After the abundant dews of the night came the delight of the cool-warm
summer day. The clustering trees now pressed their way forward more
richly and luxuriously along the banks of the Nile. Here, on the
Libyan side, lay the town of Acanthus, with its temple of Osiris in
a spreading wood of Theban acanthus-trees, of which the natives tap
the fragrant gums. Next, on the Arabian bank, came Aphroditopolis,
the second town of the name, with the temple of the White Cow;
and then the travellers reached the Heracleotic nome, a big island
in the Nile, from which a canal cuts through the Arsinoic nome,
the most fertile in the whole country. Here and here alone the
olive-tree flourished in dense, silvery woods; but here also there
twisted and twined, in close festoons, the vine-branches, on which
the grapes were beginning to swell; here the fruit-trees bent under
their heavy load and the orchards stretched; here the sickles of the
husbandmen waved through the abundant ears of corn. Here the fat soil
yielded wealth and prosperity; here the innumerable sheep spread in a
wave of wool over the hills, like a shadowy white sea. Here, between
margins of sands, Lake Moeris stretched exquisite and crystal blue to
the horizon, as it were a fresh-water inland sea. In earlier ages,
the ocean must have extended to those margins and stolen the whole
northern land of Lower Egypt, that gift of the Nile, as Herodotus
had called it long ago. Here the double lotus-flowers were trained
to blossom in the waters; and here the sacred scarabs were bred and
worshipped upon the white flowers.
Lucius would wander alone of a morning, strolling along the banks of
the lake. It was so strangely calm here and so divinely beautiful; and
a heaven-sent consolation filled the air. These were the regions blest
by the gods; and it pleased Lucius to linger here. The thalamegus lay
moored under acanthus-trees; the flowering reeds shot up to a man's
height around her. And every afternoon, at sunset, Lucius, sometimes
accompanied by Thrasyllus, sometimes alone, walked to the labyrinth.
The road lay along the waterworks of the canal, where daily, under
the supervision of the engineers, the quantity of water that flowed in
and out of the lake through the canal was closely gauged. The tilled
and inhabited lands around Lake Moeris, large as a sea, were never
flooded. If the Nile increased, all that happened was that the blue
crystal mirror of the lake rose. If the waters of the river fell,
then those of the lake filled them up, by careful management of the
sluices. The water was never other than a benevolent deity.
Along the waterworks ran the road to the labyrinth. In the sinking
glory of the sun, in blood-red and orange splendours, Lucius saw
it daily, the strange Titanic town of monoliths, the linked rows of
palaces and courts, projecting their columns endlessly, endlessly,
towards the sunlit horizon. Orange and blood-red gleams glowed over
the flat stone tables of the roofs, which were not higher than a
single pillared storey and which spread out their immense terrace
like a paved desert. There were twenty palaces, each surrounded by
twenty-seven monolithic columns; and all this wondrous architecture
of past centuries was without a beam of wood, was without cement or
masonry, was simply stone laid upon stone with faultless precision
and column hewn beside column, absolutely circular, each column a
single stone. At the end of the palaces, which were a stadium long,
rose the square pyramid, the tomb of the builder, King Amenemha.
The holy place was guarded by priests, who led Lucius through the
halls and crypts. The twenty palaces represented the former twenty
Egyptian nomes, or provinces; and the emissaries of each province
used to gather with their priests and priestesses in their palace or
court and offer up sacrifices and discuss great questions of policy
or local welfare. But nowadays the palaces were deserted, the crypts
were deserted, and the priests led Lucius along endless, deserted,
winding corridors which meandered from palace to palace. The torches
smeared the walls with blood-red light, smeared the smooth stone
walls of the corridors and halls and floors and ceilings, stone after
stone upon stone of wonderful dimensions all resting one upon another
without cement. And to Lucius it was one of the marvels of the world,
even more marvellous, because of its sublime human architecture,
than the pyramids had been.
Travelling on camels with Uncle Catullus and a great retinue, Lucius
went a hundred stadia farther, to Arsinoe-Crocodilopolis. The trees
flourished more richly, more luxuriantly, like a richly-wooded park
around the travellers, till they came to the sacred lake where the
sacred crocodile, named Such, was held in veneration.
"Well," said Uncle Catullus, "here's another of these little pets
which are kept for the edification of foreigners!"
And in fact the priests who came to meet the travellers in front of
the dromos of the sacred lake, surrounded on every side with pillars,
first amiably demanded a stater a head as entrance-fee, while Caleb,
of course, had seen to a supply of rich provisions, as an offering
to the deity. The slaves carried baskets with cakes, roast meats and
jars of hydromel.
In the lake lay Such, the huge monster; but the priests had tamed the
terrible deity: they were luring him from the middle of the lake,
where his temple was, to the bank, because some Persian visitors
happened to have arrived before Lucius and wished to present their
offerings. On the edge of the lake the priests took Such fearlessly
by his terrible jaws and made him swallow the cakes and meat and wine
of the Persian grandees, who were greatly diverted and laughed aloud.
"They must be great noblemen," said Caleb, "and are going from the
pillars of Sesostris to Alexandria, even as you, my noble lords,
are going from Alexandria to the pillars of Sesostris. My lord, if
you permit me, I should much like to exchange a few words with the
guide of the Persian lords."
Lucius gave his permission; and the crocodile, who had swallowed his
Persian presents, swam back to the middle of the lake. But the priests
now quickly lured him to the other side, where Lucius was waiting;
and the ever greedy crocodile approached; and the priests again took
him fearlessly by his terrible jaws and the monster now swallowed
Lucius' gifts, the cakes, the roast meat, as though insatiable;
and the priests, laughing, emptied a jar of hydromel into his maw.
Meanwhile, Caleb, after a few words with the guide, had sunk in
salaams before the Persian lords.
"He's offering the Persians his diversorium," said Uncle Catullus,
jestingly.
And in fact Caleb, in a few minutes, came back happy and swaggering
to his own travellers and said, in a mysterious whisper:
"I have recommended their Persian lordships to be sure to stop at
the Hermes House at Alexandria; and I slipped a gold ptolemy into
their guide's hand. Yes, my lords, business is business; and, if we
did no business at Alexandria, I could never hope to see my beloved
Saba again. For there you must have done business, if you want to
live in the country; there's no business to be done there, my lords."
By way of Heracleopolis, where divine honours were paid to the
ichneumon, the spotted rat that devours the eggs of the adders and
attacks the adders themselves, after first rolling itself in the mud,
which dries round its body and forms an armour, the travellers reached
Cynopolis, where the dog is worshipped as Anubis, and Oxyrynchus,
where the fish of the name is venerated. And it now appeared that,
in this region of Heptanomis, where, on the Arabian side of the Nile,
the strange battlements of the blinding white Alabastrites Mountains
blaze against the sky, all animals received divine honours, as though
the priests had instituted these popular forms of worship in great
numbers everywhere, so that they might the more carefully keep to
themselves the secret Hermetic wisdom. Cats and falcons, sheep and
wolves, baboons and zebus, eagles and lions, goats and spiders: all
the animals were worshipped in one or other town or village; all the
animals had their temples and priests; and Uncle Catullus said that
he grew weary of having to admire so many sacred animals, especially
as Apis, the little bull, and Such, the crocodile, were after all the
only ones that were really interesting to see. But all these cattle,
all these birds and fishes, all these creatures, from carnivora down
to insects, were worshipped, tended, fed and shown in the temples to
strangers, each time at a piece of gold a head. No, it was really too
silly, especially when, after the first Crocodilopolis, on the left,
the second Crocodilopolis appeared on the right, on the bank of the
Nile, with another Such!
"Lucius," said Uncle Catullus, "honestly, I'm not going to feed
any more sacred crocodiles, nor any sacred goats or cats or beetles
either. I've seen enough of all those pests, do you hear, nephew?"
And Lucius and Thrasyllus were inclined to agree with Uncle Catullus;
and the barge sped past the wondrous purple of the Porphyrites
Mountains, gold-ruddy crests in the orange evening sky, up to
Ptolemais, the greatest town in the Thebais.
Ptolemais was a prosperous city, ruled like Alexandria by a municipal
government founded on the Greek model; but after Ptolemais the
travellers were especially charmed with Abydos. Here they saw the
Memnonium, which was not so gigantic as the labyrinth, but which
still was built of great single blocks of stone, according to that
same marvellous system of lost ancient architecture. They also saw
the underground well, which is reached by vaults and galleries,
a subterranean miracle of monoliths, always fitted to one another
and upon one another, without masonry. The temple of Apollo rose
in a flowering acacia-wood, as in a sudden dream of swarming white,
fragrant blossoms.
Lesser Diospolis and Tentyra followed. The Tentyrians worship
Aphrodite and hunt the crocodile, which they destroy wherever they
can; and Uncle Catullus said that they showed good taste in this
civilized choice. After the half-Arabian Coptos and Apollonopolis,
Thebes loomed into view, with its hundred gates, the gates which
Homer sang, the gates through which two hundred warriors, with all
their horses and chariots, could pass. And, as the travellers drew
near, in the rosy dawn behind Thebes, the Smaragdis Hills appeared
in green outline, transparent and far-away as a dream, through the
misty light of the horizon.
Thebes was already called Greater Diospolis and worshipped
Zeus-Jupiter.
"Heaven be praised!" said Uncle Catullus. "The Upper Egyptians are
become sensible. Venus and Jupiter are once more held in honour! Every
conceivable sort of crocodile, goat, dog, rat, falcon and beetle is
done with. It was high time!"
Like Memphis, Thebes spread itself as an immense, ancient, but dying
city. For eighty stadia along the Nile its ancient palaces and temples
stood in an endless row, forsaken, ruined, cracking, slanting and
sinking, with their pillars and walls, their mutilated colossi and
sphinxes, their obelisks already fallen to the ground. Even in the
sun, a grey melancholy spread over the great city, whose streets,
indeed, were crowded with numbers of pedestrians, camels and litters,
but without the feverish, metropolitan bustle which had reigned at
Alexandria. The gloom of a fatally waning glory lay like a haze over
all this architectural immensity, which Cambyses, with his Persian
hordes, had in past ages destroyed beyond repair, as with gigantic
hammer-strokes.
In the moonlit night the city, with its vast outlines, with its endless
row of Titanic palaces, rose beside the Nile like a Titanic citadel,
mysteriously chilling to the heart. In these abandoned temples the
lost wisdom especially had been cultivated by the omniscient priests,
the heirs of Moses and of Hermes Trismegistus. Here the utmost wisdom
of philosophy and astronomy and astrology was known. Here the year
and the day were calculated by the sun and no longer, as of yore,
by the moon; here the year was divided into twelve months of thirty
days, with five intercalary days; and here was calculated the time
that must be added to the three hundred and sixty-five days in order
to arrive at the exact length of the year. The kings who reigned here
reigned, according to the hieroglyphs on the obelisks, over Scythia,
Bactria, Ionia and India! They had ruled the world, in the deep-sunk
centuries! In the measureless spaces of their immense palaces and
temples, from which the Nile, flowing silver in the moonlight, could be
seen through the rows of pylons gleaming as it had gleamed centuries
ago, not an atom remained of the material or immaterial life of this
long, long array of monarchs. Their names alone were still extant,
written on cracking or mutilated obelisks, but their history lingered
only in a few disputed legends. The unplumbed depth of the past made
Lucius' sensitive mind turn giddy. Yet, as he wandered by Thrasyllus'
side through the endless forsaken halls and rooms and courts, here
dark with shadow, there lighted by the spectral moon, he was charmed
by the sombre beauty and grandeur of that giddy depth.
Here, too, stood a monolithic memnonium. Next came, linked together,
the forty royal tombs hewn in the rock. And, in front of this Titanic
ruin, in which not a mummy remained, the travellers saw, in the moonlit
night, the two seated colossi, themselves carved out of monoliths;
but one, with the trunk broken off--by what power?--had fallen in
the high grass, while the other still stared towards the east, in
the hieratic attitude, the long hands upon the knees, the pschent
crowning the vast, ecstatic head, with its huge, staring, sightless
eyes, from which the enamel had disappeared and the jewelled pupils.
The travellers stood in silence before the statue in the moonlight;
and even Uncle Catullus refrained from jesting. The atmosphere at
this spot was woven of shimmering divinity. The moon was waning, the
dawn was rising rose-red. And, as though with a human voice, a single
note sounded from the statue. The note was intoned clearly and almost
plaintively; it developed into the powerful sound of a man's high
voice, swelled into something terribly human and almost divine and
broke off short and hard. They all heard it in the uncertain light:
Lucius, Thrasyllus, Catullus, Caleb, Cora, all the slaves, male and
female, who had accompanied the travellers. Caleb turned very pale
and time after time pressed his lips to his amulets.
And, motionless and now silent, the blind colossus stared towards the
sun, which was rising out of a sea of rosy beams and gold-dust cloud.
That evening, in the temple of Zeus-Jupiter-Ra, the travellers saw the
strange ceremony of the wedding of the Pallade, or Pallachide. She
was the daughter of one of the greatest families of Diospolis and
was chosen a month ago, for her birth and beauty, as the priestess
of the god. She had served the god that month by giving her beauty
to whomsoever she would. Now that the period of her service was
past, she was marrying her bridegroom, a young man, like herself a
member of one of the greatest and oldest Theban families. There was
a ceremony of mourning and dirge because the service of so fair and
famed a maiden was at an end; there was the presentation of gifts
by all whom she had embraced that month; there was glad gaiety now
because of her wedding. She was attired and anointed as a goddess and
received great honour from the close-packed multitude; and after her
wedding she kissed the priestess who succeeded her, likewise a virgin
from one of the leading families of the town, and who was shown naked
before the altar and was exquisitely beautiful as a child.
"Every country has its customs," said Uncle Catullus, with a shrug. "I
don't envy the bridegroom; but no one seems to consider it odd;
and the polite thing for us foreigners to do will be just to act as
though we thought it all quite natural."
And with Lucius, Thrasyllus and Caleb he approached the bride,
who was now sparkling with jewels beside her bridegroom; and their
slaves threw roses and lilies and lotus-flowers before her feet;
and she thanked him with a silent, winning dignity, standing amid
the circle of her kinsmen in a queenly attitude.
But, after Thebes, to Uncle Catullus' despair, there reappeared on the
banks of the Nile the towns at which crocodiles, fishes and falcons
were worshipped.
"Lucius," said Uncle Catullus to his nephew, seriously, one morning,
while the barge was approaching Apollonopolis Magna, "Lucius, my dear
boy, I have a confession to make to you. I think I've had enough
of it. I'm sick of falcons, fishes and crocodiles which are gods,
not to mention dogs, wolves, beetles, bulls and other cattle. And,
in addition to being sick of all these sacred animals, I'm sick of all
those strange Egyptian foodstuffs, while, moreover, I suspect Caleb of
fortifying with barley-spirit the wines with which he supplies us out
of his store; and this applies not only to the thick-as-ink Mareotis
wine, but also to the topaz-yellow liqueurs of Napata.... Lucius, my
dear boy, I am old and I feel ill. My head is like a sponge saturated
not with water but with impressions of strange ceremonies and immoral
customs. Also my stomach is overloaded and my palate over-excited. I
have a craving for a few succulent oysters and a young roast peacock. I
understand that one can't get those here, on the Nile; but still
I should like to learn what your plans really are ... I've heard
something about hunting-expeditions and the pillars of Sesostris...."
"Yes, uncle," said Lucius, with a smile, "Caleb did suggest that we
should leave the barge at Philae, where we shall soon be arriving, and
go through Ethiopia with carts, camels, elephants and tents, go hunting
on elephants and ostriches and travel over Napata and Meroe, through
forest and wilderness, to Cape Dire and the pillars of Sesostris,
where we shall find the quadrireme waiting for the homeward journey."
"Well, my dear boy, I think that this programme, together with my
spongy brain and overloaded stomach, would be too much for me. If I
were to accomplish it by your side, then Egypt would certainly be the
death of me, a contingency which I am dreading as it is. I think,
don't you, that I had better go down the Nile again in the barge,
past all the sacred wolves and falcons and cats and beetles?"
But Caleb had approached:
"In that case, my noble Lord Catullus," he said, "I have a much better
plan. In fact, I, your humble, obedient servant, agree with you that
the journey through Ethiopia would perhaps be very tiring for you. That
is why I would propose that the thalamegus take you from Apollonopolis
Magna, by the canal, to Berenice, on the Bay of Acathantus, in the
Arabian Gulf. [4] At Berenice you will meet the quadrireme, which
has gone by Pelusium and the Nechao Canal [5] and is ascending the
Arabian Gulf to fetch us at the pillars of Sesostris. In this way
you will do the journey without inconvenience and yet with enjoyment,
for the Berenice Canal passes along the Smaragdis Mountains and they
are a dream, my lord; my lord, they're a dream!..."
Thus did Caleb advise him, reflecting that, if Uncle Catullus adopted
this programme, instead of going back to Alexandria, the princely
apartments at the Hermes House would remain unoccupied and could
be let to the Persian grandees who had fed the sacred Such on Lake
Moeris and who were travelling in the opposite direction to his own
noble clients....