For the rest, it is safe to conclude that he was neither better nor worse than the general run of oriental despots--that he was ruthless in war, prodigal in peace, rapacious of booty and unsparing in the exercise of almost boundless power. Such pride and such despotism were, however, in strict accordance with immemorial precedent and with the temper of the age in which he lived. The Egyptians would seem beyond all doubt to have believed that their king was always in some sense divine. They wrote hymns[107] and offered up prayers to him, and regarded him as the living representative of deity. His princes and ministers habitually addressed him in the language of worship. Even his wives, who ought to have known better, are represented in the performance of acts of religious adoration before him. What wonder, then, if the man so deified believed himself a god? CHAPTER XVI. ABOU SIMBEL. We came to Abou Simbel on the night of the 31st of January and we left at sunset on the 18th of February. Of these eighteen clear days we spent fourteen at the foot of the rock of the great temple, called in the old Egyptian tongue the Rock of Abshek. The remaining four (taken at the end of the first week and the beginning of the second) were passed in the excursion to Wady-Halfeh and back. By thus dividing the time our long sojourn was made less monotonous for those who had no especial work to do. Meanwhile it was wonderful to wake every morning close under the steep bank, and, without lifting one’s head from the pillow, to see that row of giant faces so close against the sky. They showed unearthly enough by moonlight, but not half so unearthly as in the gray of dawn. At that hour, the most solemn of the twenty-four, they wore a fixed and fatal look that was little less than appalling. As the sky warmed this awful look was succeeded by a flush that mounted and deepened like the rising flush of life. For a moment they seemed to glow--to smile--to be transfigured. Then came a flash, as of thought itself. It was the first instantaneous flash of the risen sun. It lasted less than a second. It was gone almost before one could say it was there. The next moment mountain, river and sky were distinct in the steady light of day; and the colossi--mere colossi now--sat serene and stony in the open sunshine. Every morning I waked in time to witness that daily miracle. Every morning I saw those awful brethren pass from death to life, from life to sculptured stone. I brought myself almost to believe at last that there must sooner or later come some one sunrise when the ancient charm would snap asunder and the giants must arise and speak.