DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4996#0227
PYRAMIDS BY MOONLIGHT. 193
afar in the villages, but no sound reached us—even our own foot-
steps were noiseless in the yielding surface. We strained our eyes
through the dark, but could see nothing of Komeh—and shouted,
but no voice answered. This solitary neighbourhood, whence the
Arab, after pouncing on his prey, may so easily regain the shelter of
the wilderness, bears a bad character ; many a murder has been
committed here ; but the sight which burst upon me in turning the
angle of the projecting corner of the hills, was such as to absorb all
feeling of personal apprehension in an overpowering sense of the
sublime. The pyramids were close upon us, like enormous spectres
rising in the deep, dark, fathomless sky, faintly illumined by the as-
cending moon, and the yellow Desert received her oblique rays, and
trembled in the growing radiance. I looked round for my halting-
place, a dark patch in a hollow among the whitening sands at some dis-
tance, revealed the well-remembered palm-trees, and I advanced to-
wards them. I was now seriously uneasy about Komeh: had he missed
the way ? or, perhaps, fallen into the hands of some prowling Arab \
The boy was dispatched to the summit of the old causeway used to
convey the stones to the pyramids, from whence he could not fail to
see any figure advancing across the sands : on gaining this vantage-
ground he shouted repeatedly, but no one answered. At length I
lost sight of him also, and was left entirely alone ; the donkey was
tied to one of the palm-trees, and I sat down by the side of the
well beneath in a state of no little perplexity.
I sat long and listened, and watched the edge of the sand where
it merged into the dusky valley, for the forms of the attendants,
but in vain. Save in the interior of the monument itself, no silence
was ever more profound than that which reigned at its base. The
light, increasing apace, now illuminated the whole expanse of vision,
everything retained a faint tinge of the colour of day, beneath the
more spiritual light of the nocturnal luminary, the fans of the so-
litary palm-trees waved gently and fitfully as the breeze swept
past, their leaves glittered in the rays, and in the deep stillness the
sound of a ripe date falling from the glowing clusters upon the earth
might be distinctly heard. The moon now peered into the mounds
2 c
afar in the villages, but no sound reached us—even our own foot-
steps were noiseless in the yielding surface. We strained our eyes
through the dark, but could see nothing of Komeh—and shouted,
but no voice answered. This solitary neighbourhood, whence the
Arab, after pouncing on his prey, may so easily regain the shelter of
the wilderness, bears a bad character ; many a murder has been
committed here ; but the sight which burst upon me in turning the
angle of the projecting corner of the hills, was such as to absorb all
feeling of personal apprehension in an overpowering sense of the
sublime. The pyramids were close upon us, like enormous spectres
rising in the deep, dark, fathomless sky, faintly illumined by the as-
cending moon, and the yellow Desert received her oblique rays, and
trembled in the growing radiance. I looked round for my halting-
place, a dark patch in a hollow among the whitening sands at some dis-
tance, revealed the well-remembered palm-trees, and I advanced to-
wards them. I was now seriously uneasy about Komeh: had he missed
the way ? or, perhaps, fallen into the hands of some prowling Arab \
The boy was dispatched to the summit of the old causeway used to
convey the stones to the pyramids, from whence he could not fail to
see any figure advancing across the sands : on gaining this vantage-
ground he shouted repeatedly, but no one answered. At length I
lost sight of him also, and was left entirely alone ; the donkey was
tied to one of the palm-trees, and I sat down by the side of the
well beneath in a state of no little perplexity.
I sat long and listened, and watched the edge of the sand where
it merged into the dusky valley, for the forms of the attendants,
but in vain. Save in the interior of the monument itself, no silence
was ever more profound than that which reigned at its base. The
light, increasing apace, now illuminated the whole expanse of vision,
everything retained a faint tinge of the colour of day, beneath the
more spiritual light of the nocturnal luminary, the fans of the so-
litary palm-trees waved gently and fitfully as the breeze swept
past, their leaves glittered in the rays, and in the deep stillness the
sound of a ripe date falling from the glowing clusters upon the earth
might be distinctly heard. The moon now peered into the mounds
2 c