And day by day two great religions,
almost as if in happy brotherly love, send forth their summons by the
temple walls. And just beyond those walls, upon the hill, there is a
Coptic church. Peace reigns in happy Luxor. The lion lies down with the
lamb, and the child, if it will, may harmlessly put its hand into the
cockatrice's den.
Perhaps because it is so surrounded, so haunted by life and familiar
things, because the pigeons fly about it, the buffalo stares into it,
the goats stir up the dust beside its columns, the twittering voices of
women make a music near its courts, many people pay little heed to this
great temple, gain but a small impression from it. It decorates the
bank of the Nile. You can see it from the dahabiyehs. For many that is
enough. Yet the temple is a noble one, and, for me, it gains a definite
attraction all its own from the busy life about it, the cheerful hum and
stir. And if you want fully to realize its dignity, you can always visit
it by night. Then the cries from the village are hushed. The houses
show no lights. Only the voices from the Nile steal up to the obelisk of
Rameses, to the pylon from which the flags of Thebes once flew on festal
days, to the shrine of Alexander the Great, with its vultures and its
stars, and to the red granite statues of Rameses and his wives.
These last are as expressive as and of course more definite than my
dancers. They are full of character.
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