mber,
with a black roof, containing a sort of altar of granite, and a great
polished granite shrine which no doubt once contained the god Horus. I
am glad he is not there now. How far more impressive it is to stand in
an empty sanctuary in the house divine of "the Hidden One," whom the
nations of the world worship, whether they spread their robes on the
sand and turn their faces to Mecca, or beat the tambourine and sing
"glory hymns" of salvation, or flagellate themselves in the night before
the patron saint of the Passionists, or only gaze at the snow-white
plume that floats from the snows of Etna under the rose of dawn, and
feel the soul behind Nature. Among the temples of Egypt, Edfu is the
house divine of "the Hidden One," the perfect temple of worship.

XV

KOM OMBOS

Some people talk of the "sameness" of the Nile; and there is a lovely
sameness of golden light, of delicious air, of people, and of scenery.
For Egypt is, after all, mainly a great river with strips on each side
of cultivated land, flat, green, not very varied. River, green plains,
yellow plains, pink, brown, steel-grey, or pale-yellow mountains, wail
of shadoof, wail of sakieh. Yes, I suppose there is a sameness, a sort
of golden monotony, in this land pervaded with light and pervaded with
sound. Always there is light around you, and you are bathing in it, and
nearly always, if you are living, as I was, on the water, there is a
multitude of mingling sounds floating, floating to your ears. As there
are two lines of green land, two lines of mountains, following the
course of the Nile; so are there two lines of voices that cease their
calling and their singing only as you draw near to Nubia. For then, with
the green land, they fade away, these miles upon miles of calling and
singing brown men; and amber and ruddy sands creep downward to the
Nile. And the air seems subtly changing, and the light perhaps growing
a little harder. And you are aware of other regions unlike those you are
leaving, more African, more savage, less suave, less like a dreaming.
And especially the silence makes a great impression on you. But before
you enter this silence, between the amber and ruddy walls that will lead
you on to Nubia, and to the land of the crocodile, you have a visit to
pay. For here, high up on a terrace, looking over a great bend of the
river is Kom Ombos. And Kom Ombos is the temple of the crocodile god.

Sebek was one of the oldest and one of the m