VIEW FROM UNDER THE PORTICO OF THE TEMPLE OF 
EDFOU, UPPER EGYPT. 
This view, taken from beneath the entrance of the portico, and looking across the 
grand peristyle court of the Temple to the hack of the great propylon, is one of 
striking magnificence; it embraces the whole court; and the propylon, in noble 
proportion, seems to shut out the very sky towards the entrance. The cloistered 
corridor within the court, covered with painted hieroglyphics, offered its shelter from 
an Egyptian sun to the priests and those permitted to enter the sacred precincts. 
The propylon wants only its coved cornice to complete it. A bold torus forms an 
outline to these towers: between them, the entrance, with its beautiful cornice and 
enrichment of sculpture, offers one of the finest examples in Egypt of this peculiar 
architectural character. The vast faces of the.towers are covered with gigantic figures, 
cut in bold intaglio relievo, and represent the offerings made by the Pharaohs to the 
gods. The holes which admitted light through the walls of these towers, served also 
to attach the staffs of the standards, from which in days of ceremony, the flags waved 
over the groups in procession. 
The accumulations of sand within and about the Temple of Edfou, together with 
the vast heaps of corn kept here by Government, in magazines divided by earthen 
walls, conceal the bases of the columns round the court; and, within the pronaos, 
the sand has choked up all access to the sanctuary. Owing to the covering of the 
roof by the huts of the modern inhabitants, a small part only of the interior is accessible 
through a narrow aperture, and can only be examined with the aid of a light. 
In the foreground, the large coved cornices of the jambs, without a lintel, of the 
entrance, are here seen in all their magnitude; the figures, which rest or move upon 
them, are proportionate, and have ample space, and the sand, rising to the level of 
the cornice, makes their summits accessible. In comparison with these figures, how 
enormous are these capitals! and yet how beautiful their structure! this well deserves 
attention. Each reed which rises above the bands is surmounted with the lotus-flower, 
and each two supports one larger, which springs up between them; on each two, 
again, of these, rests another flower, double the size of the former; above and between 
each two of these rises a still larger lotus, until one more between each pair, still 
increasing in magnitude, completes this noble member of the column. Each as it 
rises, spreads out, till the whole, in exquisitely proportioned composition, becomes the 
lotus capital of the Egyptian Temple, on which a small square abacus rests, and props 
the entablature. Still nearer, in this view, another variety of this capital appears: 
the pointed leaves of the plant spring from the reeds, and are surmounted by light 
flower-stalks, which alternate around the capital, in their terminations of a bud and 
