It
is difficult to feel as if one had anything in common with men who
seriously worshipped crocodiles, had priests to feed them, and decorated
their scaly necks with jewels.
Yet the crocodile god had a noble temple at Kom Ombos, a temple which
dates from the times of the Ptolemies, though there was a temple in
earlier days which has now disappeared. Its situation is splendid. It
stands high above the Nile, and close to the river, on a terrace which
has recently been constructed to save it from the encroachments of the
water. And it looks down upon a view which is exquisite in the clear
light of early morning. On the right, and far off, is a delicious
pink bareness of distant flats and hills. Opposite there is a flood
of verdure and of trees going to mountains, a spit of sand where is an
inlet of the river, with a crowd of native boats, perhaps waiting for
a wind. On the left is the big bend of the Nile, singularly beautiful,
almost voluptuous in form, and girdled with a radiant green of crops,
with palm-trees, and again the distant hills. Sebek was well advised to
have his temples here and in the glorious Fayum, that land flowing with
milk and honey, where the air is full of the voices of the flocks and
herds, and alive with the wild pigeons; where the sweet sugar-cane
towers up in fairy forests, the beloved home of the jackal; where the
green corn waves to the horizon, and the runlets of water make a maze of
silver threads carrying life and its happy murmur through all the vast
oasis.
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