I own, after seeing that in some places even the
original colors remained, that I quite held my breath as we approached
the famous figure of Cleopatra. The sorceress of the Nile! The
favorite of the goddess Hathor herself! The siren who could tempt an
emperor to forsake his empire or a general to renounce fame and honor
more easily than a modern woman could persuade a man to break an
engagement to dine with her rival! Queen of the Lotus! Empress of the
Pyramids! What grace, what charm I anticipated! I wondered if she
would be portrayed floating down to meet Antony, with her purple and
perfumed sails, her cloth of gold garments, her peacocks, her ibex,
her lotus-blooms, and if all her mysterious fascinations would be
spread before the delighted gaze of her humble worshipper.
What I found is shown in the frontispiece to this volume. Beauty
unadorned with a vengeance! From this time on I shall question the
taste of Antony. I only wish he could have lived to see some American
girls I know.
We saw Karnak and Philae by moonlight, and we lunched in the tombs of
the kings, with hieroglyphics thousands of years old looking down upon
our pickled onions and cold fowl, and we ploughed through the sands at
Assouan and saw the naked Nubians, with a silver ear-ring in the top
of their left ear, shoot the rapids of the first cataract.
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