[334] See Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii. pp. 309 et seq.

[335] Ibid., p. 312.

[336] Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii. p. 312.

[337] The plan in the Description de l'Égypte (Antiquités, vol. ii. pl. 4) does not go beyond the back wall of the second court. That of Lepsius goes to the back of the hypostyle hall. (Denkmæler, part i. pl. 92.) Ours is much more comprehensive—it goes three stages farther back; it was communicated to us by M. Brune, who measured the building in 1866.

[338] Here M. Perrot is in error, as may be seen by reference to his own plan. The columns of the central passage of the hypostyle hall are similar in section to those of the two peristyles, except that their bases are flattened laterally in a somewhat unusual fashion.—Ed.

[339] A few of these buildings—that, for instance, on the right of the great lake—seem to have been very peculiar in arrangement, but their remains are in such a state of confusion that it is at present impossible to describe their plans.

[340] Cailliaud, Voyage à Méroé, plates, vol. ii. pl. 9-14. Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 116, 117. Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia, plates 40, 41, and 42. The plan given by Hoskins agrees more with that of Lepsius than with Cailliaud, but it only shows the beginning of the first hypostyle hall and nothing of the second. These divergences are easily understood when it is remembered that nothing but some ten columns of two different types remain in situ, and that the mounds of débris are high and wide. In order to obtain a really trustworthy plan, this accumulation would have to be cleared away over the whole area of the temple. All the plans show a kind of gallery, formed of six columns, in front of the first pylon; it reminds us in some degree of the great corridor at Luxor; by its general form, however, rather than its situation.

[341] Full particulars of the more obscure parts of the temple at Abydos will be found in Mariette's first volume.

[342] Upon the funerary character of the great temple at Abydos, see Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii. pp. 234, 235.

[343] We may cite as a peripteral temple of the Ptolemaic epoch the building at Edfou, called, in the Description, the Little Temple (Antiquités, vol. i. plates 62-65). It differs from the Pharaonic temples of the same class in having square piers only at the angles, the rest of the portico being supported by columns.

[344] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. i. plates 34-38.

[345] This base contained a crypt, no doubt for the sake of economising the material. There seems to have been no means of access to it, either from without or within.

[346] Our plan, etc. shows the temple as it must have left the hands of the architect, according to the authors of the Description de l'Égypte. Jomard (pl. 35, Fig. 1) has imported a small chamber into his plan, placing it behind the large hall as a sort of opisthodomos; but he bids us remark that it was constructed of different materials, and in a different bond, from the rest of the temple. It showed no trace of the sculptured decoration which covered all the rest of the temple. This chamber was therefore a later addition, and one only obtained at the expense of the continuous portico, the back part of which was enclosed with a wall in which the columns became engaged. According to Jomard, this alteration dates from the Roman period, but however that may be, in our examination of the temple we may disregard an addition which appears to have been so awkwardly managed.

[347] In the Description de l'Égypte it is called The Northern Temple (see vol. i. pl. 38, Figs. 2 and 3). The only difference noted by Jomard was in the ornamentation of the capitals.

[348] Lepsius Denkmæler, part i. pl. 113.

[349] Description, Antiquités, vol. i. pl. 71, Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4; letterpress, vol. i. ch. vi. This temple is 50 feet long, 31 wide, and 15 feet 8 inches high.

[350] See Lepsius for plans of these buildings; Denkmæler, part i. plates 125, 127, and 128.

[351] Denkmæler, part i. pl. 100.

[352] The internal measurements of this chamber were 26 feet by 33. Lepsius gives it four columns, but at present there are only the remains of one to be found. Almost the same arrangements are to be found in the Temple of Sedeinga. (Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 115.)

[353] See, for Gebel Silsilis, Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 102.

[354] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. iv. pl. 65, Fig. 1. The French draughtsmen thought this building was a disused quarry, and give nothing but a picturesque view of the façade.

[355] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 102; Rosellini (vol. iii. pl. 32, Fig. 3) gives a view of the interior of the Silsilis chapel.

[356] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 101.

[357] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 127.

[358] There are also a hemispeos or two of the Ptolemaic period. That, for instance, of which the plans are given in plate 101 of Lepsius's first part, was begun by Ptolemy Euergetes II.

[359] This description has been mainly taken from the plate given by Prisse (Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, vol. i.). There are discrepancies, however, between it and both the inscription of Isambert and the plan of Horeau (Panorama d'Égypte et Nubie), discrepancies which may probably be referred to the bad condition of the structural part of the building. According to Prisse's measurements the dromos, from its commencement to the foot of the first pylon, was about fifty-five yards long, and the rest of the temple, to the back of the niche, was about as much again. The rock-cut part was only about ten yards deep.

[360] The resemblance between Prisse's plan of Gherf-Hossein and Horeau's plan of Wadi-Asseboua is so great as to suggest that one of the two writers may have made a mistake.

[361] There are two polygonal columns resembling those at Beni-Hassan in the small speos at Beit-el-Wali (Fig. 237).

[362] For Beit-el-Wali and Gircheh, see plates 13, 30 and 31 in Gau, Antiquités de la Nubie. It seems that the statues, when they were drawn by him, were in a fairly good state.

[363] These words mean Convent of the North. The name is derived from an abandoned Coptic convent which existed among the ruins of the ancient building.

[364] This wide inclined plane agrees better, as it seems to us, with the indications in M. Brune's plan of the actual remains at Dayr-el-Bahari, than the narrow flight of steps given in his restoration; the effect, too, is better, more ample and majestic.

[365] The same idea caused M. Brune to place sphinxes upon the steps between the courts; he thought that some small heaps of débris at the ends of the steps indicated their situation; but M. Maspero, who recently investigated the matter, informs us that he found no trace of any such sphinxes.

[366] We must refer those who wish to study the remains of this temple in detail to the work devoted to it by M. Mariette. The plan which forms plate 1 in the said work was drawn, in 1866, by an architect, M. Brune, who is now a professor at the École des Beaux Arts. M. Brune succeeded, by intelligent and conscientious examination of all the remains, in obtaining the materials for a restoration which gave us for the first time some idea of what this interesting monument must have been in the great days of Egypt. Plate 2 contains a restored plan; plate 3 a view in perspective of the three highest terraces and of the hill which forms their support. We have attempted to give an idea of the building as a whole. Our view is taken from a more distant point than that of M. Brune, but except in some of the less important details, it does not greatly differ from his.

[367] Mariette, Dayr-el-Bahari, letterpress, p. 10.

[368] Ebers, Ægypten, p. 285.

[369] Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, pp. 202, 203. The bas-reliefs at Dayr-el-Bahari represent the booty brought back by Hatasu from the expedition into Pount. Among this booty thirty-two perfume shrubs, in baskets, may be distinguished; these shrubs were planted by the orders of Hatasu in the gardens of Thebes. On the subject of Hatasu and her expedition, see Maspero's paper entitled: De quelques Navigations des Égyptiens sur les Côtes de la Mer Érythrée (in the Revue Historique, 1878).

[370] Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 203.

[371] Herodotus, ii. 175.

[372] Herodotus, ii. 153.

[373] Herodotus uses the word αὐλή, of which stable or cattle-shed was one of the primitive meanings.

[374] Égypte, etc. p. 406.

[375] The temple of Kerdasch or Gartasse in Nubia resembles the Eastern Temple at Philæ in plan; its date appears to be unknown.

[376] We have omitted to speak of those little temples known since the time of Champollion as mammisi or places for accouchement, because the existing examples all belong to the Ptolemaic period. The best preserved is that of Denderah. It is probable, however, that the custom of building these little edifices by the side of those great temples where a triad of gods was worshipped dated back as far as the Pharaonic period. The mammisi symbolised the celestial dwelling in which the goddess gave birth to the third person of the triad. The authors of the Description called them Typhonia, from the effigy of a grimacing deity which figures in their decoration. This deity has, however, nothing in common with Set-Typhon, the enemy of Osiris. We now know that his name was Bes, that he was imported into Egypt from the country of the Aromati, and that he presided over the toilette of women. (Ebers, L'Égypte, etc., p. 255.)

[377] Mariette, Itinérare, pp. 13-16, 157-159; Karnak, p. 19; Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.

[378] The canal figured in front of the Chariot of Rameses, in Fig. 254 was, according to Ebers, the oldest of the Suez Canals, the one dug by Seti I. This canal was defended by fortifications, and is called in inscriptions the Cutting (L'Égypte, etc.).

[379] To follow these processions was an act of piety. Upon a Theban stele we find the following words addressed to Amen-Ra: "I am one of those who follow thee when thou goest abroad." The stele of Suti and Har, architects at Thebes, translated into French by Paul Pierret, in Recueil de Travaux, p. 72.