THE TEMPLE OF EDFU
Edfu stands alone, not near any other temple, on the bank of the Nile between Luxor and Assuan. It is not very far from El-Kab, once the capital of Upper Egypt and it is about two thousand years old. The building of it took over one hundred and eighty years, and it is the most perfectly preserved temple to-day of all the antique world. It is huge and it is splendid. It has towers one hundred and twelve feet high, a propylon two hundred and fifty-two feet broad, and walls four hundred and fifty feet long. Begun in the reign of Ptolemy III, it was completed only fifty-seven years before the birth of Christ.
You know these facts about it, and you forget them, or at least you do not think of them. What does all that matter when you are alone in Edfu? Let the antiquarian go with his anxious nose almost touching the stone; let the Egyptologist peer through his glasses at hieroglyphs and puzzle out the meaning of cartouches: but let us wander at ease, and worship, and regard the exquisite form, and drink in the mystical spirit, of this very wonderful temple.
Do you care about form? Here you will find it in absolute perfection. Edfu is the consecration of form. In proportion it is supreme above all other Egyptian temples. Its beauty of form is like a music. Its design affects one like the chiseled loveliness of a perfect sonnet. While the world lasts, no architect can arise to create a building more satisfying, more calm with the calm of faultlessness, more serene with a just serenity. Or so it seems to me. I think of the most lovely buildings I know in Europe—of the Alhambra at Granada, of the Cappella Palatina in the palace at Palermo. And Edfu I place with them—Edfu utterly different from them, more different, perhaps, even than they are from each other, but akin to them, as all great beauty is mysteriously akin. I have spent morning after morning in the Alhambra, and many and many an hour in the Cappella Palatina; and never have I been weary of either, or longed to go away. And this same sweet desire to stay came over me in Edfu. The Loulia was tied up by the high bank of the Nile. The sailors were glad to rest. There was no steamer sounding its hideous siren to call me to its crowded deck. So I yielded to my desire, and for long I stayed in Edfu. And when at last I left it I said to myself, “This is a supreme thing,” and I knew that within me had suddenly developed the curious passion for buildings that some people never feel, and that others feel ever growing and growing.
Yes, Edfu is supreme. No alteration could improve it. Any change made in it, however slight, could only be harmful to it. Pure and perfect is its design—broad propylon, great open courtyard with pillared galleries, halls, chambers, sanctuary. Its dignity and its sobriety are matchless. I know they must be, because they touched me so strangely, with a kind of reticent
PYLON, TEMPLE OF EDFU