File:Egypt and its monuments (1908) (14777593395).jpg

Identifier: egyptitsmonument00hich (find matches)
Title: Egypt and its monuments
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Century Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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s air, of people, and of scenery. ForEgypt is, after all, mainly a great river with strips oneach side of cultivated land, flat, green, not very varied.River, green plains, yellow plains, pink, brown, steel-grav, or pale-yellow mountains, wail of shadoof, wail ofsakieh. Yes, I suppose there is a sameness, a sort ofgolden monotony, in this land pervaded with light andpervaded with sound. Always there is light around you,and you are bathing in it, and nearly always, if youare living, as I was, on the water, there is a multitudeof mingling sounds floating, floating to your ears. Asthere are two lines of green land, two lines of moun-tains, following the course of the Nile; so are theretwo lines of voices that cease their calling and theirsinging only as you draw near to Nubia. For then,with the green land, they fade away, these miles uponmiles of calling and singing brown men; and amberand ruddy sands creep downward to the Nile. Andthe air seems subtly changing, and the light perhaps 196
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KOM OMBOS growing a little harder. And you are aware of otherregions unlike those you are leaving, more African,more savage, less suave, less like a dreaming. Andespecially the silence makes a great impression on you.But before you enter this silence, between the amberand ruddy walls that will lead you on to Nubia, and tothe land of the crocodile, you have a visit to pay. Forhere, high up on a terrace, looking over a great bendof the river, is Kom Ombos. And Kom Ombos is thetemple of the crocodile god. Sebek was one of the oldest and one of the mostevil of the Egyptian gods. In the Fayum he wasworshiped, as well as at Kom Ombos, and there, in theholy lake of his temple, were numbers of holy croco-diles, which Strabo tells us were decorated with jewelshke pretty women. He did not get on with the othergods, and was sometimes confused with Set, who per-sonified natural darkness, and who also was worshipedby the people about Kom Ombos. I have spoken of the golden sameness of the Nile,but

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