Paris Obelisk A C E Mosque 00 1:1967 30 20 10 100 Plan of Luxor Temple. an opportunity for the imagination as we recall that this shaft was floated down the river on a huge barge and set up here in the thirteenth century B. C. by the Pharaoh's engineers with no force at their command but that of a host of human arms! Climbing a staircase in the interior of the eastern pylontower, where in the days of its builder, criminals awaiting trial or execution, were confined in the dark chambers opening from each landing, we emerge at the top for a general view down the axis of the temple. For a moment the prospect is lost in a burst of blinding sunshine. Then slowly we look across the temple, its entire length stretching out before us, with shining river and the green of the palm-groves behind it. Far out yonder at the other end or back of the long structure was once a modest sanctuary, built probably by the Pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty nearly 2000 B. C. Then as the splendor-loving emperors began the development of monumental Thebes, the modest old temple was torn down by Amenhotep (Amenophis) III in the fifteenth century B. C. and his customary form of Empire architects erected the the temple: a holy of holies, with a few cultus chambers about it, a colonnaded hall or hypostyle in front of these, and before the whole a spacious court with imposing colonnades surrounding it in a noble porch facing inward. These colonnades, the most beautiful in Egypt, and equalled on the Nile only by those of the lovely temple of Soleb in far-away Nubia, form a noble prospect from our lofty perch. But the architects of Amenhotep III were not content. They dreamed of greater things and planned to erect in front of their temple another and much greater columned hall, preceded by a vast court. In beginning the hall they first set up the double row of columns on each side of the central aisle. The king's death left the project unfinished, and the central colonnade still stands alone, without those that should have risen on either side. Naked and carrying only the massive architraves, they rise here before us, each fifty feet high, the largest columns ever erected down to this time by any Pharaoh. But their significance is not in their size, nor in their beautiful contours, but in their arrangement on either side of a central aisle, which as the conditions show was to be a nave, with lower side-aisles on either hand, forming a clear-story. Amenhotep's architects had thus planned the first example of the basilica type, the form from which the cathedral architecture of later Europe developed. In Luxor therefore we are contemplat. ing the germ out of which the fundamental element of cathedral architecture grew, and we are beginning to see what a chapter in the history of art was written during the imperial age at Thebes. Nothing but that roofless nave, with its lofty columns, was left by Amenhotep III, and when Ramses II, in the beginning of the imperial decadence, attempted to give the unfinished project a facade, his architects made no effort to continue the old plans of a century earlier. They could do nothing better than to erect a court before the unfinished nave. They tore down a lovely chapel of Thutmose III to make room for it, and altered the axis, because the building would otherwise have approached too closely to the river. A slovenly example of decadent construction was the result, and in it the blocks of Thutmose III's chapel were incorporated. It is his pylon, built as a front for his court, on which we are standing. A Moslem sanctuary stands in Ramses' court today; its white minaret rises against the dark colonnade of Amenhotep III's nave. The bright Egyptian sun streams through the colonnades and throws their shadows in long black rows upon the pavement. No worshiper now moves down the silent aisles; the voice of the chanting priest, the cry of the singing women, are heard no more, and the great god who once sat in mysterious power in yonder secret chamber is forgotten. In his holy place are Christian frescoes and his halls long resounded with the hymns of Christian believers, whose fathers were his devotees. From the minaret before us floats the quavering, musical call to prayer, the call of a faith which grew up among those desert barbarians whom the Pharaohs despised,—a faith that knows not Amon. For of all the natives who respond to the call, whose fathers worshiped in this sanctuary, not one now knows the name of the great god, who once presided here, and even the language in which his praise was sung is forever forgotten among them. Behind us, too, the ancient world has been equally displaced by the modern. Nearly two miles northward we can discern the tops of the Karnak pylon-towers. Between this Luxor temple-front and yonder mass of Karnak, there was once a noble quarter, beautiful with tropical gardens through which passed avenues of sculptured sphinxes connecting the two great temples, which we now call Luxor and Karnak. The loss of these surroundings, and the fading of the colors with which the temples were adorned, have made the sombre impression of the present ruin a very different thing from that which the ancient conditions conveyed. Imagine such colonnades as these of Luxor, with their soaring contours painted with all the bright hues of the tropic verdure which they represent, all aglow with throbbing color under a tropic sky, and framed in masses of opulent green, as the tall palms embowering the court bow languidly over the roof of the porticoes, and you will have some faint hint of the beauty, of which an Egyptian architect was master. The wise visitor at Thebes, who is not driven to his task by the merciless dragoman carrying out the inexorable program of a "Cook party," will spend the rest of his day reading on the dahabiyeh, till the course of events at Thebes unfolds before him like a vast and vivid panorama. Then as the golden sunset-light glorifies all Luxor, he will enter the temple courts and halls again, and find a place where the thrilling rhythm of the stately colonnades is enriched with the magic of pink and gold, fading at last into the sudden and dusky shadows of the dying day. Then only does the charm of the ancient world, the subtle mystery of age, the message of the age-long struggle of man settle upon your soul and merge into the greater mystery of the undivined future of the race, toward which the men who made Thebes contributed a dower, whose wealth we are beginning but imperfectly to comprehend, as for the first time we enter the walls of Luxor and Karnak. Next morning begins a momentous day for the firsttime visitor at Thebes. We are to spend the day at Karnak. Before breakfast the donkeys are braying under the windows of the dining saloon; or if there are ladies in the party who prefer it, there are now a few carriages in Luxor, which can be had at an exorbitant price. Shaking off a swarm of hawkers of bogus antiquities we presently emerge from the low mud-brick houses of the town. Traversing fields now under cultivation, where once the villas, chateaus, and splendid residences of Thebes, surrounded the gardens and avenues connecting the temple precincts, the sombre ruins of southern Karnak are discoverable at intervals through the palms. Without warning we are riding down a stately avenue of sphinxes. The palms are growing even in the avenue. The long line of ram-headed sphinxes on either hand is part of the ancient connection between Luxor and Karnak. In plundering bands the soldiers of Assyria marched down this avenue; Persian hordes have swarmed through it, the phalanxes of Alexander have trodden it, the |