She
Of course, the roofs of these buildings had long since fallen into
decay and vanished, but owing to the extreme massiveness of the style
of building, and to the hardness and durability of the rock employed,
most of the party walls and great columns still remained standing.[1]
[1] In connection with the extraordinary state of preservation of
these ruins after so vast a lapse of time— at least six thousand
years—it must be remembered that Kôr was not burnt or destroyed by an
enemy or an earthquake, but deserted, owing to the action of a
terrible plague. Consequently the houses were left unharmed; also the
climate of the plain is remarkably fine and dry, and there is very
little rain or wind; as a result of which these relics have only to
contend against the unaided action of time, that works but slowly upon
such massive blocks of masonry. —L. H. H.
Straight before us stretched away what had evidently been the main
thoroughfare of the city, for it was very wide, wider than the Thames
Embankment, and regular, being, as we afterwards discovered, paved, or
rather built, throughout of blocks of dressed stone, such as were
employed in the walls, it was but little overgrown even now with grass
and shrubs that could get no depth of soil to live in. What had been
the parks and gardens, on the contrary, were now dense jungle. Indeed,
it was easy even from a distance to trace the course of the various
roads by the burnt-up appearance of the scanty grass that grew upon
them. On either side of this great thoroughfare were vast blocks of
ruins, each block, generally speaking, being separated from its
neighbour by a space of what had once, I suppose, been garden-ground,
but was now dense and tangled bush. They were all built of the same
coloured stone, and most of them had pillars, which was as much as we
could make out in the fading light as we passed swiftly up the main
road, that I believe I am right in saying no living foot had pressed
for thousands of years.[2]
[2] Billali told me that the Amahagger believe that the site of the
city is haunted, and could not be persuaded to enter it upon any
consideration. Indeed, I could see that he himself did not at all like
doing so, and was only consoled by the reflection that he was under
the direct protection of _She_. It struck Leo and myself as very
curious that a people which has no objection to living amongst the
dead, with whom their familiarity has perhaps bred contempt, and even
using their bodies for purposes of fuel, should be terrified at
approaching the habitations that these very departed had occupied when
alive. After all, however, it is only a savage inconsistency.—L. H. H.
Presently we came to an enormous pile, which we rightly took to
be a temple covering at least eight acres of ground, and
apparently arranged in a series of courts, each one enclosing
another of smaller size, on the principle of a Chinese nest of
boxes, the courts being separated one from the other by rows of
huge columns. And, while I think of it, I may as well state a
remarkable thing about the shape of these columns, which
resembled none that I have ever seen or heard of, being fashioned
with a kind of waist at the centre, and swelling out above and
below. At first we thought that this shape was meant to roughly
symbolise or suggest the female form, as was a common habit
amongst the ancient religious architects of many creeds. On the
following day, however, as we went up the slopes of the mountain,
we discovered a large quantity of the most stately looking palms,
of which the trunks grew exactly in this shape, and I have now no
doubt but that the first designer of those columns drew his
inspiration from the graceful bends of those very palms, or
rather of their ancestors, which then, some eight or ten thousand
years ago, as now, beautified the slopes of the mountain that had
once formed the shores of the volcanic lake.
At the _façade_ of this huge temple, which, I should imagine, is
almost as large as that of El-Karnac, at Thebes, some of the
largest columns, which I measured, being between eighteen to
twenty feet in diameter at the base, by about seventy feet in
height, our little procession was halted, and Ayesha descended
from her litter.
“There was a spot here, Kallikrates,” she said to Leo, who had
run up to help her down, “where one might sleep. Two thousand
years ago did thou and I and that Egyptian asp rest therein, but
since then have I not set foot here, nor any man, and perchance
it has fallen,” and, followed by the rest of us, she passed up a
vast flight of broken and ruined steps into the outer court, and
looked round into the gloom. Presently she seemed to recollect,
and, walking a few paces along the wall to the left, halted.
“It is here,” she said, and at the same time beckoned to the two mutes,
who were loaded with provisions and our little belongings, to advance.
One of them came forward, and, producing a lamp, lit it from his
brazier (for the Amahagger when on a journey nearly always carried with
them a little lighted brazier, from which to provide fire). The tinder
of this brazier was made of broken fragments of mummy carefully damped,
and, if the admixture of moisture was properly managed, this unholy
compound would smoulder away for hours.[3] As soon as the lamp was lit
we entered the place before which Ayesha had halted. It turned out to
be a chamber hollowed in the thickness of the wall, and, from the fact
of there still being a massive stone table in it, I should think that
it had probably served as a living-room, perhaps for one of the
door-keepers of the great temple.
[3] After all we are not much in advance of the Amahagger in these
matters. “Mummy,” that is pounded ancient Egyptian, is, I believe, a
pigment much used by artists, and especially by those of them who
direct their talents to the reproduction of the works of the old
masters.—Editor.
Here we stopped, and after cleaning the place out and making it
as comfortable as circumstances and the darkness would permit, we
ate some cold meat, at least Leo, Job and I did, for Ayesha, as I
think I have said elsewhere, never touched anything except cakes
of flour, fruit and water. While we were still eating, the moon,
which was at her full, rose above the mountain-wall, and began to
flood the place with silver.
“Wot ye why I have brought you here to-night, my Holly?” said
Ayesha, leaning her head upon her hand and watching the great orb
as she rose, like some heavenly queen, above the solemn pillars
of the temple. “I brought you—nay, it is strange, but knowest
thou, Kallikrates, that thou liest at this moment upon the very
spot where thy dead body lay when I bore thee back to those caves
of Kôr so many years ago? It all returns to my mind now. I can
see it, and horrible is it to my sight!” and she shuddered.
Here Leo jumped up and hastily changed his seat. However the
reminiscence might affect Ayesha, it clearly had few charms for
him.
“I brought you,” went on Ayesha presently, “that ye might look
upon the most wonderful sight that ever the eye of man beheld—the
full moon shining over ruined Kôr. When ye have done your
eating—I would that I could teach you to eat naught but fruit,
Kallikrates, but that will come after thou hast laved in the
fire. Once I, too, ate flesh like a brute beast. When ye have
done we will go out, and I will show you this great temple and
the God whom men once worshipped therein.”
Of course we got up at once, and started. And here again my pen
fails me. To give a string of measurements and details of the
various courts of the temple would only be wearisome, supposing
that I had them, and yet I know not how I am to describe what we
saw, magnificent as it was even in its ruin, almost beyond the
power of realisation. Court upon dim court, row upon row of
mighty pillars—some of them (especially at the gateways)
sculptured from pedestal to capital—space upon space of empty
chambers that spoke more eloquently to the imagination than any
crowded streets. And over all, the dead silence of the dead, the
sense of utter loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the Past!
How beautiful it was, and yet how drear! We did not dare to speak
aloud. Ayesha herself was awed in the presence of an antiquity
compared to which even her length of days was but a little thing;
we only whispered, and our whispers seemed to run from column to
column, till they were lost in the quiet air. Bright fell the
moonlight on pillar and court and shattered wall, hiding all
their rents and imperfections in its silver garment, and clothing
their hoar majesty with the peculiar glory of the night. It was a
wonderful sight to see the full moon looking down on the ruined
fane of Kôr. It was a wonderful thing to think for how many
thousands of years the dead orb above and the dead city below had
gazed thus upon each other, and in the utter solitude of space
poured forth each to each the tale of their lost life and
long-departed glory. The white light fell, and minute by minute
the quiet shadows crept across the grass-grown courts like the
spirits of old priests haunting the habitations of their
worship—the white light fell, and the long shadows grew till the
beauty and grandeur of each scene and the untamed majesty of its
present Death seemed to sink into our very souls, and speak more
loudly than the shouts of armies concerning the pomp and
splendour that the grave had swallowed, and even memory had
forgotten.
“Come,” said Ayesha, after we had gazed and gazed, I know not for
how long, “and I will show you the stony flower of Loveliness and
Wonder’s very crown, if yet it stands to mock time with its
beauty and fill the heart of man with longing for that which is
behind the veil,” and, without waiting for an answer, she led us
through two more pillared courts into the inner shrine of the old
fane.
And there, in the centre of the inmost court, that might have
been some fifty yards square, or a little more, we stood face to
face with what is perhaps the grandest allegorical work of Art
that the genius of her children has ever given to the world. For
in the exact centre of the court, placed upon a thick square slab
of rock, was a huge round ball of dark stone, some twenty feet in
diameter, and standing on the ball was a colossal winged figure
of a beauty so entrancing and divine that when I first gazed upon
it, illuminated and shadowed as it was by the soft light of the
moon, my breath stood still, and for an instant my heart ceased
its beating.
The statue was hewn from marble so pure and white that even now,
after all those ages, it shone as the moonbeams danced upon it,
and its height was, I should say, a trifle over twenty feet. It
was the winged figure of a woman of such marvellous loveliness
and delicacy of form that the size seemed rather to add to than
to detract from its so human and yet more spiritual beauty. She
was bending forward and poising herself upon her half-spread
wings as though to preserve her balance as she leant. Her arms