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.

I have spoken of the golden sameness of the Nile, but this sameness is broken by the variety of the temples. Here you have a striking instance of this variety. Edfu, only forty miles from Kom Ombos, the next temple which you visit, is the most perfect temple in Egypt. Kom Ombos is one of the most imperfect. Edfu is a divine house of "the Hidden One," full of a sacred atmosphere. Kom Ombos is the house of crocodiles. In ancient days the inhabitants of Edfu abhorred, above everything, crocodiles and their worshippers. And here at Kom Ombos the crocodile was adored.

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