How far more impressive it is to
stand in an empty sanctuary in the house divine of "the Hidden
One,"
whom the nations of the world worship, whether they spread their robes
on the sand and turn their faces to Mecca, or beat the tambourine and
sing "glory hymns" of salvation, or flagellate themselves in the night
before the patron saint of the Passionists, or only gaze at the snow-
white plume that floats from the snows of Etna under the rose of dawn,
and feel the soul behind Nature. Among the temples of Egypt, Edfu is
the house divine of "the Hidden One," the perfect temple of worship.
XV
KOM OMBOS
Some people talk of the "sameness" of the Nile; and there is a lovely
sameness of golden light, of delicious air, of people, and of scenery.
For Egypt is, after all, mainly a great river with strips on each side
of cultivated land, flat, green, not very varied. River, green plains,
yellow plains, pink, brown, steel-grey, or pale-yellow mountains, wail
of shadoof, wail of sakieh. Yes, I suppose there is a sameness, a sort
of golden monotony, in this land pervaded with light and pervaded with
sound. Always there is light around you, and you are bathing in it,
and nearly always, if you are living, as I was, on the water, there is
a multitude of mingling sounds floating, floating to your ears. As
there are two lines of green land, two lines of mountains, following
the course of the Nile; so are there two lines of voices that cease
their calling and their singing only as you draw near to Nubia. For
then, with the green land, they fade away, these miles upon miles of
calling and singing brown men; and amber and ruddy sands creep
downward to the Nile. And the air seems subtly changing, and the light
perhaps growing a little harder. And you are aware of other regions
unlike those you are leaving, more African, more savage, less suave,
less like a dreaming. And especially the silence makes a great
impression on you. But before you enter this silence, between the
amber and ruddy walls that will lead you on to Nubia, and to the land
of the crocodile, you have a visit to pay. For here, high up on a
terrace, looking over a great bend of the river is Kom Ombos. And Kom
Ombos is the temple of the crocodile god.
Sebek was one of the oldest and one of the most evil of the Egyptian
gods. In the Fayum he was worshipped, as well as at Kom Ombos, and
there, in the holy lake of his temple, were numbers of holy
crocodiles, which Strabo tells us were decorated with jewels like
pretty women. He did not get on with the other gods, and was sometimes
confused with Set, who personified natural darkness, and who also was
worshipped by the people about Kom Ombos.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 48 of 71
Words from 24366 to 24868
of 36756
