Among The Temples Of Egypt, Edfu Is
The House Divine Of "The Hidden One," The Perfect Temple Of Worship.
XV
KOM OMBOS
Some people talk of the "sameness" of the Nile; and there is a lovely
sameness of golden light, of delicious air, of people, and of scenery.
For Egypt is, after all, mainly a great river with strips on each side
of cultivated land, flat, green, not very varied. River, green plains,
yellow plains, pink, brown, steel-grey, or pale-yellow mountains, wail
of shadoof, wail of sakieh. Yes, I suppose there is a sameness, a sort
of golden monotony, in this land pervaded with light and pervaded with
sound. Always there is light around you, and you are bathing in it,
and nearly always, if you are living, as I was, on the water, there is
a multitude of mingling sounds floating, floating to your ears. As
there are two lines of green land, two lines of mountains, following
the course of the Nile; so are there two lines of voices that cease
their calling and their singing only as you draw near to Nubia. For
then, with the green land, they fade away, these miles upon miles of
calling and singing brown men; and amber and ruddy sands creep
downward to the Nile. And the air seems subtly changing, and the light
perhaps growing a little harder. And you are aware of other regions
unlike those you are leaving, more African, more savage, less suave,
less like a dreaming.
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