eatest sovereigns of Europe
for their palaces and museums as the rarest of curious treasures. Often,
indeed, have I seen a whole Arab village rising from the roof of a
single Egyptian temple. Dendera is an instance. The population of
Gornou, in number between three and four hundred, reside solely in the
tombs.

I think that Luxor, from its situation, first attracts the notice of the
traveller. It is close on the river, and is built on a lofty platform.
Its enormous columns are the first specimen of that colossal genius of
the Pharaohs which the Ptolemies never attempted to rival. The entrance
to this temple is through a magnificent propylon, that is, a portal
flanked by massy pyramidal moles. It is two hundred feet in breadth, and
rises nearly sixty feet above the soil. This gate is entirely covered
with sculpture, commemorating the triumph of Rameses the Great over the
supposed Assyrians. On each side of the portal are two colossal statues
of red granite, buried in the sand up to their shoulders, but measuring
thence, to the top of their crowns, upwards of twenty feet. On each side
of them, a little in advance, rise the two most perfect obelisks that
remain, also of red granite, and each about eighty feet high. From the
propylon you pass into a peristyle court, about two hundred and thirty
feet long by one hundred and seventy, the roof of which was once
supported by double rows of columns, many of which now remain; and so
on through other pyramidal gates and courts and porticoes and chambers
which are, in all probability, of a more ancient date than the gates and
obelisks and colossi first described, which last were perhaps added by
Rameses, who commemorated his triumph by rendering a celebrated building
still more famous.

From Luxor you proceed to Karnak, the other great division on this side
of the river, through an avenue of sphinxes considerably above a mile
in extent; and here I should observe that Egyptian sphinxes are either
_andro_ or _crio_ sphinxes, the one formed by the union of the lion with
the man, and the other of the lion with the ram. Their mystery is at
length penetrated. They are male and never female. They are male and
they are monarchs. This great avenue, extending from Luxor to Karnak,
was raised by the two immediate successors of the great Rameses, and
represents their long line of ancestry.

All the marvels of the world sink before the first entrance into Karnak.
It may vie with the Alps and