Perhaps It Is The Polished
Flank Of A Colossus, Fashioned Out Of Granite From Syene, Or A Little
Copper Osiris, The Debris Of A Vase, A Golden Trinket Beyond Price, Or
Even A Simple Blue Pearl That Has Fallen From The Necklace Of Some
Waiting-Maid Of A Queen.
This activity of the excavators, which alone reanimates certain
quarters during the day, ends at sunset.
Every evening the lean
fellahs receive the daily wage of their labour, and take themselves
off to sleep in the silent neighbourhood in their huts of mud; and the
iron gates are shut behind them. At night, except for the guards at
the entrance, no one inhabits the ruins.
*****
Crumbling and dust. . . . Far around, on every side of these palaces
and temples of the central artery - which are the best preserved and
remain proudly upright - stretch great mournful spaces, on which the
sun from morning till evening pours an implacable light. There,
amongst the lank desert plants, lie blocks scattered at hazard - the
remains of sanctuaries, of which neither the plan nor the form will
ever be discovered. But on these stones, fragments of the history of
the world are still to be read in clear-cut hieroglyphs.
To the west of the hypostyle hall there is a region strewn with discs,
all equal and all alike. It might be a draught-board for Titans with
draughts that would measure ten yards in circumference. They are the
scattered fragments, slices, as it were, of a colonnade of the Ramses.
Farther on the ground seems to have passed through fire.
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