The Horizon Trembles Under The Little
Vapours Of Mirage Like Water Ruffled By The Wind.
The background,
which mounts gradually to the foot of the Libyan mountains, is strewn
with the debris of bricks
And stones - shapeless ruins which, though
they scarcely rise above the sand, abound nevertheless in great
numbers, and serve to remind us that here indeed is a very ancient
soil, where men laboured in centuries that have drifted out of
knowledge. One divines instinctively and at once the catacombs, the
hypogea and the mummies that lie beneath!
These necropoles of Abydos once - and for thousands of years - exercised
an extraordinary fascination over this people - the precursor of
peoples - who dwelt in the valley of the Nile. According to one of the
most ancient of human traditions, the head of Osiris, the lord of the
/other world/, reposed in the depths of one of the temples which
to-day are buried in the sands. And men, as soon as their thought
commenced to issue from the primeval night, were haunted by the idea
that there were localities helpful, as if were, to the poor corpses
that lay beneath the earth, that there were certain holy places where
it behoved them to be buried if they wished to be ready when the
signal of awakening was given. And in old Egypt, therefore, each one,
at the hour of death, turned his thoughts to these stones and sands,
in the ardent hope that he might be able to sleep near the remains of
his god. And when the place was becoming crowded with sleepers, those
who could obtain no place there conceived the idea of having humble
obelisks planted on the holy ground, which at least should tell their
names; or even recommended that their mummies might be there for some
weeks, even if they were afterwards removed. And thus, funeral
processions passed to and fro without ceasing through the cornfields
that separate the Nile from the desert. Abydos! In the sad human dream
dominated by the thought of dissolution, Abydos preceded by many
centuries the Valley of Jehosophat of the Hebrews, the cemeteries
around Mecca of the Moslems, and the holy tombs beneath our oldest
cathedrals! . . . Abydos! It behoves us to walk here pensively and
silently out of respect for all those thousands of souls who formerly
turned towards this place, with outstretched hands, in the hour of
death.
The first great temple - that which King Seti raised to the mysterious
Prince of the Other World, who in those days was called Osiris - is
quite close - a distance of little more than 200 yards in the glare of
the desert. We come upon it suddenly, so that it almost startles us,
for nothing warns us of its proximity. The sand from which it has been
exhumed, and which buried it for 2000 years, still rises almost to its
roof. Through an iron gate, guarded by two tall Bedouin guards in
black robes, we plunge at once into the shadow of enormous stones. We
are in the house of the god, in a forest of heavy Osiridean columns,
surrounded by a world of people in high coiffures, carved in bas-
relief on the pillars and walls - people who seem to be signalling one
to another and exchanging amongst themselves mysterious signs,
silently and for ever.
But what is this noise in the sanctuary? It seems to be full of
people. There, sure enough, beyond a second row of columns, is quite a
little crowd talking loudly in English. I fancy that I can hear the
clinking of glasses and the tapping of knives and forks.
Oh! poor, poor temple, to what strange uses are you come. . . . This
excess of grotesqueness in profanation is more insulting surely than
to be sacked by barbarians! Behold a table set for some thirty guests,
and the guests themselves - of both sexes - merry and lighthearted,
belong to that special type of humanity which patronises Thomas Cook &
Son (Egypt Ltd.). They wear cork helmets, and the classic green
spectacles; drink whisky and soda, and eat voraciously sandwiches and
other viands out of greasy paper, which now litters the floor. And the
women! Heavens! what scarecrows they are! And this kind of thing, so
the black-robed Bedouin guards inform us, is repeated every day so
long as the season lasts. A luncheon in the temple of Osiris is part
of the programme of pleasure trips. Each day at noon a new band
arrives, on heedless and unfortunate donkeys. The tables and the
crockery remain, of course, in the old temple!
Let us escape quickly, if possible before the sight shall have become
graven on our memory.
But alas! even when we are outside, alone again on the expanse of
dazzling sands, we can no longer take things seriously. Abydos and the
desert have ceased to exist. The faces of those women remain to haunt
us, their faces and their hats, and those looks which they vouchsafed
us from over their solar spectacles. . . . The ugliness associated
with the name of Cook was once explained to me in this wise, and the
explanation at first sight seemed satisfactory: "The United Kingdom,
justifiably jealous of the beauty of its daughters, submits them to a
jury when they reach the age of puberty; and those who are classed as
too ugly to reproduce their kind are accorded an unlimited account at
Thomas Cook & Sons, and thus vowed to a course of perpetual travel,
which leaves them no time to think of certain trifles incidental to
life." The explanation, as I say, seduced me for the time being. But a
more attentive examination of the bands who infest the valley of the
Nile enables me to aver that all these good English ladies are of an
age notoriously canonical; and the catastrophe of procreation
therefore, supposing that such an accident could ever have happened to
them, must date back to a time long anterior to their enrolment. And I
remain perplexed!
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