There was a dense wood of palm-trees through which the travellers
made their way to the temple of Ammon-Ra, whose walls lay spread like
a town.
"See, my lord," said Caleb, walking ahead and pointing, "these are
male palm-trees; and those more slender ones are female; and they
marry one another, my lord, and feel love for one another; they grow
towards one another, see, my lord, like these two; and they wave to
one another and the male fructifies the female; and it is only when
they love each other that the fruits are luxuriant and their honey
and wine pleasant to the taste."
"It is as Caleb says," Tarrar assented. "The palm-trees in my country
marry one another and they are the most excellent in the whole world."
"They also marry in Saba," said Caleb, in pique. "We have sweeter
honey and date-wine in Saba than you have here in Libya."
A heated discussion arose between Caleb and Tarrar upon the respective
merits of the Sabaean and Libyan palm-trees. But the travellers were
now entering the first gate of the temple.
There was a triple row of walls round the old sanctuary, but
they were falling into ruins, the obelisks were sinking away,
the sphinxes were covered with luxuriant, flowering creepers, tall
grasses shot up between the flag-stones of the dromos and all the
doors were open. There was a deep shade from the leafy tops of the
turpentine-trees, which were fragrant with heavy perfumes in the
sunshine. The fleshy aloes drove their sword-like leaves over the
walls; and their long stalks blossomed with huge scarlet flowers which
smoked as though with incense. But it was above all the daturas whose
pendant alabaster goblets poured forth a giddiness, an intoxication of
heavy scents, around which the great Atlas moths flew slowly hovering.
There were no door-keepers; and the travellers walked on, through
the endless dromos. The monolithic colossi rose on either hand; but
they also were shelving to one side, or sinking away. Lastly, from
out of the vista of the pylons, which stood in endless row after row,
a group of priests approached the travellers. It was the high-priest
of Ammon-Ra, accompanied by eleven other priests; and they were all
very old and grey. They all had grey locks and they all wore long,
grey beards. They all wore long, fiery red robes; and, when they drew
near in procession, they were like gods in their placid dignity.
They did not wish to betray their surprise to the travellers. The
oracle of Ammon was no longer visited as it had been visited
two centuries ago. It was no longer held in honour; the temple
was fallen into decay; summers would pass without the advent of a
single pilgrim. But Lucius had wanted to consult the oracle of Ammon
just because its historic past gave it a poetic charm for him. And,
when he saw the high-priest approach, he stretched out his hands in
reverence to the ground and knelt and bowed his head; and Thrasyllus,
Caleb and Tarrar knelt and bowed behind him.
"What do you seek, my son?" asked the centenarian high-priest.
"The truth," replied Lucius.
"Then enter into the House of the Sun," the high-priest ordained.
And the travellers rose; and the priests gladly led the way. They led
their visitors through the pronaos and naos to the secos, to the holy
of holies. And, pointing in the golden shade of midday dusk, between
pillars like tree-trunks, to the enormous statue of Ammon-Ra, old as
time, the sun-god with the bull's head, the high-priest continued:
"The Sun reveals the truth to him who is worthy to hear it, even
as ages ago he revealed the truth to Alexander of Macedon. Before
his coming, the deity uttered himself only by moving his brows and
wrinkling his bull forehead between his divine horns. But the deity
addressed Alexander of Macedon with the sound of his lowing voice and
told him, in words plainly audible to the king and all his following,
that he was the son of the Sun, the son of Jupiter Ammon-Ra."
Lucius looked up at the statue. In the golden twilight of the temple,
where the noontide daylight filtered in and broke between the pillars
in a shimmer of dust, he saw the supreme god, who was no longer held
in honour, wrapped in shadow, paintless wood and colourless basalt,
blind and pock-pitted where his bull head and his human neck had
been robbed of the jewelled eyes and the precious stones with which
he had once been inlaid. And Lucius felt so deep a compassion within
himself for the fading god, once all-honoured and now forgotten in
his distant, sinking temple in the Libyan desert, that he bent his
knees in pity and reverence.
The Jewish seer, who lived in the cave of Neith, had haply seen the
new god, the Son of Jahve, crowned with light for days and days. Here,
in the immensity of his ruined sanctuary, Lucius beheld the fading
of the god who was forgotten, but whom, centuries ago, Alexander of
Macedon had travelled through whirlwinds and sand-storms to seek.
When Lucius looked up, he was alone with the old high-priest:
"Father," he said, kneeling, "I would know the truth. I would know if
what I believe to be the truth, revealed to me by oracle after oracle,
is the truth to Jupiter Ammon-Ra."
"My son," said the priest, "the truth does not shine forth until after
meditation, after contemplation and pious prayers, after days and
nights of communing with the deity. I will be your intermediary. And
you shall know what you would know, if you have faith."
"Father," said Lucius, "I lay my forehead, heavy with care and
suffering and doubt, in your holy hands."
And he bowed his head towards the priest's open palms.
He remained five days and nights together with the priest. In the
temple, the golden shadows of the day changed into the blue shadows
of the night and the glittering of the sun into the flickering of
the lamps. There was prayer and fasting and the touch of soul to soul.