The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-06-03
NTIL we arrived at Luxor we
A--l..I ....-.. =.

N1Il4 we arrived at LUXOR We
did not know the total mean
~ ing of the word old The
ruins. which are the stock and trade
of this ancient City of Thebes, date
so far back into the dimness of No
where that all the other antiquities of
earth seem as fresh and recent as
morning newspaper.
"Old" is merely a relative term, al.
ter all. remember in my native town
we small boys used to gaze in rever-
ent awe at court house that was
actually built before the civil war. We
would look up at that weather beaten
frame structure, two stories high, with
a square bird cage on top of it, and to
us 1t had all the historic interest of
medieval castle. Later in Chicago
when the special writer on the news
paper ran short of topics he would
dish up an illustrated story on the
oldest building in town. 1t was con
structed away back in 1888
When a man from the west goes
east for the first time and sees lnde-
pendence Hall in Philadelphia he take
off his hat and tries to grasp the over
whelming fact that the building stood
there even in the far distant Colonial
period. .,nen he travels to London
and walks through st. Paul's or stands
in the Henry VIII chapel at Westmin-
ster he begins to get new line on
lue meaning of "old" Later he sees
the Forum at Rome and declares to
himself: AT last l have found some
thing really ancient"
But when he arrives at Luxor and
rambles among the elephantine ruins
and sits in the deep cool shade of tenn
pies that had been standing a good
many centuries before any one thought
of laying out the Forum in Rome he
will begin to understand how every
thing else in the world is comparative
~ hot from the griddle. One day We
were in the shop of Mouhammed Mou-
hassib, in Luxor, and the old antigua
ran reached under the counter and
lugged out mummy. The body was
well preserved and the embalming
cloth in which it was wrapped and
cross-wrapped still retained definite
texture.
"This mummy dates back beyond
any of the dynasties of which we have
a record" said the dealer. There
were no inscriptions on the mummy
H. f1nf1 on
lived it was not the custom to inscribe
the cocoon. You will observe, how
ever. that he was buried in sitting
posture. and we know that this man
ner of burial was discontinued about
COCO B c."
AS we stood there gazing into the
calm features of the unidentified has
sbeen and realized that he had been
sitting in that easy attitude for eight
thousand years waiting for us to come
began to get a faint inkling of what
the word "old" really means.
Goodness knows I am not going to
attempt any detailed description of the
fstupendous ruins which make Luxor
the most interesting spot in Egypt
Any one who is going to describe Lux
or needs new box of adjectives every
few minutes, and, besides, to repeat
over and over again that the columns
and cayernous sanctuaries at Karnak
are gigantic" and colossal" and
"huge," and SO on, cannot bring the
reader to any actual conception of the
barbaric massiveness of these ancient
structures.
The rulers who built the main tenn
pie of Karnak, a section at time,
t..ought they were not doing them
selves credit unless they piled up col
umns about the size of the redwood
entrance with statues as big as the
Goddess of Liberty in New York har
Dor, and when they made wall to en-.
close courtyard, they put up some
I he ordinary $50 pound mortal edging
his way through the corridors and UNI
der the vast shadows of these over
whelming uplifts of masonry feels
about as large and as important as
a flea
Everywhere about these temples there
are uniformed guards whose duty it is
to protect the remains against the
vandal and the relic hunter. The
guard follows few feet behind you