The Mohammedans who created the mosques showed marvellous
taste. Copts are often lacking in taste, as they have proved here and
there in Abu Sargah. Above one curious and unlatticed screen, near to
a matted dais, droops a hideous banner, red, purple, and yellow, with a
white cross. Peeping in, through an oblong aperture, one sees a sort of
minute circus, in the form of a half-moon, containing a table with an
ugly red-and-white striped cloth. There the Eucharist, which must be
preceded by confession, is celebrated. The pulpit is of rosewood, inlaid
with ivory and ebony, and in what is called the "haikal-screen" there
are some fine specimens of carved ebony.
As I wandered about over the tattered carpets and the crumbling matting,
under the peaked roof, as I looked up at the flat-roofed galleries, or
examined the sculpture and ivory mosaics that, bleared by the passing
of centuries, seemed to be fading away under my very eyes, as upon every
side I was confronted by the hoary wooden lattices in which the dust
found a home and rested undisturbed, and as I thought of the narrow
alleys of grey and silent dwellings through which I had come to this
strange and melancholy "Temple of the Father," I seemed to feel upon my
breast the weight of the years that had passed since pious hands erected
this home of prayer in which now no one was praying. But I had yet to
receive another and a deeper impression of solemnity and heavy silence.
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