Marriage Ceremony, Cairo

‎We have remained in Egypt with the holy family long enough not simply to give representations of the tombs and monuments they saw nearly two thousand years ago, but also to give pictures and descriptions of customs and ceremonies and structures which have grown out of the civilization in the midst of which they spent the time of the flight. The Egyptian girl is generally married in her twelfth or thirteenth, and sometimes as early as her tenth year. Before the wedding, the bride is conducted in gala attire, and with great ceremony to the bath. The procession is called “Zeffet et Hammam.” Musicians with hautboys and drums head the procession. Pairs of married friends and relatives of the bride follow, and after these come a number of young girls. The bride is usually enveloped from head to foot in a cashmere shawl. On the head, she wears a small cap or crown of pasteboard. The procession is followed by another body of musicians. Hideous shrieks of joy greet the bride by women of the lower classes. The bride is then conducted to the house of her husband with the same formalities. He has not seen his bride until the wedding day. The match has been made by a relative or by a professional matchmaker. He is required to pay a bridal portion. Egyptian women in early life are generally erect and graceful. They color their eyelashes and eyelids dark, and their fingers and toenails a brownish yellow. Miss Edwards thus describes a wedding procession: “Here we fall in with a wedding procession consisting of a crowd of men, a band and some three or four hired carriages full of veiled women, one of whom was pointed out as the bride. The bridegroom walks in the midst of the men who seemed to be teasing him, opposing his progress; while high above the laughter, the shouting, the jingle of tambourines and the thrumming ‘darabukkehs’ was heard the shrill squeal of some instrument that sounded exactly like a bagpipe.”