Evening star., 1927-10-23

Tbahes two colossi stand. giant
statues of an ancient Pharaon.
Amenhotep III. Centuries OF saho
and wind have worn then. down.
so that the lordly features OF the kins
can hardly be discerned; and careless
generations have battered them al
most to fragments, leaving great noies
like wounds in the apparently impene'
trable stone. On one of the .1gures
NAV he read the scribbling OF Greek
tourists who came there some decaoes
before the birth OF Christ; aireauy
these monuments were gaZed upon aS
relics of a distant past, anclenI even
to antiquity Behind them lie wv
fragments of massive stella or siap'
pockmarked where once IL was IN,
crusted with precious 1eWeiry anu
gold, and bearing proud inscrlPllon
bv An,enhotep. the king: my majesty
has done these things for millions OF
Years. and know tnat they will absue
in the earth" Yes, as we sHaii GA
abide in the earth. ann
Those statues were built ABOUT i4vv
p G.: the immense temple OF which
thew formed one approach was oe-
stroved two hudred years later Dy
Amenhotep's descendants. TO tne
Greeks the statues seemed very oio,
on5 yet thew were nearer in time 20
tbose Greeks than to the great Pyra'
nids which had inaugrated Egypt
;an history three thousand years be.
fore Can we ever realize that Cneops
was as ancient to Pericles (who hearu
with wonder Herodotus' account Oh
Egypt) as Pericles is to u.s. no" the
centuries were buried, Slowly anu
patiently, one after another, by those
wind-swept sands! Still To-Day the
sands are burying them; and Wniie we
write and read the Pyramids struggle
to preserve themselves against TUG
eddies of the desert.
Greece fiared up and died away IN
half q thousand years; Rome llVeo
little more than millennium; but the
epic of Egypt begins with the intro
duction of the calendar in 424l 3. y,
and does not end till the conquest py
Rome in the generation that saw the
coming of Christ. 1t Is to the story oI
Greece what Homer's odyssey rs to a
Pindaric ode: Nowhere has a civiiiza-
tion lasted longer. Could anything be
more ridiculous than an attempt TO
compress within a little hour those
forty centuries of struggle. passion,
labor and creation!
AS you enter Egypt at Alexandra
YOU pass (now by dusty train, once
by weary foot and caravan southwark
along one Of the mouths of the Nile.
Looking on either side you see the
yerdant basis of Egyptian civilization
the rich, dark son made fertile by
the periodic overflow of the most his
toric river in the world. On every side
are irrigation canals, some of them
as old as the Pyramids. Here and
there water is being raised from It's
natural level as it was raised in the
time of Cheops--with leathern buck
cts poised on poles and lifted by coun.
terweightsyi into tho rivulets that Ieed
the soil. Peasants run about, indir'
ferently on land or through the
streams; they are not much concerned
for their clothing, since they make
no concession to fashion beyond a
loin-cloth. They are called fellaheen
now; once they had another name,
and before that, another still; but I'M
memorially they have been there.
It is astonishing how long one must
ride before reaching Cairo. One
thought of it as near the coast; but
it is q hundred miles to the south. at
the lowest corner Of that fertile tri-
angle which the Greeks from their
letter d. called the Delta. Doubtless
that triangle-which looks on the
map like the leaves of lofty palm
held UP by the slender Nile-was once
a bay; slowly the great river filled 1t
with alluvial deposits from its endless
bed, and it became the granary Of
Egypt.
Even at Cairo the Nile has but be-
gun; steamers run from the capital
six days upstream to Assuan, where
the waters are damned to regulate
the overflow; and yet Assuan itself is
far nearer to the rivers mouth than