One knows that, and so the imagination is
awake, ready to paint the lily and to gild the beaten gold. But even
if one did not know, I think one would be fascinated. This turmoil of
sun-baked earth and rock, grey, yellow, pink, orange, and red, awakens
the curiosity, summons the love of the strange, suggests that it holds
secrets to charm the souls of men.
X
MEDINET-ABU
At the entrance to the temple of Medinet-Abu, near the small groups
of palms and the few brown houses, often have I turned and looked back
across the plain before entering through the first beautiful doorway,
to see the patient backs and right sides of the Colossi, the far-off,
dreamy mountains beyond Karnak and the Nile. And again, when I have
entered and walked a little distance, I have looked back at the almost
magical picture framed in the doorway; at the bottom of the picture
a layer of brown earth, then a strip of sharp green--the cultivated
ground--then a blur of pale yellow, then a darkness of trees, and just
the hint of a hill far, very far away. And always, in looking, I have
thought of the "Sposalizio" of Raphael in the Brera at Milan, of the
tiny dream of blue country framed by the temple doorway beyond the
Virgin and Saint Joseph. The doorways of the temples of Egypt are very
noble, and nowhere have I been more struck by their nobility than in
Medinet-Abu. Set in huge walls of massive masonry, which rise slightly
above them on each side, with a projecting cornice, in their simplicity
they look extraordinarily classical, in their sobriety mysterious,
and in their great solidity quite wonderfully elegant.
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