Yes; only that obvious falsehood will convey to
those who have not seen them the effect of some of the hypostyle
halls, the columns of which seem literally soaring to the sky.
And
flowers of stone, you will say, rudely carved and rugged! That does
not matter. There was poetry in the minds that conceived them, in the
thought that directed the hands which shaped them and placed them
where they are. In Egypt perpetually one feels how the ancient
Egyptians loved the /Nymphaea lotus/, which is the white lotus, and
the /Nymphaea coeruloea/, the lotus that is blue. Did they not place
Horus in its cup, and upon the head of Nefer-Tum, the nature god, who
represented in their mythology the heat of the rising sun, and who
seems to have been credited with power to grant life in the world to
come, set it as a sort of regal ornament? To Seti I., when he returned
in glory from his triumphs over the Syrians, were given bouquets of
lotus-blossoms by the great officers of his household. The tiny column
of green feldspar ending in the lotus typified eternal youth, even as
the carnelian buckle typified the blood of Isis, which washed away all
sin. Kohl pots were fashioned in the form of the lotus, cartouches
sprang from it, wine flowed from cups shaped like it. The lotus was
part of the very life of Egypt, as the rose, the American Beauty rose,
is part of our social life of to-day.
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