Or so it seems to-day, when the passion of Christianity
against Hathor has spent itself and died. Now Christians come to seek
what Christian Copts destroyed; wander through the deserted courts,
desirous of looking upon the faces that have long since been hacked to
pieces. A more benign spirit informs our world, but, alas! Hathor has
been sacrificed to deviltries of old. And it is well, perhaps, that her
temple should be sad, like a place of silent waiting for the glories
that are gone.
With every step my melancholy grew. Encompassed by gloomy odors,
assailed by the clamour of gigantic bats, which flew furiously among the
monstrous pillars near a roof ominous as a storm-cloud, my spirit was
haunted by the sad eyes of Hathor, which gaze for ever from that column
in the first hall. Were they always like that? Once that face dwelt with
a crowd of worship. And all the other faces have gone, and all the glory
has passed. And, like so many of the living, the goddess has paid for
her splendors. The pendulum swung, and where men adored, men hated
her--her the goddess of love and loveliness. And as the human face
changes when terror and sorrow come, I felt as if Hathor's face of stone
had changed upon its column, looking toward the Nile, in obedience to
the anguish in her heart; I felt as if Denderah were a majestic house
of grief. So I must always think of it, dark, tragic, and superb. The
Egyptians once believed that when death came to a man, the soul of him,
which they called the Ba, winged its way to the gods, but that, moved
by a sweet unselfishness, it returned sometimes to his tomb, to give
comfort to the poor, deserted mummy.
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