Amun-Ra, Mut, and Khuns, the king of the gods, his wife, mother of gods,
and the moon god, were the Theban triad to whom the holy buildings of
Thebes on the two banks of the Nile were dedicated; and this temple
of Luxor, the "House of Amun in the Southern Apt," was built fifteen
hundred years before Christ by Amenhotep III. Rameses II., that vehement
builder, added to it immensely. One walks among his traces when one
walks in Luxor. And here, as at Denderah, Christians have let loose the
fury that should have had no place in their religion. Churches for their
worship they made in different parts of the temple, and when they were
not praying, they broke in pieces statues, defaced bas-reliefs, and
smashed up shrines with a vigor quite as great as that displayed in
preservation by Christians of to-day. Now time has called a truce.
Safe are the statues that are left. And day by day two great religions,
almost as if in happy brotherly love, send forth their summons by the
temple walls. And just beyond those walls, upon the hill, there is a
Coptic church. Peace reigns in happy Luxor. The lion lies down with the
lamb, and the child, if it will, may harmlessly put its hand into the
cockatrice's den.

Perhaps because it is so surrounded, so haunted by life and familiar
things, because the pigeons fly about it, the buffalo stares into it,
the goats stir up the dust beside its columns, the twittering voices of
women make a music near its courts, many people pay little heed to this
great temple, gain but a small impression from it. It decorates the
bank of the Nile. You can see it from the dahabiyehs. For many that is
enough. Yet the temple is a noble one, and, for me, it gains a definite
attraction all its own from the busy life about it, the cheerful hum and
stir. And if you want fully to realize its dignity, you can always visit
it by night. Then the cries from the village are hushed. The houses