The Little Obelisk Beyond The
Last Sphinx On The Left Began To Change, As In Egypt All Things Change
At Sunset - Pylon And Dusty Bush, Colossus And Baked Earth Hovel,
Sycamore, And Tamarisk, Statue And Trotting Donkey.
It looked like a
mysterious finger pointed in warning toward the sky.
The Nile began to
gleam. Upon its steel and silver torches of amber flame were lighted.
The Libyan mountains became spectral beyond the tombs of the kings.
The tiny, rough cupolas that mark a grave close to the sphinxes, in
daytime dingy and poor, now seemed made of some splendid material
worthy to roof the mummy of a king. Far off a pool of the Nile, that
from here looked like a little palm-fringed lake, turned ruby-red. The
flags from the standard of Luxor, among the minarets, flew out
straight against a sky that was pale as a primrose almost cold in its
amazing delicacy.
I turned, and behind me the moon was risen. Already its silver rays
fell upon the ruins of Karnak; upon the thickets of lotus columns;
upon solitary gateways that now give entrance to no courts; upon the
sacred lake, with its reeds, where the black water-fowl were asleep;
upon sloping walls, shored up by enormous stanchions, like ribs of
some prehistoric leviathan; upon small chambers; upon fallen blocks of
masonry, fragments of architrave and pavement, of capital and cornice;
and upon the people of Karnak - those fascinating people who still
cling to their habitation in the ruins, faithful through misfortune,
affectionate with a steadfastness that defies the cruelty of Time;
upon the little, lonely white sphinx with the woman's face and the
downward-sloping eyes full of sleepy seduction; upon Rameses II., with
the face of a kindly child, not of a king; upon the Sphinx, bereft of
its companion, which crouches before the kiosk of Taharga, the King of
Ethiopia; upon those two who stand together as if devoted, yet by
their attitudes seem to express characters diametrically opposed, grey
men and vivid, the one with folded arms calling to Peace, the other
with arms stretched down in a gesture of crude determination,
summoning War, as if from the underworld; upon the granite foot and
ankle in the temple of Rameses III., which in their perfection, like
the headless Victory in Paris, and the Niobide Chiaramonti in the
Vatican, suggest a great personality that once met with is not to be
forgotten:
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