he lunar disk and two feathers. And the long
lotus-stalks flow down on each side of the neck toward the ground. At
the back of this head-dress are a scarab and a cartouche. The goddess
is advancing solemnly and gently. A wonderful calm, a matchless, serene
dignity, enfold her.

In the body of this cow one is able, indeed one is almost obliged, to
feel the soul of a goddess. The incredible is accomplished. The dead
Egyptian makes the ironic, the skeptical modern world feel deity in a
limestone cow. How is it done? I know not; but it is done. Genius can
do nearly everything, it seems. Under the chin of the cow there is a
standing statue of the King Mentu-Hotep, and beneath her the king kneels
as a boy. Wonderfully expressive and solemnly refined is the cow's face,
which is of dark color, like the color of almost black earth--earth
fertilized by the Nile. Dignified, dominating, almost but just not
stern, strongly intelligent, and, through its beautiful intelligence,
entirely sympathetic ("to understand all, is to pardon all"), this face,
once thoroughly seen, completely noticed, can never be forgotten. This
is one of the most beautiful statues in the world.

When I was at Deir-el-Bahari I thought of it and wished that it still
stood there near the Colonnades of Thebes under the tiger-colored
precipices. And then I thought of Hatshepsu. Surely she would not brook
a rival to-day near the temple which she made--a rival long lost and
long forgotten. Is not her influence still there upon the terraced
platforms, among the apricot and the white columns, near the paintings
of the land of Punt? Did it not whisper to the antiquaries, even to the
soldiers from Cairo, who guarded the Vache-Hathor in the night, to make
haste to take her away far from the hills of Thebes and from the Nile's
long southern reaches, that the great queen might once more reign
alone? They obeyed. Hatshepsu was appeased. And, like a delicate woman,
perfumed and arranged, clothed in a creation of white and blue and
orange, standing ever so knowingly against a background of orange and
pink, of red and of brown-red, she rules at Deir-el-Bahari.

XIII

THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS

On the way to the tombs of the kings I went to the temple of Kurna,
that lonely cenotaph, with its sand-colored massive facade, its heaps
of fallen stone, its wide and ruined doorway, its thick, almost rough,
columns recalling Medinet-Abu. There is not very much to see, but from