DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12249#0330
29i THE PRESENT TENANTS OE THE TOMBS.
children, they are little more than pieces of bent wire.
And, indeed, swarms of little imps of both sexes are
constantly running about perfectly naked, with no-
thing artificial upon their bodies except a tolerable
coating of dirt, an iron anklet, and a string round the
neck sustaining a ball of leather, in which a sentence
from the Koran is rolled up as a safeguard against the
evil eye.
Finger rings, which are almost never wanting, are
coarse and clumsy, and although sometimes of silver,
are rarely of more valuable material than pieces of
coloured glass set roughly in brass.
It will, of course, be understood that the various
ornaments which I have mentioned are those in com-
mon and constant use by a peasant population. In
the towns, and particularly in Cairo, the inmates of
hareems are adorned with far more costly objects*;
and the wife even of a man whose means of subsistence
may amount to not more than a sum equivalent to forty
or fifty pounds sterling a year, will probably possess
jcAvellery equal in value to three, four, or five times her
husband's annual income, this being one of the ways of
storing realized funds. Even at Groornch, for aught
that I know, the shekh's, or one or two other families
may have some few richer decorations, used on the
gala occasions of marriages; but the ornaments which
I have described are parts of the invariable costume.
* In Mr. Lane's photographically accurate work several of these
richer ornaments may be seen figured and described.—Modem Egyptians,
ed. 1860, pp. 560, et seq.
children, they are little more than pieces of bent wire.
And, indeed, swarms of little imps of both sexes are
constantly running about perfectly naked, with no-
thing artificial upon their bodies except a tolerable
coating of dirt, an iron anklet, and a string round the
neck sustaining a ball of leather, in which a sentence
from the Koran is rolled up as a safeguard against the
evil eye.
Finger rings, which are almost never wanting, are
coarse and clumsy, and although sometimes of silver,
are rarely of more valuable material than pieces of
coloured glass set roughly in brass.
It will, of course, be understood that the various
ornaments which I have mentioned are those in com-
mon and constant use by a peasant population. In
the towns, and particularly in Cairo, the inmates of
hareems are adorned with far more costly objects*;
and the wife even of a man whose means of subsistence
may amount to not more than a sum equivalent to forty
or fifty pounds sterling a year, will probably possess
jcAvellery equal in value to three, four, or five times her
husband's annual income, this being one of the ways of
storing realized funds. Even at Groornch, for aught
that I know, the shekh's, or one or two other families
may have some few richer decorations, used on the
gala occasions of marriages; but the ornaments which
I have described are parts of the invariable costume.
* In Mr. Lane's photographically accurate work several of these
richer ornaments may be seen figured and described.—Modem Egyptians,
ed. 1860, pp. 560, et seq.