Rudder of your boat; and your black donkey-boy prays behind a red rock
in the sand; and your camel-man prays when you are resting in the
noontide, watching the far-off quivering mirage, lost in some wayward
dream.
And must you not pray, too, when you enter certain temples where once
strange gods were worshipped in whom no man now believes?
There is one temple on the Nile which seems to embrace in its arms all
the worship of the past; to be full of prayers and solemn praises; to
be the holder, the noble keeper, of the sacred longings, of the
unearthly desires and aspirations, of the dead. It is the temple of
Edfu. From all the other temples it stands apart. It is the temple of
inward flame, of the secret soul of man; of that mystery within us
that is exquisitely sensitive, and exquisitely alive; that has
longings it cannot tell, and sorrows it dare not whisper, and loves it
can only love.
To Horus it was dedicated - hawk-headed Horus - the son of Isis and
Osiris, who was crowned with many crowns, who was the young Apollo of
the old Egyptian world. But though I know this, I am never able to
associate Edfu with Horus, that child wearing the side-lock - when he
is not hawk-headed in his solar aspect - that boy with his finger in
his mouth, that youth who fought against Set, murderer of his father.
Edfu, in its solemn beauty, in its perfection of form, seems to me to
pass into a region altogether beyond identification with the worship
of any special deity, with particular attributes, perhaps with
particular limitations; one who can be graven upon walls, and upon
architraves and pillars painted in brilliant colors; one who can
personally pursue a criminal, like some policeman in the street; even
one who can rise upon the world in the visible glory of the sun. To
me, Edfu must always represent the world-worship of "the Hidden One";
not Amun, god of the dead, fused with Ra, with Amsu, or with Khnum:
but that other "Hidden One," who is God of the happy hunting-ground of
savages, with whom the Buddhist strives to merge his strange serenity
of soul; who is adored in the "Holy Places" by the Moslem, and lifted
mystically above the heads of kneeling Catholics in cathedrals dim
with incense, and merrily praised with the banjo and the trumpet in
the streets of black English cities; who is asked for children by
longing women, and for new dolls by lisping babes; whom the atheist
denies in the day, and fears in the darkness of night; who is on the
lips alike of priest and blasphemer, and in the soul of all human
life.
Edfu stands alone, not near any other temple.
