26 ANCIENT EGYPT. 



The total length of the temple of Ammon, as stepped by 

 myself, is nearly 2,000 feet, by about from 300 to 350 feet 

 broad, with an area of something like 70,000 square yards ; 

 and the entire buildings are constructed of limestone, sand- 

 stone, alabaster, and the beautiful rose granite of Syene. The 

 masonry is massive, sometimes stupendous ; while the founda- 

 tions are but shallow for such superstructures, going rarely 

 deeper than seven feet below the surface. 



Only fragments of the earlier temple are now discernible, 

 and the materials of these would appear to have been largely 

 used up by the pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty for the 

 buildings of their own reigns. The whole structure was to a 

 great extent completed and generally restored by the 

 Ptolemies. 



Before I enter upon some description of the various halls 

 and sectional temples, you will understand more clearly if you 

 can familiarize yourselves with the different styles of columns, 

 with their capitals, represented in the buildings I am about to 

 lay before you. Taking them in their order on the screen, the 

 first column has the inverted lotus flower capital — a form 

 peculiar to the temple of Thotmes III. Next is the lovely 

 proto-Doric column of Osertasen I., then the charming lotus 

 column, with lotus-bud capital ; the broad example is known 

 as the Osiride column ; the next two have lotus-flower or bell 

 capitals, not upside down, as is the case with that crowning 

 Fig I. 



The section lumped A on the plan is the work of Thotmes 

 III., and, like all the others in the main structure, is dedicated 

 to Ammon. The capitals of the columns employed in the 

 hypostyle hall (No. i), as shown on Fig. i among the speci- 

 men columns, are a distinct innovation, and the effect being 

 unpleasing it was never repeated. The lotus-flower or bell 

 capital when inverted, and then so like an extinguisher, is 

 decidedly inelegant. There are twenty of these columns here, 

 and rows of square pillars run parallel with them. Some of 

 them show traces of the hall having been used as a Christian 

 church, as frescoes of the saints are still dimly discernible. 



