/We Know/, For We Have
Penetrated There Before, What Things Are Hidden In The Womb Of This
Old Desert, On Which The Yellow Shroud Of The Sand Grows Thicker And
Thicker As The Centuries Pass.
The whole deep rock had been perforated
patiently to make hypogea and sepulchral chambers, great and small,
and veritable palaces for the dead, adorned with innumerable painted
figures.
And though now, for some two thousand years, men have set
themselves furiously to exhume the sarcophagi and the treasures that
are buried here, the subterranean reserves are not yet exhausted.
There still remain, no doubt, pleiads of undisturbed sleepers, who
will never be discovered.
As we advance the wind grows stronger and colder beneath a sky that
becomes increasingly cloudy, and the sand is flying on all sides. The
sand is the undisputed sovereign of the necropolis; if it does not
surge and roll like some enormous tidal wave, as it appears to do when
seen from the green valley below, it nevertheless covers everything
with an obstinate persistence which has continued since the beginning
of time. Already at Memphis it has buried innumerable statues and
colossi and temples of the Sphinx. It comes without a pause, from
Libya, from the great Sahara, which contain enough to powder the
universe. It harmonises well with the tall skeletons of the pyramids,
which form immutable rocks on its always shifting extent; and if one
thinks of it, it gives a more thrilling sense of anterior eternities
even than all these Egyptian ruins, which, in comparison with it, are
things of yesterday.
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