manufactory of Kurna. From many
points it looks not unlike a strangely prolonged rubbish-heap in which
busy giants have been digging with huge spades, making mounds and pits,
caverns and trenches, piling up here a monstrous heap of stones, casting
down there a mighty statue. But how it fascinates! Of curse one knows
what it means. One knows that on this strip of land Naville dug out at
Deir-el-Bahari the temple of Mentu-hotep, and discovered later, in her
shrine, Hathor, the cow-goddess, with the lotus-plants streaming from
her sacred forehead to her feet; that long before him Mariette here
brought to the light at Drah-abu'l-Neggah the treasures of kings of
the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties; that at the foot of those
tiger-colored precipices Theodore M. Davis the American found the
sepulcher of Queen Hatshepsu, the Queen Elizabeth of the old Egyptian
world, and, later, the tomb of Yuaa and Thuaa, the parents of Queen
Thiy, containing mummy-cases covered with gold, jars of oil and wine,
gold, silver, and alabaster boxes, a bed decorated with gilded ivory a
chair with gilded plaster reliefs, chairs of state, and a chariot; that
here Maspero, Victor Loret, Brugsch Bey, and other patient workers gave
to the world tombs that had been hidden and unknown for centuries; that
there to the north is the temple of Kurna, and over there the Ramesseum;
that those rows of little pillars close under the mountain, and looking
strangely modern, are the pillars of Hatshepsu's temple, which bears
upon its walls the pictures of the expedition to the historic land of
Punt; that the kings were buried there, and there the queens and the
princes of the vanished dynasties; that beyond to the west is the temple
of Deir-el-Medinet with its judgment of the dead; that here by the
native village is Medinet-Abu. One knows that, and so the imagination is
awake, ready to paint the lily and to gild the beaten gold. But even
if one did not know, I think one would be fascinated. This turmoil of
sun-baked earth and rock, grey, yellow, pink, orange, and red, awakens
the curiosity, summons the love of the strange, suggests that it holds
secrets to charm the souls of men.

X

MEDINET-ABU

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 Coloss