When Safekh Inscribed Upon A Leaf Of The Persea-Tree The Name Of
King Or Conqueror, He Gained Everlasting Life.
Was it the life of
youth?
An everlasting life of middle age might be a doubtful benefit.
And then mentally I added, "unless one lived in Egypt." For here the
years drop from one, and every golden hour brings to one surely
another drop of the wondrous essence that sets time at defiance and
charms sad thoughts away.
Unlike White Abydos, White Denderah stands apart from habitations, in
a still solitude upon a blackened mound. From far off I saw the
façade, large, bare, and sober, rising, in a nakedness as complete as
that of Aphrodite rising from the wave, out of the plain of brown,
alluvial soil that was broken here and there by a sharp green of
growing things. There was something of sadness in the scene, and again
I thought of Hathor as the "Lady of the Underworld," some deep-eyed
being, with a pale brow, hair like the night, and yearning, wistful
hands stretched out in supplication. There was a hush upon this place.
The loud and vehement cry of the shadoof-man died away. The sakieh
droned in my ears no more like distant Sicilian pipes playing at
Natale. I felt a breath from the desert. And, indeed, the desert was
near - that realistic desert which suggests to the traveller approaches
to the sea, so that beyond each pallid dune, as he draws near it, he
half expects to hear the lapping of the waves. Presently, when, having
ascended that marvellous staircase of the New Year, walking in
procession with the priests upon its walls toward the rays of Ra, I
came out upon the temple roof, and looked upon the desert - upon sheeny
sands, almost like slopes of satin shining in the sun, upon paler
sands in the distance, holding an Arab /campo santo/, in which rose
the little creamy cupolas of a sheikh's tomb, surrounded by a creamy
wall, those little cupolas gave to me a feeling of the real, the
irresistible Africa such as I had not known since I had been in Egypt;
and I thought I heard in the distance the ceaseless hum of praying and
praising voices.
"God hath rewarded the faithful with gardens through which flow
rivulets. They shall be for ever therein, and that is the reward of
the virtuous."
The sensation of solemnity which overtook me as I approached the
temple deepened when I drew close to it, when I stood within it. In
the first hall, mighty, magnificent, full of enormous columns from
which faces of Hathor once looked to the four points of the compass, I
found only one face almost complete, saved from the fury of fanatics
by the protection of the goddess of chance, in whom the modern
Egyptian so implicitly believes. In shape it was a delicate oval. In
the long eyes, about the brow, the cheeks, there was a strained
expression that suggested to me more than a gravity - almost an anguish
- of spirit.
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