[Illustration:  Fig. 96.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 97.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 98.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 99.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 100.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 101.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 102.—­Two Nile-gods, bearing lotus flowers and libation vases.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 103.—­Dado decoration, hall of Thothmes III., Karnak.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 104.—­Ceiling decoration, from tomb of Bakenrenf (Bocchoris), Sakkarah, Twenty-sixth Dynasty.]

Ancient tradition affirmed that the earliest Egyptian temples contained neither sculptured images, inscriptions, nor symbols; and in point of fact, the Temple of the Sphinx is bare.  But this is a unique example.  The fragments of architraves and masonry bearing the name of Khafra, which were used for building material in the northern pyramid of Lisht, show that this primitive simplicity had already been abandoned by the time of the Fourth Dynasty.  During the Theban period, all smooth surfaces, all pylons, wall-faces, and shafts of columns, were covered with figure-groups and inscriptions.  Under the Ptolemies and the Caesars, figures and hieroglyphs became so crowded that the stone on which they are sculptured seems to be lost under the masses of ornament with which it is charged.  We recognise at a glance that these scenes are not placed at random.  They follow in sequence, are interlinked, and form as it were a great mystic book in which the official relations between gods and men, as well as between men and gods, are clearly set forth for such as are skilled to read them.  The temple was built in the likeness of the world, as the world was known to the Egyptians.  The earth, as they believed, was a flat and shallow plane, longer than its width.  The sky, according to some, extended overhead like an immense iron ceiling, and according to others, like a huge shallow vault.  As it could not remain suspended in space without some support, they imagined it to be held in place by four immense props or pillars.  The floor of the temple naturally represented the earth.  The columns, and if needful the four corners of the chambers, stood for the pillars.  The roof, vaulted at Abydos, flat elsewhere, corresponded exactly with the Egyptian idea of the sky.  Each of these parts was, therefore, decorated in consonance with its meaning.  Those next to the ground were clothed with vegetation.  The bases of the columns were surrounded by leaves, and the lower parts of the walls were adorned with long stems of lotus or papyrus (fig. 96), in the midst of which animals were occasionally depicted.  Bouquets of water-plants emerging from the water (fig. 97), enlivened the bottom of the wall-space in certain chambers.  Elsewhere, we find full-blown flowers interspersed with buds (fig. 98), or tied together with cords (fig. 99); or those emblematic plants which symbolise the union of Upper and Lower Egypt under the rule of a single Pharaoh (fig. 100); or birds with