CHAPTER XXVIII.—MODERN FACTS AND ANCIENT MEMORIES.
ON a high bluff stands the tottering temple of Kom Ombos conspicuous from a distance, and commanding a dreary waste of desert. Its gigantic columns are of the Ptolemaic time, and the capitals show either Greek influence or the relaxation of the Egyptian hieratic restraint.
The temple is double, with two entrances and parallel suites of apartments, a happy idea of the builders, impartially to split the difference between good and evil; one side is devoted to the worship of Horus, the embodiment of the principle of Light, and the other to that of Savak, the crocodile-headed god of Darkness. I fear that the latter had here the more worshippers; his title was Lord of Ombos, and the fear of him spread like night. On the sand-bank, opposite, the once-favored crocodiles still lounge in the sun, with a sharp eye out for the rifle of the foreigner, and, no doubt, wonder at the murderous spirit which has come into the world to supplant the peaceful heathenism.
These ruins are an example of the jealousy with which the hierarchy guarded their temples from popular intrusion. The sacred precincts were enclosed by a thick and high brick wall, which must have concealed the temple from view except on the river side; so formidable was this wall, that although the edifice stands upon an eminence, it lies in a basin formed by the ruins of the enclosure. The sun beating in it at noon converted it into a reverberating furnace—a heat sufficient to melt any image not of stone, and not to be endured by persons who do not believe in Savak.
We walked a long time on the broad desert below Ombos, over sand as hard as a sea-beach pounded by the waves, looking for the bed of pebbles mentioned in the handbook, and found it a couple of miles below. In the soft bank an enormous mass of pebbles has been deposited, and is annually added to—sweepings of the Nubian deserts, flints and agates, bits of syenite from Assouan, and colored stones in great variety. There is a tradition that a sailor once found a valuable diamond here, and it seems always possible that one may pick some precious jewel out of the sand. Some of the desert pebbles, polished by ages of sand-blasts, are very beautiful.
Every day when I walk upon the smooth desert away from the river, I look for colored stones, pebbles, flints, chalcedonies, and agates. And I expect to find, some day, the ewige pebble, the stone translucent, more beautiful than any in the world—perhaps, the lost seal of Solomon, dropped by some wandering Bedawee. I remind myself of one looking, always in the desert, for the pearl of great price, which all the markets and jewelers of the world wait for. It seems possible, here under this serene sky, on this expanse of sand, which has been trodden for thousands of years by all the Oriental people in turn, by caravans, by merchants and warriors and wanderers, swept by so many geologic floods and catastrophes, to find it. I never tire of looking, and curiously examine every bit of translucent and variegated flint that sparkles in the sand. I almost hope, when I find it, that it will not be cut by hand of man, but that it will be changeable in color, and be fashioned in a cunning manner by nature herself. Unless, indeed, it should be, as I said, the talismanic ring of Solomon, which is known to be somewhere in the world.