The hieroglyphs of the cartouche are there to affirm his identity,
albeit the sculptor, not knowing his actual physiognomy, has given him
the traditional features, regular as those of the god Horus. During
the centuries of the Roman domination the Western emperors used to
send from home instructions that their likeness should be placed on
the walls of the temples, and that offerings should be made in their
name to the Egyptian divinities - and this notwithstanding that in
their eyes Egypt must have seemed so far away, a colony almost at the
end of the earth. (And it was such a goddess as this, of secondary
rank in the times of the Pharaohs, that was singled out as the
favourite of the Romans of the decadence.)
The Emperor Nero! As a matter of fact at the very time these bas-
reliefs - almost the last - and these expiring hieroglyphics were being
inscribed, the confused primitive theogonies had almost reached their
end and the days of the Goddess of Joy were numbered. There had been
conceived in Judaea symbols more lofty and more pure, which were to
rule a great part of the world for two thousand years - afterwards,
alas, to decline in their turn; and men were about to throw themselves
passionately into renunciation, asceticism and fraternal pity.
How strange it is to say! Even while the sculptor was carving this
archaic bas-relief, and was using, for the engraving of its name,
characters that dated back to the night of the ages, there were
already Christians assembled in the catacombs at Rome and dying in
ecstasy in the arena!
CHAPTER XIII
MODERN LUXOR
The waters of the Nile being already low my dahabiya - delayed by
strandings - had not been able to reach Luxor, and we had moored
ourselves, as the darkness began to fall, at a casual spot on the
bank.
"We are quite near," the pilot had told me before departing to make
his evening prayer; "in an hour, to-morrow, we shall be there."
And the gentle night descended upon us in this spot which did not seem
to differ at all from so any others where, for a month past now, we
had moored our boat at hazard to await the daybreak. On the banks were
dark confused masses of foliage, above which here and there a high
date-palm outlined its black plumes. The air was filled with the
multitudinous chirpings of the crickets of Upper Egypt, which make
their music here almost throughout the year in the odorous warmth of
the grass. And, presently, in the midst of the silence, rose the cries
of the night birds, like the mournful mewings of cats.
