And it seems a contradiction to speak of a dandy of Ancient Egypt; of that stern valley with its wide faith, its dark philosophy, its eternal pyramids and mighty works: it seems impossible that a land which brought forth such enduring mementos of its majesty, should have also cradled children whose sole existence was a gentle vanity, whose worst sin was folly, whose highest virtue was harmlessness from their very weakness. As little as for fair fragile flowers on the rough rock should we think to find our curled and perfumed fop, a thing of such inanity and foolishness, in the same country as that which Isis and Osiris blessed, and for which Rameses and Psamettichus bled. Amidst that giant structure filled with its colossal figures of such surpassing grandeur, rearing up his gentle life like a young blue blossom in the Theban tombs, stands forth the Egyptian dandy. Speak tenderly of his follies; cover up his frailties with the wide cloak of charity; there are more noxious weeds on the bosom of the earth than our vain young fop ; and though he does but little good in his brief day, save perhaps to mark by contrast how- grand and noble a thing humanity may be made, yet even for his puerilities we have patience, even for his foolish life we have love.
A dandy in Egypt!, a thing of paint and perfume, of lisping speech and empty brain, in that valley which the Nile bound with its living zone, the holy tomb of the members of a God ! Strange union this; strange comradeship in blood and land for the descendants of Menes and for the subjects of the Pharaohs. But in Egypt too the earth brought forth the corn-field and the poppy together; and among her sons were the true and the reverent, the earnest and the thoughtful, walking through crowds of fools and foplings whose lives were but the scarlet poppies of the corn-field. Side by side with the swart priest who knows such deep things of Nature and of Nature’s God, stands that gentle, vain, bejewelled thing, to whom art and science are but master-workmen for his luxury, to whom the grand world of his religion is but illimitable darkness, and the philosophy of the adytum a chaos of terrifying dread where he is lost without redemption. To him each mythe is a practical fact, which he must believe against reason as he best may; each legendary impersonation is a living existence which he must reconcile with the known laws of nature as he can. He has neither faith nor courage to pierce the outward husk and find the truth which lay concealed beneath all these wrappages of mythe, and God, and sacred life. He believes in the outward ; and fears for piety’s sake the daring which would lead him to examine his belief. For the priest understanding, for the fopling credence: but can any man believe if he does really understand ? And yet a faith without scrutiny is but cowardice before the truth, though zealots name that scrutiny blasphemy, and its result, if against the public religion, is ranked as one of the actual sins of the day. Our dandy is no religionist, he is no philosopher; delicately he walks through the flower-gardens of life, but the brick-kiln, and the quarry, and the harvest-field, and the workshops of the more stalwart, he passes by as overstern schools for his dainty senses. His God is pleasure ; and his shrine is not to be found in the temple or in the labour-field.
Yet though they numbered coquettes and fops among them, there was but little folly for all that in the ” Sons of Khem.” For the most part they were grave and solemn: even in their lightest arts still recurring to the mysteries of their faith, and in their grander works proving a sublimityof idea overwhelming to us of this pigmy day. But they had both luxury and humour, aye, and the spirit of beauty too among them ; though many will smile at this, remembering only the stiff, flat, angular figures painted in red and blue and yellow on the walls, with disproportioned shoulders drawn in front when the figure itself is in profile, with hands
long, lean, and skinny, and fingers joined together most uselessly, with large flat feet advanced before each other in a mode which rendered locomotion impossible ; all these offences against artistic beauty will rise up in condemnation of our words, and we shall be voted a theorist who takes ideas for substances and wishes for actualities.
Forget their delineation of the human figure, where the archaic stiffness of a rude and early time was perpetuated for sanctity in a refined and cultivated age, aud instead of priests and kings (though we often find much sweetness, dignity, and grace, with all their angularity and wooden hardness), look at those things which the narrowing hand of religion had not touched. Their vases, cups, baskets, jewellery, and furniture, illustrate their perception and appreciation of beauty; while their architecture and statuary attest to their grandeur, their sublimity, their majesty ; and their painted satires prove the humorousness which lurked beneath all their gravity and solid stern philosophy.
The Egyptian architecture stands alone. Neither Parthenon nor Erechtheion, neither Temple of Theseus nor Fane of Artemis, neither Olympeion norChoragic monument, nor any of the most beautiful temples of Greece, rich as she was in all noble structures, were more harmonious in detail or more grand in idea than the Nile-washed Gods’ houses. Symmetry in the parts, and a visible intention throughout the whole, made Egypt’s temples the noblest buildings in the world. The heart of the nation was in the work; and when this is the case the result must be proportionately grand.
As to their satire, it must be borne in mind how massive and severe was the genius of the Mizraimites. They had nothing of the Athenian’s lighter graces, they had nothing (to judge by analogy) of the sparkling wit, the rapid flow of genial life, the graceful gray luxuriousness, the thoughtless chase of pleasure, which formed the chief elements of Ionian existence; but a staid humour, a seriousness even in frivolity, a power even in weakness, appear through the Egyytian efforts of painted satiric poetry. And thus we exhume torn scrolls and half-effaced pictures of biting satire, together with sacred bird and adored divinity, together with holy amulet and mystic scarab, piled up around the blackened corse of what was once the casket of so much proud fervid life. The tombs on the lonely desert-sands give these to the Arab fellah and the English noble, and with them one of the saddest moral lessons we may learn.
In our example of Egyptian frivolity, an Egyptian dandy, we shall see whether in him, too, are not the characteristics of the nation, despite all his efforts to overlay the core of native solomness with the foreign gilding of gaiety and luxury. See him as he rises from that elegantly-shaped and highly-chased bronze bedstead, tossing aside the fine linens so sweetly perfumed and so richly embroidered, perhaps in his eagerness tossing them on the blue and ornamented alabaster head-pillow where his head has rested the whole night through, his soul luxuriating in the dreams that floated about him. Grave and decorous is his mien, for all that he is still young enough to gain pardon for any levity ; his first waking reflection is, whether the gods have spoken favourably to him through his dreams, and whether they promise him good fortune during the day by the omen of the words first heard.
If words of pleasant import, if a blessing or the promise of a happy future, if words of praise, or love, or kindness, then his brow is smooth and bright as a young child’s, and the smiles which play around his lips have in them a world of mindless happiness never seen in the smiles of men. And lighter, too, is the weighty business of the toilet, than if weeping, wrangling, discomfort, dispraise, or sorrow, have first greeted him as he awoke from his long soft sleep. The flight of birds, favourable if to the right hand, ominous if to the left, has also the power to affect our dandy as he watches them sail across the square opening from which he has withdrawn the drapery that curtained out the sun ; and by such signs as these he interprets of the wrath or favour of the gods; by such small, simple, fortuitous, events the will of the Great Creator, the design of the Awful Wisdom, is fathomed and displayed. This is called piety.
Be the auguries as they may, his day begins with that diurnal curse of civilised man, to shave or to be shaved, as custom and character make it verb active or passive. The Egyptian man of fashion and breeding would probably imitate the upper class of his country, and that upper class was the priestly. This was Mizraim’s aristocracy ; and wisely and mightily had they welded the political and ecclesiastical power into one giant sword of rule, under which the laymen passed as captives under the harrows.
Now the priests, we are told by dear old Herodotus, shaved the whole body for the sake of a cleanliness well-prized in a country which forbade swine’s flesh and produced palm-trees ; and to be in this hieratic fashion our dandy passes under the knife. Perhaps it is of finely tempered steel, beautifully damaskeened, or inlaid with gold ; most likely it is of this, or even a richer pattern, if belonging to himself; but if the property of the barber then a blade of metal, plain and unornamented, or simpler still, a sharp flake of Ethiopian flint shocks our fopling’s delicacy and removes his hairy superfluities at the same time. But as the Egyptians hedged round all things pertaining to their religion with peculiar sanctity, aud as these Ethiopian flints were used by the incisor to the embalmer, it is probable that the laity were not thus far honoured. For in all its branches embalming was a highly religious rite ; and every tiling connected with it, excepting the incisor before mentioned, was endowed with a peculiar sacredness unknown to the uninitiated.
After the shaving comes the bath, the most delicious of the luxuries with which every hour of the day is enframed as gems in gorgeous casings. While he lies in the large cool marble bed, whose sides are covered all over with glowing pictures and marked with gay devices, the huge jars or amphorae of unglazed porous earthenware stand round, from whence the cold fresh water is poured over him in a gentle stream by his careful attendants, and flowers and fruits are strewn upon the bath to delight the voluptuary idling there. Sweet herbs are gathered up in handfuls ; fresh flowers are heaped upon the stands in a pyramid of perfumed loveliness ; and the finest gums and essences of Arabia are burnt or scattered round.
What a heaven he lies in now ! with the bright water laving his delicate body, the breath of the young blossoms and the heavier scents of the burning incense wreathing about him, every luxury of nature and of art collected there for his sole pleasure, and he himself one of a land which was supreme in the earth, one of a race which the gods loved to the exclusion of all foreign and polluted brethren. Bright thoughts are they which fleet through his mind as the clear water slowly trickles round !
And now his body must be anointed with unguents, and scented with other and more precious perfumes of that dear Araby whose very soil is odorous, so steeped in all most exquisite sweetness is it. The ointment is so precious that it is bought with many a one of those massive golden rings, or circular bars, which he keeps in the treasure chests and closets, piled up in small pyramids according to the prevailing fashion.
After his body, not his own natural mother-given hair, but that large, bushy, curled, and plaited wig which hangs on the cedar-wood stand near his ebony dressing-table, must also be scented and anointed. The slave who pours the unctuous drops on those black threads is careful not to allow the smallest stain to fall on the carved and gilded stand. For our dandy disdains all his native woods. The sycamore, tamarisk, acacia, and dompalm trees are not fit to form the furniture of his aristocratic chambers ; or if admitted, it is only when dyed, or stained, or gilded, or veneered, or painted, that he could suffer their homeliness to make part of a collectionso rare and costly. Cedar, ebony, ivory, cinnamon-wood, all and every richest produce of distant lands he diligently collects together in that place of refinement: and one of their charms to him is their very costliness.
His eyes and eyebrows must now be painted with the black kohl or collyrium, which he keeps in a small case made of fine porcelain, or of the substance called the false emerald, of the lazule stone, of transparent glass, of agate, gem, or gold, as it suits his fancy. This case or bottle has separate compartments, into which is carefully plunged the slight bronze or golden needle; for it is a delicate operation, requiring skill and much dexterity. In this practice of blackening his eyes he imitates the example of the sweet women of his land, whose languishing orbs have been the theme of praise for ages long. He cannot have more bright examples than the women of his day ; superior then and ever in all the graces and adornments of life man cannot err when he takes them as his guides. Our dandy thinks this, though his lips are silent, as he looks into that round highly-polished metal mirror, whose gilded handle, formed perhaps in the likeness of Athor, the dearest and most beautiful of the goddesses, brings a mingled sense of religious, personal, and human admiration, as the goddess, himself, or the woman, is the image most regarded.
His robe of fine linen fringed and bordered with purple, blue, or scarlet, the breast and shoulder-straps being worked in gold, and the full sleeves daintily plaited, is then brought to him. It is in the hot summer solstice, so he wears no other garment save this long loose flowing linen one, which he fastens round his waist by a girdle worked in variegated colours, stiff and heavy, and rustling with gold and silk embroidery. Chains, bracelets, armlets, necklaces, rings of gold chased and plain, and others of lazule, gem, or finest porcelain, complete his equipments of a gentleman at home.
The chains are surpassingly beautiful ; they are variously patterned ; some are formed into small pendant leaves, some are long irregular beads, some are rows of sacred amulets, the scarab and the ibis and the cynocephalus the most frequent, and others are imitations of flowers which gold and gem together fashion right livingly. Elegant sandals of papyrus or of painted leather are the last to be indued ; and now the finely-dressed gentleman issues from his dormitory into that temple of art and luxury where his daily life is spent. He might be one of the gods of the Aedes, he is so rich in his investiture, so gorgeous in his adornments ; he looks scarcely a son of this common every-day world as he treads the shining floor so naughtily, mincing his dainty feet, and seeming as though nature had been created solely for him.
His slaves feel the influence of the high superiority which riches and rank have given ; and they bend their necks in all lowliness, casting down their eyes with humility, and speaking below their breath for fear, lest their august master should deem they thought themselves men such as himself. Aye, aye, even in Egypt, grand, great, glorious Egypt, reigns the baleful spirit of respect for that which claims it by nought more holy than accident or arbitrary apportionment!
The breakfast or morning meal, which it is the next personal duty of our dandy to despatch, is probably light and simple, as with the Greeks, and early Romans, and all the nations of former times of whom we know any thing certain. A few vegetables, a little wheaten bread, fruits according to the season, cucumbers, melons, peaches, dates, grapes, quinces, nuts, or figs, a draught of light Teniatic wine much diluted, which he pours from an unglazed jar into an alabaster cup, the scent of the roses or bay leaves with which the amphora has been closed still lingering on the sparkling drops, complete the early repast. There is nothing of the grosser luxury of northern nations ; nothing of the heavy voluptuousness of the midday meals ; all is simple, light, easily prepared and easily partaken, leaving him free for what active exertion he may choose to make.
But oh ! no active exertion yet! It is too delicious to lie on the painted, cushioned couch, before which is placed the round table with its gorgeous colours and well-worked carving, strown as it is with all the loveliest flowers of the Nile-gardens ; it is too delicious to lie so luxuriously there, slowly sipping the cool wine, or plucking the purple grapes one by one from their curling stem, gazing on the bright river as it rushes by, bearing on its broad bosom such wealth and life ; he cannot rise just yet to dispose of himself for the day. No ; he will recline there some moments longer, counting the sails as they glide past, and judging
from the shape and equipments of the boats on what service they speed.
The merchant-gallies are easily distinguishable, by the simplicity of their fittings and the absence of all superfluity in adornment or in furniture, from those gay barks with painted sails and flower-formed prows which steal up and down the great river, bearing but one cargo of love and pleasure, bound but to one harbour of delight. Their gay streamers,their beautiful painted hulls, their bright oars fashioned and coloured into mimic flowers, the laughter, song, and music which poured from them, made even our dandy feel a faint wish that he might for once be unconventional, for once be free and gay, according to nature and not according
to society.
But loud mirth was in Egypt, as in Athens, a mark of vulgarity which no well-bred gentleman would ever dream of indulging. So strictly do men think it needful to bar in you hoyden Nature from roaming and acting at her will. Something like a faint sigh, as he hears the merry music and the loud laughter revelling on the young breeze, is followed by a glance of conscious superiority, a smile of pride as he reflects on his own patrician refinement; his high place of birth and education and riches, raising him so far above that meaner herd who might safely laugh and sing in all their rude vulgarity. Society does not revenge herself on born plebeians.
The occupations of the day must at last be commenced. It is yet very early, long before the sun has gained his strength, perhaps before he has fully risen. Our dandy has messages to send, or visits to pay, or business to attend to at his country-seat or farm, which lies on the banks of the Nile, not far from this city of Thebes in which he dwells. If he must transmit his affections or his courtly greetings before setting out, his slave brings him his painted wooden case, together with an embossed and embroidered leathern bag, very fine and soft, in which are his writing-materials.
And then after due consideration, our dandy, though a good scribe, never doing any thing in a hurry, spreads before him a sheet of the best superfine ” three digits broad” papyrus, and on it indites his letter in the popular or demotic characters. How highly scented is that papyrus ! how delicately trimmed that reed ! Who but a dandy such as ours could ever fashion lines so fine and small, so suitable for the delicate hand that traced them! With no small pride he folds up his well-written document, fastening it with a string, and inscribing it to its destination.
The first labour completed, the slaves are summoned ; and after having flung over his loose linen robe a cloak of soft white wool, he goes forth into the street attended by them, and carrying, as his peculiar mark of gentility, a long cherry-wood stick which is beautifully carved and partially gilded ; the same stick, or rather staff, is also used by the Babylonians ; and not unfrequently it is made the index to the bearer’s station and fortune. In Thebes, where the priesthood was the haute noblesse, it was the aim of every well-regulated mind to appear as priestly as he was able; hence the stick always carried in religious processions (very probably originally with some mythic intention or allusion), became afterwards a sign of high breeding in the laity, as approaching them in one outward circumstance at least with the hieratic nobility.
The sun rapidly becomes more powerful; our daudy is increasing in indolence. Then his light chariot must be brought out, for it is impossible with slaves, cherry-wood staff, umbrella-fan, and all, to face the burning heat of an Egyptian summer day. The chariot is brought, and the young noble steps slowly into the open body. The two powerful Nubian horses harnessed with straps from the head, not along the flanks, bear him like lightning through the streets, clattering noisily down the great avenues, and past the colossi, and through the squares, and by the temeni or sacred enclosures, till they bring him to his friend’s house.
His host receives him with the customary compliments of the palm-leaf fan, (no contemptible offering in Mizraim), with the bowl of clear water for the ablution so necessary to health and comfort alike, with the tray of fruits and light wine and sweet cakes, with fresh bunches of flowers and lotus garlands too, if he is indeed a true lover of Khem, the god of gardens, with flatteries gravely uttered and staid courtesies soberly offered; with all the still and quiet reverence with which society, even among young “bloods,”is carried on in Egypt. Our dandy, leaving his cherry-wood stick in charge of the slaves at the door, and returning with equal gravity the sober compliments so stiffly offered, talks learnedly on the merits of the new dancing men and women which some enterprising “choragos” has obtained, or else he discusses the wares of the foreign merchants, the voices of the choristers, and in a lower tone, the meaning of the public omens, the health of the Holy Bull, and the wisdom of the last procession. He then takes leave, mounts his chariot, and speeds away to his farm.
He first hears from the scribe, or overseer, the state of the stock and crops ; whether sickness has attacked the young heifers or if the tender calves have died, whether the sheep have failed and the goats forgotten to live ; however bad may be the news, the unlucky overseer must repeat it all, even if the thousand eggs sent to the public oven have been spoiled in the baking, and so no chickens are hatched this time, or if the best heifer on the farm, which had been piously destined for holy sacrifice, has fallen sick and refused its food, and hence is unfit for god or man. For that which had once been consecrate by its dedication to the deities was afterwards unfit, because too holy, for human use.
He next inspects the gardens, cross or clad, as the scribe’s tale has been one of failure or success. He visits the vineyards and the orchards and the wine-press. If it is the vintage-time, he wishes that his wine could be procured without all those naked feet being first bathed in its ruddy drops : the custom of “treading out the grape,” though so universal, displeases his aristocratic mind ; and he wishes that the gods had made him a genius (in his language a prophet or a priest), and so he might invent some better and more cleanly mode of wine-making.
He then selects those of the young kids which his overseer points out as most fit to browse off the superfluous buds and shoots of the growing fruit-trees ; and he believes, poor harmless puppet, when he obeys the directing mind of the scribe with such solemn inanity as makes the very agent smile in secret at his master, that he himself has been the originator of such-and-such ideas, the organ of such-and-such commands. Poor dandified land-owner that he is! He knows infinitely more of precious stones, and fine linen, and handsome women, than he does of the rougher details of a farm-yard.
Having given his orders slowly and deliberately he prepares to visit the preserved and well-stocked fishery on his property. The river is to the Egyptian what the moor is to the European. There he takes his sport both singly and en battue.
The byblus boat is launched (it is so light that it can be carried on the shoulders and removed from place to place like a folding-stool) ; the gamekeeper attends ; fish-hooks, nets, and spears are thrown into the boat; and slings and stones and curved or straight sticks show that he intends to diversify his day’s sport. Worst of all, a faithless bird, taught by her captors one of their own vices, flies to the boat’s-head, where she stands to lure her unsuspecting kind into the same power as that which has enslaved herself. Faithless bird, with thy tender cries, thy voice of pity and of prayer, thy fluttering wings of entreaty, thy bending head of caressing love ; false, lying, treacherous bird! thy deceitfulness hath passed into a proverb which, originated beneath the shadow of the pyramids, has come down in all its force even to us, northern barbarians of the island of the far West!
Our young heir is far too deeply steeped in luxury and idleness to venture on the rougher chase of the hippopotamos, or of the crocodile. He is too foppishly staid to disturb the stern serenity of his appearance by that vigorous throw of the barbed spear and the rapid cast of the noosed rope which such chase requires. Why, he would ruffle his garments, discompose his flowing hair, disarrange his flowery garlands, and make himself excessively hot and uncomfortable for no good! No ; the gentle sport of angling, the tranquil cast and drag of the net, lazily and sleepily, or at most the stronger exertion of bringing down the water-fowl by means of the slings, stones, and sticks before mentioned, these are the utmost efforts of which his energies admit. And these weary him soon and long.
And there he sits, while his slaves row the light boat, or keep her steady against the bank, or moor her to the strong reeds which grow up in a marine forest about him ; and lying thus beneath the shadow of the awning, or within the protection of the high gunwale, he watches the stealthy steps of his trained cat and favourite ichneumon as they plunge among the game, or he lazily listens to the cries of the decoy-bird as she calls her wilder kind to come admire her nest of eggs, or come help to feed her brood of young. Perhaps if not over-stupified by luxury he makes some internal reflection on her treachery ; then turns away thinking that all is good, even an ichneumon’s craft, and a decoy-bird’s falsehood.
The sun shines down through the tall reeds and water-plants ; his glossy hair runs thick with perfumed oil; his servants bring him fruits in small baskets covered with leaves and flowers to make the purple figs and golden grapes yet more tempting; and some fan away the flies which crowd in myriads from the marsh, or lower the awning checquered with bright colours, which screens away the sun: and he lies in that byblus bark the ideal of Egyptian luxuriousness.
We will not ask his thoughts as he thus rests, holding the line and rod so carelessly ; we will not inquire what fair form his visions take, as he wraps his linen robe decorously graceful about him, and composes himself to sleep with the thick rushes bending over him. Be she some proud Isiac priestess, regal in her birth and glorious in her beauty, or be she some simple country maid, worshipping at the shrine of his refinement, and loving him with that intense unasking love which only women feel, and which women of every land and faith and climate do feel, be she loveliest dancer or sweetest songstress of the choir whom to love with devotion would be a stain on his gallantry, be she high or low, rich or poor, patrician or plebeian, he were no true man if she did not fill his dreaming thoughts as he rests there within his byblus bark on the dancing waters of the blue river !
The fish are caught, the birds struck down in sufficient quantities ; the sun rides high, and our dandy must away to the gay banquet to which he has invited his guests this noon-day. His boatmen pull the lord of all this wealth back to his own domain : again he traverses his well-kept farm, passing through orchards rich in fruit trees, and through gardens gay with flowers, cooled by water-tanks and fountains all about; and once again he enters that ancient cottage ornfe of old Egypt, while his car is harnessing to bear him back to the grandeur of the Eternal City of the Gods.
Surely we must admire that elegant and graceful chariot. Where can we find a lighter shape ? where a more gorgeous equipment ? The large wheels are bound with metal; the sides are painted, gilded, and carved ; the beautiful bow-case, richly ornamented, hangs with studied negligence from the rail of the frame; the harness is embossed, painted, and studded; the horses are trapped with magnificent caparisons, gay plumes float over their proud heads and mingle with their flowing manes ; the bronze nails set every where in the harness and the car flash and glitter in the sun ; and the whole equipage is one of beauty, elegance, and colour unequalled throughout all Mizraim.
The Nubian horses too, large, black, and powerful, might well make the Cushite dandy proud as they fly with him through the broad paved roads, and make the simple peasantry compare him to some god on a rainbow-meteor, passing swiftly through the air.
After the bath, after fresh ointments are poured over his supple body and a whole alabaster vase of precious oil is lavished on his false tresses, after he is wreathed with young flowers, gay chaplets, garlands, and loose bunches all before him, after he has put on other and more costly garments, and changed the fashion of his jewellery for gems more brilliant even than those he now wears, after, in a word, he has exhausted all that Egyptian gold can buy, and all that Egpytian luxury can command, he repairs to the gorgeous chamber where his expected guests would assemble.
The furniture of this room surpasses all that we have yet seen. The linen is the finest which Egyptian looms can produce ; the tapestry came from Babylon; the carpets are Lydian; the tables are of expensive foreign woods, or if of native, then brightly painted and thickly gilded; the chairs are hung with gold and scarlet and deep blue ; their frame-work is a very study of elegance in design. Some are massive, covered throughout with rich drapery; others are light, with lotus buds and flowers, volutes, scrolls, and ornaments, forming the sides; some have captives, others birds, gazelles, lions, and goats, as their supports ; all are rich,
elegant, and splendid; all suit well with the heavy Egyptian luxury.
Each smallest box is a gem for artistic beauty ; each vase and cup and basket of gold, or porcelain, or the true and the false murrhine, (the last is the production of Theban workshops), is a thing to be examined for ever ; while those of the ” pigeon’s neck” manufacture, that strange substance of such varied dyes which change in every light till you may not tell what the original hue, are sure to attract crowds of the idly curious to gaze and still gaze on the wonders of light and colour. Splendid lamps of glass and porcelain ; statues of ivory, stained wood, false emerald, and vitrified pottery; the coloured ceiling, where the eye is lost in the maze of scrolls and arabesques and many-shaped borderings ; the massive columns with their painted lotus-capitals ; all these, and more than we can enumerate, speak of the Mizraimite’s wealth, and luxury, and taste. And many a fair maid among the gathering guests would not be ill pleased were the owner of so much beauty to call her ” Sister.”*
Wine is handed round, after each guest has received from the slaves the usual courtesies of water, ointments, lotus-garlands, and sweet nosegays. The wine, and that undressed cabbage in a glass dish, are to stimulate the appetite ; and even dainty female lips do not refuse their provocatives.
The banquet passes, while singers trill out their sweet melodies, and buffoons repeat their merry tales and racy jests ; while jugglers perform their magic feats, and dancing girls flit like young goddesses about the halls ; while mirth and gaiety, love and beauty, enchant the dazzled senses, those grave staid guests carry out their hours. Oh, believe me well, life in Ancient Egypt, despite all the gravity of the nation, was filled with the same passions and allurements as now ! We do but change the fashion ; the thing remains the same.
And hours pass on, until the near approach of the evening and the latest meal separates the revellers. Some are bound homeward to the still duties of domestic life, in strong contrast to the pleasures tasted now ; others to scenes perhaps more free, more burning in their delights than these. Our dandy is one of this class. Another banquet made up as this has been of wine and perfumes and dainty meats, of sweetmeats, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, of music, the dance, and the song, and the jest, and, dearest of all, of women’s beauty and of woman’s love, succeeds the departure of his guests, and closes the day so deliciously spent.
And then our Egyptian commends himself to his gods, to the Ibis and the bull, and the cynocephalus, and the crocodile, and the onion; and once more sleeps beneath the scented linen of the chased bronze bedstead, to rise on the morrow, and pursue the same round of vacant pleasure.
He sleeps. Hush! let the gods of his faith, nay, let the One God of the Universe watch over him ; for he is man, therefore equal participator with all men in the love of the Awful Name. Let his sins of frivolity in a life so full of earnest things be pardoned ; let him sleep, to waken in another world to a truer knowledge of the value of being. Gently leave his bed. Vain and harmless, a thing of folly not of crime, we may well spare thee, frail son of Khemi! Thou hast nobler brethren, men whose lives are of thought and action, men who know what life demands, and of what awfulness are its requirements, men who have left behind them eternal monuments of their power and majesty ; but even among all this majesty, all this power, we have space in our regard and place in our love for thee ! Sleep ! sleep! thou art the child of our common Father ; and though erring, blind, and wandering now, thou hast long since wakened to the light of truth and to the reality of the hereafter !
BY THE AUTHOR OF ” AZETH: THE EGIPTIAN.”
The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist. Vol. 48, 1848.