rm, and girdled with a radiant green of crops,
with palm-trees, and again the distant hills. Sebek was well advised to
have his temples here and in the glorious Fayum, that land flowing with
milk and honey, where the air is full of the voices of the flocks and
herds, and alive with the wild pigeons; where the sweet sugar-cane
towers up in fairy forests, the beloved home of the jackal; where the
green corn waves to the horizon, and the runlets of water make a maze of
silver threads carrying life and its happy murmur through all the vast
oasis.

At the guardian's gate by which you go in there sits not a watch dog,
nor yet a crocodile, but a watch cat, small, but very determined, and
very attentive to its duties, and neatly carved in stone. You try to
look like a crocodile-worshipper. It is deceived, and lets you pass. And
you are alone with the growing morning and Kom Ombos.

I was never taken, caught up into an atmosphere, in Kom Ombos. I
examined it with interest, but I did not feel a spell. Its grandeur
is great, but it did not affect me as did the grandeur of Karnak. Its
nobility cannot be questioned, but I did not stilly rejoice in it, as in
the nobility of Luxor, or the free splendor of the Ramesseum.

The oldest thing at Kom Ombos is a gateway of sandstone placed there by
Thothmes III. as a tribute to Sebek. The great temple is of a warm-brown
color, a very rich and particularly beautiful brown, that soothes and
almost comforts the eyes that have been for many days boldly assaulted
by the sun. Upon the terrace platform above the river you face a low and
ruined wall, on which there are some lively reliefs, beyond which is
a large, open court containing a quantity of stunted, once big columns
standing on big bases. Immediately before you the temple towers up, very
gigantic, very majestic, with a stone pavement, walls on which still
remain some traces of paintings, and really grand columns, enormous in
size and in good formation. There are fine architraves, and some bits of
roofing, but the greater part is open to the air. Through a doorway is
a second hall containing columns much less noble, and beyond this one
walks in ruin, among crumbled or partly destroyed chambers, broken
statues, become mere slabs of granite and fallen blocks of stone. At the
end is a wall, with a pavement bordering it, and a row of chambers that
look like monkish cells, closed by small doors. At Kom Ombos there
are two sanctuaries, one dedic