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 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 worshipped 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 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 stands alone, not near any other temple. It is not pagan; it is not
Christian: it is a place in which to worship according to the dictates
of your heart.
Edfu stands alone 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 it all 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 the chiselled
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 enchantment, and I am not by nature enamored 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 at 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 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 follow 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 consisted
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 very 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 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 for ever. 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 jewelled 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 fire-works, 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 house divine of “the Hidden One,” whom the
nations of the world 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.