orientalcairocit00sladuoft

33^ Oriental Cairo
feet high. There were no lights but the tapers we bore in
our hands. At short intervals, right and left, abysses opened
up, into which we should have fallen but for the stout wooden
rail which guarded them. Each of these was tenanted by
a vast sarcophagus of polished Assuan granite, black with
age, from which the enormous lid had been dislocated by
some incomprehensible force, and the contents withdrawn.
It is said that the early Christians opened them to destroy
the mummies of the sacred bulls. To any one else they
would have been valuable curios if nothing more. At all
events, not one of them is there to astonish the world with
its gigantic chrysalis.
Near the end of the portion which we were permitted to
see, the abysses grew shallower, and steps were laid down to
one of them, to admit of the examination of the sarcophagus,
which could be entered by a ladder. The only interesting
thing about it was the enormous thickness of the sarcophagus
—about a foot. But dismantled as the catacomb is, it is one
of the most impressive sights in Egypt, for everything about
it— its galleries, its mummy pits, its sarcophagi—are on so
vast a scale, and it has the darkness of Hades.
When a Cook's party visits Sakkara, the piece of desert
which contains all these monuments is a picture. The un-
saddled asses lie about the golden sand in every posture of
asinine content. Here you see the donkey at his club
munching green forage, where his master has been persuasive
enough to get his tourist to pay for some. The donkey-boys
cover their heads and go to sleep in the sand, looking like so
many corpses. And the Europeans, who are not chasing round
the monuments, sit about the verandahs of Mariette's bunga-
low, eating their lunch, or trying to get rid of the Arab touts
who are besieging them with little gods and mummy-beads.
The second time we went to Sakkara we did not return to
Ikdrashen. We made a bargain with our donkey-boys to take
us across the desert to the Pyramids of Ghizch, where we
could catch a tram to take us back to Cairo. The ride across
the desert was delightful. It took us past the lake and
Pyramids of Abusir ; and all the time, as our donkeys lazily