“Then enter into the House of the Sun,” the high-priest ordained.
And the travellers rose; and the priests gladly led the way. They led their visitors through the pronaos and naos to the secos, to the holy of holies. And, pointing in the golden shade of midday dusk, between pillars like tree-trunks, to the enormous statue of Ammon-Râ, old as time, the sun-god with the bull’s head, the high-priest continued:
“The Sun reveals the truth to him who is worthy to hear it, even as ages ago he revealed the truth to Alexander of Macedon. Before his coming, the deity uttered himself only by moving his brows and wrinkling his bull forehead between his divine horns. But the deity addressed Alexander of Macedon with the sound of his lowing voice and told him, in words plainly audible to the king and all his following, that he was the son of the Sun, the son of Jupiter Ammon-Râ.”
Lucius looked up at the statue. In the golden twilight of the temple, where the noontide daylight filtered in and broke between the pillars in a shimmer of dust, he saw the supreme god, who was no longer held in honour, wrapped in shadow, paintless wood and colourless basalt, blind and pock-pitted where his bull head and his human neck had been robbed of the jewelled eyes and the precious stones with which he had once been inlaid. And Lucius felt so deep a compassion within himself for the fading god, once all-honoured and now forgotten in his distant, sinking temple in the Libyan desert, that he bent his knees in pity and reverence.
The Jewish seer, who lived in the cave of Neith, had haply seen the new god, the Son of Jahve, crowned with light for days and days. Here, in the immensity of his ruined sanctuary, Lucius beheld the fading of the god who was forgotten, but whom, centuries ago, Alexander of Macedon had travelled through whirlwinds and sand-storms to seek.
When Lucius looked up, he was alone with the old high-priest:
“Father,” he said, kneeling, “I would know the truth. I would know if what I believe to be the truth, revealed to me by oracle after oracle, is the truth to Jupiter Ammon-Râ.”
“My son,” said the priest, “the truth does not shine forth until after meditation, after contemplation and pious prayers, after days and nights of communing with the deity. I will be your intermediary. And you shall know what you would know, if you have faith.”
“Father,” said Lucius, “I lay my forehead, heavy with care and suffering and doubt, in your holy hands.”
And he bowed his head towards the priest’s open palms.