Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/464

 0/ o A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, between the fifth and sixth pylons, another hall, also with two ranges of columns but not so deep as the last, is introduced. Its position shows it to be meant for a vestibule to the naos properly speaking. The fine Court of the Caryatides with its Osiride pillars, the first chamber entered by the visitors who penetrate into the temple proper, seems to have been designed for a similar purpose (G). If we wish, then, to evolve some order out of the seeming chaos ot Karnak ; if we wish to find among its ruins the essential characteristics, the vital organs, if we may put it so, of the Egyptian temple, we have only to apply the method of analysis and reduction suggested by examination of simpler monuments, and to take account of the long series of additions which resulted in the finally stupendous dimensions of the whole mass.^ These additions may be distinguished from one another by their scale of proportions and by their methods of construction. When rightly examined the gigantic ruins of the great temple of Amen betray those simple lines and arrangements, which form, as we have shown, the original type. The same remark may be applied to the other great building on the left bank of the river, the Temple of Luxor. There, too, the architecture is, to use the words of Champollion, the " architecture of giants." From the first pylon to the innermost recesses of the sanctuary the building measures about 850 feet. No traveller can avoid being deeply impressed by the first sight of its lofty colonnades, by its tall and finely proportioned pillars rearing their majestic capitals among the palms and above the huts of the modern village. These columns belong to the first hypostyle hall, and, were they not buried for two-thirds of their height, they would be, from the ground up to the base of their capitals, rather more than 50 feet high ; the capitals and the cubes above them measure about 18 feet more. The plan of Luxor is more simple than that of Karnak ; it was built in two " heats " only, to borrow an expression from the ^ A plan of the successive accretions is given in plates 6 and 7 of Mariettes' work. The different periods and their work are shown by changes of tint. The same information is given in another form in pages 36 and 37 of the text. The complete title of the work is as follows : Karnak^ Etude topogmphique et archeo- logiqite. avec u/i Appendice comprenant les principaux Textes hieroglyphiques. Plates in folio ; text in a 4to of 88 pages (1875).