Identifier: egyptitsmonument00hich (find matches)
Title: Egypt and its monuments
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Century Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ff across thesands, when one is travehng in the desert, onesees thin minarets rising toward the sky. Adesert city is there. It signals its presence by this muteappeal to Allah. And where there are no minarets,—in the great wastes of the dunes, in the eternal silence,the lifelessness that is not broken even by any lonely,wandering bird,—the camels are stopped at the ap-pointed hours, the poor, and often ragged, robes arelaid down, the brown pilgrims prostrate themselves inprayer. And the rich man spreads his carpet, andprays. And the half-naked nomad spreads nothing;but he prays, too. The East is full of lust, and full ofmoney-getting, and full of bartering, and full of vio-lence ; but it is full of worship—of worship that dis-dains concealment, that recks not of ridicule orcomment, that believes too utterly to care if othersdisbelieve. There are in the East many men who donot pray. They do not laugh at the man who does,like the unpraying Christian. There is nothing ludicrous 174
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EDFU to them in prayer. In Egypt your Nubian sailor praysin the stern of your dahabiyeh ; and your Egyptianboatman prays by the rudder of your boat; and yourblack donkey-boy prays behind a red rock in the sand;and your camel-man prays when you are resting in thenoontide, watching the far-off, ciuivering mirage, lostin some wayward dream. And must you not pray, too, when you enter certaintemples where once strange gods were worshiped inwhom no man now believes ? There is one temple on the Nile which seems to em-brace in its arms all the worship of the past; to be fullof prayers and solemn praises ; to be the holder, thenoble keeper, of the sacred longings, of the unearthlydesires and aspirations, of the dead. It is the templeof Edfu. From all the other temples it stands apart.It is the temple of the inward flame, of the secret soulof man ; of that mystery within us that is exquisitelysensitive, and exquisitely alive; that has longings itcannot tell, and sorrows it dare not whisper, and

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