And
Yet To-Day You Can See Quite Clearly In These Temples, For, Since The
Suspended Rocks Which Served For Roof Have Fallen, Floods Of Light
Descend From All Parts.
But formerly, when a kind of half night
reigned in the deep halls, beneath the immovable carapaces of
sandstone or granite, how oppressive and sepulchral it must all have
been - how final and pitiless, like a gigantic palace of Death!
On one
day, however, in each year, here at Thebes, a light as of a
conflagration used to penetrate from one end to the other of the
sanctuaries of Amen; for the middle artery is open towards the north-
west, and is aligned in such a fashion that, once a year, one solitary
time, on the evening of the summer solstice, the sun as it sets is
able to plunge its reddened rays straight into the sanctuaries. At the
moment when it enlarges its blood-coloured disc before descending
behind the desolation of the Libyan mountains, it arrives in the very
axis of this avenue, of this suite of aisles, which measures more than
800 yards in length. Formerly, then, on these evenings it shone
horizontally beneath the terrible ceilings - between these rows of
pillars which are as high as our Colonne Vendome - and threw, for some
seconds, its colours of molten copper into the obscurity of the holy
of holies. And then the whole temple would resound with the clashing
of music, and the glory of the god of Thebes was celebrated in the
depths of the forbidden halls.
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