The Temple of Heliopolis [pp. 438-444]

THE TEMPLE OF HELZIOPOLIS.
was a murder!" What if a glimpse of
Thornton should give me a hint for it!
I looked behind me. How Terentieff
would like to read it! I turned back to
see him standing near the door as if
waiting for some one. Could I influence
him enough to bring him in? I had not
heard his footsteps. I wondered if a
deaf person could for an instant affect
me to the extent of making me also
deaf. He went to the curb-stone. So
nervous that I felt even his presence
would be a relief, I ran out to catch him
-he was gone before I could reach him.
I never saw him again. Turning back,
I ran against a famous Jehu of the Geyser roads.
"Who was it you chased?"
"Terentieff."
"Terentieff! You must be crazy!"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, that about six months ago, in
the last of his continual free rides on my
stage, I saw him fall off, cover his right
shoulder with grease and mud from the
off fore-wheel-and-break his neck!"
I staggered into the store and groped
for a seat. Mechanically I took up
Gray's poems, lying as Terentieff left
them, open at the "Descent of Odin."
This was the heavily penciled passage
I had just seen him underline:
"Irwas snowed aver with snow,
Andbeaten with rain,
And drenched with dews,
Dead have I long been!"
THE TEMPLE OF HELIOPOLIS.
HE greatest university of the an cient world to which our civilization appertains was built 3,300 years ago
at least, and possibly first built 4,650
years ago. An obelisk hereafter to be
mentioned bears the name of a king
said to have reigned 2,803 years before
Christ. Its name, or rather the name
of the place where it was situated, was
called by the Greeks-and by the Romans, who adopted the Greek name
"Heliopolis," the City of the Sun, or the
Sun City. By the authors of the books
known to us as the Old Testament, it
was called "On." But by the Egyptians
themselves it was called "Onoo," or
"Anoo," meaning the house of the god
Toum, the god of the western hemisphere.
This renowned temple of astronomy, of
medicine, of philosophy, and of theology,
stood near the Arab village of Matariah,
and about five miles from the present
city of Cairo, in Egypt. No ruins, no
vestige of the great walls of the temple,
have been visible within the memory of
man. There is no reason to doubt that
all its movable material was transported, centuries ago, to the ancient city of
Cairo, to be there used in the construction of walls in a new city. Some mounds
of earth-marking the site of distant
walls, once surrounding the gardens and
grounds of the temple, or possibly supplying the teachers' and students' quarters-and a lonely obelisk still standing
on the plain, are all that now remain of
that oldest and most renowned school
of antiquity. Its long avenue, bordered
by great sculptured sphinxes, between
which the priests and teachers and students approached; its two tall, reddish,
shining obelisks, among the most chaste
and beautiful monoliths ever yet erected
by man; its two stupendous pylons of
solid masonry; the huge walls of the
sanctuary, formed of great stones (hewn
and burst from the quarries from which
the greatest of the pyramids were formed), with their endless bass-reliefs on the
438
[MAY,