And Kom Ombos is the temple of the crocodile god.
Sebek was one of the oldest and one of the most evil of the Egyptian
gods. In the Fayum he was worshipped, as well as at Kom Ombos, and
there, in the holy lake of his temple, were numbers of holy crocodiles,
which Strabo tells us were decorated with jewels like pretty women. He
did not get on with the other gods, and was sometimes confused with Set,
who personified natural darkness, and who also was worshipped by the
people about Kom Ombos.
I have spoken of the golden sameness of the Nile, but this sameness is
broken by the variety of the temples. Here you have a striking instance
of this variety. Edfu, only forty miles from Kom Ombos, the next temple
which you visit, is the most perfect temple in Egypt. Kom Ombos is one
of the most imperfect. Edfu is a divine house of "the Hidden One," full
of a sacred atmosphere. Kom Ombos is the house of crocodiles. In ancient
days the inhabitants of Edfu abhorred, above everything, crocodiles and
their worshippers. And here at Kom Ombos the crocodile was adored. You
are in a different atmosphere.
As soon as you land, you are greeted with crocodiles, though fortunately
not by them. A heap of their black mummies is shown to you reposing in a
sort of tomb or shrine open at one end to the air. By these mummies the
new note is loudly struck. The crocodiles have carried you in an
instant from that which is pervadingly general to that which is narrowly
particular; from the purely noble, which seems to belong to all time,
to the entirely barbaric, which belongs only to times outworn.
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