More Than Three Thousand Years Old,
They Look Less Eternal Than The Sphinx.
Like them, the Sphinx is
waiting, but with a greater purpose.
The Sphinx reduces man really to
nothingness. The Colossi leave him some remnants of individuality. One
can conceive of Strabo and AElius Gallus, of Hadrian and Sabina, of
others who came over the sunlit land to hear the unearthly song in the
dawn, being of some - not much, but still of some - importance here.
Before the Sphinx no one is important. But in the distance of the
plain the Colossi shed a real magic of calm and solemn personality,
and subtly seem to mingle their spirit with the flat, green world, so
wide, so still, so fecund, and so peaceful; with the soft airs that
are surely scented with an eternal springtime, and with the light that
the morning rains down on wheat and clover, on Indian corn and barley,
and on brown men laboring, who, perhaps, from the patience of the
Colossi in repose have drawn a patience in labor that has in it
something not less sublime.
From the Colossi one goes onward toward the trees and the mountains,
and very soon one comes to the edge of that strange and fascinating
strip of barren land which is strewn with temples and honeycombed with
tombs. The sun burns down on it. The heat seems thrown back upon it by
the wall of tawny mountains that bounds it on the west. It is dusty,
it is arid; it is haunted by swarms of flies, by the guardians of the
ruins, and by men and boys trying to sell enormous scarabs and
necklaces and amulets, made yesterday, and the day before, in the
manufactory of Kurna. From many points it looks not unlike a strangely
prolonged rubbish-heap in which busy giants have been digging with
huge spades, making mounds and pits, caverns and trenches, piling up
here a monstrous heap of stones, casting down there a mighty statue.
But how it fascinates! Of curse one knows what it means. One knows
that on this strip of land Naville dug out at Deir-el-Bahari the
temple of Mentu-hotep, and discovered later, in her shrine, Hathor,
the cow-goddess, with the lotus-plants streaming from her sacred
forehead to her feet; that long before him Mariette here brought to
the light at Drah-abu'l-Neggah the treasures of kings of the twelfth
and thirteenth dynasties; that at the foot of those tiger-colored
precipices Theodore M. Davis the American found the sepulcher of Queen
Hatshepsu, the Queen Elizabeth of the old Egyptian world, and, later,
the tomb of Yuaa and Thuaa, the parents of Queen Thiy, containing
mummy-cases covered with gold, jars of oil and wine, gold, silver, and
alabaster boxes, a bed decorated with gilded ivory a chair with gilded
plaster reliefs, chairs of state, and a chariot; that here Maspero,
Victor Loret, Brugsch Bey, and other patient workers gave to the world
tombs that had been hidden and unknown for centuries; that there to
the north is the temple of Kurna, and over there the Ramesseum; that
those rows of little pillars close under the mountain, and looking
strangely modern, are the pillars of Hatshepsu's temple, which bears
upon its walls the pictures of the expedition to the historic land of
Punt; that the kings were buried there, and there the queens and the
princes of the vanished dynasties; that beyond to the west is the
temple of Deir-el-Medinet with its judgment of the dead; that here by
the native village is Medinet-Abu. One knows that, and so the
imagination is awake, ready to paint the lily and to gild the beaten
gold. But even if one did not know, I think one would be fascinated.
This turmoil of sun-baked earth and rock, grey, yellow, pink, orange,
and red, awakens the curiosity, summons the love of the strange,
suggests that it holds secrets to charm the souls of men.
X
MEDINET-ABU
At the entrance to the temple of Medinet-Abu, near the small groups of
palms and the few brown houses, often have I turned and looked back
across the plain before entering through the first beautiful doorway,
to see the patient backs and right sides of the Colossi, the far-off,
dreamy mountains beyond Karnak and the Nile. And again, when I have
entered and walked a little distance, I have looked back at the almost
magical picture framed in the doorway; at the bottom of the picture a
layer of brown earth, then a strip of sharp green - the cultivated
ground - then a blur of pale yellow, then a darkness of trees, and just
the hint of a hill far, very far away. And always, in looking, I have
thought of the "Sposalizio" of Raphael in the Brera at Milan, of the
tiny dream of blue country framed by the temple doorway beyond the
Virgin and Saint Joseph. The doorways of the temples of Egypt are very
noble, and nowhere have I been more struck by their nobility than in
Medinet-Abu. Set in huge walls of massive masonry, which rise slightly
above them on each side, with a projecting cornice, in their
simplicity they look extraordinarily classical, in their sobriety
mysterious, and in their great solidity quite wonderfully elegant. And
they always suggest to me that they are giving access to courts and
chambers which still, even in our times, are dedicated to secret cults
- to the cults of Isis, of Hathor, and of Osiris.
Close to the right of the front of Medinet-Abu there are trees covered
with yellow flowers; beyond are fields of doura. Behind the temple is
a sterility which makes one think of metal. A great calm enfolds the
place. The buildings are of the same color as the Colossi. When I
speak of the buildings, I include the great temple, the pavilion of
Rameses III., and the little temple, which together may be said to
form Medinet-Abu.
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