e entrance to the pylon that is at the outer gate. Then, seeking
solitude, and, as it were, to draw near to heaven, I climbed the pylon's
two hundred steps, until at length I reached the massive roof. Here I
leaned my breast against the parapet, and looked forth. As I looked,
the red edge of the full moon floated up over the Arabian hills, and
her rays fell upon the pylon where I stood and the temple walls beyond,
lighting the visages of the carven Gods. Then the cold light struck the
stretch of well-tilled lands, now whitening to the harvest, and as the
heavenly lamp of Isis passed up to the sky, her rays crept slowly down
to the valley, where Sihor, father of the land of Khem, rolls on toward
the sea.

Now the bright beams kissed the water that smiled an answer back, and
now mountain and valley, river, temple, town, and plain were flooded
with white light, for Mother Isis was arisen, and threw her gleaming
robe across the bosom of the earth. It was beautiful, with the beauty
of a dream, and solemn as the hour after death. Mightily, indeed, the
temples towered up against the face of night. Never had they seemed so
grand to me as in that hour--those eternal shrines, before whose walls
Time himself shall wither. And it was to be mine to rule this moonlit
land; mine to preserve those sacred shrines, and cherish the honour of
their Gods; mine to cast out the Ptolemy and free Egypt from the foreign
yoke! In my veins ran the blood of those great Kings who await the
day of Resurrection, sleeping in the tombs of the valley of Thebes.
My spirit swelled within me as I dreamed upon this glorious destiny,
I closed my hands, and there, upon the pylon, I prayed as I had never
prayed before to the Godhead, who is called by many names, and in many
forms made manifest.

"O Amen," I prayed, "God of Gods, who hast been from the beginning; Lord
of Truth, who art, and of whom all are, who givest out thy Godhead and
gatherest it up again; in the circle of whom the Divine ones move
and are, who wast from all time the Self-begot, and who shalt be till
time--hearken unto me.[*]

[*] For a somewhat similar definition of the Godhead see the
funeral papyrus of Nesikhonsu, a Princess of the Twenty-
first Dynasty.--Editor.

"O Amen--Osiris, the sacrifice by whom we are justified, Lord of the
Region of the Winds, Ruler of the Ages, Dweller in the West, the Supreme
in Amenti, hearken unto me.

"O Isis, great Mother Goddess, mothe