No longer able to
see there what she was, she will not see there what she has become."
My Hathor of Denderah, the sad-eyed dweller on the column in the first
hall, had she a mirror, would surely hang it, as Lais hung hers, at
the foot of the pedestal of the Egyptian Aphrodite; had she a veil,
would surely cover the face that, solitary among the cruel evidences
of Christian ferocity, silently says to the gloomy courts, to the
shining desert and the Nile:
"Once I was worshipped, but I am worshipped no longer."
VII
KARNAK
Buildings have personalities. Some fascinate as beautiful women
fascinate; some charm as a child may charm, naively, simply, but
irresistibly. Some, like conquerors, men of blood and iron, without
bowels of mercy, pitiless and determined, strike awe to the soul,
mingled with the almost gasping admiration that power wakes in man.
Some bring a sense of heavenly peace to the heart. Some, like certain
temples of the Greeks, by their immense dignity, speak to the nature
almost as music speaks, and change anxiety to trust. Some tug at the
hidden chords of romance and rouse a trembling response. Some seem to
be mingling their tears with the tears of the dead; some their
laughter with the laughter of the living. The traveller, sailing up
the Nile, holds intercourse with many of these different
personalities. He is sad, perhaps, as I was with Denderah; dreams in
the sun with Abydos; muses with Luxor beneath the little tapering
minaret whence the call to prayer drops down to be answered by the
angelus bell; falls into a reverie in the "thinking place" of Rameses
II., near to the giant that was once the mightiest of all Egyptian
statues; eagerly wakes to the fascination of record at Deir-el-Bahari;
worships in Edfu; by Philae is carried into a realm of delicate magic,
where engineers are not. Each prompts him to a different mood, each
wakes in his nature a different response. And at Karnak what is he?
What mood enfolds him there? Is he sad, thoughtful, awed, or gay?
An old lady in a helmet, and other things considered no doubt by her
as suited to Egypt rather than to herself, remarked in my hearing,
with a Scotch accent and an air of summing up, that Karnak was "very
nice indeed." There she was wrong - Scotch and wrong. Karnak is not
nice. No temple that I have seen upon the banks of the Nile is nice.
And Karnak cannot be summed up in a phrase or in many phrases; cannot
even be adequately described in few or many words.
Long ago I saw it lighted up with colored fires one night for the
Khedive, its ravaged magnificence tinted with rose and livid green and
blue, its pylons glittering with artificial gold, its population of
statues, its obelisks, and columns, changing from things of dreams to
things of day, from twilight marvels to shadowy specters, and from
these to hard and piercing realities at the cruel will of pigmies
crouching by its walls.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 16 of 71
Words from 7810 to 8334
of 36756
