And these figures too, inscribed on every side, and this
mystery of the hieroglyphs and the symbols, cause a growing
uneasiness. You are too near them, they seem too much the masters of
the exits, these gods with their heads of falcon, ibis and jackal,
who, on the walls, converse in a continual exalted pantomime. And then
the feeling comes over you, that you are guilty of sacrilege standing
there, before this open coffin, in this unwonted insolent light. The
dolorous, blackish face, half eaten away, seems to ask for mercy:
"Yes, yes, my sepulchre has been violated and I am returning to dust.
But now that you have seen me, leave me, turn out that light, have
pity on my nothingness."
In sooth, what a mockery! To have taken so many pains, to have adopted
so many stratagems to hide his corpse; to have exhausted thousands of
men in the hewing of this underground labyrinth, and to end thus, with
his head in the glare of an electric lamp, to amuse whoever passes.
And out of pity - I think it was the poor bouquet of mimosa that
awakened it - I say to the Bedouin: "Yes, put out the light, put it
out - that is enough."
And then the darkness returns above the royal countenance, which is
suddenly effaced in the sarcophagus. The phantom of the Pharaoh is
vanished, as if replunged into the unfathomable past. The audience is
over.
And we, who are able to escape from the horror of the hypogeum,
reascend rapidly towards the sunshine of the living, we go to breathe
the air again, the air to which we have still a right - for some few
days longer.
CHAPTER XVIII
AT THEBES IN THE TEMPLE OF THE OGRESS
This evening, in the vast chaos of ruins - at the hour in which the
light of the sun begins to turn to rose - I make my way along one of
the magnificent roads of the town-mummy, that, in fact, which goes off
at a right angle to the line of the temples of Amen, and, losing
itself more or less in the sands, leads at length to a sacred lake on
the border of which certain cat-headed goddesses are seated in state
watching the dead water and the expanse of the desert. This particular
road was begun three thousand four hundred years ago by a beautiful
queen called Makeri,[*] and in the following centuries a number of
kings continued its construction. It was ornamented with pylons of a
superb massiveness - pylons are monumental walls, in the form of a
trapezium with a wide base, covered entirely with hieroglyphs, which
the Egyptians used to place at either side of their porticoes and long
avenues - as well as by colossal statues and interminable rows of rams,
larger than buffaloes, crouched on pedestals.
[*] To-day the mummy with the baby in the museum at Cairo.
At the first pylons I have to make a detour. They are so ruinous that
their blocks, fallen down on all sides, have closed the passage. Here
used to watch, on right and left, two upright giants of red granite
from Syene. Long ago in times no longer precisely known, they were
broken off, both of them, at the height of the loins. But their
muscular legs have kept their proud, marching attitude, and each in
one of the armless hands, which reach to the end of the cloth that
girds their loins, clenches passionately the emblem of eternal life.
And this Syenite granite is so hard that time has not altered it in
the least; in the midst of the confusion of stones the thighs of these
mutilated giants gleam as if they had been polished yesterday.
Farther on we come upon the second pylons, foundered also, before
which stands a row of Pharaohs.
On every side the overthrown blocks display their utter confusion of
gigantic things in the midst of the sand which continues patiently to
bury them. And here now are the third pylons, flanked by their two
marching giants, who have neither head nor shoulders. And the road,
marked majestically still by the debris, continues to lead towards the
desert.
And then the fourth and last pylons, which seem at first sight to mark
the extremity of the ruins, the beginning of the desert nothingness.
Time-worn and uncrowned, but stiff and upright still, they seem to be
set there so solidly that nothing could ever overthrow them. The two
colossal statues which guard them on the right and left are seated on
thrones. One, that on the eastern side, has almost disappeared. But
the other stands out entire and white, with the whiteness of marble,
against the brown-coloured background of the enormous stretch of wall
covered with hieroglyphs. His face alone has been mutilated; and he
preserves still his imperious chin, his ears, his Sphinx's headgear,
one might almost say his meditative expression, before this deployment
of the vast solitude which seems to begin at his very feet.
Here however was only the boundary of the quarters of the God Amen.
The boundary of Thebes was much farther on, and the avenue which will
lead me directly to the home of the cat-headed goddesses extends
farther still to the old gates of the town; albeit you can scarcely
distinguish it between the double row of Krio-sphinxes all broken and
well-nigh buried.
The day falls, and the dust of Egypt, in accordance with its
invariable practice every evening, begins to resemble in the distance
a powder of gold. I look behind me from time to time at the giant who
watches me, seated at the foot of his pylon on which the history of a
Pharaoh is carved in one immense picture.
