As we draw nearer to this singular hill it is revealed as a mass of
ruins. And the ruins are all of a kind, of a brownish-red. They are
the remains of the colonial towns of the Romans, which subsisted here
for some two or three hundred years (an almost negligible moment of
time in the long history of Egypt), and then fell to pieces, to become
in time mere shapeless mounds on the fertile margins of the Nile and
sometimes even in the submerging sands.
A heap of little reddish bricks that once were fashioned into houses;
a heap of broken jars or amphorae - myriads of them - that served to
carry the water from the old nourishing river; and the remains of
walls, repaired at diverse epochs, where stones inscribed with
hieroglyphs lie upside down against fragments of Grecian obelisks or
Coptic sculptures or Roman capitals. In our countries, where the past
is of yesterday, we have nothing resembling such a chaos of dead
things.
Nowadays the sanctuary is reached through a large cutting in this hill
of ruins; incredible heaps of bricks and broken pottery enclose it on
all sides like a jealous rampart. Until recently indeed they covered
it almost to its roof. From the very first its appearance is
disconcerting: it is so grand, so austere and gloomy. A strange
dwelling, to be sure, for the Goddess of Love and Joy. It seems more
fit to be the home of the Prince of Darkness and of Death. A severe
doorway, built of gigantic stones and surmounted by a winged disc,
opens on to an asylum of religious mystery, on to depths where massive
columns disappear in the darkness of deep night.
Immediately on entering there is a coolness and a resonance as of a
sepulchre. First, the pronaos, where we still see clearly, between
pillars carved with hieroglyphs. Were it not for the large human faces
which serve for the capitals of the columns, and are the image of the
lovely Hathor, the goddess of the place, this temple of the decadent
epoch would scarcely differ from those built in this country two
thousand years before. It has the same square massiveness.
And in the dark blue ceilings there are the same frescoes, filled with
stars, with the signs of the Zodiac, and series of winged discs; in
bas-relief on the walls, the same multitudinous crowd of people who
gesticulate and make signs to one another with their hands - eternally
the same mysterious signs, repeated to infinity, everywhere - in the
palaces, the hypogea, the syringes, and on the sarcophagi and papyri
of the mummies.
The Memphite and Theban temples, which preceded this by so many
centuries, and far surpassed it in grandeur, have all lost, in
consequence of the falling of the enormous granites of their roofs,
their cherished gloom, and, what is the same thing, their religious
mystery.
