So The Egyptian Builders Lead The Spirit Gently, Mysteriously Forward From The Gateway Between The Towers To The Distant House Divine.

When one enters the outer court, one feels the far-off sanctuary.

Almost unconsciously one is aware that for that sanctuary all the rest of the temple was created; that to that sanctuary everything tends. And in spirit one is drawn softly onward to that very holy place. Slowly, perhaps, the body moves from courtyard to hypostyle hall, and from one hall to another. Hieroglyphs are examined, cartouches puzzled out, paintings of processions, or bas-reliefs of pastimes and of sacrifices, looked at with care and interest; but all the time one has the sense of waiting, of a want unsatisfied. And only when one at last reaches the sanctuary is one perfectly at rest. For then the spirit feels: "This is the meaning of it all."

One of the means which the Egyptian architects used to create this sense of approach is very simple, but perfectly effective. It consisted only in making each hall on a very slightly higher level than the one preceding it, and the sanctuary, which is narrow and mysteriously dark on the highest level of all. Each time one takes an upward step, or walks up a little incline of stone, the body seems to convey to the soul a deeper message of reverence and awe. In no other temple is this sense of approach to the heart of a thing so acute as it is when one walks in Edfu. In no other temple, when the sanctuary is reached, has one such a strong consciousness of being indeed within a sacred heart.

The color of Edfu is a pale and delicate brown, warm in the strong sunshine, but seldom glowing. Its first doorway is extraordinarily high, and is narrow, but very deep, with a roof showing traces of that delicious clear blue-green which is like a thin cry of joy rising up in the solemn temples of Egypt. A small sphinx keeps watch on the right, just where the guardian stands; this guardian, the gift of the past, squat, even fat, with a very perfect face of a determined and handsome man. In the court, upon a pedestal, stands a big bird, and near it is another bird, or rather half of a bird, leaning forward, and very much defaced. And in this great courtyard there are swarms of living birds, twittering in the sunshine. Through the doorway between the towers one sees a glimpse of a native village with the cupolas of a mosque.

I stood and looked at the cupolas for a moment. Then I turned, and forgot for a time the life of the world without - that men, perhaps, were praying beneath those cupolas, or praising the Moslem's God. For when I turned, I felt, as I have said, as if all the worship of the world must be concentrated here. Standing far down the open court, in the full sunshine, I could see into the first hypostyle hall, but beyond only a darkness - a darkness which led me on, in which the further chambers of the house divine were hidden.

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