Encompassed By Gloomy Odors,
Assailed By The Clamour Of Gigantic Bats, Which Flew Furiously Among
The Monstrous Pillars Near A Roof Ominous As A Storm-Cloud, My Spirit
Was Haunted By The Sad Eyes Of Hathor, Which Gaze For Ever From That
Column In The First Hall.
Were they always like that?
Once that face
dwelt with a crowd of worship. And all the other faces have gone, and
all the glory has passed. And, like so many of the living, the goddess
has paid for her splendors. The pendulum swung, and where men adored,
men hated her - her the goddess of love and loveliness. And as the
human face changes when terror and sorrow come, I felt as if Hathor's
face of stone had changed upon its column, looking toward the Nile, in
obedience to the anguish in her heart; I felt as if Denderah were a
majestic house of grief. So I must always think of it, dark, tragic,
and superb. The Egyptians once believed that when death came to a man,
the soul of him, which they called the Ba, winged its way to the gods,
but that, moved by a sweet unselfishness, it returned sometimes to his
tomb, to give comfort to the poor, deserted mummy. Upon the lids of
sarcophagi it is sometimes represented as a bird, flying down to, or
resting upon, the mummy. As I went onward in the darkness, among the
columns, over the blocks of stone that form the pavements, seeing
vaguely the sacred boats upon the walls, Horus and Thoth, the king
before Osiris; as I mounted and descended with the priests to roof and
floor, I longed, instead of the clamour of the bats, to hear the light
flutter of the soft wings of the Ba of Hathor, flying from Paradise to
this sad temple of the desert to bring her comfort in the gloom.
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