Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

18

CITIES OF EGYPT.

Egyptian history, the one large historical incident in the
reign of the first king, who emerges a real man from the
shadowland which the Egyptians called the reign of the
gods. Let us try and span in our minds the vast
interval which has passed since the days of Menes.
Look once more with me from the Citadel of Cairo west-
ward, and beneath our feet is spread out the greatest of
Eastern cities, Masr the Victorious, splendid yet with the
fast-decaying mosques of the Moslem rule, so numerous
that they foil the attempt to count them. In a series of
successive styles, the Eastern counterparts of the changes
of Western art, you pass in time through the base art of
the Turkish rule, to group after group, or memorial after
memorial, up to the earliest and greatest of all, whose
vast court, surrounded by colonnades with pointed arches,
marks the first stage in Arab art. A thousand years
have passed since it was built. Two centuries more take
us to the Arab conquest. This art, nobly massive or
delicately sumptuous, has passed through its phases
since, while the like changes have worked in the hearts
and minds of men, while race after race, dynasty after
dynasty, has ruled over Egypt. Yet this is but a mere
fragment of the time since Menes reigned. Memphis