auty than a human skeleton
does of the beauty of a living man or woman. Suppose, then, that we are
coming up to the gates of a great Egyptian temple in the days when it
was still the house of a god who was worshipped by hundreds of thousands
of people.

As we pass out of the narrow streets of the city to which the temple
belongs, we find ourselves standing upon a broad paved way, which
stretches before us for hundreds of yards. On either side, this way is
bordered by a row of statues, and these statues are in the form of what
we call sphinxes--that is to say, they have bodies shaped like crouching
lions, and on the lion-body there is set the head of a different
creature. Some of the sphinxes, like the Great Sphinx, have human heads;
but those which border the temple avenues have oftener either ram or
jackal heads.

As we pass along the avenue, two high towers rise before us, and between
them is a great gateway. In front of the gate-towers are two tall
obelisks, slender, tapering shafts of red granite, like Cleopatra's
Needle on the Thames Embankment. They are hewn out of single blocks of
stone, carved all over with hieroglyphic figures, polished till they
shine like mirrors, and their pointed tops are gilded so that they flash
brilliantly in the sunlight. Beside the obelisks, which may be from 70
to 100 feet high, there are huge statues, perhaps two, perhaps four, of
the King who built the temple. These statues represent the King as
sitting upon his throne, with the double crown of Egypt, red and white,
upon his head. They also are hewn out of single blocks of stone, and
when you look at the huge figures you wonder how human hands could ever
get such stones out of the quarry, sculpture them, and set them up.
Before one of the temples of Thebes still lie the broken fragments of a
statue of Ramses II. When it was whole the statue must have been about
57 feet high, and the great block of granite must have weighed about
1,000 tons--the largest single stone that was ever handled by human
beings. Plate 10 will give you some idea of what these huge statues
looked like.

Fastened to the towers are four tall flagstaves--two on either side of
the gate--and from them float gaily-coloured pennons. The walls of the
towers are covered with pictures of the wars of the King. Here you see
him charging in his chariot upon his fleeing enemies; here, again, he is
seizing a group of captives by the hair, and raising his mace or his
swor