Kom Ombos and Edfu, the two houses of the lovers and haters of crocodiles, or at least of the lovers and the haters of their worship, I shall always think of them together, because I drifted on the Loulia from one to the other, and saw no interesting temple between them, and because their personalities are as opposed as were, centuries ago, the tenets of those who adored within them. The Egyptians of old were devoted to the hunting of crocodiles, which once abounded in the reaches of the Nile between Assuan and Luxor, and also much lower down. But I believe that no reliefs, or paintings, of this sport are to be found upon the walls of the temples and the tombs. The fear of Sebek, perhaps, prevailed even over the dwellers about the temple of Edfu. Yet how could fear of any crocodile god infect the souls of those who were privileged to worship in such a temple, or even reverently to stand under the colonnade within the court? As well, perhaps, one might ask how men could be inspired to raise such a perfect building to a deity with the face of a hawk? But Horus was not the god of crocodiles, but a god of the sun. And his power to inspire men must have been vast; for the greatest conception in stone in Egypt, and, I suppose, in the whole world, the Sphinx, as De Rougé proved by an inscription at Edfu, was a representation of Horus transformed to
THE ISLAND OF ELEPHANTINE, FROM ASSOUAN
conquer Typhon. The Sphinx and Edfu! For such marvels we ought to bless the hawk-headed god. And if we forget the hawk, which one meets so perpetually upon the walls of tombs and temples, and identify Horus rather with the Greek Apollo, the yellow-haired god of the sun, driving “westerly all day in his flaming chariot,” and shooting his golden arrows at the happy world beneath, we can be at peace with those dead Egyptians. For every pilgrim who goes to Edfu to-day is surely a worshiper of the solar aspect of Horus. As long as the world lasts there will be sun-worshipers. Every brown man upon the Nile is one, and every good American who crosses the ocean and comes at last into the somber wonder of Edfu, and I was one upon the deck of the Loulia.
And we all worship as yet in the dark, as in the exquisite dark, like faith, of the Holy of Holies of Horus.