lonely cenotaph, with its sand-colored, massive façade, its heaps of
fallen stone, its wide and ruined doorway, its thick, almost rough,
columns recalling Medinet-Abu. There is not very much to see, but from
there one has a fine view of other temples--of the Ramesseum, looking
superb, like a grand skeleton; of Medinet-Abu, distant, very pale gold
in the morning sunlight; of little Deir-al-Medinet, the pretty child of
the Ptolemies, with the heads of the seven Hathors. And from Kurna the
Colossi are exceptionally grand and exceptionally personal, so personal
that one imagines one sees the expressions of the faces that they no
longer possess.
Even if you do not go into the tombs,--but you will go,--you must ride
to the tombs of the kings; and you must, if you care for the finesse of
impressions, ride on a blazing day and toward the hour of noon. Then the
ravine is itself, like the great act that demonstrates a temperament. It
is the narrow home of fire,
[Illustration:
From stereograph, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
PAINTED TOMB CHAMBER OF PRINCE SEN-NOFER, THEBES]
hemmed in by brilliant colors, nearly all--perhaps quite all--of which
could be found in a glowing furnace. Every shade of yellow is
there,--lemon yellow, sulphur yellow, the yellow of amber, the yellow of
orange with its tendency toward red, the yellow of gold, sand color, sun
color. Cannot all these yellows be found in a fire? And there are
reds--pink of the carnation, pink of the coral, red of the little rose
that grows in certain places of sands, red of the bright flame’s heart.
And all these colors are mingled in complete sterility. And all are
fused into a fierce brotherhood by the sun. And like a flood, they seem
flowing to the red and the yellow mountains, like a flood that is
flowing to its sea. You are taken by them toward the mountains, on and
on, till the world is closing in, and you know the way must come to an
end. And it comes to an end--in a tomb.
You go to a door in the rock, and a guardian lets you in, and wants to
follow you in. Prevent him if you can. Pay him. Go in alone. For this is
the tomb of Amenhotep II; and he himself is here, far down, at rest
under the mountain, this king who lived and reigned more than fourteen
hundred years before the birth of Christ. The ravine-valley leads to
him, and you should go to him alone. He lies in the heart of the living
rock, in the dull heat of the earth’s bowels, which is like no other
heat. You descend by stairs and corridors, you pass over a well by a
bridge, you pass through a naked chamber; and the king is not there.
And you go on down another staircase, and along another corridor, and
you come into a pillared chamber, with paintings on its walls, and on
its pillars, paintings of the king in the presence of the gods of the
under-world, under stars in a soft blue sky. And below you, shut in on
the farther side by the solid mountain in whose breast you have all this
time been walking, there is a crypt. And you turn away from the bright
paintings, and down there you see the king.
Many years ago in London I went to the private view of the Royal Academy
at Burlington House. I went in the afternoon when the galleries were
crowded with politicians and artists, with dealers, gossips, quidnuncs,
and _flâneurs_; with authors, fashionable lawyers, and doctors; with men
and women of the world; with young dandies and actresses _en vogue_. A
roar of voices went up to the roof. Every one was talking, smiling,
laughing, commenting, and criticizing. It was a little picture of the
very worldly world that loves the things of to-day and the chime of the
passing hours. And suddenly some people near me were silent, and some
turned their heads to stare with a strangely fixed attention. And I saw
coming toward me an emaciated figure, rather bent, much drawn together,
walking slowly on legs like sticks. It was clad in black, with a gleam
of color. Above it was a face so intensely thin that it was like the
face of death. And in this face shone
[Illustration:
From stereograph, copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
TEMPLE OF ESNEH]
two eyes that seemed full of--the other world. And, like a breath from
the other world passing, this man went by me and was hidden from me by
the throng. It was Cardinal Manning in the last days of his life.
The face of this king is like his, but it has an even deeper pathos as
it looks upward to the rock. And the king’s silence bids you be silent,
and his immobility bids you be still. And his sad, and unutterable
resignation sifts awe, as by the desert wind the sand is sifted into the
temples, into the temple of your heart. And you feel the touch of time,
but the touch of eternity, too. And as, in that rock-hewn sanctuary, you
whisper “Pax vobiscum,” you say it for all the world.
XIV
EDFU
Prayer pervades the East. Far off across the sands, when one is
traveling in the desert, one sees thin minarets rising toward the sky. A
desert city is there. It signals its presence by this mute appeal to
Allah. And where there are no minarets,--in the great wastes of the
dunes, in the eternal silence, the lifelessness that is not broken even
by any lonely, wandering bird,--the camels are stopped at the appointed
hours, the poor, and often ragged, robes are laid down, the brown
pilgrims prostrate themselves in prayer. And the rich man spreads his
carpet, and prays. And the half-naked nomad spreads nothing; but he
prays, too. The East is full of lust, and full of money-getting, and
full of bartering, and full of violence; but it is full of worship--of
worship that disdains concealment, that recks not of ridicule or
comment, that believes too utterly to care if others disbelieve. There
are in the East many men who do not pray. They do not laugh at the man
who does, like the unpraying Christian. There is nothing ludicrous
[Illustration: PRAYER IN THE DESERT]
to them in prayer. In Egypt your Nubian sailor prays in the stern of
your dahabiyeh; and your Egyptian boatman prays by the rudder of your
boat; and your black donkey-boy prays behind a red rock in the sand; and
your camel-man prays when you are resting in the noontide, watching the
far-off, quivering mirage, lost in some wayward dream.
And must you not pray, too, when you enter certain temples where once
strange gods were worshiped in whom no man now believes?
There is one temple on the Nile which seems to embrace in its arms all
the worship of the past; to be full of prayers and solemn praises; to be
the holder, the noble keeper, of the sacred longings, of the unearthly
desires and aspirations, of the dead. It is the temple of Edfu. From all
the other temples it stands apart. It is the temple of the inward flame,
of the secret soul of man; of that mystery within us that is exquisitely
sensitive, and exquisitely alive; that has longings it cannot tell, and
sorrows it dare not whisper, and loves it can only love.
To Horus it was dedicated,--hawk-headed Horus,--the son of Isis and
Osiris, who was crowned with many crowns, who was the young Apollo of
the old Egyptian world. But though I know this, I am never able to
associate Edfu with Horus, that child wearing the side-lock,--when he is
not hawk-headed in his solar aspect,--that boy with his finger in his
mouth, that youth who fought against Set, murderer of his father.
Edfu, in its solemn beauty, in its perfection of form, seems to me to
pass into a region altogether beyond identification with the worship of
any special deity, with particular attributes, perhaps with particular
limitations; one who can be graven upon walls, and upon architraves and
pillars painted in brilliant colors; one who can personally pursue a
criminal, like some policeman in the street; even one who can rise upon
the world in the visible glory of the sun. To me, Edfu must always
represent the world-worship of “the Hidden One”; not Amun, god of the
dead, fused with Ra, with Amsu, or with Khnum: but that other “Hidden
One,” who is God of the happy hunting-ground of savages, with whom the
Buddhist strives to merge his strange serenity of soul; who is adored in
the “Holy Places” by the Moslem, and lifted mystically above the heads
of kneeling Catholics in cathedrals dim with incense, and merrily
praised with the banjo and the trumpet in the streets of black English
cities; who is asked for children by longing women, and for new dolls by
lisping babes; whom the atheist denies in the day, and fears in the
darkness of night; who is on the lips alike of priest and blasphemer,
and in the soul of all human life.
Edfu is the temple of “the Hidden One.” It is not pagan; it is not
Christian: it is a place in which to worship according to the dictates
of your heart.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF EDFU]
Edfu stands alone, not near any other temple, on the bank of the Nile
between Luxor and Assuan. It is not very far from El-Kab, once the
capital of Upper Egypt and it is about two thousand years old. The
building of it took over one hundred and eighty years, and it is the
most perfectly preserved temple to-day of all the antique world. It is
huge and it is splendid. It has towers one hundred and twelve feet high,
a propylon two hundred and fifty-two feet broad, and walls four hundred
and fifty feet long. Begun in the reign of Ptolemy III, it was completed
only fifty-seven years before the birth of Christ.
You know these facts about it, and you forget them, or at least you do
not think of them. What does all that matter when you are alone in Edfu?
Let the antiquarian go with his anxious nose almost touching the stone;
let the Egyptologist peer through his glasses at hieroglyphs and puzzle
out the meaning of cartouches: but let us wander at ease, and worship,
and regard the exquisite form, and drink in the mystical spirit, of this
very wonderful temple.
Do you care about form? Here you will find it in absolute perfection.
Edfu is the consecration of form. In proportion it is supreme above all
other Egyptian temples. Its beauty of form is like a music. Its design
affects one like the chiseled loveliness of a perfect sonnet. While the
world lasts, no architect can arise to create a building more
satisfying, more calm with the calm of faultlessness, more serene with
a just serenity. Or so it seems to me. I think of the most lovely
buildings I know in Europe--of the Alhambra at Granada, of the Cappella
Palatina in the palace at Palermo. And Edfu I place with them--Edfu
utterly different from them, more different, perhaps, even than they are
from each other, but akin to them, as all great beauty is mysteriously
akin. I have spent morning after morning in the Alhambra, and many and
many an hour in the Cappella Palatina; and never have I been weary of
either, or longed to go away. And this same sweet desire to stay came
over me in Edfu. The _Loulia_ was tied up by the high bank of the Nile.
The sailors were glad to rest. There was no steamer sounding its hideous
siren to call me to its crowded deck. So I yielded to my desire, and for
long I stayed in Edfu. And when at last I left it I said to myself,
“This is a supreme thing,” and I knew that within me had suddenly
developed the curious passion for buildings that some people never feel,
and that others feel ever growing and growing.
Yes, Edfu is supreme. No alteration could improve it. Any change made in
it, however slight, could only be harmful to it. Pure and perfect is its
design--broad propylon, great open courtyard with pillared galleries,
halls, chambers, sanctuary. Its dignity and its sobriety are matchless.
I know they must be, because they touched me so strangely, with a kind
of reticent
[Illustration: PYLON, TEMPLE OF EDFU]
enchantment, and I am not by nature enamoured of sobriety, of reticence
and calm, but am inclined to delight in almost violent force, in
brilliance, and, especially, in combinations of color. In the Alhambra
one finds both force and fairylike lightness, delicious proportions,
delicate fantasy, a spell as of subtle magicians; in the Cappella
Palatina a jeweled splendor, combined with a small perfection of form
which simply captivates the whole spirit and leads it to adoration. In
Edfu you are face to face with hugeness and with grandeur; but soon you
are scarcely aware of either--in the sense, at least, that connects
these qualities with a certain overwhelming, almost striking down, of
the spirit and the faculties. What you are aware of is your own immense
and beautiful calm of utter satisfaction--a calm which has quietly
inundated you, like a waveless tide of the sea. How rare it is to feel
this absolute satisfaction, this praising serenity! The critical spirit
goes, like a bird from an opened window. The excited, laudatory, voluble
spirit goes. And this splendid calm is left. If you stay here, you, as
this temple has been, will be molded into a beautiful sobriety. From the
top of the pylon you have received this still and glorious impression
from the matchless design of the whole building, which you see best from
there. When you descend the shallow staircase, when you stand in the
great court, when you go into the shadowy halls, then it is that the
utter satisfaction within you deepens. Then it is that you feel the
need to worship in this place created for worship.
The ancient Egyptians made most of their temples in conformity with a
single type. The sanctuary was the heart, the core, of each temple--the
sanctuary surrounded by the chambers in which were laid up the precious
objects connected with ceremonies and sacrifices. Leading to this core
of the temple, which was sometimes called “the divine house,” were
various halls the roofs of which were supported by columns--those
hypostyle halls which one sees perpetually in Egypt. Before the first of
these halls was a courtyard surrounded by a colonnade. In the courtyard
the priests of the temple assembled. The people were allowed to enter
the colonnade. A gateway with towers gave entrance to the courtyard. If
one visits many of the Egyptian temples, one soon becomes aware of the
subtlety, combined with a sort of high simplicity, and sense of mystery
and poetry, of these builders of the past. As a great writer leads one
on, with a concealed but beautiful art, from the first words of his
story to the last--the last words to which all the other words are
ministering servants; as the great musician--Wagner in his
“Meistersinger,” for instance,--leads one from the first notes of his
score to those final notes which magnificently reveal to the listeners
the real meaning of those first notes, and of all the notes which
followed them: so the Egyptian builders lead the spirit gently,
mysteriously forward from the gateway between the towers to the distant
house divine. When one enters the outer court, one feels the far-off
sanctuary. Almost unconsciously one is aware that for that sanctuary all
the rest of the temple was created; that to that sanctuary everything
tends. And in spirit one is drawn softly onward to that very holy place.
Slowly, perhaps, the body moves from courtyard to hypostyle hall, and
from one hall to another. Hieroglyphs are examined, cartouches puzzled
out, paintings of processions, or bas-reliefs of pastimes and of
sacrifices, looked at with care and interest; but all the time one has
the sense of waiting, of a want unsatisfied. And only when one at last
reaches the sanctuary is one perfectly at rest. For then the spirit
feels: “This is the meaning of it all.”
One of the means which the Egyptian architects used to create this sense
of approach is very simple, but perfectly effective. It consists only in
making each hall on a very slightly higher level than the one preceding
it, and the sanctuary, which is narrow and mysteriously dark, on the
highest level of all. Each time one takes an upward step, or walks up a
little incline of stone, the body seems to convey to the soul a deeper
message of reverence and awe. In no other temple is this sense of
approach to the heart of a thing so acute as it is when one walks in
Edfu. In no other temple, when the sanctuary is reached, has one such a
strong consciousness of being indeed within a sacred heart.
The color of Edfu is a pale and delicate brown, warm in the strong
sunshine, but seldom glowing. Its first doorway is extraordinarily high,
and is narrow, but very deep, with a roof showing traces of that
delicious, clear blue-green which is like a thin cry of joy rising up in
the solemn temples of Egypt. A small Sphinx keeps watch on the right,
just where the guardian stands; this guardian, the gift of the past,
squat, even fat, with a very perfect face of a determined and handsome
man. In the court, upon a pedestal, stands a big bird, and near it is
another bird, or rather half of a bird, leaning forward, and much
defaced. And in this great courtyard there are swarms of living birds
twittering in the sunshine. Through the doorway between the towers one
sees a glimpse of a native village with the cupolas of a mosque.
I stood and looked at the cupolas for a moment. Then I turned, and
forgot for a time the life of the world without--that men, perhaps, were
praying beneath those cupolas, or praising the Moslem’s God. For when I
turned, I felt, as I have said, as if all the worship of the world must
be concentrated here. Standing far down the open court, in the full
sunshine, I could see into the first hypostyle hall, but beyond only a
darkness--a darkness which led me on, in which the further chambers of
the house divine were hidden. As I went on slowly, the perfection of the
plan of the dead architects was gradually revealed to
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF EDFU FROM THE TOP OF THE PYLON]
me, when the darkness gave up its secrets; when I saw not clearly, but
dimly, the long way between the columns, the noble columns themselves,
the gradual, slight upward slope,--graduated by genius; there is no
other word,--which led to the sanctuary, seen at last as a little
darkness, in which all the mystery of worship, and of the silent desires
of men, was surely concentrated, and kept by the stone forever. Even the
succession of the darknesses, like shadows growing deeper and deeper,
seemed planned by some great artist in the management of light, and so
of shadow effects. The perfection of form is in Edfu, impossible to
describe, impossible not to feel. The tremendous effect it has--an
effect upon the soul--is created by a combination of shapes, of
proportions, of different levels, of different heights, by consummate
graduation. And these shapes, proportions, different levels, and
heights, are seen in dimness. Not that jeweled dimness one loves in
Gothic cathedrals, but the heavy dimness of windowless, mighty chambers
lighted only by a rebuked daylight ever trying to steal in. One is
captured by no ornament, seduced by no lovely colors. Better than any
ornament, greater than any radiant glory of color, is this massive
austerity. It is like the ultimate in an art. Everything has been tried,
every strangeness, _bizarrerie_, absurdity, every wild scheme of hues,
every preposterous subject--to take an extreme instance, a camel,
wearing a top-hat, and lighted up by fireworks, which I saw recently in
a picture-gallery of Munich. And at the end a genius paints a portrait
of a wrinkled old woman’s face, and the world regards and worships. Or
all discords have been flung together pell-mell, resolution of them has
been deferred perpetually, perhaps even denied altogether, chord of B
major has been struck with C major, works have closed upon the leading
note or the dominant seventh, symphonies have been composed to be played
in the dark, or to be accompanied by a magic-lantern’s efforts, operas
been produced which are merely carnage and a row,--and at the end a
genius writes a little song, and the world gives the tribute of its
breathless silence and its tears. And it knows that though other things
may be done, better things can never be done. For no perfection can
exceed any other perfection.
And so in Edfu I feel that this untinted austerity is perfect; that
whatever may be done in architecture during future ages of the world,
Edfu, while it lasts, will remain a thing supreme--supreme in form and,
because of this supremacy, supreme in the spell which it casts upon the
soul.
The sanctuary is just a small, beautifully proportioned, inmost chamber,
with a black roof, containing a sort of altar of granite, and a great
polished granite shrine which no doubt once contained the god Horus. I
am glad he is not there now. How far more impressive it is to stand in
an empty sanctuary, in the
[Illustration: THE COURT, TEMPLE OF EDFU]
house divine of “the Hidden One,” whom the nations of the earth worship,
whether they spread their robes on the sand and turn their faces to
Mecca, or beat the tambourine and sing “glory-hymns” of salvation, or
flagellate themselves in the night before the patron saint of the
Passionists, or only gaze at the snow-white plume that floats from the
snows of Etna under the rose of dawn, and feel the soul behind Nature.
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-gray, 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
[Illustration:
From a photograph by James S Lee
HYPOSTYLE HALL, KÔM OMBOS]
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. And especially the silence makes a great impression on you.
But before you enter this silence, between the amber and ruddy walls
that will lead you on to Nubia, and to the land of the crocodile, you
have a visit to pay. For here, high up on a terrace, looking over a
great bend of the river, is Kom Ombos. And Kom Ombos is the temple of
the crocodile god.
Sebek was one of the oldest and one of the most evil of the Egyptian
gods. In the Fayum he was worshiped, as well as at Kom Ombos, and there,
in the holy lake of his temple, were numbers of holy crocodiles, which
Strabo tells us were decorated with jewels like pretty women. He did not
get on with the other gods, and was sometimes confused with Set, who
personified natural darkness, and who also was worshiped by the people
about Kom Ombos.
I have spoken of the golden sameness of the Nile, but this sameness is
broken by the variety of the temples. Here you have a striking instance
of this variety. Edfu, only forty miles from Kom Ombos, the next temple
which you visit, is the most perfect temple in Egypt. Kom Ombos one of
the most imperfect. Edfu is a divine house of “the Hidden One,” full of
a sacred atmosphere. Kom Ombos is the house of crocodiles. In ancient
days the inhabitants of Edfu abhorred, above everything, crocodiles and
their worshipers. And here at Kom Ombos the crocodile was adored. You
are in a different atmosphere.