So flat is it, so young are the
growing crops, that they are like a coating of green paint spread over
a mighty canvas.
But the doura rises higher than the heads of the
naked children who stand among it to watch you canter past. And in the
far distance you see dim groups of trees - sycamores and acacias,
tamarisks and palms. Beyond them is the very heart of this "land of
sand and ruins and gold"; Medinet-Abu, the Ramesseum, Deir-el Medinet,
Kurna, Deir-el-Bahari, the tombs of the kings, the tombs of the queens
and of the princes. In the strip of bare land at the foot of those
hard, and yet poetic mountains, have been dug up treasures the fame of
which has gone to the ends of the world. But this plain, where the
fellaheen are stooping to the soil, and the women are carrying the
water-jars, and the children are playing in the doura, and the oxen
and the camels are working with ploughs that look like relics of far-
off days, is the possession of the two great presiding beings whom you
see from an enormous distance, the Colossi of Memnon. Amenhotep III.
put them where they are. So we are told. But in this early morning it
is not possible to think of them as being brought to any place.
Seated, the one beside the other, facing the Nile and the home of the
rising sun, their immense aspect of patience suggests will, calmly,
steadily exercised, suggests choice; that, for some reason, as yet
unknown, they chose to come to this plain, that they choose solemnly
to remain there, waiting, while the harvests grow and are gathered
about their feet, while the Nile rises and subsides, while the years
and the generations come, like the harvests, and are stored away in
the granaries of the past.
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