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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