m.

Despite the disaster which has overtaken the ceilings, this is
nevertheless one of the most perfect of the sanctuaries of ancient
Egypt. The sands, those gentle sextons, have here succeeded miraculously
in their work of preservation. They might have been carved yesterday,
these innumerable people, who, everywhere--on the walls, on this forest
of columns--gesticulate and, with their arms and long hands, continue
with animation their eternal mute conversation. The whole temple, with
the openings which give it light, is more beautiful perhaps than in the
time of the Pharaohs. In place of the old-time darkness, a transparent
gloom now alternates with shafts of sunlight. Here and there the
subjects of the bas-reliefs, so long buried in the darkness, are deluged
with burning rays which detail their attitudes, their muscles, their
scarcely altered colours, and endow them again with life and youth.
There is no part of the wall, in this immense place, but is covered with
divinities, with hieroglyphs and emblems. Osiris in high coiffure,
the beautiful Isis in the helmet of a bird, jackal-headed Anubis,
falcon-headed Horus, and ibis-headed Thoth are repeated a thousand
times, welcoming with strange gestures the kings and priests who are
rendering them homage.

The bodies, almost nude, with broad shoulders and slim waist, have a
slenderness, a grace, infinitely chaste, and the features of the faces
are of an exquisite purity. The artists who carved these charming heads,
with their long eyes, full of the ancient dream, were already skilled
in their art; but through a deficiency, which puzzles us, they were only
able to draw them in profile. All the legs, all the feet are in profile
too, although the bodies, on the other hand, face us fully. Men needed
yet some centuries of study before they understood perspective--which to
us now seems so simple--and the foreshortening of figures, and were able
to render the impression of them on a plane surface.

Many of the pictures represent King Seti, drawn without doubt from life,
for they show us almost the very features of his mummy, exhibited now
in the museum at Cairo. At his side he holds affectionately his son, the
prince-royal, Ramses (later on Ramses II., the great Sesostris of the
Greeks). They have given the latter quite a frank air, and he wears a
curl on the side of his head, as was the fashion then in childhood. He,
also, has his mummy in a glass case in the museum, and anyon