of cast-off flesh- the discarded garment of the soul. Amelia, if it had touched me I should have died!'
We went up to the tombs. You may rest assured, dear reader, that I had not wasted my time during the voyage. I had with me the Reverend Samuel Birch's little books on the study of Egyptian hieroglyphs; and my hours of poring over these sources were repaid in full when I was able to point out to Evelyn the group of hieroglyphic signs which spells the name of the chief of this district during the Twelfth Dynasty. There is no thrill equal to seeing the actual signs, painted on crumbling rock walls instead of printed on a page; finding in them meaning and sense…
But I fear I am being carried away by my scholarly enthusiasm. The tombs had considerable interest even for casual tourists, the painted scenes on the wall are gay and pretty, showing the activities in which the dead man loved to indulge during his lifetime, as well as the industries pursued on his estates. His serfs blow glass and work gold into jewelry; they tend the flocks, fashion pottery, and work in the fields.
Some years later these same splendid tombs were savagely mutilated by native Egyptians extracting fragments of the paintings for sale to antiquities dealers. But even when we saw them I was aware of some of the abuses Emerson had talked about. Fragments of paint and plaster were constantly flaking off the walls, which were dulled by the smoke from the candles carried by the guides. Visiting travelers were no more careful than the uninformed Egyptians; as we stood in one tomb I watched an American gentleman calmly walk away with a fallen bit of stone that bore a pretty picture of a young calf. I shouted at him, but Evelyn prevented me when I would have pursued him to retrieve the fragment. As she pointed out, someone else would have taken it anyway.
The name of Emerson has now returned to the narrative; but the reader must not suppose that it was absent from our thoughts during the halcyon days of sailing. Evelyn did not refer to Walter, but when I introduced his name the eager light in her eye, the unguarded way in which she turned toward me told me that, though absent from her tongue, the name was not far from her thoughts.
As for myself, I thought often of Emerson, though not, of course, in the same way Evelyn regarded his young brother. No; the thought of Emerson was a stinging mosquito, which produced an itching spot that constantly demanded to be rubbed. (The Critic comments upon the inelegance of this comparison. I insist upon leaving it in.) Emerson's criticisms kept recurring to me; I saw evidence of neglect and vandalism to the monuments wherever we went, and I itched (you see the appropriateness of my analogy), I positively itched to be in charge of the entire antiquities department. I would have settled things properly!
We got to know some of our crew quite well. The cook was an elderly, toothless black gentleman from Assuan, who produced the most delicious meals upon two small charcoal burners. The waiters, Habib and Abdul, were handsome boys who might have stepped straight out of an ancient Egyptian painting, with their broad shoulders and long, slim bodies. We got to be very fond of them, especially Habib, who laughed in the most infectious manner whenever I spoke to him in Arabic. The crewmen I could only vaguely distinguish by their complexions, which ranged from black to cafe-au-lait; they looked identical otherwise, in their flowing striped robes and white turbans.
I acquired a new name during the voyage. The Egyptians have nicknames for everyone, and some of them are quite amusing and disrespectful. Maspero told us of a friend of his, an American gentleman named Wilbour, who is the proud possessor of a magnificent white beard. The Arabs call him 'Father of the Beard.' My name was equally descriptive; they called me the Sitt Hakim, the lady doctor. I felt I deserved the title; scarcely a day went by when I was not patching up some scrape or cut, although, to my regret, I was not called upon to amputate anything. When we stopped in the native villages I was always being approached by dark-eyed mothers, some no more than children themselves, carrying their pitiful babies. I had used virtually all my stock of eye medicines by the time we left Beni Hassan- and knew, unfortunately, that my efforts were like a single drop of water in a desert. The key to the regeneration of Egypt lies in the women. So long as they are forced into marriage and motherhood long before they are ready for such responsibilities- sold to the highest bidder like animals, untrained in even the rudiments of sanitation and housekeeping,, untaught, unassisted, and degraded- so long will the country fail to realize its potential. I determined that I would speak to Major Baring about this as soon as we returned to Cairo. I didn't suppose that the man had any notion of matters outside of his account books; men never do.
With such reflections and studies the days passed delightfully. Evelyn's companionship added immeasurably to my enjoyment. She was the perfect friend: sensitive to beauty, responsive to my moods and to the frequent distressing sights of poverty and disease; interested in learning all she could of the history that unrolled before us; cheerful; uncomplaining. I found myself dreading the spring. It would have been so pleasant to look forward to years of Evelyn's company; we could have lived like sisters, enjoying the domestic comforts of England, and traveling whenever we got bored with domesticity. But that was clearly not to be expected. Whether Evelyn yielded to her cousin's suit or not, she would certainly marry one day; and I rather believed that Lucas would prevail. He had every argument on his side. So I decided to enjoy the moment and forget about the future.
After Beni Hassan, the next site of interest to historians is near a village called Haggi Qandil. The region has a more famous name; it is sometimes called Tell-el-Amarna, and it was the city of the heretic king Khuenaten- if indeed he was a king, and not a queen in disguise, as some archaeologists have claimed. I had seen copies of the strange portraits of this monarch, and had to admit that his form bore more resemblance to the feminine than to the masculine.
Even more intriguing was the speculation on the religious beliefs of this peculiar personage. He had abandoned the worship of the old gods of Egypt and given his devotion to the sun, Aten. Did he worship only this god? Was he the first monotheist of whom history gives us a record? And what connection could there be between this supposed monotheism and the monotheism of the Hebrews? Moses was raised at the court of Egypt. Perhaps the elevated faith of Yahweh derived, ultimately, from the iconoclastic religion of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh!
Evelyn was rather shocked when I proposed this idea, and we had a pleasant little argument. I gave her a lecture on Khuenaten; she was always anxious to learn.
'He abandoned the royal city of Thebes,' I explained, 'and built a new capital dedicated to his god, on land that had never been contaminated by other worship. Herr Lepsius discovered some of the boundary
