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.
And now, at last, Thebes is being exhumed and restored to a semblance
of life - now, after a cycle of seven or eight thousand years, when our
Western humanity, having left the primitive gods that we see here, to
embrace the Christian conception, which, even yesterday, made it live,
is in way of denying everything, and struggles before the enigma of
death in an obscurity more dismal and more fearful than in the
commencement of the ages. (More dismal and more fearful still in this,
that plea of youth is gone.) From all parts of Europe curious and
unquiet spirits, as well as mere idlers, turn their steps towards
Thebes, the ancient mother. Men clear the rubbish from its remains,
devise ways of retarding the enormous fallings of its ruins, and dig
in its old soil, stored with hidden treasure.
And this evening on one of the portals to which I have just mounted -
that which opens at the north-west and terminates the colossal artery
of temples and palaces, many very diverse groups have already taken
their places, after the pilgrimage of the day amongst the ruins. And
others are hastening towards the staircase by which we have just
climbed, so as not to miss the grand spectacle of the sun setting,
always with the same serenity, the same unchanging magnificence,
behind the town which once was consecrated to it.
French, German, English; I see them below, a lot of pygmy figures,
issuing from the hypostyle hall, and making their way towards us. Mean
and pitiful they look in their twentieth-century travellers' costumes,
hurrying along that avenue where once defiled so many processions of
gods and goddesses. And yet this, perhaps, is the only occasion on
which one of these bands of tourists does not seem to me altogether
ridiculous. Amongst these groups of unknown people, there is none who
is not collected and thoughtful, or who does not at least pretend to
be so; and there is some saving quality of grace, even some grandeur
of humility, in the sentiment which has brought them to this town of
Amen, and in the homage of their silence.
We are so high on this portal that we might fancy ourselves upon a
tower, and the defaced stones of which it is built are immeasurably
large. Instinctively each one sits with his face to the glowing sun,
and consequently to the outspread distances of the fields and the
desert.
Before us, under our feet, an avenue stretches away, prolonging
towards the fields the pomp of the dead city - an avenue bordered by
monstrous rams, larger than buffaloes, all crouched on their pedestals
in two parallel rows in the traditional hieratic pose. The avenue
terminates beyond at a kind of wharf or landing-stage which formerly
gave on to the Nile. It was there that the God Amen, carried and
followed by long trains of priests, came every year to take his golden
barge for a solemn procession. But it leads to-day only to the
cornfields, for, in the course of successive centuries, the river has
receded little by little and now winds its course a thousand yards
away in the direction of Libya.
We can see, beyond, the old sacred Nile between the clusters of palm-
trees on its banks; meandering there like a rosy pathway, which
remains, nevertheless, in this hour of universal incandescence,
astonishingly pale, and gleams occasionally with a bluish light. And
on the farther bank, from one end to the other of the western horizon,
stretches the chain of the Libyan mountains behind which the sun is
about to plunge; a chain of red sandstone, parched since the beginning
of the world - without a rival in the preservation to perpetuity of
dead bodies - which the Thebans perforated to its extreme depths to
fill it with sarcophagi.
We watch the sun descend. But we turn also to see, behind us, the
ruins in this the traditional moment of their apotheosis. Thebes, the
immense town-mummy, seems all at once to be ablaze - as if its old
stones were able still to burn; all its blocks, fallen or upright,
appear to have been suddenly made ruddy by the glow of fire.
On this side, too, the view embraces great peaceful distances. Past
the last pylons, and beyond the crumbling ramparts the country, down
there behind the town, presents the same appearance as that we were
facing a moment before. The same cornfields, the same woods of date-
trees, that make a girdle of green palms around the ruins. And, right
in the background, a chain of mountains is lit up and glows with a
vivid coral colour. It is the chain of the Arabian desert, lying
parallel to that of Libya, along the whole length of the Nile Valley -
which is thus guarded on right and left by stones and sand stretched
out in profound solitudes.
In all the surrounding country which we command from this spot there
is no indication of the present day; only here and there, amongst the
palm-trees, the villages of the field labourers, whose houses of dried
earth can scarcely have changed since the days of the Pharaohs. Our
contemporary desecrators have up till now respected the infinite
desuetude of the place, and, for the tourists who begin to haunt it,
no one yet has dared to build a hotel.
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