The New Year found PUNCH on his way to India, to join the Prince incog. He halted en route to give a word of counsel to his friend CAVE at Cairo.
“Shall PUNCH come within sight of the Pyramids, and not climb the biggest? On my eyes be it!” cried the KHEDIVE, as he lighted his last cigarette after a snug dinner given to his Great Guest and his new Finance Commissioner - whom he persists in calling “Adullam”, because to him, as to that Cave of old, resort those who are in debt and difficulty and discontent.
Straightway an escort of Pashas and Beys, Agas and Effendees, an army of Arabs - horse and man - dragomen and khavasses, cooks and chiboukjees - was at MR. PUNCH’S orders. But with a majestic wave of the hand, at once gracious and unmistakeable, that potentate dismissed the baksheesh-breathing brood.
“When PUNCH visit’s a poor country, ‘tis to make it richer, not poorer; and when PUNCH meets a Pyramid, it must be alone!” So he went, and gazed, and climbed - with no escort of clamorous touts or howling donkey-drivers to mar the solemnity of that great encounter between the mightiest of mirth-makers and the most majestic of monuments. Unaided, except by the tail of Toby, he climbed the highest of those sepulchral giants, and stood at last on the platform that forms its apex - awe-struck, awe-striking, and - save for his faithful Toby, alone!
Morning had not yet broken. The sun was just peeping above the eastern horizon, little expecting on what a guest his eye would fall. Above PUNCH’S head still twinkled the stars; below him gleamed the Desert sands through the mist of the Nile.
But PUNCH questioned not the Stars of the Future they will not reveal; nor the Sands of the Past they hold buried. His eye followed the opalescent winding of the New Cut - not that which binds the transporting roads of Waterloo and Blackfriars, but that which interpontine, links the roadsteads of Alexandria and Suez - the Canal which LORD PALMERSTON did his best to burke, and M. LESSEPS, his better to plan, preach up, finance and finish - the Canal which swallowed a great many thousands of Egyptian fellahs’ lives, and more thousands of European fellows’ capital - the Canal which drained the KHEDIVE’S spare cash, and opened a new road to India - the Canal of Good Hope, vice the Cape of ditto superseded… …
Upon that platform, from which Sixty-Eight Volumes of PUNCH, arm-in-arm with Forty Centuries of Time, were now contemplating the world at their feet, save MR. PUNCH himself, was none of articulate-speaking mortals who could have put the question. Was it PUNCH’S thought made audible in the stillness of that weird altitude? Was it the Mummy of KING CHEOPS - still sarcophagused in the labyrinthine recesses of the star-y-pointing Pyramid, to mock generations of Egyptologists past, present and to come - that had all at once found a tongue within his desiccated jaws? Was it Toby, suddenly revealed as Anubis, his ancestral Egyptian god, with his bark translated by the genius loci into the intelligible oracle?
“Own the coup a master-stroke, worthy of our great forefather MOSES, who first taught Jews the spoiling of Egyptians.” They were the same accents, but this time with a dry chuckle… And then PUNCH knew it was the voice of the Great Asian Mystery - the utterance of the riddling oracle of Semitic wisdom - the speech of the inscrutable, immutable, unfathomable SPHINX. Yes, they were the great granite lips of the Colossal Head - which reared its impassive brow and stony eye-balls from the waves of the sand-sea far below - that sent forth that mysterious music. And PUNCH braced himself for the encounter; for he knew that the Inexhaustible Fountain of Double Acrostics was about to be let loose upon him, and that, like OEDIPUS, he must answer aright, or die. But asking questions, especially of the SPHINX, is easier than answering them; so PUNCH determined to put in his cross-fire of interrogatories, before the Great Fountain-head of Mystery could flash forth its riddle…
And so the Great Riddle of the SPHINX was answered - and the SPHINX can smile to see that her seed is not degenerate - that her sons still know, and teach by example, that there are roads which it may be wise men’s while to pave with gold - .
“And what is more precious even than gold, O SPHINX!” shouted PUNCH. .. And with a majestic motion he hurled down to the Desert sands below, from which straightway burst forth a fountain of laughing waters -
Bibliography
“Preface.” Punch, or the London Charivari 69 (January 8, 1876): iii-iv.
Last modified 30 April 2021