the mother's temple, faces north, and Amen, the great sun-father's, faces east and west. Khonsu was "the good and kind," the revealer of the will of God through his oracles, aiding mankind in the battle of life, and healing the sick. From the vigour and strength with which he destroyed evil spirits, the Greeks took him to be the same as Herakles. At the end of this avenue of ram-headed sphinxes is a gateway, put up by Ptolemy Euergetes in front of the older temple, and plumped down right in the middle of the avenue. We go into this temple of Khonsu, which was built by Rameses III. of the Twentieth Dynasty, 1200 B.C., and therefore was of considerably later date than the larger ones of Amen and Maut. All the ten following kings of the Ramesside dynasty paid particular attention to this oracle temple, and Rameses XIII. completed it. It is in itself a considerable temple, 233 feet long and 67 feet broad, with its double court and interior shrine and halls; but we were told it is but a small temple in comparison with that which we are about to see. The decoration of this temple of Khonsu is particularly interesting, as affording proof of the growth of the priestly power; for the first time a high priest, Her-Hor, actually occupies the place on the walls of the temple that is invariably reserved for the sovereign; and he appears with the sacred asp on his forehead and his name on the double cartouche. On the gateway is the high priest, his successor, who ultimately made himself king and founded the Twenty-first Dynasty.

It was from this temple that the ark of the god Khonsu was sent away in order to drive out an evil spirit from Bint-resh, a princess of the land of Bakten.1 Noferu-Ra, the eldest sister of this princess, had married King Rameses XII. (B.C. 1130), when he had been on one of his annual visits to Mesopotamia. Afterwards an embassy came, bearing tribute from the queen's father to Thebes, and asks for a doctor for the queen's sister "who has an evil movement in her limbs;" one is sent from this temple, and finds the little sister possessed with demons. Eleven years go by and a second embassy arrives: "Would my lord the king order a god to be sent to the land. of Bakten by a very great favour?" The ark of Khonsu was carried thither and remained with her three years four months and five

1 Bactria, or the country of the Rak tribes, who were certainly an Akkadian race, is rather an indefinite locality. It may have extended even as far as the confines of China (p. 235), for the journey thither from Thebes occupied a year and five months, and the return journey a still longer period. Dr. Birch thinks that the king who sent for the ark was Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria. (Records of the Past, vol. iv. pp. 53-60.)

days. The talisman worked so well that the evil spirit came out at once and the princess was cured. Khonsu returned in triumph to this temple, with a great ark and five small boats, a chariot and many horses on the right and left, in peace, having been absent on his travels seven years.

We approach the great temple of Amen from the west through the stupendous walls and gateways at that end. They appear, even in their dilapidated condition, more like mountains than walls, and they were never finished. The breadth is 376 feet and the height 146 feet, or about that of the Vendôme column at Paris, and their depth is about 50 feet. We climbed up to the top of the northern wing over the rubbish which is piled against its eastern side, in order to see the view. First of all, looking away westwards, we take in the size of the Theban plain on the opposite side of the river (p. 462). The length of this is three miles, and the width from the river to the foot of the hills in its widest part another two miles, and all of that was covered at one time by the city of the dead and of the priests. Its whole surface is to-day bright emerald green; across over there are pointed out to us the three groups of buildings now remaining - Medeenet Haboo to the south or left, the Ramesseum in the centre facing us, and El-Goornah on the right or north. At the back of these rise the bare Libyan hills in a semicircle, called in old Egyptian "the coffin mountain ;" and in their yellow, rocky sides we can even from here distinguish the lines of caves and tombs. Those of the kings lie over the summit of the hills beyond, and still further to the west. The approach to them it is supposed was by means of a tunnel cut through those very hills themselves; and, as if at the eastern end of such a tunnel, we see the temple of Deir-el-Bahari high up on the scarped cliffs and apparently midway between the Ramesseum and El-Goornah. Down from that terraced memorial temple led another avenue of sphinxes, a mile and a-half at least in length, straight across the beautiful plain of Thebes to the bank of the Nile, here broadened by islands and offering long reaches of rushing water, across which the straight line came on and up by another avenue of lions, another mile in length, to this great gate, on the top of which we stand. And thus, it would seem, the last resting-places of the kings were connected, by an avenue that ran through the whole breadth of their capital on both sides of the river, with this temple of their great god Amen-Ra at Karnak; on which, one after the other in succession, they had vied in the sumptuousness of their additions; the splendid centre of what was once the

most splendid city in the world. Almost parallel with the long avenue that ran from Deir-el-Bahari to Karnak, there was on the southern side of the city another royal street of over two miles long, that ran from the colossal statues of Amen-Hotep in Thebes, right across to the temple he constructed at Luxor. These two avenues were thus two sides of a great parallelogram of which the remaining two sides, the eastern and western, were formed-the eastern by the avenue we have traversed from Luxor to Karnak, and the western by another which ran throughout the necropolis from Deir-el-Bahari to Medeenet Haboo. The structural connection of all these magnificent buildings of Karnak and Thebes throughout these eight miles of avenue seems to have been the grand conception of Rameses II.

Facing round now to the east, from the top of the pylon where we are standing, we see the extent of the other half of the city which lay on this, the eastern side of the river. Here and there rise the many tall-walled gateways that used to be at the end of avenues or in front of temples. Many of these are now isolated and we realise as we look on them why Thebes was called "hundred gated," as they in their height must always have towered above the temples and palaces and dwellings of the kings and their subjects, more especially as on each side of them there were always reared still more lofty flagstaffs. There were eleven such temples altogether inclosed within the circuit of Karnak, 24 miles round; its greatest breadth, which was from north to south, was over a mile and its width from east to west was one-third of a mile. On this great mound on which we stand the solid wall on its western face has been perforated for the reception of the huge poles which were secured in their places by bronze or iron, and probably, when of the enormous size that would be required for this gateway, were built up of several lengths and pieces. Like the eagles in the Roman legions these standards were themselves objects of almost divine veneration.

We now look down into the temple itself. Often as we have seen pictures of it before, we never realised till now the size of this, the most colossal pile of temples that have ever stood upon the earth. The length of the temple of Amen alone from this gateway on which we stand to the extreme eastern end is 1197 feet and its extreme width 370 feet. The walls that surrounded its courts were over a mile and a-half in circumference, and those of the temple itself were over half a mile in length. But that which produces perhaps the greatest feeling of the size is seeing as we

stand here, without exaggeration, what pigmies the men look as they walk at the foot of the huge pillars in the great court. This temple was the central shrine of Egypt throughout the days of her greatest Empire-from the Twelfth Dynasty to that of the Greek kings, during more than 2,000 years. It is not alone a temple, for its storied walls and pillars inscribed within and without are a library of historical records. It is among temples what the great pyramid is among tombs. Every clearing of the chambers yields new literary treasures. The cost of its maintenance must have been enormous. Besides what other preceding kings had given, one by no means the greatest, Rameses III., has left a list of the endowments, gardens, fields, cities, which he gave to this temple of Amen-Ra, and to those

D. Easternmost shrine of the Temple. C. Hall of Thothmes III. E. "Hall of Ancestors." F. Boy Alexander. G. Flowers of Palestine. I. Sacred Lake. A. Remains of Osirtasen's Temple. B. Rose-granite double shrine. H. Chambers destroyed by fire. The VIth or innermost pylon was the front of the original temple: on it are now the Palestinian conquests of Thothmes III. (B. C. 1600). Between the IVth and Vth pylons stands the obelisk of Hatasu (109 feet high). The IVth pylon was built by Thothies I. (B.c. 1663). The IIIrd pylon was built by Amen-Hotep III. (B C. 1500). Between the IIIrd and IVth pylons is the gateway in the southern wall for the processions to enter from Maut's temple, built by Amen-Hotep III., which also in its turn is approached through four pylons, the first of which is shown on the plan. The IInd pylon was built by Rameses I. (B. C. 1460). Between the IInd and IIIrd pylons is the Hall of Columns, 340 feet broad by 170 feet long. The central pillars are 75 feet high and 33 feet in circumference: the other pillars are 40 feet high. The court in front of the IInd pylon is 275 feet wide by 329 feet long. was in existence in Shishak's reign (B.C. 960). His sculptures are in the south-east corner. The first or outermost pylon (or "towered gateway") is 144 feet high, 370 feet broad, and 49 feet deep; an avenue of sixty lion-headed sphinxes, thirty on either side, led up to it. This last addition of the Ptolemies ji st doubled the size of the temple as left by Thothimes III., for the length from the exterior of this gateway to that of the third gateway is exactly the same as the length from the exterior of the fourthi gateway to the easternmost wall.

It

(For comparison it may be remembered that the extreme length of St. Paul's Cathedral is 500 feet, the greatest breadth 250 feet, and the width of the nave 118 fet, the height to top of cross 355 feet.)

of Maut and Khonsu, as property for ever. In all, there were under the chiefs of the temple 62,626 persons. The herds of the sun were 971, and the total of all herds and cattle was 421,362. Fifty-six towns of Egypt contributed to its sustenance, and eighty-three barges and galleys brought their produce. The linen, the oil, the wine, the incense, the honey, the silver, the gold, the bronze, the precious stones, the cedar-trees from Lebanon for the harps and arks, the mulberry trees, the fruit and flowers and vegetables, the waterfowl, the corn and grain, are all enumerated. The loaves of bread for offerings, and even how many of each shape (so many great tails, square rolls and curly rolls, biscuits, buns, puffs and ornamental pastry); beer for the cellar, jugs of wine, barrels of meal, baskets of fruit, sandals of papyrus and of leather, olives, goats, geese, ducks, turtle-doves (57,810), pigeons, fish, nosegays, even to the handfuls of water-flowers and chains of blue flowers and buds, counted by their hundreds and thousands.1

1 Records of the Past, vol. vi. pp. 24-52.