The Spell of Egypt by Robert Hichens — Read

At the entrance to the temple of Medinet-Abu, near the small groups / of palms and the few brown houses, often have I turned and looked back / across the plain before entering through the first beautiful doorway, / to see the patient backs and right sides of the Colossi, the far-off, / dreamy mountains beyond Karnak and the Nile. And again, when I have / entered and walked a little distance, I have looked back at the almost / magical picture framed in the doorway; at the bottom of the picture / a layer of brown earth, then a strip of sharp green -- the cultivated / ground -- then a blur of pale yellow, then a darkness of trees, and just / the hint of a hill far, very far away. And always, in looking, I have / thought of the "Sposalizio" of Raphael in the Brera at Milan, of the / tiny dream of blue country framed by the temple doorway beyond the / Virgin and Saint Joseph. The doorways of the temples of Egypt are very / noble, and nowhere have I been more struck by their nobility than in / Medinet-Abu. Set in huge walls of massive masonry, which rise slightly / above them on each side, with a projecting cornice, in their simplicity / they look extraordinarily classical, in their sobriety mysterious, / and in their great solidity quite wonderfully elegant. And they always / suggest to me that they are giving access to courts and chambers which / still, even in our times, are dedicated to secret cults -- to the cults of / Isis, of Hathor, and of Osiris.

Close to the right of the front of Medinet-Abu there are trees covered / with yellow flowers; beyond are fields of doura. Behind the temple is / a sterility which makes one think of metal. A great calm enfolds the / place. The buildings are of the same color as the Colossi. When I speak / of the buildings, I include the great temple, the pavilion of Rameses / III., and the little temple, which together may be said to form / Medinet-Abu. Whereas the temple of Luxor seems to open its arms to / life, and the great fascination of the Ramesseum comes partly from its / invasion by every traveling air and happy sun-ray, its openness and / freedom, Medinet-Abu impresses by its colossal air of secrecy, by its / fortress-like seclusion. Its walls are immensely thick, and are covered / with figures the same color as the walls, some of them very tall. / Thick-set, massive, heavy, almost warlike it is. Two seated statues / within, statues with animals' faces, steel-colored, or perhaps a little / darker than that, look like savage warders ready to repel intrusion.