A GROUP AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE TEMPLE OF AMUN 
AT GOORNA, THEBES. 
Tins ruin of the Temple of Amun at Goorna is merely adopted as the locale for a 
group of Turco-Egyptians, such as the traveller often meets in the valley of the Nile. 
The central figure is an officer of the Pacha, making a visit to collect tribute, or to 
listen to complaints of mal-administration. He is visited by the Sheik of the village, 
who stands near him, behind whom is an attendant; the officer is ready to decide, 
not so much upon the justice of a case submitted to him, as to arguments accompanied 
by bribes. This makes such an appointment profitable, and it is usually obtained 
by a bribe, or given to a favourite, to reward him by a means of becoming rich, 
without regard to the injustice which it is almost certain will attend his administration. 
Old men of the village form picturesque groups on such and similar occasions around 
the functionary, who, when he has learned from the Sheik or others the cases likely 
to come before him,—how he can make the most by his decisions, who can best 
pay him or bribe best to evade just payment, or suffer best the injustice about to 
be inflicted in enforcing unjust claims, and thus fleece the poor wretches subjected to 
such ministers of justice; having learnt all this,—he is ready to receive the complaining 
parties. Such is the general character of these visits; they are frequent, and strikingly 
characteristic of law, or the abuse of it, in Egypt. 
But such scenes are presented, and groups formed, by causes less painful to reflect 
upon. Sometimes the principal people of a village meet to receive a stranger, or 
listen to the teller of a story; but, however formed, the group never fails to be highly 
picturesque in costume with ample draperies: muffled figures, and attitudes as effective 
from their gestures, positions, and habits, as any painter could arrange for study, 
and offer materials for the sketch-book, which renew to the artist, or excite in the 
untravelled stranger, impressions of Eastern manners and character which no mere 
inventor could produce. On the left in the group here sketched is an Arab woman, 
dressed in the boorcho, or face-veil, which conceals all but the eyes, and leaves the 
imagination to supply that beauty which rarely exists in the face itself. Near her 
are two children, one an Aral) boy, in the costume of childhood seen in the lower 
parts of the valley of the Nile, the other in the dress of a richer class or better 
condition of society. 
The ruins in which this scene is laid would be grand and striking in any other 
place than in proximity with the great Temples of Karnak, Luxor, and Medinet Abou. 
The Temple of Amun at Goorna, on the western bank of the Nile, was one of the 
most northern of the Temples of Thebes, in what was called, in the time of the Ptolemies, 
the Libyan suburb; and, though less ancient than Karnak, it was dedicated to Amun 
