house divine of “the Hidden One,” whom the nations of the earth worship, whether they spread their robes on the sand and turn their faces to Mecca, or beat the tambourine and sing “glory-hymns” of salvation, or flagellate themselves in the night before the patron saint of the Passionists, or only gaze at the snow-white plume that floats from the snows of Etna under the rose of dawn, and feel the soul behind Nature. Among the temples of Egypt, Edfu is the house divine of “the Hidden One,” the perfect temple of worship. XV KOM OMBOS Some people talk of the “sameness” of the Nile; and there is a lovely sameness of golden light, of delicious air, of people, and of scenery. For Egypt is, after all, mainly a great river with strips on each side of cultivated land, flat, green, not very varied. River, green plains, yellow plains, pink, brown, steel-gray, or pale-yellow mountains, wail of shadoof, wail of sakieh. Yes, I suppose there is a sameness, a sort of golden monotony, in this land pervaded with light and pervaded with sound. Always there is light around you, and you are bathing in it, and nearly always, if you are living, as I was, on the water, there is a multitude of mingling sounds floating, floating to your ears. As there are two lines of green land, two lines of mountains, following the course of the Nile; so are there two lines of voices that cease their calling and their singing only as you draw near to Nubia. For then, with the green land, they fade away, these miles upon miles of calling and singing brown men; and amber and ruddy sands creep downward to the Nile. And the air seems subtly changing, and the light perhaps [Illustration: From a photograph by James S Lee HYPOSTYLE HALL, KÔM OMBOS] growing a little harder. And you are aware of other regions unlike those you are leaving, more African, more savage, less suave, less like a dreaming. And especially the silence makes a great impression on you. But before you enter this silence, between the amber and ruddy walls that will lead you on to Nubia, and to the land of the crocodile, you have a visit to pay. For here, high up on a terrace, looking over a great bend of the river, is Kom Ombos. And Kom Ombos is the temple of the crocodile god. Sebek was one of the oldest and one of the most evil of the Egyptian gods. In the Fayum he was worshiped, as well as at Kom Ombos, and there, in the holy lake of his temple, were numbers of holy crocodiles, which Strabo tells us were decorated with jewels like pretty women. He did not get on with the other gods, and was sometimes confused with Set, who personified natural darkness, and who also was worshiped by the people about Kom Ombos.