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Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
Lovecraft, Howard Phillips
Published:
1924
Categorie(s):
Fiction, Horror, Short Stories
Source:
http://en.wikisource.org
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About Lovecraft:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of fantasy, horror
and science fiction. He is notable for blending elements of science fiction
and horror; and for popularizing "cosmic horror": the notion that some
concepts, entities or experiences are barely comprehensible to human
minds, and those who delve into such risk their sanity. Lovecraft has be-
come a cult figure in the horror genre and is noted as creator of the
"Cthulhu Mythos," a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a
"pantheon" of nonhuman creatures, as well as the famed Necronomicon,
a grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works typically had a
tone of "cosmic pessimism," regarding mankind as insignificant and
powerless in the universe. Lovecraft's readership was limited during his
life, and his works, particularly early in his career, have been criticized as
occasionally ponderous, and for their uneven quality. Nevertheless,
Lovecraft’s reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he
is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers
of the 20th Century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though of-
ten indirect. Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Lovecraft:
•
(1926)
•
(1931)
•
(1916)
•
(1928)
•
(1926)
•
(1934)
•
(1931)
•
(1927)
•
(1936)
•
(1930)
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Mystery attracts mystery. Ever since the wide appearance of my name as
a performer of unexplained feats, I have encountered strange narratives
and events which my calling has led people to link with my interests and
activities. Some of these have been trivial and irrelevant, some deeply
dramatic and absorbing, some productive of weird and perilous experi-
ences and some involving me in extensive scientific and historical re-
search. Many of these matters I have told and shall continue to tell very
freely; but there is one of which I speak with great reluctance, and which
I am now relating only after a session of grilling persuasion from the
publishers of this magazine, who had heard vague rumors of it from oth-
er members of my family.
The hitherto guarded subject pertains to my non-professional visit to
Egypt fourteen years ago, and has been avoided by me for several reas-
ons. For one thing, I am averse to exploiting certain unmistakably actual
facts and conditions obviously unknown to the myriad tourists who
throng about the pyramids and apparently secreted with much diligence
by the authorities at Cairo, who cannot be wholly ignorant of them. For
another thing, I dislike to recount an incident in which my own fantastic
imagination must have played so great a part. What I saw - or thought I
saw - certainly did not take place; but is rather to be viewed as a result of
my then recent readings in Egyptology, and of the speculations anent
this theme which my environment naturally prompted. These imaginat-
ive stimuli, magnified by the excitement of an actual event terrible
enough in itself, undoubtedly gave rise to the culminating horror of that
grotesque night so long past.
In January, 1910, I had finished a professional engagement in England
and signed a contract for a tour of Australian theatres. A liberal time be-
ing allowed for the trip, I determined to make the most of it in the sort of
travel which chiefly interests me; so accompanied by my wife I drifted
pleasantly down the Continent and embarked at Marseilles on the P & O
Steamer Malwa, bound for Port Said. From that point I proposed to visit
the principal historical localities of lower Egypt before leaving finally for
Australia.
The voyage was an agreeable one, and enlivened by many of the
amusing incidents which befall a magical performer apart from his work.
I had intended, for the sake of quiet travel, to keep my name a secret; but
was goaded into betraying myself by a fellow-magician whose anxiety to
astound the passengers with ordinary tricks tempted me to duplicate
and exceed his feats in a manner quite destructive of my incognito. I
mention this because of its ultimate effect - an effect I should have
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foreseen before unmasking to a shipload of tourists about to scatter
throughout the Nile valley. What it did was to herald my identity
wherever I subsequently went, and deprive my wife and me of all the
placid inconspicuousness we had sought. Traveling to seek curiosities, I
was often forced to stand inspection as a sort of curiosity myself!
We had come to Egypt in search of the picturesque and the mystically
impressive, but found little enough when the ship edged up to Port Said
and discharged its passengers in small boats. Low dunes of sand, bob-
bing buoys in shallow water, and a drearily European small town with
nothing of interest save the great De Lesseps statue, made us anxious to
get to something more worth our while. After some discussion we de-
cided to proceed at once to Cairo and the Pyramids, later going to Alex-
andria for the Australian boat and for whatever Greco-Roman sights that
ancient metropolis might present.
The railway journey was tolerable enough, and consumed only four
hours and a half. We saw much of the Suez Canal, whose route we fol-
lowed as far as Ismailiya and later had a taste of Old Egypt in our
glimpse of the restored fresh-water canal of the Middle Empire. Then at
last we saw Cairo glimmering through the growing dusk; a winkling
constellation which became a blaze as we halted at the great Gare
Centrale.
But once more disappointment awaited us, for all that we beheld was
European save the costumes and the crowds. A prosaic subway led to a
square teeming with carriages, taxicabs, and trolley-cars and gorgeous
with electric lights shining on tall buildings; whilst the very theatre
where I was vainly requested to play and which I later attended as a
spectator, had recently been renamed the 'American Cosmograph'. We
stopped at Shepheard's Hotel, reached in a taxi that sped along broad,
smartly built-up streets; and amidst the perfect service of its restaurant,
elevators and generally Anglo-American luxuries the mysterious East
and immemorial past seemed very far away.
The next day, however, precipitated us delightfully into the heart of
the Arabian Nights atmosphere; and in the winding ways and exotic sky-
line of Cairo, the Bagdad of Harun-al-Rashid seemed to live again.
Guided by our Baedeker, we had struck east past the Ezbekiyeh Gardens
along the Mouski in quest of the native quarter, and were soon in the
hands of a clamorous cicerone who - notwithstanding later develop-
ments - was assuredly a master at his trade.
Not until afterward did I see that I should have applied at the hotel for
a licensed guide. This man, a shaven, peculiarly hollow-voiced and
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relatively cleanly fellow who looked like a Pharaoh and called himself
'Abdul Reis el Drogman' appeared to have much power over others of
his kind; though subsequently the police professed not to know him, and
to suggest that reis is merely a name for any person in authority, whilst
'Drogman' is obviously no more than a clumsy modification of the word
for a leader of tourist parties - dragoman.
Abdul led us among such wonders as we had before only read and
dreamed of. Old Cairo is itself a story-book and a dream - labyrinths of
narrow alleys redolent of aromatic secrets; Arabesque balconies and ori-
els nearly meeting above the cobbled streets; maelstroms of Oriental
traffic with strange cries, cracking whips, rattling carts, jingling money,
and braying donkeys; kaleidoscopes of polychrome robes, veils, turbans,
and tarbushes; water-carriers and dervishes, dogs and cats, soothsayers
and barbers; and over all the whining of blind beggars crouched in al-
coves, and the sonorous chanting of muezzins from minarets limned del-
icately against a sky of deep, unchanging blue.
The roofed, quieter bazaars were hardly less alluring. Spice, perfume,
incense beads, rugs, silks, and brass - old Mahmoud Suleiman squats
cross-legged amidst his gummy bottles while chattering youths pulver-
ize mustard in the hollowed-out capital of an ancient classic column - a
Roman Corinthian, perhaps from neighboring Heliopolis, where Augus-
tus stationed one of his three Egyptian legions. Antiquity begins to
mingle with exoticism. And then the mosques and the museum - we saw
them all, and tried not to let our Arabian revel succumb to the darker
charm of Pharaonic Egypt which the museum's priceless treasures
offered. That was to be our climax, and for the present we concentrated
on the mediaeval Saracenic glories of the Califs whose magnificent tomb-
mosques form a glittering faery necropolis on the edge of the Arabian
Desert.
At length Abdul took us along the Sharia Mohammed Ali to the an-
cient mosque of Sultan Hassan, and the tower-flanked Babel-Azab, bey-
ond which climbs the steep-walled pass to the mighty citadel that Salad-
in himself built with the stones of forgotten pyramids. It was sunset
when we scaled that cliff, circled the modern mosque of Mohammed Ali,
and looked down from the dizzy parapet over mystic Cairo - mystic
Cairo all golden with its carven domes, its ethereal minarets and its flam-
ing gardens.
Far over the city towered the great Roman dome of the new museum;
and beyond it - across the cryptic yellow Nile that is the mother of eons
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