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"These one hundred and twenty-two columns are each 42 feet high and 9 feet in diameter. Altogether there are one hundred and thirty-four columns in the hall of the temple, and they are all closely covered with

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sculptures. They once supported a roof, but it is nearly all gone now, and some of the columns have fallen. The stones used in building the temple were of great size, and they lie around us in all directions; they do not appear very large till you come close up to them, and then you seem dwarfed into nothing by their greatness. Everything is on so grand a scale that you forget the dimensions of individual things until you are side by side with them.

"Some writers have said that there is as much stone here as in the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. Certainly there is a vast amount; but it is so scattered, and in such irregular masses, that you cannot easily make an estimate of it. At any rate, it is a much finer work than that of building the Great Pyramid, as the whole of the walls, the columns, the sides of all the rooms, in fact everywhere that a plain surface was presented, is covered with sculpture or painting. The pyramid impresses you with its vastness, and so does Karnak; but the latter has another impression

HISTORY ON THE WALLS OF THE TEMPLE.

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The

that of beauty and artistic effect-which the pyramid has not. stones used in the construction of Karnak are many of them much larger than those in the pyramids; they show that the builders must have been very skilful engineers, and that their work covered a long period of years.

"We looked at the sculptures till our eyes were weary. At every step something new was revealed, and we seemed to be living in the days of the great kings of Egypt. The most of the sculptures represent battle scenes and kindred subjects; and the deeds of the kings are so well illustrated that anybody who has time and patience to study them can easily make out the whole history of a campaign. the king is marching out with his army, some on foot, and others on horseback

Here

A BODY OF ARCHERS.

or in chariots, and bearing the swords, spears, and other weapons in use at that time. Next we see him attacking a fortress or crossing a river; next he is putting the enemy to flight and securing the captives; and, finally, he is returning in triumph, and coming to the temple to offer thanks to the divinity who has protected and favored him.

"The sculptures here, and at other temples in the vicinity of Thebes, show pretty certainly that the ancient Egyptians were accustomed to make human sacrifices. There is a large picture representing the king

MAKING A LIST OF CAPTIVES.

striking off the heads of a group of captives, and sometimes the hands and feet of slain enemies are cut off and piled before the king, to show how great the slaughter has been. Frequently the king is represented much larger than those that surround him, and the artists took the precaution to label each king with his name, so that there could be no mis

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take as to his identity. They also put labels on most of the battle scenes, and thus greatly assisted our study of Egyptian history.

"Who built the great Temple of Karnak?

"There has been and still is much dispute among Egyptian scholars on this subject: it is now generally agreed that it was the work of no one king, but rather of several. There is a difference of two hundred and fifty years between the earliest and latest sculptures, and it is believed that from the beginning to the completion of the temple was nearly three centuries. On the walls, columns, and obelisks are the names of kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, and they are so conspicuons that it is pretty certain the building of the temple covered these two periods in Egyptian history. Thothmes III. and Rameses II. and III. are prominently represented, and some of the inscriptions show

ANTIQUITY OF THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK.

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that portions were added to the temple much later than any of the rulers mentioned.

"It is supposed that the present temple is on the site of an older one, and that four thousand years at least must be given for its antiquity. The Arabs have a tradition that Noah visited the temple after the Flood, and we may fairly believe that portions of it were finished before Jacob went to Egypt with his family. It was an old structure when Moses led the Israelites out of captivity, and its decay had begun when Christ was born at Bethlehem. Shishak, or Sheshonk, who plundered Jerusalem and led the King of Judea captive, is represented on its walls, and there is a picture showing his return with his train of unhappy prisoners. Do you wonder that we stand astonished amid the ruins of Karnak, which are older than the Bible, and older than any of the histories that have come down to our hands?

"We spent the afternoon among the ruins, and then returned to Luxor. The evening was bright with the growing moon, and so we determined to see Karnak by moonlight. If any reader of these lines should hereafter be at Luxor when the moon favors, we advise him by all means to go there under its light, as he will find an effect that is not visible when the sun is in the sky. It is impossible to describe, and so we will not attempt a description; the play of light and the darkness of the shadows are surpassingly beautiful, and some of the columns and broken walls seem even more gigantic than at other times. There is an Arab village close to the ruins, but not within the temple itself; the only inhabitants are owls and jackals, who resent your intrusion with their peculiar cries, and seem to consider themselves the rightful heirs of the kings so long dead and gone."

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CHAPTER XVI.

THE RAMESEUM, MEDINET ABOO, AND THE VOCAL MEMNON.

HE morning after the visit to Karnak an early start was made for the other side of the river. The party was ferried across in a couple of native boats to a sand-bank that pushed out some distance from the shore; the boats grounded in the shallow water, and our friends were carried on the backs of several Arabs, who gladly accepted the chance to earn a few pennies by a temporary conversion into beasts of burden. Everybody landed dry and unharmed with the exception of one unfortunate individual, whose bearer stumbled just before reaching the solid earth. Luckily the accident resulted only in a slight wetting. The Arab carrier demanded a large backsheesh because he waited so long before falling!

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There are several temples on the west bank of the Nile, the most prominent of them being the Rameseum, or Memnonium, and Medinet Aboo. These two were on the same general plan as the Temple of Karnak, though less extensive; but, even when compared with Karnak, they are entitled to very high rank as works of Egyptian art and architecture. In the neighborhood there are half a dozen or more smaller temples, each possessing an historical and artistic interest peculiar to itself.

DRY FOOTING.

It was a busy time for our friends, as they had a great deal to see in a few hours. What they saw we will learn from their accounts:

"We had a delightful ride on the donkeys that were waiting on the bank as we arrived, our way lying through fields such as we have already described, and afterward passing over a stretch of barren ground-the

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