Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/80

 entire structure is among the largest, as it undoubtedly is one of the most beautiful, buildings in the world.

"We have thus in this one temple a complete history of the style during the whole of its most flourishing period; and either for interest or for beauty it forms such a series as no other country and no other age can produce. Besides those buildings mentioned above, there are other temples to the North, to the East, and more especially to the South, and pylons connecting them, and avenues of sphinxes extending for miles, and enclosing walls and tanks and embankments—making up such a group as no city ever possessed before or since. St. Peter with its colonnades and the Vatican make up an immense mass, but as insignificant in extent as in style when compared with this glory of ancient Thebes and its surrounding temples.

"The culminating point and climax of all this group of buildings is the hypostile hall of Manephthah &hellip; No language can convey an idea of its beauty, and no artist has yet been able to reproduce its form so as to convey to those who have not seen it an idea of its grandeur. The mass of its central piers, illumined by a flood of light from the clerestory, and the smaller pillars of the wings gradually fading into obscurity, are so arranged and lighted as to convey an idea of infinite space; at the same time, the beauty and massiveness of the forms, and the brilliancy of their coloured decorations, all combine to stamp this as the greatest of man's architectural works, but such a one as it would be impossible to reproduce except in such a climate and in that individual style in which and for which it was created."

There is one more quotation from which I am unable to refrain,

"In all the conveniences and elegances of building they seem to have anticipated all that has been in those countries down