The shadow of the great structure darkened its approaches before it was clearly visible through the grove.  The devotee entered a long avenue of sphinxes—­fifty pairs lining a broad highway paved with polished granite flagging.

At its termination the two truncated pyramids that formed the entrance to the temple towered upward, two hundred feet of massive masonry.  Egypt had dismantled a dozen mountains to build two.

When he reached the gateway that opened like a tunnel between the ponderous pylons, he was delayed some minutes waiting till the porter should admit him through the wicket of bronze.  At last, a lank youth, the son of the regular keeper, appeared, and, with an inarticulate apology, bade him enter.

Within the overarching portals he was met by a novice, a priest of the lowest orders, to whom he stated his mission.  With a sign to the young man to follow, the priest passed through the porch into the inner court of the temple.  This was simply an immense roofless chamber.  Its sides were the outer walls of the temple proper, reinforced by stupendous pilasters and elaborated with much bas-relief and many intaglios.  The ends were formed by the inner pylons of the porch and outer pylons of the main temple.  The latter were guarded by colossal divinities.  Down the center of the court was a second aisle of sphinxes.  They had entered this when the priest, with a startled exclamation, sprang behind one of the recumbent monsters in time to avoid the frolicsome salutation of an ape.

“Anubis!  Mut, the Mother of Darkness, lends you her cloak!  Out!” Kenkenes cried, striking at his pet.  The wary animal eluded the blow and for a moment revolved about another sphinx, pursued by his master, and then fled like a phantom out of the court by the path he came.  By this time the priest had emerged from his refuge and was attempting to prevent the young man’s interference with the will of the ape.

“Nay, nay; I am sorry!” the priest exclaimed as Anubis disappeared.  “It is an omen.  Toth[2] visiteth Ptah; Wisdom seeketh Power!  Came he by divine summons or did he seek the great god?  It is a problem for the sorcerers and is of ominous import!”

“The pestiferous creature followed me unseen from the house,” Kenkenes explained, rather flushed of countenance.  “To me it is an omen that the idler who keeps the gate is not vigilant.”

The priest shook his head and led the way without further words into the temple.  Here the young sculptor was conducted through a wilderness of jacketed columns, over pavements that rang even under sandaled feet, to the center of a vast hall.  The priest left him and disappeared through the all-enveloping twilight into the more sacred part of the temple.

In a moment, Asar-Mut, high priest to Ptah, appeared, approaching through the dusk.  He wore the priestly habiliments of spotless linen, and, like a loose mantle, a magnificent leopard-skin, which hung by a claw over the right shoulder and, passing under the left arm, was fastened at the breast by a medallion of gold and topaz.  He was a typical Egyptian, but thinner of lip and severer of countenance than the laity.  The wooden dolls tumbled about by the children of the realm were not more hairless than he.  His high, narrow head was ghastly in its utter nakedness.