Caleb rode ahead, by the sphinxes in the avenue. They stood in rows, the wise lionesses with fixed women's faces, eternal guardians of the secret. Some of them were already sinking in the sandy ground, disappearing with their stretched fore-paws. Others shelved to one side, borne down by the pressure of the centuries. Here the Pharaohs themselves had passed in sacred processions! Here Moses had walked and Hermes Trismegistus; here Joseph had wandered, the interpreter of dreams; here, lastly, Cambyses, with his Persian hordes, had ridden sacrilegiously! This was Memphis, thrice-sacred Memphis, profaned long centuries ago and now dead and sinking in the devouring sands of the desert, which approached from the west, out yonder! The city would be swallowed up by the sands! That past would sink back into the lap of the earth!
Suddenly Lucius shuddered with the mystic awe of what has been. And his own life and grief seemed small to him.
They approached the sanctuary. It rose as a huge shadow. And from every door swarmed serving-priests of Serapis, minor priests and door-keepers ... because they saw the strangers. They ranged themselves in front of the entrance and stood waiting.
"These are distinguished Latin lords, cousins of the divine Cæsar Tiberius, blessed be his name. They wish to see the sacred bull...."
"Who is Osiris, in the sacred shape of the bull ..." added other priests.
"And who drew the plough through the fields of sacred Egypt when he disguised himself with the other gods, under the forms of animals...."
"From the eyes of Jupiter Ammon, who wished to reign alone."
"The same," said Caleb, flinging himself from his camel.
The priests arranged themselves in processional order while the travellers alighted and Thrasyllus also slid from his camel. And they sang the Hymn of Apis, as they were wont to do when visitors came. For in the huge dead city of Memphis, inhabited by hardly a few thousands, who were dwarfed and lost in the spaces of the ancient, mystic capital of ancient, mystic Egypt, in truth the worship of Apis was still maintained only because all the travellers came to see the sacred bull. The fees which the travellers paid to the priests formed the principal revenue of their brotherhood. The temple was falling in ruins; the enormous pylons seemed to totter, the gigantic architraves leaned forward; the giant statues were bruised by the rains and eaten away, as though the centuries themselves had mutilated them; the sphinxes were sinking into the sand. But still the worship of the bull Apis was maintained, because of the strangers and their fees.