Egypt and its Monuments by Robert Hichens

"Pharaoh's Bed," which stands alone close to the Nile on the eastern side of the island, is not one of those rugged, majestic buildings, full of grandeur and splendor, which can bear, can "carry off," as it were, a cruelly imposed ugliness without being affected as a whole. It is, on the contrary, a small, almost an airy, and a femininely perfect thing, in which a singular loveliness of form was combined with a singular loveliness of color. The spell it threw over you was not so much a spell woven of details as a spell woven of divine uniformity. To put it in very practical language, "Pharaoh's Bed" was "all of a piece. " The form was married to the color. The color seemed to melt into the form. It was indeed a bed in which the soul that worships beauty could rest happily entranced. Nothing jarred. Antiquaries say that apparently this building was left unfinished. That may be so. But for all that it was one of the most finished things in Egypt, essentially a thing to inspire within one the "perfect calm that is Greek. " The blighting touch of the Nile, which has changed the beautiful pale yellow of the stone of the lower part of the building to a hideous and dreary gray, -- which made me think of a steel knife on which liquid has been spilt and allowed to run, -- has destroyed the uniformity, the balance, the faultless melody lifted up by form and color.

And so it is with the temple. It is as it were cut in two by the intrusion into it of this hideous, mottled complexion left by the receded water. Everywhere one sees disease on walls and columns, almost blotting out bas-reliefs, giving to their active figures a morbid, a sickly look. The effect is specially distressing in the open court that precedes the temple dedicated to the Lady of Phile. In this court, which is at the southern end of the island, the Nile at certain seasons is now forced to rise very nearly as high as the capitals of many of the columns. The consequence of this is that here the disease seems making rapid strides. One feels it is drawing near to the heart, and that the poor, doomed invalid may collapse at any moment.