LXI A POTSHERD AT ELEPHANTINE
The river broadens into calm,
And runs from roaring into rest,
Where underneath the purple skies
Of evening, clear reflected lies
Upon the water's burnished breast,
A double island, rock and palm.
Beyond—is famine and is fear,
The sorrow of the waste Soudan,
The Mahdi's wrath, the sabre's flash;
Beyond,—the torrent's foam and crash,
But here is quiet Assuan,—
Food, peace, security is here.
By ancient Abu
as I stroll,
Where once the ivories were stored,
I hear Syene's quarry ring
With hammer-strokes for queen and king,
The sledge is dragged, the water poured,
The red Colossi shoreward roll.
In vain I seek the Sun-god's well,
O'er which, at high meridian, stood
Râ's golden boat that sought the west;
Osiris has been dispossest,
Tho' from his hand men take their food
They will not here his praises tell—
Nor wonder, seeing how the dust
Is sown with tax and toll for bread;
The very sherds beneath our feet
Cry, ‘Ere the men of Kush may eat,
The lords of Egypt shall be fed!
The Roman Eagle have his lust!’
And wandering on by Pêpi's stone,
I pluck from out the ruinous heap
A tile whereon some Grecian wrote;
What tax-collector struck the note,
That, echoing, makes our hearts to leap
With music of old Homer's tone?
For all the world of toil and fret,
Of foes that still with might assail,
Of tax still forced by tyrant's hand,
Is charmed to silence as we stand
To hear the fragmentary tale
Of Troy, no centuries can forget.
[_]
Note.—The broken potsherds that are strewn in such abundance
in one part of the island of Elephantine, written with ancient Greek,
are now ascertained to be the receipts given by the Government
tax-collector during the Roman occupation of Egypt, a.d. 77-165,
for the merchandise of Nubia as it entered Egypt at Elephantine.
The very name of the island suggests that here may have been
stored in olden days the ivories brought from the lands of Kush
and Punt.
Among the potsherd fragments have been found one or two inscribed
with portions of Homer's Iliad; one with an extract from
the eighteenth book of the Iliad is preserved in the Louvre. It is to
this fact that an allusion is made in the poem.
The boulder stone inscribed with the names of Pêpi and other
kings of the sixth dynasty will be familiar to travellers, but no
trace remains of the famous ‘Well of the sun,’ which was said to
be entirely enlightened by the sun's rays at noon from top to bottom,
and which was believed to mark the world's meridian, as the sun
cast no shadow there at noon.
