Spell of Egypt — 15 - Ch. XIV: Edfu, pt. 1

EDFU

Prayer pervades the East.

Far off across the sands, when one is traveling in the desert, one sees thin minarets rising toward the sky.

A desert city is there.

It signals its presence by this mute appeal to Allah.

And where there are no minarets--in the great wastes of the dunes, in the eternal silence, the lifelessness that is not broken even by any lonely, wandering bird--the camels are stopped at the appointed hours, the poor, and often ragged, robes are laid down, the brown pilgrims prostrate themselves in prayer.

And the rich man spreads his carpet, and prays.

And the half-naked nomad spreads nothing; but he prays, too.

The East is full of lust and full of money-getting, and full of bartering, and full of violence; but it is full of worship--of worship that disdains concealment, that recks not of ridicule or comment, that believes too utterly to care if others disbelieve.

There are in the East many men who do not pray.

They do not laugh at the man who does, like the unpraying Christian.

There is nothing ludicrous to them in prayer.

In Egypt your Nubian sailor prays in the stern of your dahabiyeh; and your Egyptian boatman prays by the rudder of your boat;

and your black donkey-boy prays behind a red rock in the sand; and your camel-man prays when you are resting in the noontide, watching the far-off quivering mirage, lost in some wayward dream.

And must you not pray, too, when you enter certain temples where once strange gods were worshipped in whom no man now believes?

There is one temple on the Nile which seems to embrace in its arms all the worship of the past; to be full of prayers and solemn praises; to be the holder, the noble keeper, of the sacred longings, of the unearthly desires and aspirations, of the dead.

It is the temple of Edfu.

From all the other temples it stands apart.

It is the temple of inward flame, of the secret soul of man; of that mystery within us that is exquisitely sensitive, and exquisitely alive; that has longings it cannot tell, and sorrows it dare not whisper, and loves it can only love.

To Horus it was dedicated--hawk-headed Horus--the son of Isis and Osiris, who was crowned with many crowns, who was the young Apollo of the old Egyptian world.

But though I know this, I am never able to associate Edfu with Horus, that child wearing the side-lock--when he is not hawk-headed in his solar aspect--that boy with his finger in his mouth, that youth who fought against Set, murderer of his father.

Edfu, in its solemn beauty, in its perfection of form, seems to me to pass into a region altogether beyond identification with the worship of any special deity, with particular attributes, perhaps with particular limitations; one who can be graven upon walls, and upon architraves and pillars painted in brilliant colors; one who can personally pursue a criminal, like some policeman in the street; even one who can rise upon the world in the visible glory of the sun.

To me, Edfu must always represent the world-worship of “the Hidden One”; not Amun, god of the dead, fused with Ra, with Amsu, or with Khnum: but that other “Hidden One,” who is God of the happy hunting-ground of savages, with whom the Buddhist strives to merge his strange serenity of soul; who is adored in the “Holy Places” by the Moslem, and lifted mystically above the heads of kneeling Catholics in cathedrals dim with incense, and merrily praised with the banjo and the trumpet in the streets of black English cities; who is asked for children by longing women, and for new dolls by lisping babes; whom the atheist denies in the day, and fears in the darkness of night; who is on the lips alike of priest and blasphemer, and in the soul of all human life.

Edfu stands alone, not near any other temple.

It is not pagan; it is not Christian: it is a place in which to worship according to the dictates of your heart.

Edfu stands alone on the bank of the Nile between Luxor and Assuan.

It is not very far from El-Kab, once the capital of Upper Egypt, and it is about two thousand years old.

The building of it took over one hundred and eighty years, and it is the most perfectly preserved temple to-day of all the antique world.

It is huge and it is splendid.

It has towers one hundred and twelve feet high, a propylon two hundred and fifty-two feet broad, and walls four hundred and fifty feet long.

Begun in the reign of Ptolemy III.

, 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.

And this same sweet desire to stay came over me in Edfu.

The _Loulia_ was tied up by the high bank of the Nile.

The sailors were glad to rest.

There was no steamer sounding its hideous siren to call me to its crowded deck.

So I yielded to my desire, and for long I stayed in Edfu.

And when at last I left it I said to myself, “This is a supreme thing,” and I knew that within me had suddenly developed the curious passion for buildings that some people never feel, and that others feel ever growing and growing.

Yes, Edfu is supreme.

No alteration could improve it.

Any change made in it, however slight, could only be harmful to it.

Pure and perfect is its design--broad propylon, great open courtyard with pillared galleries, halls, chambers, sanctuary.

Its dignity and its sobriety are matchless.

I know they must be, because they touched me so strangely, with a kind of reticent enchantment, and I am not by nature enamored of sobriety, of reticence and calm, but am inclined to delight in almost violent force, in brilliance, and, especially, in combinations of color.

In the Alhambra one finds both force and fairylike lightness, delicious proportions, delicate fantasy, a spell as of subtle magicians; in the Cappella Palatina, a jeweled splendor, combined with a small perfection of form which simply captivates the whole spirit and leads it to adoration.

In Edfu you are face to face with hugeness and with grandeur;

but soon you are scarcely aware of either--in the sense, at least, that connects these qualities with a certain overwhelming, almost striking down, of the spirit and the faculties.

What you are aware of is your own immense and beautiful calm of utter satisfaction--a calm which has quietly inundated you, like a waveless tide of the sea.

How rare it is to feel this absolute satisfaction, this praising serenity!

The critical spirit goes, like a bird from an opened window.

The excited, laudatory, voluble spirit goes.

And this splendid calm is left.

If you stay here, you, as this temple has been, will be molded into a beautiful sobriety.

From the top of the pylon you have received this still and glorious impression from the matchless design of the whole building, which you see best from there.

When you descend the shallow staircase, when you stand in the great court, when you go into the shadowy halls, then it is that the utter satisfaction within you deepens.

Then it is that you feel the need to worship in this place created for worship.