Seized with another impulse, we ran down the steps once more, splashed through the halls of Isis, and slid into the water down the broad stairway of the forecourt. Bearing off to our left, we swam down a corridor, through a dark chamber, and so out into an open avenue leading between ruined walls to the temple of Hathor. Along this we struck out, the rows of gods gliding by us, and presently entered the temple, which caught much of the last light of the day. Hathor being the Egyptian Aphrodite, the walls of her shrine are covered with festive scenes. Half submerged in the water, we could see in the open court a figure standing beside some rushes,
The Nile at Philæ, looking North
The island of Philæ is seen in the middle of the picture. When the dam at Aswân is closed the water rises here, flooding Philæ and the deserted villages in the foreground
playing a double pipe, other figures making music upon the harp, an ape playing the guitar, the Pharaoh offering festal coronets, flowers, and wine to the goddess of joy, and the little dancing god Bes leaping about and beating a tambourine. The water was not silent here, for the evening breeze ruffled the surface and sent the ripples whispering into the sanctuary; and in answer to the mood of the place we splashed through it, laughed at little Bes, and sat whistling a tune upon a fallen column. Then, as the early stars came out, we dived through a small side-door, submerged almost to the lintel, and, thus leaving the temple, swam across open water towards the kiosk.
Looking beneath us as we went, we could sometimes discern the buildings below, and could catch glimpses of strange shapes as we glided over the altars of forsaken shrines and struck the bubbles down into the faces of gods and Pharaohs. The half-seen ruins in the depths of the water took hold of the imagination and suggested much to the mind that would have been scorned in other circumstances. What spirits of the Nile dwelt in these sunken chambers?—what cities of the river were approached through these dusky halls? If only one could have breath to dive down through that dark doorway below the water, down the wide stairs, and along the passage ...! The reflections of the gathering stars suggested that there were little lamps to light the way below; and presently, no doubt, we should swim into the illumination of fairy palaces, and come suddenly upon the enchanted maidens of the deep. They would take hold of us with their cool hands, glide over us with their soft limbs, and entangle us with their hair. The summons of their eyes would lead us onwards till their cold lips touched ours; and thus down to fantastic depths they would beguile us, through chambers of silver lit by a thousand stars, to halls of gold illumined by many a sun. Their hands would hold our hands, feel the muscles of our arms, and touch our faces; and ever they would lead us onwards, till of a sudden we should stand blinded at the doorway of that shining cavern wherein the old god Khnum dispensed the floods of the Nile and ordered their going.
The darkening water was replete with suggestions of this kind as we swam through it towards the kiosk. If only we could find the right doorway amidst all these ruins below us; if only the ghostly shadows of the water-plants, the pale forms of submerged altars, should be lit for a moment by the passing of some luminous spirit, so that we might dive below and follow ...! But as the fancy thus drifted we had crossed the open space and had entered the shadow of the great kiosk, whose columns towered above our heads against the last-left light of the sky, and were reflected with the stars in the water beneath us. Seated here on a sunken wall, my companion asked me whether I had called to mind Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” as we swam from the temple; and therewith he repeated those haunting lines which tell of one who
Saw in sleep old palaces and towers ...
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
And as we swam back to the steamer at length, through the gate of Philadelphus and down the colonnade, I felt that the whole experience had given us a new point of view in regard to the reservoir. One did not look forward only to the six months of each year when the water sinks and Philæ is left once more high and dry: the portion of the year when it is inundated also makes it appeal. Philæ clean and bare, as it must have been in ancient days, was good to look upon; Philæ overgrown with trees and grasses, as it was before the dam was built, was picturesque; but Philæ floating in the water, as it now does for half the year, has that indefinable charm of unreality which is the very essence of beauty.