DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11638#0031
AND LOWER EGYPT. 17 '
served to themselves that which passes in the eyes
of the religious for the most precious spot; this is a
grotto or low chapel, in which, as a pious tradi-
tion informs us, the Virgin lived some time with
the infant Jesus when they were obliged to flee
into Egypt. Such traditions as these are never
without their use to the monks. When the La-
tins wish to visit this chapel, they pay for their ad-
mission to the Cophts ; and if devotion carries
them so far as to celebrate mass there, the Cophtish
monks are paid for this complaisance by those of
the Catholic persuasion ; and these take care in
their turn to receive a recompense from those who
employ them.
You see at ancient Cairo the granaries of Jo-
seph, if the name of granaries can with propriety
be given to a vast space of ground surrounded
with walls twenty feet in height, and divided into
a sort of courts which have no roof, or any other
covering whatever, in which are deposited the
grains brought out of Upper Egypt for the reve-
nue, where they are the food of a multitude of
birds, and the receptacle of their ordure. The
walls of this enclosure are of a bad construction,
they have nothing in their appearance which an-
nounces an ancient building, and the love of the
marvellous alone could have attributed its eleva-
tion to the Patriarch Joseph.
vol. nr. c Another
served to themselves that which passes in the eyes
of the religious for the most precious spot; this is a
grotto or low chapel, in which, as a pious tradi-
tion informs us, the Virgin lived some time with
the infant Jesus when they were obliged to flee
into Egypt. Such traditions as these are never
without their use to the monks. When the La-
tins wish to visit this chapel, they pay for their ad-
mission to the Cophts ; and if devotion carries
them so far as to celebrate mass there, the Cophtish
monks are paid for this complaisance by those of
the Catholic persuasion ; and these take care in
their turn to receive a recompense from those who
employ them.
You see at ancient Cairo the granaries of Jo-
seph, if the name of granaries can with propriety
be given to a vast space of ground surrounded
with walls twenty feet in height, and divided into
a sort of courts which have no roof, or any other
covering whatever, in which are deposited the
grains brought out of Upper Egypt for the reve-
nue, where they are the food of a multitude of
birds, and the receptacle of their ordure. The
walls of this enclosure are of a bad construction,
they have nothing in their appearance which an-
nounces an ancient building, and the love of the
marvellous alone could have attributed its eleva-
tion to the Patriarch Joseph.
vol. nr. c Another