GENERAL VIEW OF EXISTING BUILDINGS AT KARNAK
RESTORED BY CHARLES CHIPIEZ

The variations are, in fact, very great, but they are not so great as they seem at the first glance. They are generally to be explained by those developments and repetitions of which Egyptian architects were so fond. We shall endeavour to demonstrate this by glancing rapidly at each of the more celebrated Theban buildings in turn. Our purpose does not require that we should describe any of them in detail, as we have already done in the case of the temple of Khons, and we shall be content with noticing their variations upon the type established by our study of the minor monument.

Fig. 213.—Longitudinal section of the Temple of Luxor.
Restored by Ch. Chipiez.

Let us take Karnak first. This, the most colossal assemblage of ruins which the world has to show, comprises no less than eleven separate temples within its four inclosing walls of crude brick. The longest axis of this collection of ruins is that from north to south; it measures about 1,560 yards; its transverse axis is 620 yards long. The whole circuit of the walls is nearly two English miles and a half.[323]

The first thing that strikes us in looking at a general map of Karnak is that Egyptian temples were not oriented.[324] The Great Temple is turned to the west, that of Khons to the south, that of Mouth to the north. There is some doubt as to the name which should be given to several of these buildings. Two of the most important are consecrated to those deities who, with Amen, form the Theban triad. The highest and largest of them all, that which is called the Great Temple, is dedicated to Amen-Ra.

We are here concerned with the latter building only. We reproduce, on a much larger scale and in two parts (Fig. 214 on page 363, and Fig. 215 on page 367), the plan given on page 358 (Fig. 212). A few figures will suffice to give an idea of the several dimensions. From the external doorway of the first western pylon to the eastern extremity of the building, the length, over all, is 1,215 feet. Its greatest width is that of the first pylon, namely 376 feet. The total circumference of the bounding wall is about 3,165 feet. The outside curtain wall of brick is from 2,500 to 2,700 yards in length, which corresponds closely to the 13 stadia said by Diodorus to be the circumference of the oldest of the four great Theban temples.[325]

After passing the first pylon (No. 1 on the plan) we find ourselves in a peristylar court answering to that in the temple of Khons. On our right and left respectively we leave two smaller temples, one of which (C on plan) cuts through the outer wall and was built by Rameses III.; Seti II. was the author of the other (D). Those two buildings are older than the court and its colonnades. When the princes of the twenty-second dynasty added this peristyle to the already constructed parts of the great temple, they refrained from destroying those monuments to the piety of their ancestors. We also may regard these temples as mere accidents in the general arrangement. We may follow the path marked out down the centre of the court by the remains of an avenue of columns which dates from the times of the Ethiopian conquerors and of the Bubastide kings (E). After the second pylon (2) comes the hypostyle hall, the wonder of Karnak, and the largest room constructed by the Egyptians (F). It is 340 feet long by 170 wide.[326] One hundred and thirty-four colossal columns support, or rather did once support, the roof, which, in the central portion, was not less than 76 feet above the floor; in this central portion, twelve pillars of larger proportions than the others form an avenue; these columns are 11 feet 10 inches in diameter and more than 33 feet in circumference, so that, in bulk, they are equal to the column of Trajan. They are, without a doubt, the most massive pillars ever employed within a building. From the ground to the summit of the cube which supports the architrave, they are 70 feet high. Right and left of the central avenue the remaining 122 columns form a forest of pillars supporting a flat roof, which is lower than that of the central part by 33 feet. The cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris, would stand easily upon the surface covered by this hall (see Plate V.).

Fig. 214.—Plan of the anterior portion of the Great Temple at Karnak.
From the plan of M. Brune.

Its proportions are very different from those of the corresponding chamber in the little temple of Khons, but yet it fills the same office in the general conception, it is constructed on the same principle and lighted in the same fashion. To use the expression of Strabo, we have here a real pronaos or ante-temple, because a passage, open to the sky, intervenes between it and that part of the building which contains the sanctuary. The four doorways[327] with which this vast hall is provided seem to indicate that it was more accessible than the parts beyond the passage just mentioned.

We cannot pretend to determine the uses of all those chambers which encumber with their ruins the further parts of the great building. It is certain however that between them they constitute the naos, or temple properly speaking. They are surrounded by a double wall and there is but one door by which they can be reached—precautions which suffice to prove the peculiarly sacred character of this part of the whole rectangle. In which of these chambers are we to find the σηκός? Was it, as the early observers thought, in those granite apartments which are marked H on the plan? This locality was suggested by the extra solicitude as to the strength and beauty of those chambers betrayed by the use of a more beautiful and costly material upon them than upon the rest of the temple. Moreover, the chamber (H) which is situated upon the major axis of the temple bears a strong resemblance in shape as well as position, to the sanctuary of the temple of Khons, in the case of which no doubt was possible. Or must we follow Mariette when he places the sanctuary in the middle of the eastern court (I in plan)? All traces of it have now almost vanished, but Mariette based his opinion upon the fact that in the ruins of this court alone are to be found any traces of the old temple dating back to the days of the Amenemhats and Ousourtesens of the twelfth dynasty. He does not attempt to account, however, for those carefully built granite apartments which seem to most visitors to be the real sanctuary, or, at least, the sanctuary of the temple as reconstructed and enlarged by the princes of the second Theban Empire.

Fig. 215.—The Great Temple at Karnak; inner portion;
from the plan of M. Brune.

In the actual state of the ruins the doubts on this point are, perhaps, irremovable. But the final determination of the question would be of no particular moment to our argument. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that in the Great Temple, as in the Temple of Khons, the sanctuary was surrounded and followed by a considerable number of small apartments. In the Great Temple these chambers are very numerous and some of them are large enough to require central supports for their ceilings in the form of one or more columns. In other respects they are similar to those in the Temple of Khons.

INTERIOR OF THE HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK

The resemblance between the two temples is completed by the existence in both of a minor hypostyle hall behind the sanctuary. The hall of four columns of the smaller building corresponds to the large saloon called the Hall of Thothmes, in the Great Temple (J). The roof of this saloon is supported by twenty columns disposed in two rows and by square piers standing free of the walls. It is 146 feet wide, and from 53 to 57 feet deep. Immediately before the granite apartments, and between the fifth and sixth pylons, another hall, also with two ranges of columns but not so deep as the last, is introduced. Its position shows it to be meant for a vestibule to the naos properly speaking. The fine Court of the Caryatides with its Osiride pillars, the first chamber entered by the visitors who penetrate into the temple proper, seems to have been designed for a similar purpose (G).

Fig. 216.—Karnak as it is at present.
The ruins of a pylon and of the hypostyle hall.

If we wish, then, to evolve some order out of the seeming chaos of Karnak; if we wish to find among its ruins the essential characteristics, the vital organs, if we may put it so, of the Egyptian temple, we have only to apply the method of analysis and reduction suggested by examination of simpler monuments, and to take account of the long series of additions which resulted in the finally stupendous dimensions of the whole mass.[328] These additions may be distinguished from one another by their scale of proportions and by their methods of construction. When rightly examined the gigantic ruins of the great temple of Amen betray those simple lines and arrangements, which form, as we have shown, the original type.

The same remark may be applied to the other great building on the left bank of the river, the Temple of Luxor. There, too, the architecture is, to use the words of Champollion, the "architecture of giants." From the first pylon to the innermost recesses of the sanctuary the building measures about 850 feet. No traveller can avoid being deeply impressed by the first sight of its lofty colonnades, by its tall and finely proportioned pillars rearing their majestic capitals among the palms and above the huts of the modern village. These columns belong to the first hypostyle hall, and, were they not buried for two-thirds of their height, they would be, from the ground up to the base of their capitals, rather more than 50 feet high; the capitals and the cubes above them measure about 18 feet more.

The plan of Luxor is more simple than that of Karnak; it was built in two "heats" only, to borrow an expression from the athletes, under Amenophis III. and Rameses II. In later periods it underwent some insignificant retouches, and that is all. It is narrower than its great neighbour, and covers a very much less space of ground, neither has it so many chambers, and yet we are in some respects more at a loss in attempting to assign their proper uses to its apartments and in finding some equivalent for them in the elementary type from which we started, than we were in the larger temple.

It is true that the proper character of the naos is better marked at Luxor than elsewhere. The sanctuary may be determined at a glance. It consists of a rectangular chamber standing in the middle of a large square hall; it is the only chamber in the whole building for which granite has been used; it has two doors, one in each end, exactly upon the major axis of the building. The hall in which it is placed is preceded by a vestibule, and surrounded by those small chambers which are always found in this part of a temple. So far, then, there is nothing to embarrass us; everything is in conformity with the principles which have been laid down.

Fig. 217.—Plan of the Temple of Luxor.

The real difficulty begins when we look round us for the pronaos, and examine the hypostyle halls. Here, as elsewhere, there is a hall of modest dimensions beyond the sanctuary. It is supported by twelve columns. There is another, much wider and deeper, in front of the naos; it has thirty-two of those lofty columns of which we have already spoken. By its design, situation, and the spacing of its columns, it reminds us of the hypostyle hall of Karnak. It differs from it in being open, without any external wall towards the court; so that it may be called a portico with four ranges of columns. Moreover, again unlike the Karnak hall, it is by no means the most imposing feature of the whole edifice. The greatest elevation and the most imposing proportions, so far as the interior of the building is concerned, are to be found in the great gallery which leads from the first to the second court, from the second to the third pylon. This gallery is in effect a hypostyle hall, but it differs profoundly from the superb edifice which bears that name at Karnak. It is long and narrow and looks more like a mere covered corridor than an ample hall in which the eager crowd could find elbow-room.

The place occupied by this hall in the whole composition is equally singular. It has been ascertained that the first pylon and the peristylar courtyard behind it date from the time of Rameses II., while all the rest of the building, from what is at present the second pylon inwards, was built by Amenophis III. The doorway in the second pylon leads immediately into the grand gallery, some 176 feet long, of which we have been speaking.

We can hardly tell, therefore, where to look for the true pronaos at Luxor. In that part of the ground plan where it is generally found there is nothing but an open portico, which is considerably lower than the highest parts of the building. The great colonnade, again, is separated from the naos by an open court, so that it ought, perhaps, to be classified as what the Greeks called a propylæum; but yet it is a hall, inclosed and covered, of great size and height, and richly decorated, like the hypostyle halls which we have already described and others which we have yet to notice.[329]

Fig. 218.—Bird's-eye view of Luxor, as restored by M. Ch. Chipiez.

Another peculiarity of Luxor is its change of axis. The first pylon, that of Rameses, is not parallel with the two built by Amenophis; the angle at which they stand is a very perceptible one. Neither is the doorway of this pylon in alignment with the other doorways on the major axis of the building. No justification or even explanation of this irregularity, which is unique among the Theban temples, has been discovered.

If we cross the Nile and land upon the plain which stretches between the river and the Libyan hills, we find ourselves in the presence of those temples, the Ramesseum, Medinet-Abou, and Gournah, whose funerary destination we have already noticed. These are royal chapels erected in connection with the royal tombs in their neighbourhood, they are cenotaphs filled with the memories of the great Theban princes, and with representations of their exploits. Consequently we do not find in them those complications which, in the great temples of the right bank, mark the successive dynasties to which their final form was due. But yet the difference in general appearance is not great; there is however, one distinction which, as it goes far to prove the peculiar character of these buildings, should be carefully noticed. In no one of them, if we may judge from plans which have been made, has any chamber or structure been found which corresponds to the sanctuary or σηκός, of the temples of Amen or Khons. The absence of such a chamber might easily be explained by our supposition that these buildings were funerary chapels; as such they would require no depository for those mysterious symbols of this or that deity which the temples proper contained: they were the lineal descendants of the upper chambers in the mastabas, in which no rudiment of such a thing is to be found. On the other hand, we have reason to believe that the great Theban divinities were associated in the worship paid to deceased kings. If that were so these funerary temples might well have been arranged like those of the right bank. The inner portions of the Ramesseum and of Medinet-Abou are so ruinous that the question cannot be settled by the examination of their remains.

The Ramesseum certainly appears to have been the monument described by Diodorus as the Tomb of Osymandias, a name which has never been satisfactorily explained.[330] It is also called by the Institut d'Égypte, the Palace of Memnon and the Memnonium, upon the faith of Strabo's identification of Ismandes and Memnon.[331] It is to Champollion that this building owes the restoration of its true title, under which it is now generally known.

Without being so colossal as Karnak, the size of the Ramesseum would astonish us anywhere but in Egypt. When it was complete, it must have been as large as Luxor before the additions of Rameses II. were made, if not larger. The first pylon was 226 feet wide; the whole of its upper part is destroyed.[332] Immediately behind this pylon comes a vast peristylar court, almost square on plan (186 feet by 173). On the left the remains of a double colonnade exist, which must at one time have extended along at least two sides of the quadrangle. At the further end of this court and directly facing the back of the pylon, was a colossal statue of Rameses. Although seated, this statue was more than 56 feet high; its fragments now cover a considerable amount of the courtyard. A grand doorway, pierced through the centre of the wall upon which the defeat of the Khetas is painted, leads to a second court, a little less extensive than the first. Right and left there are porticos, each with a double range of columns. On the side of the entrance and on that opposite to it there are single ranges of Osiride figures. Many of these figures are still standing; they are 31 feet high.

THEBES

Three flights of steps lead up from this court into a vestibule ornamented with two colossal busts of Rameses and with a row of columns. From this vestibule the hypostyle hall is reached by three doorways of black granite. It measures 136 feet wide and 103 deep. Its roof is supported by forty-eight columns, in eight ranges of six each, counting from front to rear. Five of these eight ranges are still standing and still afford support to a part of the ceiling. This latter is painted with golden stars upon a blue ground, in imitation of the vault of heaven. The side walls have entirely disappeared.[333]

Fig. 219.—Plan of the Ramesseum (from Lepsius.)

This hall resembles that at Karnak, both in its plan and in its general appearance. The mode of lighting is the same; the arrangement is the same; there is in both a wide passage down the centre, supported by columns thicker and higher than the rest, from which they are also distinguished by the nobility of their bell-shaped capitals. At Karnak the hall was begun by Rameses I. and Seti; Rameses II. did no more than carry on the work of his predecessors. He heard the chorus of admiration with which the completion of such a superb building must have been hailed, and we can easily understand that he was thereby incited to reproduce its happy arrangement and majestic proportions in the great temple which he was erecting in his own honour on the left bank of the river.

Ambitious though he was, Rameses II. could not attempt to give the colossal dimensions of the great temple of Amen to what was, after all, no more than the chapel of his own tomb. The great hall at Karnak required three reigns, two of them very long ones, for its completion. In the Ramesseum an attempt was made to compensate for inferior size by extra care in the details and by the beauty of the workmanship. The tall columns of the central nave were no more than thirty-six feet high, including base and capital, the others were only twenty-five feet; but they surpassed the pillars at Karnak by the elegance of their proportions.

The admiration excited in us by the ruins of Karnak is mingled with astonishment, almost with stupefaction, but at the Ramesseum we are more charmed although we are less surprised. We see that, when complete, it must have had a larger share than its rival of that beauty into which merely colossal dimensions do not enter.[334]

Beyond the hall there are wide chambers, situated upon the major axis of the building, and each with its roof supported by eight columns. Beyond them again there is a fourth and smaller chamber which has only four columns. Round these rooms a number of smaller ones are gathered; they are all in a very fragmentary state, and among them no vestige of anything like a secos has been found. On the other hand, the bas-reliefs in one of the larger rooms seem to confirm the assertion of Diodorus, in his description of the Tomb of Osymandias, that the library was placed in this part of the building.[335]

Fig. 220.—The Ramesseum.
Bird's-eye view of the general arrangement,
restored by M. Ch. Chipiez.

The Ramesseum was formerly surrounded by brick structures of a peculiar character, some of which are yet to be found in good preservation at about 50 metres from the north face of the building. They consist of a double range of vaults closely abutting on each other, numbering from ten to twelve in each range, and surmounted by a platform. If it be true that a library was included in the building, these curious structures, which are situated within the outer bounding wall of the temple, may have contained rooms for lodging and instructing students, as well as chambers for the priests. In that case Rameses would deserve the credit of having founded, like the Mussulman sovereigns, a médressé, or sort of university, by the side of his turbeh and mosque. Additional probability is given to this conjecture both by certain discoveries which have been made in tombs near the Ramesseum and by the evidence of several papyri.[336] But for these texts we should be inclined to believe that these remains are the ruins of storehouses.

Fig. 221.—General plan
of the buildings
at Medinet-Abou.

About a thousand yards south-west of the Ramesseum rises the group of buildings which is known by the name of the modern village of Medinet-Abou. It was not until the second half of the present century had commenced that they were cleared from the débris and modern huts which concealed many of their parts. The group is composed of three distinct buildings in one enclosure. The oldest is a temple built by Thothmes II. and Thothmes III. and afterwards enlarged by the Ptolemies and the Roman Emperors (A on plan). The other two date from the time of Rameses III., the founder of the twentieth dynasty. They both lie upon the same axis, they are connected by a sphinx avenue, and they must certainly be considered as two parts of one whole. The first of the three which we encounter in approaching the group from the river is known as the Royal Pavilion or Pavilion of Rameses III. (B). Ninety yards farther to the north we come upon the great temple, the funerary character of which we have already explained (C). It is a second Ramesseum, and to avoid confusion it is generally known as the Great Temple of Medinet-Abou. We shall return to the Royal Pavilion presently, and, as for the Temple of Thothmes, which was consecrated to Amen, its really ancient portion is of too little importance to detain us long. It consists merely of an isolated secos surrounded on three sides by an open gallery upheld by square piers and, upon the fourth, by a block containing six small chambers (Fig. 222).

The great temple, however, whose picturesque ruins attract every visitor to Thebes, deserves to be carefully considered even in our summary review.[337] It bears a striking resemblance to the Ramesseum. Their dimensions are nearly the same. The first pylon at Medinet-Abou is 210 feet wide. The two courts which follow and isolate the second pylon are severally 113 feet by 140, and 126 feet by 136. The plan of Medinet-Abou does not differ (223) in any very important points from that of the Ramesseum. Upon two of its sides only, those which are at right angles to the face of the pylon, the first quadrangle has colonnades. One of these colonnades, that on the right of a visitor entering the temple, consists of a row of pillars faced with caryatides of Osiris. These Osiride piers are repeated in the second court, where a double colonnade, five steps above the pavement, leads to the pronaos. The latter seems too small for the two peristyles. It has only twenty-four supporting columns, in four rows of six each, counting from front to back of the building. These columns are smaller in section than those of the peristyles, and the eight which constitute the central nave do not differ from their companions.[338] This hypostyle hall lacks, therefore, some of the distinguishing characteristics of its rivals elsewhere. Its unambitious appearance is all the more surprising after the noble proportions and rich decorations of the two external courts. The effect of the hall is still farther lessened by the fact that it does not occupy the whole width of the building. Ranges of apartments are introduced between it and the external walls of the temple.

Fig. 222.—Plan of the Temple of Thothmes. (Champollion, Notices descriptives, p. 314.)

Was there a sanctuary behind this hypostyle hall? It would seem rather, according to the recent investigations of Mariette, that upon the major axis of the temple there were two small halls, each supported by eight columns, like those in the Ramesseum; around these many small chambers would be grouped in the fashion which is almost universal in this part of an Egyptian religious building. The little that can be discovered as to this point has its importance in establishing a comparison between the temple of Rameses II. and that of Rameses III., because it might prove that the similarity, which we have mentioned as existing between the more public parts of the two edifices, extended to the sanctuary and its dependencies in the rear. The last of the great Theban Pharaohs certainly drew much of his inspiration from the work of his illustrious predecessors. In their present state of mutilation it is impossible to decide which was the finer of the two in their complete state. To the fine hypostyle hall of the Ramesseum, Medinet-Abou could oppose the Royal Pavilion which rose in front of the temple and grouped itself so happily with the first pylon, affording one of the most effective compositions in the whole range of Egyptian architecture.

Fig. 223.—Plan of the great Temple at Medinet-Abou. (Communicated by M. Brune.)

The rest of the temples in this neighbourhood and within the enclosures at Karnak are all more or less intimately allied to the type we have established, and need not be noticed in detail.[339]

We have good reason to believe that the type of temple which we have described was a common one in other parts of Egypt than Thebes. The temples of Memphis, of Heliopolis and of the Delta cities, have perished and, practically, left no trace behind; but the great buildings constructed by the Theban conquerors outside the limits of Egypt proper, in Nubia, are in comparatively good preservation. One of these, the Temple of Soleb, built by Thothmes III. and reconstructed by Amenophis III., must have borne a strong resemblance to the Ramesseum, so far as can be judged through the discrepancies in the available plans of the first-named building. Cailliaud only allows it one peristylar court, while Hoskins and Lepsius give it two. According to Cailliaud, its hypostyle hall, which must have been a very beautiful one, contained forty-eight columns. After it came another hall, with a roof supported by twelve columns. This was surrounded by small chambers, the remains of which are very confused. In the plan given by Lepsius there are two hypostyle halls with a wall between them, an arrangement which is also found at Abydos. The outer one must have had twenty-four columns, the largest in the building, and the second forty, of rather less diameter; the remainder of the temple has disappeared.[340]

We find analogous arrangements in the great temple of Napata (Gebel-Barkal). Built by Amenophis III. when Napata was the seat of an Egyptian pro-consul, and repaired by Tahraka when Ethiopia became supreme over Egypt, this temple resembles the Theban buildings in its plan. From a peristylar court enclosed between two pylons, we pass into a hypostylar hall containing forty-six columns; behind this hall comes the sanctuary, in its usual position, with its entourage of small chambers. We may call this the classic type of Egypt.

The temples which we have hitherto examined are chiefly remarkable for the simplicity of their plan. A single sanctuary forms the centre and, so to speak, the heart of the whole composition. Pylons, peristylar courts and hypostylar halls, are but anterooms and vestibules to this all important chamber; while the small apartments which surround it afford the necessary accommodation for the material adjuncts of Egyptian worship. In the great temple at Karnak, the anterior and posterior dependencies are developed to an extraordinary extent, but this development is always in the direction of the length, or to speak more accurately, of the depth of the building. The smaller faces of the whole rectangle are continually carried farther from each other by the additions of fresh chambers and architectural features, which are distributed, with more or less regular alternation, on the right and left of the major axis which always passes through the centre of the secos. The building, therefore, in spite of many successive additions always contrives to preserve the unity of its organic constitution.

But all the great buildings in Egypt which were constructed for the service of religion were not so simply designed. A good instance of a more complex arrangement is to be found in the great temple at Abydos (Fig. 224). It was begun by Seti I. and finished by Rameses II. Mariette freed it from the débris and modern hovels which encumbered it, and, thanks to his efforts, there are now few monuments in Egypt whose inner arrangements can be more clearly and certainly perceived.

Its general shape is singular. The courts and the pronaos compose a narrow and elongated rectangle, with which the parts corresponding to the sanctuary and its dependent chambers form a right angle (see Fig. 224). This salient wing has no corresponding excrescence on the other side. We might consider the building unfinished, but that there is no sign whatever that the architect meant to complete it with another wing at the opposite angle. The Egyptians were never greatly enamoured of that exact symmetry which has become one of the first artistic necessities of our time.

Still more surprising than the eccentricity of its plan, are the peculiar arrangements which are to be found in the interior of this temple. As at Medinet-Abou and the Ramesseum, there are two courts, each preceded by a pylon. After these comes the pronaos. The courts differ from those at Thebes in having no peristyles or colonnades. The only thing of the kind is a row of square pillars standing before the inner wall of the second court (see plan). This is a poor equivalent for the majestic colonnades and files of caryatides which we have hitherto encountered.

The suppression of the portico has a great effect upon the appearance of these two courts. It deprives them of the rich shadows cast by the long colonnades and their roofs of the Theban temples, and the long walls must have seemed rather cold and monotonous in spite of the bas-reliefs and paintings which covered them. Their absence, however, is not allowed to affect the general lines of the plan.

Fig. 224.—Plan of the Temple at Abydos (from Mariette).

We have given neither an elevation nor a section of the temple at Abydos, because neither the one nor the other was to be had. The building was hardly known until Mariette freed it from the débris with which it was engulphed. He, too, studied rather as an egyptologist than as an architect, and was content with making known its internal arrangements by a plan. This plan does not appear to be minutely exact. A little farther on we shall have to speak of a peculiarity which exists at Abydos, but which is not hinted at in the adjoining plan; some of the columns are coupled in the first hypostyle hall. We take this fact from the Description, where the measurements are given in a fashion which forbids all doubt of their fidelity.

It is when we arrive at the pronaos that we fail to recognize the disposition to which we have grown accustomed. There is no central nave, with its columns of extra size and more careful design, leading to the closed door of the sanctuary. There are two hypostyle halls, the first supported by twenty-four, the second by thirty-six columns. They are separated by a wall pierced with seven doorways, each doorway corresponding to one of the aisles between the columns. In the farther wall of the second of these halls, there are seven more doorways, corresponding to the last named, and opening upon seven oblong vaulted saloons, all of one size and completely isolated one from another.

By their situation on the plan, by their form, and by the decoration of their walls, these vaulted chambers declare themselves to be so many sanctuaries. Each one of them is dedicated to some particular deity, whose name and image appear in the decorations of the chamber itself and also upon the lintel of the door outside. These names and images are again repeated upon all the surfaces presented by the aisle which leads up to the door.

The seven deities thus honoured, beginning at the right, are Horus, Isis, Osiris, Amen, Harmachis, Ptah, and Seti himself, whom we thus find assimilated with the greatest of the Egyptian gods. Each chamber contains a collection of thirty-six pictures, which are repeated from one to another with no changes beyond those rendered necessary by the substitution of one god for another. These pictures deal with the rites which would be celebrated by the king in each of the seven sanctuaries.

Behind this septuple sanctuary there is a secondary hypostyle hall, just as we find it behind the single secos of the ordinary temple. Its roof was supported by ten columns, and access to it was obtained through the third sanctuary, that of Osiris. This part of the temple is in a very fragmentary condition. Very little is left of the bounding walls, but it has been ascertained that several of these chambers were dedicated to one or other of the deities between whom the naos was apportioned. Thus one of the chambers referred to was placed under the protection of Osiris, another under that of Horus, and a third under that of Isis.

The decoration of the southern wing of the temple seems never to have been completed. It contains a long corridor, a rectangular court with an unfinished peristyle, several small chambers with columns, and a flight of steps leading up on to the flat roof. A dark apartment or crypt, divided into two stories by a floor of large stone slabs, may have been used as a storehouse.

Fig. 225.—Seti, with the attributes of Osiris, between Amen,
to whom he is paying homage, and Chnoum.

These farthest apartments seem to have been arranged in no sort of order. We shall not here enter into such matters as the construction of the seven parallel vaults in the naos; for that a future opportunity will be found;[341] at present our business is to make the differences between the temple at Abydos and that of Khons and its congeners, clearly understood. The distinction lies in the seven longitudinal subdivisions, beginning with the seven doors in the façade of the hypostyle hall, and ending in the vaulted chambers which form the same number of sanctuaries. Seen from outside, the temple would not betray its want of unity; it was surrounded by a single wall, the complex naos was prefaced by courts and pylons in the same fashion as in the temples of Thebes which we have already noticed, and it would not be until the building was entered and explored that the fact would become evident that it was seven shrines in one, seven independent temples under one roof.[342]

At Thebes also we find a temple which, by its internal arrangements, resembles that of Abydos. It is called sometimes the Palace and sometimes the Temple of Gournah; in the inscriptions it is called the House of Seti. Two propylons, one about fifty yards in front of the other, form an outwork to the main building, with which they are connected by an avenue of sphinxes. It is probable that they were originally the doorways through brick walls, now demolished, which formed successive enclosures round the temple. The dromos led up to the pronaos, which was reached by a few steps. The front of the naos is a portico of simple design, consisting of ten columns between two square pilasters, the whole being 166 feet long by 10 feet deep. Eight of these line columns are still erect. The wall at the back of the portico is pierced by three doorways, to which three distinct compartments or divisions of the interior correspond (see plan, Fig. 226).

The only feature in which these compartments resemble one another is their independence. They are isolated from one another by walls which run from front to back of the naos. The most important and elaborate of the three compartments is the middle one. Its entrance doorway opens directly upon a hall which is the largest in the whole temple. It is eighteen metres long, its roof is supported by six columns similar to those of the portico already mentioned, and ranged around it are nine small chambers, the pictures in which illustrate the apotheosis of Seti, who, often indued with the attributes of Osiris, is sometimes shown doing homage to the Theban triad of gods, and more especially to Amen-Ra, sometimes as himself the object of worship. The central one of these chambers opens upon a hall where the roof is supported by four square pillars, and upon this hall again four small apartments open. These can hardly be mere storehouses, but they have suffered so greatly that no certain opinion can be formed as to their real purposes.

The right-hand compartment is in a very bad state, but enough of it remains to show that its arrangements were quite different from those of its neighbour and much less complex. So far as we can judge, the larger part of it was taken up with a peristylar court or hall seventy-six feet long and forty-six wide. Behind this the site of three rectangular chambers may be distinguished. Every wall which is still standing bears representations of Rameses II. paying his devotions to the Theban gods.

Fig. 226.—Plan of the Temple of Gournah.

The left compartment is in better preservation than the right, and its arrangements are more like those of the central part of the naos. It is not so large, however, and it contains no hypostyle hall. It has six chambers placed in two sets of three, the one set behind the other. Here we find Rameses I., the founder of the dynasty, honoured by his son Seti I. and his grandson Rameses II.

Fig. 227.—Façade of the naos of the Temple of Gournah
(from the Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. ii. pl. 42).

Fig. 228.—Longitudinal section of the Temple of Gournah,
from the portico of the naos to the back wall
(from Lepsius's Denkmæler, part i. pl. 86).

The great temples of Abydos and Gournah were built by the same sovereigns, Seti I. and Rameses II. Perhaps, too, their plans were traced by the same architect. The resemblance between them is so great that they may be looked upon as variants of one type, of a type which is distinguished by the juxtaposition of similar parts grouped laterally one by the side of the other. Each of the chapels which we have described was self-contained, the subsidiary chambers which were required for the routine of worship were grouped round it, either on one side, as at Abydos, or in the angles of the sanctuary itself, as at Gournah. With such slight differences of detail as this, the two buildings were built upon the same principle. At Gournah the division is tripartite, and the three compartments vary in their arrangements; at Abydos they are seven in number, and exactly similar in design. A temple thus cut into three parts, or seven, reminds us of the seed-pods of certain plants, in which the fertilizing grain is divided between several cells. But whether these are numerous or few, the naos never has any great depth. It seems as if the absence of a true organic centre arrested the development of the building; we find no signs of an edifice which, like the temple of Amen at Karnak, might be developed almost to infinity without losing its unity.

On the other hand, there were a few temples in which a severe and extreme unity was the distinguishing characteristic. In Upper Egypt and Nubia a few examples of the class are still to be seen. As a rule they date from the eighteenth dynasty, but there were a few temples of the same kind erected under the Ptolemies.[343] It seems probable, therefore, that they were common to all the periods of Egyptian history, and to the conquered provinces, as well as to Egypt proper. They were erected within, and in the neighbourhood of, those cities whose importance was not sufficient to demand such great monumental works as the temples of Thebes or Abydos, of Memphis or Sais. We might call them chapels, raised either to the honour of the local deities, or for the purpose of commemorating the passage of some conquering prince and the homage paid by him to the deity to whom he looked for protection and victory.

In these chapels there are neither internal peristyles nor hypostyles; there are none of those subsidiary chambers among which it is sometimes so easy to lose our way. There is, in fact, nothing but a rectangular chamber and a portico about it, and, in most cases, it would appear that a short dromos, consisting of a few pairs of sphinxes, lent dignity to the approach.

The best proportioned and perhaps the most interesting building of this class is the little sandstone temple built by Amenophis III. at Elephantiné, upon the southern frontier of Egypt. It was discovered at the end of the last century by the draughtsmen of the French Expedition, and named by them the Temple of the South.[344] This little building no longer exists. It was destroyed in 1822 by the Turkish Governor of Assouan, who had a mania for building. Happily the plans and drawings, which we reproduce, seem to have been made with great care.