Kohl pots were
fashioned in the form of the lotus, cartouches sprang from it, wine
flowed from cups shaped like it. The lotus was part of the very life of
Egypt, as the rose, the American Beauty rose, is part of our social
life of to-day. And here, in the Ramesseum, I found campaniform, or
lotus-flower capitals on the columns--here where Rameses once perhaps
dreamed of his Syrian campaigns, or of that famous combat when, "like
Baal in his fury," he fought single-handed against the host of the
Hittites massed in two thousand, five hundred chariots to overthrow him.
The Ramesseum is a temple not of winds, but of soft and kindly airs.
There comes Zephyrus, whispering love to Flora incarnate in the Lotus.
To every sunbeam, to every little breeze, the ruins stretch out arms.
They adore the deep-blue sky, the shining, sifted sand, untrammeled
nature, all that whispers, "Freedom."
So I felt that day when Ibrahim left me, so I feel always when I sit
in the Ramesseum, that exultant victim of Time's here not sacrilegious
hand.
All strong souls cry out secretly for liberty as for a sacred necessity
of life. Liberty seems to drench the Ramesseum. And all strong souls
must exult there. The sun has taken it as a beloved possession. No massy
walls keep him out. No shield-shaped battlements rear themselves up
against the outer world as at Medinet-Abu. No huge pylons cast down upon
the ground their forms in darkness.
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