gallery opening at each end into a square chamber, now filled with rubbish (E), completes the plan.  Without any main door, without windows, and entered through a passage too long to admit the light of day, the building can only have received light and air through slanting air-slits in the roofing, of which traces are yet visible on the tops of the walls (e, e) on each side of the main hall (Note 10).  Inscriptions, bas-reliefs, paintings, such as we are accustomed to find everywhere in Egypt, are all wanting; and yet these bare walls produce as great an impression upon the spectator as the most richly decorated temples of Thebes.  Not only grandeur but sublimity has been achieved in the mere juxtaposition of blocks of granite and alabaster, by means of purity of line and exactness of proportion.

Some few scattered ruins in Nubia, the Fayum, and Sinai, do not suffice to prove whether the temples of the Twelfth Dynasty merited the praises lavished on them in contemporary inscriptions or not.  Those of the Theban kings, of the Ptolemies, and of the Caesars which are yet standing are in some cases nearly perfect, while almost all are easy of restoration to those who conscientiously study them upon the spot.  At first sight, they seem to present an infinite variety as to arrangement; but on a closer view they are found to conform to a single type.  We will begin with the sanctuary.  This is a low, small, obscure, rectangular chamber, inaccessible to all save Pharaoh and the priests.  As a rule it contained neither statue nor emblem, but only the sacred bark, or a tabernacle of painted wood placed upon a pedestal.  A niche in the wall, or an isolated shrine formed of a single block of stone, received on certain days the statue, or inanimate symbol of the local god, or the living animal, or the image of the animal, sacred to that god.  A temple must necessarily contain this one chamber; and if it contained but this one chamber, it would be no less a temple than the most complex buildings.  Very rarely, however, especially in large towns, was the service of the gods thus limited to the strictly necessary.  Around the sanctuary, or “divine house,” was grouped a series of chambers in which sacrificial and ceremonial objects were stored, as flowers, perfumes, stuffs, and precious vessels.  In advance of this block of buildings were next built one or more halls supported on columns; and in advance of these came a courtyard, where the priests and devotees assembled.  This courtyard was surrounded by a colonnade to which the public had access, and was entered through a gateway flanked by two towers, in front of which were placed statues, or obelisks; the whole being surrounded by an enclosure wall of brickwork, and approached through an avenue of sphinxes.  Every Pharaoh was free to erect a hall still more sumptuous in front of those which his predecessors had built; and what he did, others might do after him.  Thus, successive series of chambers and courts, of pylons and porticoes, were added reign after reign to the original nucleus; and—­vanity or piety prompting the work—­the temple continued to increase in every direction, till space or means had failed.