I Came To It By The Desert, And Descended To Shellal - Shellal With Its
Railway-Station, Its Workmen's Buildings, Its
Tents, its dozens of
screens to protect the hewers of stone from the burning rays of the
sun, its bustle
Of people, of overseers, engineers, and workmen,
Egyptian, Nubian, Italian, and Greek. The silence I had known was
gone, though the desert lay all around - the great sands, the great
masses of granite that look as if patiently waiting to be fashioned
into obelisks, and sarcophagi, and statues. But away there across the
bend of the river, dominating the ugly rummage of this intrusive
beehive of human bees, sheer grace overcoming strength both of nature
and human nature, rose the fabled "Pharaoh's Bed"; gracious, tender,
from Shellal most delicately perfect, and glowing with pale gold
against the grim background of the hills on the western shore. It
seemed to plead for mercy, like something feminine threatened with
outrage, to protest through its mere beauty, as a woman might protest
by an attitude, against further desecration.
And in the distance the Nile roared through the many gates of the dam,
making answer to the protest.
What irony was in this scene! In the old days of Egypt Philae was
sacred ground, was the Nile-protected home of sacerdotal mysteries,
was a veritable Mecca to the believers in Osiris, to which it was
forbidden even to draw near without permission. The ancient Egyptians
swore solemnly "By him who sleeps in Philae." Now they sometimes swear
angrily at him who wakes in, or at least by, Philae, and keeps them
steadily going at their appointed tasks.
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