pillars we enter the rock-hewn chamber, usually with square pillars, where, in a niche, was a statue of the deceased; as the double (ka) was supposed to dwell in the statue of a man, this arrangement was excellent for enabling the deceased to see the offerings that were made in his chapel, and to hear the prayers said. This niche is the equivalent of the serdab in the maṣṭăba tomb. In a corner of the hall or chapel, or, if there be more than one hall, in the hall most remote, is the entrance to the square pit which leads to the mummy chamber. The best examples of tombs of this period are at Beni-Hasan and Aswân, and at each place there are many really fine tombs. At Aswân is a very interesting flight of steps with a slide down the middle, up which coffins and sarcophagi were dragged from the river bank, and it is probable that a similar arrangement was provided wherever rock-hewn tombs were made in the side of a steep, high hill. The rock-hewn tomb was very popular in Egypt among high military and priestly officials, and this is hardly to be wondered at, for a body carefully buried therein would be extremely difficult to find when once the opening of the tomb had been blocked up. Coming to the period of the XVIIIth and four following dynasties, we find that it became the fashion among kings and royal personages to have magnificent tombs with long corridors and numerous chambers hewn out of the solid rock; and as the kings of this period reigned at Thebes, the Theban mountains were literally turned into a cemetery. In various parts of the rocky ground on the western bank the priests and high officials caused magnificent tombs to be hewn, and, although the fundamental ideas which guided the builders of the pyramid and maṣṭăba tombs were still all-powerful, the shape, the disposition of the chambers, the ornamentation, and texts inscribed upon the walls show that many new religious ideas had sprung into being in the mind of the Egyptian.

The tombs of the kings at Thebes are the best examples of the royal tombs of the period, and in them all we have the equivalents of the hall, the stele, the serdab, the statue, the shaft or pit, and the mummy-chamber; there is, however, one great difference. In the Theban mountains it was found to be impossible to build chapels of a size proportionate to the tombs hewn within them, therefore the kings decided to have their funeral chapels built on the level ground near the river, where they were easy of access, and where there was abundant room for crowds of people to make their offerings to their kings, and to pray for them. In them also the religious were free to worship the gods they loved, as well as perform commemoration services, and in this way temples like the Ramesseum acquired a double character. As every man seems to have had his tomb prepared according to his own plans, it follows as a matter of course that in details hardly any two tombs are alike; nevertheless the central ideas of providing for the hiding of the body and for the supply of suitable offerings at regular intervals for the ka of the deceased were never lost sight of. The tombs constructed under the rule of the priests of Amen are inferior to those made in the time of the great Theban kings. In the XXVIth dynasty an attempt was made to revive the funeral ceremonies of the Early Empire, and, in consequence, a number of modifications were made in the internal arrangement of the subterranean rooms, etc.; but very soon the old ideas reasserted themselves, and the Egyptians who could afford to hew sepulchres out of the rocks adopted the class of tomb in general use at the time.

It has been said above that the oldest buildings in Egypt are tombs, and although the necessary evidence, in the shape of ruins, which would prove the great antiquity of the use of temples in Egypt, is not forthcoming, we are fully justified in assuming that, after

tombs, the building of temples for the safe-keeping of the statues of the gods, and for their worship, would form the next subject of earnest consideration in the minds of the people of that country. In fact, as soon as the Egyptian arrived at any comparatively advanced stage of civilization, he would set to work to build "a house God" or temple, suitable to the rank

of

and position of this god in the land. That the pre-dynastic and early dynastic Egyptians believed in numbers of gods goes without saying; unfortunately, however, their houses, or temples, were built of such fragile materials that even the sites of them are unknown. It has been thought that the earliest temples of the Egyptians were built of wood, that bricks formed the next material employed, and that stone was employed last of all. The earliest stone temples were probably contemporary with the earliest of the maṣṭăba tombs, but what such temples were like we shall never know, for they were at a very remote period restored, or enlarged, or reconstructed out of existence. One thing about them, however, is certain: the sites of the principal temples have remained unchanged. The sanctuaries of Heliopolis, Memphis, Abydos, Thebes, and other cities were the abodes of gods probably ten thousand years ago. The names and characteristics of the gods worshipped in them have changed, no doubt, and dozens of buildings have, successively, been erected upon them, but the sites must always have enjoyed a solid reputation for holiness, even though the histories or legends which gave them their reputations have been forgotten.

Egypt is the granite
Sphinx, which was

The earliest known temple in and limestone Temple of the discovered by Mariette in 1853, and which lies about 130 feet to the south-east of the right foot of the Sphinx at Gizah. The following plan (after Perrot and

Chipiez) will illustrate its arrangement :-The room or hall (A), with six square granite pillars, measures about 32 feet by 23 feet, and the pillars are about 16 feet 6 inches high, and 4 feet square. The room or hall (B), which

opens out of this, runs from east to west, and measures about 56 feet by 30 feet; the granite pillars here are ten in number. To the east of the smaller hall is a corridor (c), having a room at each end, and near the opening into it is a well, wherein a number of statues of king Chephren were found In the by Mariette.

room (D), which is

entered from the small hall, mummies were probably kept, and when we bear in mind the well, or pit, in the hall (c), it seems not unlikely that this massive little temple was originally nothing more than a royal funeral chapel. The pillars are without any ornament or decoration, and the walls have neither bas-reliefs nor paintings on them; the outsides of the walls are, however, ornamented with vertical and horizontal channels only, and resemble the outside of a sarcophagus of the early maṣṭăba period.

Strictly speaking, the idea of the temple, such as we see at Karnak and elsewhere, was not imagined in the Early Empire, and the Temple of the Sphinx is the most complete example known of those that were built between B.C. 4500 and B.C. 2500. Of the temples which were built in Egypt between B.C. 2500 and B.C. 1700, we have very few remains, but it is certain that the great kings of the

XIIth dynasty restored the temples which had been erected on historic sites by their predecessors, and it is probable that they built new ones. There are many reasons for believing that the temples of the XIIth dynasty were large, beautiful, and richly decorated, among the chief of these being the fact that beautifully painted rock-hewn tombs were executed at this period. Now the public temples, especially if they had been originally funeral chapels, must have been as grand and beautiful as the chapels of private individuals. We know, too, that the XIIth dynasty temples must have been of very considerable size, otherwise the huge granite obelisks which were set up before them would have looked absurdly out of proportion, and the pylons would have dwarfed the rest of the buildings on the site. Belonging to this period, and worthy of special note, are the ruins of the little temple which the Amen-em-ḥāt and Usertsen kings built at Karnak in honour of the god Amen; this temple formed the nucleus of all the buildings which the succeeding kings of Egypt vied with each other in raising upon that site. From about B.C. 1700 to B.C. 1400, a favourite form of temple was a rectangular building with a colonnade running round all four sides; a parapet, which rested upon the severely plain square pillars that supported the roof, was one of its prominent features. The temple was entered through a door at the east end, which was usually approached by steps. At the top of the steps on each side was a pillar with a decorated capital, and between these pillars the two leaves of a door were hung; immediately opposite to them. was the door of the temple building leading to the shrine, and it also was provided with swinging leaves that were probably plated with smu metal or copper. The shrine was, of course, at the other end of the building. At a later time, when all the chief characteristics of such a temple were changed, the interior was divided into three parts, a portico, a pronaos, and a shrine.