Amun-Ra, Mut, And Khuns, The King Of The Gods, His Wife, Mother Of
Gods, And The Moon God, Were
The Theban triad to whom the holy
buildings of Thebes on the two banks of the Nile were dedicated; and
This temple of Luxor, the "House of Amun in the Southern Apt," was
built fifteen hundred years before Christ by Amenhotep III. Rameses
II., that vehement builder, added to it immensely. One walks among his
traces when one walks in Luxor. And here, as at Denderah, Christians
have let loose the fury that should have had no place in their
religion. Churches for their worship they made in different parts of
the temple, and when they were not praying, they broke in pieces
statues, defaced bas-reliefs, and smashed up shrines with a vigor
quite as great as that displayed in preservation by Christians of
to-day. Now time has called a truce. Safe are the statues that are
left. And day by day two great religions, almost as if in happy
brotherly love, send forth their summons by the temple walls. And just
beyond those walls, upon the hill, there is a Coptic church. Peace
reigns in happy Luxor. The lion lies down with the lamb, and the
child, if it will, may harmlessly put its hand into the cockatrice's
den.
Perhaps because it is so surrounded, so haunted by life and familiar
things, because the pigeons fly about it, the buffalo stares into it,
the goats stir up the dust beside its columns, the twittering voices
of women make a music near its courts, many people pay little heed to
this great temple, gain but a small impression from it.
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