, it was completed only fifty-seven years before
the birth of Christ.
You know these facts about it, and you forget them, or at least you do
not think of them. What does it all matter when you are alone in Edfu?
Let the antiquarian go with his anxious nose almost touching the stone;
let the Egyptologist peer through his glasses at hieroglyphs and puzzle
out the meaning of cartouches: but let us wander at ease, and worship
and regard the exquisite form, and drink in the mystical spirit, of this
very wonderful temple.
Do you care about form? Here you will find it in absolute perfection.
Edfu is the consecration of form. In proportion it is supreme above
all other Egyptian temples. Its beauty of form is like the chiselled
loveliness of a perfect sonnet. While the world lasts, no architect can
arise to create a building more satisfying, more calm with the calm of
faultlessness, more serene with a just serenity. Or so it seems to me. I
think of the most lovely buildings I know in Europe--of the Alhambra at
Granada, of the Cappella Palatina in the palace at Palermo. And Edfu
I place with them--Edfu utterly different from them, more different,
perhaps, even than they are from each other, but akin to them, as all
great beauty is mysteriously akin. I have spent morning after morning
in the Alhambra, and many and many an hour in the Cappella Palatina; and
never have I been weary of either, or longed to go away.
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