DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0028
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
restless craving for originality; and the sun could give us
wings to soar over the epochs which stand before us like
walls of rock. The great It, the source of every miracle in
Egypt, shines today just as it shone under king Menes.
None of the facts revealed by testimony, no discovery
deciphered by the admirable zeal of the learned from
chiselled hieroglyph or wrested from yellowing papyrus is
more certain than this. Nothing is more profoundly satisfy-
ing. All this outcome of unparalleled effort emerged under
the rays of the same sun. All but the scantiest fragments has
gone to rack and ruin; and although at times one is sorely
grieved, for never was a greater achievement destroyed, and
never was the lust to destroy blinder and more fanatical, yet
half an hour later one smiles and interprets this waxing and
waning as merely one of the many functions of the imper-
turbable, inexhaustible norm. Certainly ancient Egypt was
beautiful, dazzlingly beautiful, during the long, during the
tiny period when it stood intact, if it ever really was intact;
but it was beautiful, too, before it was complete, and beauti-
ful in its fall, and beautiful thereafter; and still the great It
sheds its light upon winding alleys and filthy holes, upon
domes and minarets, upon the wide streets of a modern city
and upon crumbling tombs, upon clean and verminous folk
of every hue, upon motors and donkeys and carriages and
dromedaries, and wakens them all to life and beauty. Stand
aside a little, and you fall to your knees. Last of all, they
have never been able to make away with the Mokattam, the
limestone height to the east of the city, nor the Nile, nor the
desert, still less the pyramids ; and every trace that the
destroyer’s hand has spared acts in one way or another,
even in the imagination of world-weary Europeans, as a
stimulus to a new creation.
Do not grieve; for even in the frozen north there are
reflections of this miracle. Let the monuments of your
Rameses get carefully frosted over, and if a couple of sun-
22
restless craving for originality; and the sun could give us
wings to soar over the epochs which stand before us like
walls of rock. The great It, the source of every miracle in
Egypt, shines today just as it shone under king Menes.
None of the facts revealed by testimony, no discovery
deciphered by the admirable zeal of the learned from
chiselled hieroglyph or wrested from yellowing papyrus is
more certain than this. Nothing is more profoundly satisfy-
ing. All this outcome of unparalleled effort emerged under
the rays of the same sun. All but the scantiest fragments has
gone to rack and ruin; and although at times one is sorely
grieved, for never was a greater achievement destroyed, and
never was the lust to destroy blinder and more fanatical, yet
half an hour later one smiles and interprets this waxing and
waning as merely one of the many functions of the imper-
turbable, inexhaustible norm. Certainly ancient Egypt was
beautiful, dazzlingly beautiful, during the long, during the
tiny period when it stood intact, if it ever really was intact;
but it was beautiful, too, before it was complete, and beauti-
ful in its fall, and beautiful thereafter; and still the great It
sheds its light upon winding alleys and filthy holes, upon
domes and minarets, upon the wide streets of a modern city
and upon crumbling tombs, upon clean and verminous folk
of every hue, upon motors and donkeys and carriages and
dromedaries, and wakens them all to life and beauty. Stand
aside a little, and you fall to your knees. Last of all, they
have never been able to make away with the Mokattam, the
limestone height to the east of the city, nor the Nile, nor the
desert, still less the pyramids ; and every trace that the
destroyer’s hand has spared acts in one way or another,
even in the imagination of world-weary Europeans, as a
stimulus to a new creation.
Do not grieve; for even in the frozen north there are
reflections of this miracle. Let the monuments of your
Rameses get carefully frosted over, and if a couple of sun-
22