And at dawn one wakes
with hope and hears the songs of the dawn; and at noon one dreams of
the happiness to come; and at sunset one is swept away on the gold
into the heart of the golden world; and at night one looks at the
stars, and each star is a twinkling hope. Soft are the airs of Luxor;
there is no harshness in the wind that stirs the leaves of the palms.
And the land is steeped in light. From Luxor one goes with regret. One
returns to it with joy on dancing feet.
One day I sat in the temple, in the huge court with the great double
row of columns that stands on the banks of the Nile and looks so
splendid from it. The pale brown of the stone became almost yellow in
the sunshine. From the river, hidden from me stole up the songs of the
boatmen. Nearer at hand I heard pigeons cooing, cooing in the sun, as
if almost too glad, and seeking to manifest their gladness. Behind me,
through the columns, peeped some houses of the village: the white home
of Ibrahim Ayyad, the perfect dragoman, grandson of Mustapha Aga, who
entertained me years ago, and whose house stood actually within the
precincts of the temple; houses of other fortunate dwellers in Luxor
whose names I do not know. For the village of Luxor crowds boldly
about the temple, and the children play in the dust almost at the foot
of the obelisks and statues. High on a brown hump of earth a buffalo
stood alone, languishing serenely in the sun, gazing at me through the
columns with light eyes that were full of a sort of folly of
contentment. Some goats tripped by, brown against the brown stone - the
dark brown earth of the native houses. Intimate life was here,
striking the note of coziness of Luxor. Here was none of the sadness
and the majesty of Denderah. Grand are the ruins of Luxor, noble is
the line of columns that boldly fronts the Nile, but Time has given
them naked to the air and to the sun, to children and to animals.
Instead of bats, the pigeons fly about them. There is no dreadful
darkness in their sanctuaries. Before them the life of the river,
behind them the life of the village flows and stirs. Upon them looks
down the Minaret of Abu Haggag; and as I sat in the sunshine, the
warmth of which began to lessen, I saw upon its lofty circular balcony
the figure of the muezzin. He leaned over, bending toward the temple
and the statues of Rameses II. and the happy dancers on the wall. He
opened his lips and cried to them:
"God is great. God is great . . . I bear witness that there is no god
but God. . . . I bear witness that Mohammed is the Apostle of God.
. . . Come to prayer! Come to prayer! . . . God is great. God is
great. There is no god but God."
He circled round the minaret. He cried to the Nile. He cried to the
Colossi sitting in their plain, and to the yellow precipices of the
mountains of Libya. He cried to Egypt:
"Come to prayer! Come to prayer! There is no god but God. There is no
god but God."
The days of the gods were dead, and their ruined temple echoed with
the proclamation of the one god of the Moslem world. "Come to prayer!
Come to prayer!" The sun began to sink.
"Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me."
The voice of the muezzin died away. There was a silence; and then, as
if in answer to the cry from the minaret, I heard the chime of the
angelus bell from the Catholic church of Luxor.
"Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark."
I sat very still. The light was fading; all the yellow was fading,
too, from the columns and the temple walls. I stayed till it was dark;
and with the dark the old gods seemed to resume their interrupted
sway. And surely they, too, called to prayer. For do not these ruins
of old Egypt, like the muezzin upon the minaret, like the angelus bell
in the church tower, call one to prayer in the night? So wonderful are
they under stars and moon that they stir the fleshly and the worldly
desires that lie like drifted leaves about the reverence and the
aspiration that are the hidden core of the heart. And it is released
from its burden; and it awakes and prays.
Amun-Ra, Mut, and Khuns, the king of the gods, his wife, mother of
gods, and the moon god, were the Theban triad to whom the holy
buildings of Thebes on the two banks of the Nile were dedicated; and
this temple of Luxor, the "House of Amun in the Southern Apt," was
built fifteen hundred years before Christ by Amenhotep III. Rameses
II., that vehement builder, added to it immensely. One walks among his
traces when one walks in Luxor. And here, as at Denderah, Christians
have let loose the fury that should have had no place in their
religion. Churches for their worship they made in different parts of
the temple, and when they were not praying, they broke in pieces
statues, defaced bas-reliefs, and smashed up shrines with a vigor
quite as great as that displayed in preservation by Christians of
to-day. Now time has called a truce. Safe are the statues that are
left. And day by day two great religions, almost as if in happy
brotherly love, send forth their summons by the temple walls. And just
beyond those walls, upon the hill, there is a Coptic church. Peace
reigns in happy Luxor. The lion lies down with the lamb, and the
child, if it will, may harmlessly put its hand into the cockatrice's
den.
