You Walk Over
Blackish Scoriae Encrusted With Brazen Bolts And Particles Of Melted
Glass.
It is the quarter burnt by the soldiers of Cambyses.
They were
great destroyers of the queen city, were these same Persian soldiers.
To break up the obelisks and the colossal statues they conceived the
plan of scorching them by lighting bonfires around them, and then,
when they saw them burning hot, they deluged them with cold water. And
the granites cracked from top to base.
It is well known, of course, that Thebes used to extend for a
considerable distance both on this, the right, bank of the Nile, where
the Pharaohs resided, and opposite, on the Libyan bank, given over to
the preparers of mummies and to the mortuary temples. But to-day,
except for the great palaces of the centre, it is little more than a
litter of ruins, and the long avenues, lined with endless rows of
sphinxes or rams, are lost, goodness knows where, buried beneath the
sand.
At wide intervals, however, in the midst of these cemeteries of
things, a temple here and there remains upright, preserving still its
sanctified gloom beneath its cavernous carapace. One, where certain
celebrated oracles used to be delivered, is even more prisonlike and
sepulchral than the others in its eternal shadow. High up in a wall
the black hole of a kind of grotto opens, to which a secret corridor
coming from the depths used to lead. It was there that the face of the
priest charged with the announcement of the sibylline words appeared -
and the ceiling of his niche is all covered still with the smoke from
the flame of his lamp, which was extinguished more than two thousand
years ago!
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