VIEW FROM UNDER THE PORTICO OF THE GREAT 
TEMPLE OF DENDERA. 
It is from beneath and within this magnificent portico of twenty-four columns that 
the grandeur of magnitude and the beauty of decoration produce their greatest effect 
upon the traveller who visits this beautiful Temple. It is a work of the Roman 
period, but because it is less severe than the older Egyptian structures it is decried 
by the cant of connoisseurship, and “learned pundits” direct the traveller to look upon 
it as low in art. It is certainly less visited and observed than it deserves to be; for 
the traveller who makes the voyage up the Nile too generally, in his haste against 
time and season to reach the Cataracts, leaves the examination of Dendera till his 
return, when, with his mind filled, if not wearied, with excess of impressions received 
from his visits to other temples, he neglects or slurs over Dendera, or allows the 
ignorance of others to weaken the impression which he must otherwise receive from 
this magnificent Temple. Mr. Roberts says, that “whilst those who assume to be 
learned in Egyptian antiquities sneer at the Temple of Dendera, because of its com¬ 
paratively modern date, they must be blind to the principles of structure which have 
raised and placed single stones thirty-five feet long, and of proportionate breadth and 
thickness, such as those which formed the roof; and the sharpness and finish of the 
sculptured decorations and beautiful colours which everywhere enrich it. I beheld 
Dendera,” he says, “ after having minutely examined the Temples of Upper Egypt 
and Nubia, and it did not suffer in beauty by the comparison, though it is less sublime 
than the Temples of Thebes; yet one of the elements of this emotion — magnitude, is 
only surpassed in the City of a Hundred Gates. The portico, the last portion of this 
Temple that was built by Tiberius, is one hundred and thirty-six feet six inches wide, 
seventy-eight feet deep, and sixty feet high: massive, simple, and grand.” 
A richly-sculptured screen or wall of intercolumniation, closes the access in front, 
except through the central column of the fa 9 ade; within, and viewed as the drawing 
here represents, across the portico, it scarcely yields to any other temple in the impression 
it gives. Every spot is covered with the remains of the most finished and elaborate 
sculpture. Columns, screens, walls, soffits, ceiling—all were thus decorated and painted, 
and are still vivid with the colours of their first enrichment; and where the sculpture 
has not been injured by the early Christians in their horror of image-worship, it is as 
sharp and as perfect as when left by the sculptor’s chisel. 
Wathen, whose opinion agrees with that of Mr. Roberts upon this Temple, says:— 
“ The portico, formed of four ranks of massive columns, six in a row, covered with 
painted sculptures, whether viewed from without as a facade, or standing within its 
colonnades, is rich, imposing, sublime: it delights the eye and fills the imagination. 
