Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/433

 The Temple under the New Empire. 34 0Hv3 cealed behind a pylon, whose summit rises above it while its two wings stretch beyond it laterally until they meet the rect- angular wall which incloses the sanctuary. The dimensions of pylons vary with those of the temples to which they belong. The largest still existing is the outer pylon of the great temple of Karnak. It was constructed in Ptolemaic times. Its two chief masses are 146 feet high, or about equal to the Vendome column in Paris. This pylon is 376 feet wide at the widest part and 50 feet thick. The first pylon at Luxor, which was built by Rameses II., is less gigantic in its proportions than this ; it is, however, 76 feet high, each of its two great masses is 100 feet wide, and the portal in the middle is 56 feet high (see Fig. 207). In those temples which were really complete, obelisks were erected a few feet in front of the pylons, and immediately behind the obelisks, in contact with the pylons themselves, were placed those colossal statues by which every Egyptian monarch commemo- rated his connection with the structures which were reared in his time. The obelisks are generally two in number, the colossi vary from four to six for each pylon, according to the magnificence of the temple. The obelisks range in height from about 60 to 100 feet, and the statues from 20 to 45 feet.^ Obelisks and colossal statues seem to have been peculiarly necessary outside the first, or outer, pylon of a temple. This produced an effect upon the visitor at the earliest moment, before he had entered the sacred inclosure itself. But they are also to be found before the inner pylons, a repetition which is explained by the fact that such temples as those of Karnak and Luxor were not the result of a single effort of construction. Each of the successive pylons which met the visitor during the last centuries of Egyptian civilization had been at one time the front of the whole edifice. To complete our description of the external parts of the temple ' The obelisk of Ousourtesen at Heliopolis is 20*27 metres, or 67 feet 6 inches, high; the Luxor obehsk at Paris, 22-80 metres, or 76 feet; that in the piazza before St. Peter's in Rome, 83 feet 9 inches ; that of San Giovanni Laterano, the tallest in Europe, is 107 feet 2 inches; and that of Queen Hatasu, still standing amid the ruins at Karnak, 32-20 metres, or 107 feet 4 inches. This is the highest obelisk known. [The Cleopatra's Needle on the Victoria Embankment is only 68 feet 2 inches high. — Ed.]