There Was No Duck For Dinner In Camp That
Night, And The Cook Was Inconsolable.
But I had seen a relief come to
life, and surmounted my disappointment.
Kom Ombos and Edfu, the two houses of the lovers and haters of
crocodiles, or at least of the lovers and the haters of their worship,
I shall always think of them together, because I drifted on the
/Loulia/ from one to the other, and saw no interesting temple between
them and because their personalities are as opposed as were, centuries
ago, the tenets of those who adored within them. The Egyptians of old
were devoted to the hunting of crocodiles, which once abounded in the
reaches of the Nile between Assuan and Luxor, and also much lower
down. But I believe that no reliefs, or paintings, of this sport are
to be found upon the walls of the temples and the tombs. The fear of
Sebek, perhaps, prevailed even over the dwellers about the temple of
Edfu. Yet how could fear of any crocodile god infect the souls of
those who were privileged to worship in such a temple, or even
reverently to stand under the colonnade within the door? As well,
perhaps, one might ask how men could be inspired to raise such a
perfect building to a deity with the face of a hawk? But Horus was not
the god of crocodiles, but a god of the sun. And his power to inspire
men must have been vast; for the greatest concentration in stone in
Egypt, and, I suppose, in the whole world, the Sphinx, as De Rouge
proved by an inscription at Edfu, was a representation of Horus
transformed to conquer Typhon.
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