VIEW LOOKING ACROSS THE HALL OF COLUMNS, 
KARNAK. 
Few drawings have been more successful in conveying an idea of the immensity of 
this stupendous Temple; but, crowded as these enormous columns are, any attempt 
to convey an idea of their true scale appears to be hopeless. In standing beneath or 
among them, they are seen under angles too large for the eye to command or the 
pencil justly to convey. In the drawing of the central avenue, given in a former 
part of this Work, the perspective of the successive columns, of equal height and 
size, conveys some idea of their vastness; but this becomes confused in any effort 
to obtain a transverse view, like that before us, which is taken at a right angle with 
the former. The nearer columns are much smaller than those of the central avenue, 
being one-fourth less both in diameter and in height, yet they appear, from their 
proximity, to be much larger. This view lies across six rows of these lateral columns 
that lie on either side of the two central rows, which are sixty-six feet in height 
without the pedestal and abacus, and originally bore an architrave and a roof nearly 
one hundred feet in height. What mind can receive a clear impression of such magnitude, 
except from an actual contemplation of the Temple itself? Yet there is no one object 
which the Artist, who has visited Egypt, has been more desirous to succeed in, than, 
by his art, to convey to others who have not travelled there an idea of the Hall 
of Columns in the great Temple of Karnak. 
Nor is it merely the emotion of sublimity that he has wished to excite by giving 
a just idea of its scale and proportions, the enrichments of its sculpture and painting 
make an equally striking impi’ession of its great beauty, for the hieroglyphics with 
which every member and every part of the building is covered are nowhere more sharp 
and beautiful in design and execution, and in many places the colours are as vivid 
as when first laid on, and enable the observer to conceive what beauty and grandeur 
were combined in this wonderful structure before the Persian conquest. Its massiveness 
seems to have saved it from destruction; yet these columns are not in single pieces, 
but built up with large blocks of stone, so admirably put together that, though many 
columns are displaced and have fallen against others, they rest there unbroken, as 
may be seen in the leaning column, with its entablature in the distance. In this 
case, the foundation seems to have given way. That the state of the ground has not 
been to a greater extent a cause of their falling is a matter of surprise, for it is 
swampy and strongly impregnated with nitre. The columns of the Great Hall at 
Karnak, however, are long likely to remain, to the astonishment and delight of many 
generations yet appointed to succeed us. 
