They seem to breathe out the
essence of a vanished domesticity.
Colossal are the statues of the
king, solid, powerful, and tremendous, boldly facing the world with
the calm of one who was thought, and possibly thought himself, to be
not much less than a deity. And upon each pedestal, shrinking
delicately back, was once a little wife. Some little wives are left.
They are delicious in their modesty. Each stands away from the king,
shyly, respectfully. Each is so small as to be below his down-
stretched arm. Each, with a surely furtive gesture, reaches out her
right hand, and attains the swelling calf of her noble husband's leg.
Plump are their little faces, but not bad-looking. One cannot pity the
king. Nor does one pity them. For these were not "Les desenchantees,"
the restless, sad-hearted women of an Eastern world that knows too
much. Their longings surely cannot have been very great. Their world
was probably bounded by the calf of Rameses's leg. That was "the far
horizon" of the little plump-faced wives.
The happy dancers and the humble wives, they always come before me
with the temple of Luxor - joy and discretion side by side. And with
them, to my ears, the two voices seem to come, muezzin and angelus
bell, mingling not in war, but peace. When I think of this temple, I
think of its joy and peace far less than of its majesty.
And yet it is majestic. Look at it, as I have often done, toward
sunset from the western bank of the Nile, or climb the mound beyond
its northern end, where stands the grand entrance, and you realize at
once its nobility and solemn splendor. From the /Loulia's/ deck it was
a procession of great columns; that was all. But the decorative effect
of these columns, soaring above the river and its vivid life, is fine.
By day all is turmoil on the river-bank. Barges are unloading,
steamers are arriving, and throngs of donkey-boys and dragomans go
down in haste to meet them. Servants run to and fro on errands from
the many dahabiyehs. Bathers leap into the brown waters. The native
craft pass by with their enormous sails outspread to catch the wind,
bearing serried mobs of men, and black-robed women, and laughing,
singing children. The boatmen of the hotels sing monotonously as they
lounge in the big, white boats waiting for travellers to Medinet-Abu,
to the Ramesseum, to Kurna, and the tombs. And just above them rise
the long lines of columns, ancient, tranquil, and remote - infinitely
remote, for all their nearness, casting down upon the sunlit gaiety
the long shadow of the past.
From the edge of the mound where stands the native village the effect
of the temple is much less decorative, but its detailed grandeur can
be better grasped from there; for from there one sees the great towers
of the propylon, two rows of mighty columns, the red granite Obelisk
of Rameses the great, and the black granite statues of the king.
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