Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/46

 16 Egyptian Architecture. they do not support the entablature, they greatly add t( the architectural effect of Egyptian temples. The royal Theban tombs of the eighteenth and following dynasties, excavated from the living rock in the westei plain of the Nile, are no less worthy of study than th( temples. A labyrinth of winding passages, alternating with halls, of which the roof is supported by, pillars left in the live rock, leads from a vestibule to the sarcophagus chamber itself. The walls of these tombs are covered with paintings relating to the life of the ruler, and the sarcophagus stands in the test chamber. There are many distinct groups of tombs in the plain of the Nile, of which the most remarkable are the Tombs of the Queens, the Tombs of the Kings, and the Cemeteries of the Sacred Apis. Othei important Egyptian monuments are met with elsewhere, especially in Nubia — such as the temple on the small island of Elephantine, and the two rock-cut caves at Ip- sambul (Fig. 9), the larger of which has an external facade 100 feet in height, adorned with a statue, 65 feet high, of Rhamses the Great (the Sesostris of the Greeks). Egyptian architecture entered its final stage in the Ptolemaic age (b.c. 300). The picturesque temple on the island of Philse is a monument of that epoch. Egyptian Sphjn: