Even For The Invaders Of
Egypt, The Greeks And Romans, This Old Ancestral Town Of Towns
Remained Imposing And Unique.
They repaired its ruins, and built here
temple after temple, in a style which hardly ever changes.
Even in the
ages of decadence everything that raised itself from the old, sacred
soil, seemed to be impregnated a little with the ancient grandeur.
And it was only when the early Christians ruled here, and after them
the Moslem iconoclasts, that the destruction became final. To these
new believers, who, in their simplicity, imagined themselves to be
possessed of the ultimate religious formula and to know by His right
name the great Unknowable, Thebes became the haunt of "false gods,"
the abomination of abominations, which it behoved them to destroy.
And so they set to work, penetrating with an ever-present fear into
the profound depths of the gloomy sanctuaries, mutilating first of all
the thousands of visages whose disconcerting smile frightened them,
and then exhausting themselves in the effort to uproot the colossi,
which even with the help of levers, they could not move. It was no
easy task indeed, for everything was as solid as geological masses, as
rocks or promontories. But for five or six hundred years the town was
given over to the caprice of desecrators.
And then came the centuries of silence and oblivion under the shroud
of the desert sands, which, thickening each year, proceeded to bury,
and, in the event, to preserve for us, this peerless relic.
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