Having obtained all my letters and dispatches, as well from the patriarch as from the Bey, I set about preparing for my journey.
Cairo is supposed to be the ancient Babylon[75], at least part of it. It is in lat. 30° 21´ 30´´ north, and in long. 31° 16´ east, from Greenwich. I cannot assent to what is said of it, that it is built in form of a crescent. You ride round it, gardens and all, in three hours and a quarter, upon an ass, at an ordinary pace, which will be above three miles an hour.
The Calish[76], or Amnis Trajanus, passes through the length of it, and fills the lake called Birket el Hadje, the first supply of water the pilgrims get in their tiresome journey to Mecca.
On the other side of the Nile, from Cairo, is Geeza, so called, as some Arabian authors say, from there having been a bridge there; Geeza signifies the Passage.
About eleven miles beyond this are the Pyramids, called the Pyramids of Geeza, the description of which is in every body’s hands. Engravings of them had been published in England, with plans of them upon a large scale, two years before I came into Egypt, and were shewn me by Mr Davidson consul of Nice, whose drawings they were.
He it was too that discovered the small chamber above the landing-place, after you ascend through the long gallery of the great Pyramid on your left hand, and he left the ladder by which he ascended, for the satisfaction of other travellers. But there is nothing in the chamber further worthy of notice, than its having escaped discovery so many ages.
I think it more extraordinary still, that, for such a time as these Pyramids have been known, travellers were content rather to follow the report of the ancients, than to make use of their own eyes.
Yet it has been a constant belief, that the stones composing these Pyramids have been brought from the [77]Libyan mountains, though any one who will take the pains to remove the sand on the south side, will find the solid rock there hewn into steps.
And in the roof of the large chamber, where the Sarcophagus stands, as also in the top of the roof of the gallery, as you go up into that chamber, you see large fragments of the rock, affording an unanswerable proof, that those Pyramids were once huge rocks, standing where they now are; that some of them, the most proper from their form, were chosen for the body of the Pyramid, and the others hewn into steps, to serve for the superstructure, and the exterior parts of them.