se things contribute to this very definite effect.

I have heard travelers on the Nile speak piteously of the confusion
wakened in their minds by a hurried survey of many temples, statues,
monuments, and tombs. But if one stays long enough this confusion fades
happily away, and one differentiates between the antique personalities
of Ancient Egypt almost as easily as one differentiates between the
personalities of one's familiar friends. Among these personalities
Medinet-Abu is the warrior, standing like Mentu, with the solar disk,
and the two plumes erect above his head of a hawk, firmly planted at the
foot of the Theban mountains, ready to repel all enemies, to beat back
all assaults, strong and determined, powerful and brutally serene.

XI

THE RAMESSEUM

"This, my lord, is the thinking-place of Rameses the Great."

So said Ibrahim Ayyad to me one morning--Ibrahim, who is almost as
prolific in the abrupt creation of peers as if he were a democratic
government.

I looked about me. We stood in a ruined hall with columns, architraves
covered with inscriptions, segments of flat roof. Here and there traces
of painting, dull-red, pale, ethereal blue--the "love-color" of Egypt,
as the Egyptians often call it--still adhered to the stone. This hall,
dignified, grand, but happy, was open on all sides to the sun and air.
From it I could see tamarisk- and acacia-trees, and far-off shadowy
mountains beyond the eastern verge of the Nile. And the trees were still
as carven things in an atmosphere that was a miracle of clearness and
of purity. Behind me, and near, the hard Libyan mountains gleamed in the
sun. Somewhere a boy was singing; and suddenly his singing died away.
And I thought of the "Lay of the Harper" which is inscribed upon the
tombs of Thebes--those tombs under those gleaming mountains:

"For no one carries away his goods with him;
Yea, no one returns again who has gone thither."

It took the place of the song that had died as I thought of the great
king's glory; that he had been here, and had long since passed away.

"The thinking-place of Rameses the Great!"

"Suttinly."

"You must leave me alone here, Ibrahim."

I watched his gold-colored robe vanish into the gold of the sun
through the copper color of the columns. And I was quite alone in
the "thinking-place" of Rameses. It was a brilliant day, the sky
dark sapphire blue, without even the spectre of a cloud, or any airy,
vaporous veil;