Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/427

 The Temple under the New Empire. ^j-r were still nearer to one another ; ^ the dromos which they lined was found to be 50 feet wide and about 1,650 yards long. Following our modern notions we should, perhaps, expect to find these causeways laid out upon an exactly rectilinear plan. They are not so, however. It has sometimes been said that one of the characteristic features of Egy-ptian architecture is its dislike, or rather hatred, of a rigorous symmetn.-. Traces of this hatred are to be found in these avenues. The ver}- short ones, such as those which extend between one pylon and another, are straight, but those which are prolonged for some distance outside the build- ings of the temple almost always make some abrupt turns. The Serapeum dromos undergoes several slight changes of direction, in order, no doubt, to avoid the tombs between which its course lay. We find the same thing at Karnak, where the architect must have had different motives for his abandonment of a straiofht line. At the point where the man-headed sphinxes of Horus succeed to those sphinxes without inscriptions the date of which ]Iariette found it impossible to determine, the axis of the avenue inclines gently to the left. These avenues of sphinxes are always outside the actual walls ot the temple, from which it has been inferred that they were merely ornamental, and without religious signification. - Some of the great temples have several of these avenues leading up to their different gates. It is within these gates only that the sacred inclosure called by the Greeks the -efi€vo9 commences. The religious ceremonies were all performed within this space, which was inclosed by an encircling wall built at sufficient distance from the actual temple to allow of the marshalling of processions and other acts of ritual. These outer walls are of crude brick. At Karnak they are about 2)3 feet thick, but as their upper parts have disappeared through the perishable nature of the material, it is impossible to say with certainty what their original height may hav^e been.-^ ^ We ma)' infer from what Mariette says that they were separated from one another by a distance of 1 2 feet 4 inches. - Mariette, Karnak, p. 5. We find, however, that sphinxes were sometimes placed in the interior of a temple. The two fine sphinxes in rose granite which form the chief ornaments of the principal court of the Boulak museum, were found in one of the inner halls of the temple at Karnak. They date, probably, from the time of Thothmes III., to whom this part of the building owes its existence. 2 Description, etc. ; Description ginirale Je T/icfics, section viii. § i. VOL. L XX