t run parallel--on the east that of the desert
of Arabia, on the west that of the Libyan desert--enclose, in the
distance, this valley of the Nile, this land of plenty, which, alike in
antiquity as in our days, has excited the greed of predatory races. The
temple has also some underground dependencies or crypts into which you
descend by staircases as of dungeons; sometimes even you have to crawl
through holes to reach them. Long superposed galleries which might serve
as hiding-places for treasure; long corridors recalling those which,
in bad dreams, threaten to close in and bury you. And the innumerable
figures, of course, are here too, gesticulating on the walls; and
endless representations of the lovely goddess, whose swelling bosom,
which has preserved almost intact the flesh colour applied in the times
of the Ptolemies, we have perforce to graze as we pass.

*****

In one of the vestibules that we have to traverse on our way out of
the sanctuary, amongst the numerous bas-reliefs representing various
sovereigns paying homage to the beautiful Hathor, is one of a young man,
crowned with a royal tiara shaped like the head of a uraeus. He is shown
seated in the traditional Pharaonic pose and is none other than the
Emperor Nero!

The hieroglyphs of the cartouche are there to affirm his identity,
albeit the sculptor, not knowing his actual physiognomy, has given him
the traditional features, regular as those of the god Horus. During the
centuries of the Roman domination the Western emperors used to send from
home instructions that their likeness should be placed on the walls
of the temples, and that offerings should be made in their name to the
Egyptian divinities--and this notwithstanding that in their eyes Egypt
must have seemed so far away, a colony almost at the end of the earth.
(And it was such a goddess as this, of secondary rank in the times of
the Pharaohs, that was singled out as the favourite of the Romans of the
decadence.)

The Emperor Nero! As a matter of fact at the very time these
bas-reliefs--almost the last--and these expiring hieroglyphics were
being inscribed, the confused primitive theogonies had almost reached
their end and the days of the Goddess of Joy were numbered. There had
been conceived in Judaea symbols more lofty and more pure, which were to
rule a great part of the world for two thousand years--afterwards,
alas, to decline in their turn; and men were about to throw themselves
passionate