Among these
personalities Medinet-Abu is the warrior, standing like Mentu, with
the solar disk, and the two plumes erect above his head of a hawk,
firmly planted at the foot of the Theban mountains, ready to repel all
enemies, to beat back all assaults, strong and determined, powerful
and brutally serene.
XI
THE RAMESSEUM
"This, my lord, is the thinking-place of Rameses the Great."
So said Ibrahim Ayyad to me one morning - Ibrahim, who is almost as
prolific in the abrupt creation of peers as if he were a democratic
government.
I looked about me. We stood in a ruined hall with columns, architraves
covered with inscriptions, segments of flat roof. Here and there
traces of painting, dull-red, pale, ethereal blue - the "love-color" of
Egypt, as the Egyptians often call it - still adhered to the stone.
This hall, dignified, grand, but happy, was open on all sides to the
sun and air. From it I could see tamarisk- and acacia-trees, and far-
off shadowy mountains beyond the eastern verge of the Nile. And the
trees were still as carven things in an atmosphere that was a miracle
of clearness and of purity. Behind me, and near, the hard Libyan
mountains gleamed in the sun. Somewhere a boy was singing; and
suddenly his singing died away. And I thought of the "Lay of the
Harper" which is inscribed upon the tombs of Thebes - those tombs under
those gleaming mountains:
"For no one carries away his goods with him;
Yea, no one returns again who has gone thither."
It took the place of the song that had died as I thought of the great
king's glory; that he had been here, and had long since passed away.
"The thinking-place of Rameses the Great!"
"Suttinly."
"You must leave me alone here, Ibrahim."
I watched his gold-colored robe vanish into the gold of the sun
through the copper color of the columns. And I was quite alone in the
"thinking-place" of Rameses. It was a brilliant day, the sky dark
sapphire blue, without even the spectre of a cloud, or any airy,
vaporous veil; the heat already intense in the full sunshine, but
delicious if one slid into a shadow. I slid into a shadow, and sat
down on a warm block of stone. And the silence flowed upon me - the
silence of the Ramesseum.
Was /Horbehutet/, the winged disk, with crowned /uroei/, ever set up
above this temple's principal door to keep it from destruction? I do
not know. But, if he was, he failed perfectly to fulfil his mission.
And I am glad he failed. I am glad of the ruin that is here, glad that
walls have crumbled or been overthrown, that columns have been cast
down, and ceilings torn off from the pillars that supported them,
letting in the sky. I would have nothing different in the thinking-
place of Rameses.
Like a cloud, a great golden cloud, a glory impending that will not,
cannot, be dissolved into the ether, he loomed over the Egypt that is
dead, he looms over the Egypt of to-day. Everywhere you meet his
traces, everywhere you hear his name. You say to a tall young
Egyptian: "How big you are growing, Hassan!"
He answers, "Come back next year, my gentleman, and I shall be like
Rameses the Great."
Or you ask of the boatman who rows you, "How can you pull all day
against the current of the Nile?" And he smiles, and lifting his brown
arm, he says to you: "Look! I am strong as Rameses the great."
This familiar fame comes down through some twenty years. Carved upon
limestone and granite, now it seems engraven also on every Egyptian
heart that beats not only with the movement of shadoof, or is not
buried in the black soil fertilized by Hapi. Thus can inordinate
vanity prolong the true triumph of genius, and impress its own view of
itself upon the minds of millions. This Rameses is believed to be the
Pharaoh who oppressed the children of Israel.
As I sat in the Ramesseum that morning, I recalled his face - the face
of an artist and a dreamer rather than that of a warrior and
oppressor; Asiatic, handsome, not insensitive, not cruel, but subtle,
aristocratic, and refined. I could imagine it bending above the little
serpents of the sistrum as they lifted their melodious voices to bid
Typhon depart, or watching the dancing women's rhythmic movements, or
smiling half kindly, half with irony, upon the lovelorn maiden who
made her plaint:
"What is sweet to the mouth, to me is as the gall of birds;
Thy breath alone can comfort my heart."
And I could imagine it looking profoundly grave, not sad, among the
columns with their opening lotus flowers. For it is the hall of lotus
columns that Ibrahim calls the thinking-place of the king.
There is something both lovely and touching to me in the lotus columns
of Egypt, in the tall masses of stone opening out into flowers near
the sun. Near the sun! Yes; only that obvious falsehood will convey to
those who have not seen them the effect of some of the hypostyle
halls, the columns of which seem literally soaring to the sky. And
flowers of stone, you will say, rudely carved and rugged! That does
not matter. There was poetry in the minds that conceived them, in the
thought that directed the hands which shaped them and placed them
where they are. In Egypt perpetually one feels how the ancient
Egyptians loved the /Nymphaea lotus/, which is the white lotus, and
the /Nymphaea coeruloea/, the lotus that is blue.
