THE DROMOS, OR FIRST COURT OF THE TEMPLE OF 
IvARNAK. 
Few scenes of greater desolation are presented amidst the ruins of this vast structure, 
than within the dromos, where one only now remains erect of that stupendous avenue 
of isolated columns, which formerly continued through the great cloistered court of 
the Temple of Karnak between the first and the second propylon; the former terminated 
the avenue of sphinxes, and the latter led from the dromos into the great Hall of 
Columns: these propyla, if we may judge from their ruins, were the most gigantic 
and magnificent ever erected. 
Eleven of the central columns are now fallen, broken, and disjointed; yet the 
parts of each lie generally in such connexion as to enable the observer to mark how 
they once stood, and in his imagination replace them where they must have contributed 
so much to the grandeur and beauty of this the most mighty Temple ever raised by 
man. Unless the single column had remained standing, it would have been difficult 
to conceive the extent of the destruction of this once glorious approach, and understand 
the purport of their structure; they were isolated, and bore on their summits the 
figures or the emblems of Amunre, the great Egyptian deity to whom the Temple 
of Karnak was dedicated. Beyond the column are seen the ruins of the second 
propylon, and within, the central avenue of the great Hall of Columns. 
How striking must have been the processions of the Pharaoh with the priests 
and the privileged through these courts and halls! how impressive the solemnities 
of the music and the rites! how splendid the dresses, the banners, the emblems, used 
in such processions, and the Temple itself! The imagination is overwhelmed, not 
merely by its vastness, but by its sculptured and painted enrichments, adding all 
that the arts of beauty could do to honour the god therein worshipped. 
But this mighty Temple, which time and man have not yet been able utterly to 
destroy, is permitted to exist in this state of ruin, to mark the punishment of those 
whose idolatrous perversions of religion brought destruction upon what would, from 
its immensity and prodigious strength, seem to have been built for all ages: what 
is it now ? Cities have existed of far more recent foundation, without one stone 
being left upon another to mark their site; but those of Egypt, and especially Thebes 
—the Noph and No of Scripture — were doomed by the maledictions of the prophets, 
and the proofs before us exist of their awful verification. The predictions uttered by 
Divine inspiration have been justified by Divine power. Here, where man so impiously 
worshipped the foul idol he had made, the crawling reptile now shelters in, and the 
hyena finds a den. 
Thus fearfully have the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel jcen fulfilled here. “Let 
