The Tour

obelisks and its spreading palm-trees. The barges lay moored to the long quay, one beside the other. One solemn train of pilgrims af

ike a divine, golden thunder rolling at regular intervals under the stars.

t sphinxes, half woman, half lioness; half man, half bull. They were drawn up like superhuman sentinels that had turned to stone; and their great human

veritable forest of pylon-trunks rising in serried ranks of frowning columns and crowned with heavy architraves which seemed to support the starry realm of the summer night itself. Through these endless rows of pillars the dense multitud

s followed; the slaves, male and female, followed. In front of him strode his musicians, singers an

altar, without anything. Nevertheless as it were a mysterious sanctity descended here, because of the height, the impressive, colossal dimensions. The "wings," or pteres, the two side-walls, sculptured with symbolic bas-reliefs, painted gold, azure and scarlet, approached each other with slanting lines in

viding into two rivers. At the end of the wings, behind the holy of holies, flights of stairs widened in the open night, leading to terraces, the one

mats guarded the secrets of the Hermetic wisdom; the pastophors carried the images of Anubis, with the dog's head, in silver boats; the sphagists were the sacrificial priests; the stolists served the sacred images, adorned them, tended them with ever clean and perfumed hands. But among the hierogrammat

n itself, when all the procession would have streamed in, when the gates of the dromos would have slammed

he terraces themselves suddenly an incredible stillness reigned. Not a voice, not a rustle sounded from out

pilgrims and covered them with the dreaming-nets and -veils, while zacori slung the censers.

e, the harps of the hieropsa

mn, one single phras

a sound came from the illuminated city. The sacred silence reigned wide and mystic, fraught with terror, over the sea, alo

ris himself; between him and Osiris there is no difference. He is two. While Osiris is the benevolent Almighty above, he is the ben

rains from the sacred vessels wherewith the dog's-head of Anubis, his watchman, servant and comrade, is crowned, the

e cannot be other than the benefactor. He makes the dreams hover like butterflies around the foreheads of those who believe in him. His healing power makes whole the sick. He pours the secret of that heal

am where to find a beloved

etwork, like a precious mummy, straight out, his arms besi

wafted over their eyes reve

continues, hour aft