Sonnini de Manoncourt, Charles Nicolas Sigisbert: Travels in upper and lower Egypt (Band 2) (London, 1807)

and lower egypt.

325

CHAP. XXXVI.

Marriages—Circumcision—Commerce—Nubian ca-
ravans—Black slaves—Nubian domestics—Scor-
pions—Ancient statue—Pyramids—Mummies'well
at Sakkara—Bol/i, bayatte, and band, fishes of
the Nile—Titlarks.

Beside the little exhibitions, the sight of which
I enjoyed from my windows, and of which the
canal, become a frequented thoroughfare, was
the theatre, the various processions attending
civil or religious ceremonies, which sometimes
passed by the entrance of the country of the
Franks, contributed to the amusement of the
melancholy and retired life I was obliged to lead at
Cairo. Among the most pompous and noisy of
these processions were those attendant on weddings.
As soon as the preliminaries of the marriage are
settled, whenever the bride elect stirs abroad she
is attended by a numerojs company. Preceded by
drums and hautbois, she marches slowlv under a
sort of canopy, closed on aU sides by squares of
stuff, and is followed and surrounded by a nume-
rous crowd. The first time of her going out is to
the bath, where she is deprived of the mysterious

y 3 veil