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Opposite the Museum he seated himself upon a bench in the shade of a faded dogwood and wiped the moisture from his eyes. The glare from the unprotected boulevards was terrific. Under these somewhat unfavourable conditions he was occupied in studying the monument of Egypt's past magnificence when he felt a slight dragging sensation. It was indefinable and had no visual concomitant.
He had helped her to unravel the skein of difficulties which Egypt's three distinct and widely-different civilizations had presented to her the period of ancient Egypt, the period which we now call Coptic or Early Christian and the period of the Arab invasion, with its importation of a Mohammedan civilization.
As regards the period of Egypt's great military conquests, the Theban tombs of that age have supplied objects enough to stock a museum of pottery; but unfortunately the types are very uninteresting. To begin with, we find hand-made sepulchral statuettes modelled in summary fashion from an oblong lump of clay.
It was as if the treasure of all the lost mines of Nub had been flung out on the black rocks, and lay in a glittering carpet there. We passed small, submerged temples, with their foreheads just above water; drowning palm groves whose plumes trailed sadly on the blue expanse, and deserted mud-villages where the high Nile looked in at open doors to say, "This is for Egypt's good!"
Then he drew out for him a geomantic figure, which showed what had befallen Salim and Salim and said to Judar, "Such and such things have befallen thy brothers and they are now in the King of Egypt's prison; but thou art right welcome to abide with me and accomplish thine ordinances of pilgrimage and all shall be well."
For I tell thee that, for Egypt, Alexandria is but a splendid gate of ruin, and, while it endures, all nations of the earth shall march through it, to the plunder of the land, and all false Faiths shall nestle in it and breed the overthrow of Egypt's Gods." I made no answer, for there was truth in his words. And yet to me the city seemed very fair to look on.
How much of Egypt's myths and splendors are here depicted; the temple column called Pompey's pillar, the obelisk of Luxor, the mighty pyramids, last of all the sphynx, that fabled creature with the face of a woman, the body of a tigress and the heart of both.
In 1848, to the first volume of Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in Universal History," Birch contributed a long list of hieroglyphics, with descriptions and statements of their separate phonetic and ideographic values.
I would like to go there when Joseph was dreaming those curious dreams, or when Moses was doing wonderful things with snakes and sticks. 'I don't care about snakes, said Anthea shuddering. 'Well, we needn't be in at that part, but Babylon was lovely! We had cream and sweet, sticky stuff. And I expect Egypt's the same.
This was the sentiment of the nation, by the lips of Khu-n-Aten, the artist king: "Sweet love fills my heart for the queen; may she ever keep the hand of the Pharaoh." Whatever Egypt's mode of worshiping Khem and Isis, nothing could set at naught this clean, impulsive, sincere avowal. Here, then, openly and in perfect propriety was a woman abroad with her suitor.
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