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At the entrance to the temple of Medinet-Abu, near the small groups of palms and the few brown houses, often have I turned and looked back across the plain before entering through the first beautiful doorway, to see the patient backs and right sides of the Colossi, the far-off, dreamy mountains beyond Karnak and the Nile.
Passing the fragment, in grey granite, of a monarch of the 18th dynasty , the visitor may pause before another object taken from the French . It is the statue, from Karnak, of a high priest of Amen-ra, seated, holding an ear of corn, and, like his companions in stone, resting his arms upon his knees.
Already its silver rays fell upon the ruins of Karnak; upon the thickets of lotus columns; upon solitary gateways that now give entrance to no courts; upon the sacred lake, with its reeds, where the black water-fowl were asleep; upon sloping walls, shored up by enormous stanchions, like ribs of some prehistoric leviathan; upon small chambers; upon fallen blocks of masonry, fragments of architrave and pavement, of capital and cornice; and upon the people of Karnak those fascinating people who still cling to their habitation in the ruins, faithful through misfortune, affectionate with a steadfastness that defies the cruelty of Time; upon the little, lonely white sphinx with the woman's face and the downward-sloping eyes full of sleepy seduction; upon Rameses II., with the face of a kindly child, not of a king; upon the Sphinx, bereft of its companion, which crouches before the kiosk of Taharga, the King of Ethiopia; upon those two who stand together as if devoted, yet by their attitudes seem to express characters diametrically opposed, grey men and vivid, the one with folded arms calling to Peace, the other with arms stretched down in a gesture of crude determination, summoning War, as if from the underworld; upon the granite foot and ankle in the temple of Rameses III., which in their perfection, like the headless Victory in Paris, and the Niobide Chiaramonti in the Vatican, suggest a great personality that once met with is not to be forgotten: upon these and their companions, who would not forsake the halls and courts where once they dwelt with splendor, where now they dwell with ruin that attracts the gaping world.
Windows, always rare in Egyptian architecture, are mere ventilators when introduced into the walls of temples, being intended to light the staircases, as in the second pylon of Horemheb at Karnak, or else to support decorative woodwork on festival days.
They had barely recovered from their amazement when Margarid, seeing all her family either dying or dead at her feet, raised to heaven her blood-stained knife, and exclaimed in a calm and steady voice: "Our daughters shall not be outraged; our children shall not be enslaved; all of us, of the family of Joel the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, dead, like our husbands and brothers, for the liberty of Gaul, are on our way to rejoin them above.
A companion to this one, for they were always erected in pairs, has been removed. In ancient times a paved street led from this temple to Karnak, which is reached by a short walk. This ancient street was adorned by a row of ram-headed sphinxes on each side.
The call to prayers could be heard hourly from the great gongs of the temple at Karnak, when in happier days the sound had been lost in the city's noises within the very shadow of the pylons. He could hear strains of music in religious processions, when the wind was fair, but he missed the acclaim of the populace. Besides these sounds, silence had settled over Thebes.
The flames lighted the tops of the oaks of the forest, the colossal stones of Karnak, and even the vast expanse of the sea, while the moon inundated the space with its divine light. A few minutes later there was nothing left but a heap of ashes where the pyre of Daoulas had stood.
Every inch of column, wall, and ceiling was carved with hieroglyphic and pictorial decorations. These were painted in bright colors which are yet faintly visible. This structure is a modern one compared with Karnak; for Karnak was an ancient temple more than one thousand years old when King Ptolemy began the erection of this building just before the Christian Era.
He was so straight-laced, so considerate. He wouldn't, like so many other men she knew, do a mean thing. He couldn't. Finally Lester rose and excused himself. He and Jennie were going farther up the Nile in the morning toward Karnak and Thebes and the water-washed temples at Phylae. They would have to start at an unearthly early hour, and he must get to bed. "When are you going home?" asked Mrs.
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