On The Left Is The Big Bend Of The Nile, Singularly Beautiful,
Almost Voluptuous In Form, And Girdled With A Radiant Green Of Crops,
With Palm-Trees, And Again The Distant Hills.
Sebek was well advised
to have his temples here and in the glorious Fayum, that land flowing
with milk
And honey, where the air is full of the voices of the flocks
and herds, and alive with the wild pigeons; where the sweet sugar-cane
towers up in fairy forests, the beloved home of the jackal; where the
green corn waves to the horizon, and the runlets of water make a maze
of silver threads carrying life and its happy murmur through all the
vast oasis.
At the guardian's gate by which you go in there sits not a watch dog,
nor yet a crocodile, but a watch cat, small, but very determined, and
very attentive to its duties, and neatly carved in stone. You try to
look like a crocodile-worshipper. It is deceived, and lets you pass.
And you are alone with the growing morning and Kom Ombos.
I was never taken, caught up into an atmosphere, in Kom Ombos. I
examined it with interest, but I did not feel a spell. Its grandeur is
great, but it did not affect me as did the grandeur of Karnak. Its
nobility cannot be questioned, but I did not stilly rejoice in it, as
in the nobility of Luxor, or the free splendor of the Ramesseum.
The oldest thing at Kom Ombos is a gateway of sandstone placed there
by Thothmes III.
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