but Roberts thinks they were used only as places of security for the utensils, banners, 
and other insignia of their religion. 
The stone of which this Temple is built has preserved the sharpness of the sculptured 
capitals except where the action of fire appears, which has so largely contributed to 
the destruction of the ancient temples of Egypt. This of Kalabslie, like the others 
in Nubia, has been used as a Christian church; and on the walls of the cella and 
adytum, amidst rich and even gaudy paintings of Osiris and other figures, some 
early Greek pictures of Christian saints and subjects appear. Owing to these later 
artists having overlaid the ancient pictures with plaster upon which to paint their 
own designs, those of the Egyptian deities have been well preserved, as may be seen 
wherever the plaster has fallen off, or been removed. Numerous Greek and Roman 
inscriptions are found upon the walls. One of these, copied by Burckhardt, is in 
Greek, though it is the votive offering of a Roman knight. 
Burckhardt’s Travels in Nubia. Boberts's Journal. 
AT LUXOR : THEBES. 
The beautiful subject of this Vignette, taken from that extremity of the Temple which 
is the nearest to the Nile, is almost the only part of it which is free from the foul 
accompaniment of the mud habitations of the Fellahs, who have built their village in 
and around these magnificent ruins. “ The Arab village of Luqsor,” says Wathen, 
“ has kennelled itself in the midst of the lordly halls of the Pharaohs, and vile mud- 
huts contrast with the ‘ cunning work ’ of gigantic capitals.” Here the ground is so 
raised by the ruins of the Temple, or of former habitations, that not more than half 
the length of the shaft of the column is visible. “ The capitals,” says Roberts, “ are 
supposed to have had their forms suggested by the budding lotus ; ” but Wathen 
describes this sort of column of the Pharaonic architects as consisting “ of a massive 
cylindrical shaft, modelled upon a primitive pillar, formed of a cluster of reeds, such 
as may have been in use in the earliest times. And this confirms the statement of 
Diodorus, that the first Egyptian buildings were constructed of reeds. In the early 
examples, as at the Temple of Luqsor, the reeds, or stems, are distinctly represented, 
bound together at successive heights; a ring or cincture appears to unite or secure 
them near the top, and the supposed bulging of the pliant reeds under the superincumbent 
architrave produces the singular contour of the capital; the whole is crowned with 
a square block or abacus.” Resting on these are the vast masses of stone which 
formed the entablature and often the ponderous roofs of these extraordinary structures. 
This portion of the south-western extremity of the Temple of Luxor is strikingly 
picturesque. 
Boberts’s Journal. 
Wathen’s Arts and Antiquities of Egypt. 
