DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0357
DISCO VJURIES AT ABO U SIMBEL. 339
smoke-blackened sanctuary, and two side-chambers. Tbe
osiride colossi, which stand twenty feet high without the
entablature over their heads or the pedestal under their
feet, are thick-set, bow-legged, and misshapen. Their
faces would seem to have been painted black originally;
while those of the avenue outside have distinctly Ethiopian
features. One seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady
Sabooah, the work of provincial sculptors ; just as at
Abou Simbel one recognizes the master-style of the artists
of the Theban Ramesseum.
The side-chambers at Gerf Ilossayn are infested with
bats. These bats are the great sight of the place and
have their appointed showman. A\re find him waiting
for us with an end of tarred rope, which he flings, blazing,
into the pitch-dark doorway. For a moment we see the
whole ceiling bun"-, as it were, with a close fringe of white,
mmy-looking pendants. But it is only for a moment.
■The next instant the creatures are all in motion, dashing
out madly in our faces like driven snowflakes. We picked
np a dead one afterward, when the rush was over, and
examined it by the outer daylight—a lovely little creature,
white and downy, with fine transparent wings and little
pink feet and the prettiest mousey mouth imaginable.
Bordered with dwarf palms, acacias and henna-bushes,
the cliffs between Gerf Ilossayn and Dendoor stand out in
detached masses so like ruins that sometimes we can hardly
believe they are rocks. At Dendoor, when the sun is set-
ting and a delicious gloom is stealing up the valley, we
visit a tiny temple on the western bank. It stands out above
the river surrounded by a wall of inclosure and consists of
a single pylon, a portico, two little chambers and a sanetu-
ai'y. The whole thing is like an exquisite toy, so covered
with sculptures, so smooth, so new-looking, so admirably
built. Seeing them half by sunset, half by dusk, it
matters not that these delicately wrought bas-reliefs are of
the decadence school.* The rosy half-light of an Egyptian
after-glow covers a multitude of sins, and steeps the whole
in an atmosphere of romance.
" C'est un ouvrage non aclieve du temps de 1'Erapereur A.uguste.
yuoique pen important par son etendue, ce monument m'a beaucoup
mteresse. puisqu'U est entieremeut relatif a rincarmition d'Gsiris
sous fonnu Lumaine, sur la terre."—Lettrcs icrites d'Egypte, etc.:
^Uampolliou. Paris, 1S08; p. 126,
smoke-blackened sanctuary, and two side-chambers. Tbe
osiride colossi, which stand twenty feet high without the
entablature over their heads or the pedestal under their
feet, are thick-set, bow-legged, and misshapen. Their
faces would seem to have been painted black originally;
while those of the avenue outside have distinctly Ethiopian
features. One seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady
Sabooah, the work of provincial sculptors ; just as at
Abou Simbel one recognizes the master-style of the artists
of the Theban Ramesseum.
The side-chambers at Gerf Ilossayn are infested with
bats. These bats are the great sight of the place and
have their appointed showman. A\re find him waiting
for us with an end of tarred rope, which he flings, blazing,
into the pitch-dark doorway. For a moment we see the
whole ceiling bun"-, as it were, with a close fringe of white,
mmy-looking pendants. But it is only for a moment.
■The next instant the creatures are all in motion, dashing
out madly in our faces like driven snowflakes. We picked
np a dead one afterward, when the rush was over, and
examined it by the outer daylight—a lovely little creature,
white and downy, with fine transparent wings and little
pink feet and the prettiest mousey mouth imaginable.
Bordered with dwarf palms, acacias and henna-bushes,
the cliffs between Gerf Ilossayn and Dendoor stand out in
detached masses so like ruins that sometimes we can hardly
believe they are rocks. At Dendoor, when the sun is set-
ting and a delicious gloom is stealing up the valley, we
visit a tiny temple on the western bank. It stands out above
the river surrounded by a wall of inclosure and consists of
a single pylon, a portico, two little chambers and a sanetu-
ai'y. The whole thing is like an exquisite toy, so covered
with sculptures, so smooth, so new-looking, so admirably
built. Seeing them half by sunset, half by dusk, it
matters not that these delicately wrought bas-reliefs are of
the decadence school.* The rosy half-light of an Egyptian
after-glow covers a multitude of sins, and steeps the whole
in an atmosphere of romance.
" C'est un ouvrage non aclieve du temps de 1'Erapereur A.uguste.
yuoique pen important par son etendue, ce monument m'a beaucoup
mteresse. puisqu'U est entieremeut relatif a rincarmition d'Gsiris
sous fonnu Lumaine, sur la terre."—Lettrcs icrites d'Egypte, etc.:
^Uampolliou. Paris, 1S08; p. 126,