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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.
An average chamber of Edfû or Denderah yields more material for study than the hypostyle hall of Karnak; and the chapel of Antoninus Pius at Philae, had it been finished, would have contained more scenes than the sanctuary of Luxor and the passages by which it is surrounded.
Then they passed Eilithya, standing on the eastern bank, with many temples rising above it, and with the sandstone rock behind it dotted with the entrances to sepulchers. A few miles higher up they passed Edfu. Above this the valley gradually narrowed, the hills closing in until they rose almost perpendicularly from the edge of the stream.
At Edfu Mariette found the temple of Horus, built during the time of the Ptolemies, whose roof formed the foundation of an Arab village. After persevering excavations the whole magnificent plan of the temple stood uncovered, with all its columns, inscriptions, and carvings nearly intact.*
Now the King of Egypt was always called Horus, and the priests of Edfu wishing to magnify their local god, Horus of Behutet, or Horus of Edfu, attributed to him the conquests of this human, and probably predynastic, king.
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.
The text of this Legend is cut in hieroglyphs on the walls of the temple of Edfu, in Upper Egypt, and some of the incidents described in it are illustrated by large bas-reliefs. The form of the Legend here given dates from the Ptolemaic Period, but the subject matter is some thousands of years older.
On the other side we see a row of animated nome-standards of Upper Egypt, with the symbols of the god Min of Koptos, the hawk of Horus of Edfu, the ibis of Thot of Eshmunên, and the jackals of Anubis of Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the monument, we should see, bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner, king, or animal symbolic of the North.
It is at least possible that there was a sky-god her at Letopolis, and likewise the hawk-god was a sky-god her at Edfu, and hence the mixture of the two deities. It is always the hawk-headed Horus who wars against Set, and attends on the enthroned Osiris. One of the earlier of these forms is that of the boy Horus standing upon crocodiles, and grasping scorpions and noxious animals in his hands.
At Ombos, at Edfû, at Denderah, the whole city nestled inside the precincts of the divine dwelling. At El Kab, where the temple temenos formed a separate enclosure within the boundary of the city walls, it served as a sort of donjon, or keep, in which the garrison could seek a last refuge.
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