Egypt and Its Monuments — Edition Insights

The Tiger-Colored Precipices: Hichens's Landscape as Predator

Hichens's most distinctive authorial choice is his personification of the Egyptian landscape as a predatory force. The cliffs are not merely orange and yellow; they 'shoot out turrets of rock that blaze like flames' and 'show great teeth, like the tiger when any one draws near.' The simile is extended with a reference to Blake's 'Tiger,' and Hichens concludes that these precipices are 'burning things, avid like beasts of prey.' This is not a neutral description of geology; it is a deliberate rhetorical strategy to make the reader feel the environment as a character—angry, hungry, and barely contained. The effect is heightened by contrast: the 'restored apricot-colored pillars' of Deir-el-Bahari are 'not afraid of their impending fury,' as if the architecture itself possesses courage. Hichens thus frames the monuments not as inert stone, but as participants in a drama of survival against a hostile natural world.

The Ka and the Boudoir: Domesticating the Divine

In his description of Deir-el-Bahari, Hichens introduces the Egyptian concept of the Ka—a 'separate entity, a sort of spiritual other self'—and immediately personalizes it. The temple, he writes, was built so that offerings might be made to the Ka of Queen Hatshepsut, and he exclaims, 'Fortunate Ka of Hatshepsu to have had so cheerful a dwelling!' This is not a dry theological explanation; it is an affectionate, almost envious remark. Hichens then compares the temple's details to 'the amusing ornaments of a clever woman's boudoir': 'niches full of bright hues, the arched chapels, the small, white steps leading upward to shallow sanctuaries, the small black foxes facing each other on little yellow pedestals.' The diction deliberately feminizes and domesticates the sacred space, making it intimate rather than awe-inspiring. This choice reflects Hichens's broader tendency to translate ancient Egyptian religion into terms his Edwardian readers would recognize—not as alien superstition, but as a recognizable human impulse to beautify and cherish.

Arrested Movement: Color and Vivacity Over Form

Hichens explicitly states his aesthetic priority: 'At Deir-el-Bahari, what the long shell contains—its happy murmur of life—is more fascinating than the shell. There, instead of being uplifted or overawed by form, we are rejoiced by color, by the high vivacity of arrested movement, by the story that color and movement tell.' This is a direct statement of authorial method. Hichens is less interested in architectural structure or historical chronology than in the sensory immediacy of painted scenes. He describes the temple's colors as 'brilliant as yesterday's picture anywhere,' and notes that the painted figures are 'surely dancing still.' The cows being weighed in scales are given personalities: one 'reposes with an air that says, “Even this last indignity of being weighed against my will cannot perturb my soaring spirit,”' while the other two 'look as apprehensive as old ladies in a rocking express.' This anthropomorphic playfulness is a deliberate stylistic choice, transforming ancient reliefs into a comic vignette. Hichens's prose thus mimics the very 'vivacity' he admires in the art, using active verbs and present tense to collapse the distance between past and present.

The Observer's Presence: Hichens as Eyewitness

Hichens frequently inserts himself into the narrative as a remembered participant, grounding his descriptions in personal experience. At Deir-el-Bahari, he recalls 'lunching at Thebes with Monsieur Naville and Mr. Hogarth, and afterward going with them to watch the digging away of the masses of sand and rubbish which concealed this gracious building.' He remembers 'the songs of the half-naked workmen toiling and sweating in the sun' and 'seeing a white temple wall come up into the light with all the painted figures surely dancing with joy upon it.' These recollections serve a dual purpose: they authenticate his account by placing him at the scene of excavation, and they inject a note of nostalgia and human warmth. The workmen's songs, the heat, the gradual revelation of the wall—these details transform the temple from a static monument into an event. Hichens's choice to include his own past visit, complete with named archaeologists, also signals his position as a knowledgeable but not pedantic guide. He is not merely describing what he sees; he is sharing what he felt, and inviting the reader to feel it too.

Hichens's Egypt is a place of animated stone and vivid color, where cliffs snarl like tigers and temple walls dance with joy. His prose consistently prioritizes sensory impression over scholarly data, and his willingness to compare a sacred precinct to a boudoir or a cow to a philosopher reveals a writer who trusts his own eye and ear above received opinion. Readers who approach this book expecting a dry guide to antiquities will be surprised; those who welcome a personal, often playful travelogue will find a companionable voice that makes the monuments feel newly alive.

Sometimes a book stays with me less for its facts than for how it makes a place feel nearly alive — that’s what Hichens’s Egypt did, those temples as moods, not stones. I found a similar warmth in Greek Lands and Letters — A Closer Reading, where the landscape seems to whisper back, almost like an old friend remembering out loud.