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Updated: May 5, 2025
The high-road runs past one stately entrance-gate after another; entrances with high Georgian, carved stone gateposts surmounted with vases, probably sent out ready-made from England; Adam entrances, with sphinxes and the stereotyped Adam semi-circular railings, all very imposing, and all alike derelict.
A row of Sphinxes led from the Nile to the surrounding wall, and to the first vast pro-pylon, which formed the entrance to a broad fore-court, enclosed on the two sides by colonnades, and beyond which stood a second gate-way.
A paved road, with a row of Sphinxes on each side, led from the Greek temple of Serapis to the rock-hewn tombs of Apis, and the temples and chapels built over them, and near them; in these the Apis bull after its death or "in Osiris" as the phrase went was worshipped, while, so long as it lived, it was taken care of and prayed to in the temple to which it belonged, that of the god Ptah at Memphis.
Gyp had passed beyond the age when Graham's teasing could disturb her. She smiled to show how little she minded his words. "You'll know, my dear brother, sometime, whether we're silly or not," she answered with beautiful dignity. "We're not a society that's organized just for fun!" Which was, of course, a slap at the Sphinxes. Isobel roused suddenly to an active interest in the discussion.
The architecture of Egypt, of which the principal forms are pyramids, sphinxes, obelisks, and temples, is characterized by massiveness of material, grandeur of proportion, and simplicity of parts a style well suited to its flat, sandy soil, though it would look heavy and out of place in a country where nature had herself supplied the elements of grandeur and massiveness in the form of lofty mountains or mighty forests.
On the farther side of the rows of sphinxes too, which he had now reached, there was not a man to be seen not a watchman even though the white limestone of the tombstones and the yellow desert-sand shone as clear in the moonlight as if they had some internal light of their own.
As the lovers stood together in the salon, exclaiming with delight at its bare floor, its low ceiling, its old bureau, its hard sofa with the Empire legs, and the dilapidated sphinxes on the arms, the owner of the house looked them up and down, from the door, with comprehending eyes. Barbizon had known adventures like this before!
Chinese vases, marble slabs for tables, old and new furniture with curving lines, with griffins, sphinxes, and lions' paws, gilded and ungilded, chandeliers, sconces, all were heaped together in a perfect chaos of art. The auction appeared to be at its height. The surging throng was competing for a portrait which could not but arrest the attention of all who possessed any knowledge of art.
In it were the palaces of the reigning family, the great museum, and the famous library which the Arabs later burned. There were parks and gardens brilliant with tropical foliage and adorned with the masterpieces of Grecian sculpture, while sphinxes and obelisks gave a suggestion of Oriental strangeness.
Esar-haddon, having made these arrangements, and having set up his tablet at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb side by side with that of Rameses II., returned to his own country, and proceeded to introduce sphinxes into the ornamentation of his palaces, while, at the same time, he attached to his former titles an additional clause, in which he declared himself to be "king of the kings of Egypt, and conqueror of Ethiopia."
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