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The Professor has acquired a gigantic mount in which he takes profound delight-a tall donkey possessed of numerous gaits and attended by the black pearl of donkey-boys, hight Joseph. The latter's coat is appropriately patched in many a shade of faded blue. He is, to outward seeming, about eleven years old, but inwardly I suspect he is already the proud parent of a family as large as the Professor's — larger, maybe. It is the way of the world hereabouts. As for Katrina's beast, it boasted the familiar name of Minnehaha to-day, was occasionally referred to as "Lily," and is, curiously enough, of the sterner sex. Thus mounted we rode away.

It required something like half an hour to ride to Karnak, although the distance is not great. After leaving the confines of the town the road made straight across the plain, roughly parallel with the river, toward some distant pylons whose many towers reared their forms in rosy majesty from the midst of waving palms. Passing along, we doubtless rode through the very heart of ancient Thebes, and for part of the way at least along the grand avenue of sphinxes which once led from the one temple to the other. But of its vestiges we found nothing, although a few sadly mutilated sphinxes do still exist at the Karnak end of the road, in the immediate vicinity of the first temple of the Theban triad. When the site

was in its glory, avenues of sphinxes led up to each of the several shrines, and at least one of these - the avenue of approach to the great main temple of Ammon-is intact and splendid still.

Now, the great gods of Thebes were threeAmmon-Ra, Mut, and Khonsu, the time-measuring moon; and it was Khonsu's shrine that first revealed itself to us, behind an imposing portal sixty feet or more in height, with a gorgeously decorated cornice. As a matter of age, this imposing gate proved too youthful for words, being the work of the Third Ptolemy (Euergetes) in the third century B.C. As a work of art, however, it was as splendid as anything of the sort we had yet encountered, and admirably preserved, as indeed all the Ptolemaic structures are.

The little temple behind, which is a considerably older work, we found both beautiful and interesting. It cannot be compared, of course, with the great temple of Ammon for grandeur; but its low halls furnished us our first intimate acquaintance with papyrus capitals, both of the closed bud and open calyx type the latter, to my mind, one of the most successful architectural forms ever designed. It is almost unfortunate that the bud capitals so generally outnumber the broader open-flowered style - the latter being commonly employed for the loftier naves of the great temples, while the bud capitals serve for

the lower aisles. They are so strong, and so free, and so impressively magnificent as compared with the close-bound buds which, to the eye unfamiliar with the papyrus, are likely to suggest nothing so much as stalks of asparagus.

I say the temple of Khonsu is older than its gate. Rameses III built it, so that it is later in time than the best Theban period; and a mark of its lateness is to be found in the use of fluted columns in the rear courts, a decided innovation in a land where hitherto smooth round columns had been universally preferred because of their greater utility for bearing hieroglyphic decoration. A few windows with stone gratings likewise appeared — but these were not unknown to the older architects, and fine large examples of them survive in the great temple of Ammon hard by. As a further peculiarity, I noted that this temple of Khonsu, instead of having a deeply inclosed sanctuary, was open at both ends - seemingly not as holy a spot as most others.

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It was pleasantly cool in the shade of those massive pillars, but we were not permitted long to remain there because the rapidly increasing warmth made it advisable to hasten on to the huge shrine of Ammon-Ra— the most notable as well as the largest of the Egyptian temples, dedicated to the greatest of the gods and constantly added to by the most

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