mphorae--myriads of them--that served to carry
the water from the old nourishing river; and the remains of walls,
repaired at diverse epochs, where stones inscribed with hieroglyphs lie
upside down against fragments of Grecian obelisks or Coptic sculptures
or Roman capitals. In our countries, where the past is of yesterday, we
have nothing resembling such a chaos of dead things.

Nowadays the sanctuary is reached through a large cutting in this hill
of ruins; incredible heaps of bricks and broken pottery enclose it on
all sides like a jealous rampart. Until recently indeed they covered it
almost to its roof. From the very first its appearance is disconcerting:
it is so grand, so austere and gloomy. A strange dwelling, to be sure,
for the Goddess of Love and Joy. It seems more fit to be the home of
the Prince of Darkness and of Death. A severe doorway, built of gigantic
stones and surmounted by a winged disc, opens on to an asylum of
religious mystery, on to depths where massive columns disappear in the
darkness of deep night.

Immediately on entering there is a coolness and a resonance as of a
sepulchre. First, the pronaos, where we still see clearly, between
pillars carved with hieroglyphs. Were it not for the large human faces
which serve for the capitals of the columns, and are the image of the
lovely Hathor, the goddess of the place, this temple of the decadent
epoch would scarcely differ from those built in this country two
thousand years before. It has the same square massiveness.

And in the dark blue ceilings there are the same frescoes, filled with
stars, with the signs of the Zodiac, and series of winged discs; in
bas-relief on the walls, the same multitudinous crowd of people who
gesticulate and make signs to one another with their hands--eternally
the same mysterious signs, repeated to infinity, everywhere--in the
palaces, the hypogea, the syringes, and on the sarcophagi and papyri of
the mummies.

The Memphite and Theban temples, which preceded this by so many
centuries, and far surpassed it in grandeur, have all lost, in
consequence of the falling of the enormous granites of their roofs,
their cherished gloom, and, what is the same thing, their religious
mystery. But in the temple of the lovely Hathor, on the contrary, except
for some figures mutilated by the hammers of Christians or Moslems,
everything has remained intact, and the lofty ceilings still throw their
fearsome shadows.

The gloom deepens