in the rubbish near by. Surely it is good to find at least one obelisk extant in Egypt, standing on its own appropriate spot where it really means something, instead of gracing remote plazas and squares in Rome, London, Paris, or New York.

At Karnak we have come at last upon those high girdle walls which later custom dictated should always be erected around the sacred inclosure, partly and indeed chiefly to exclude the profane throng, but also in all probability to afford ample spaces on which to carve the chronicle of the monarch's mundane glory. The great conquerors of old did not scruple to record on the walls of their churches the warlike deeds which Ammon had blessed in dominions beyond the sea; and great has been the importance of this form of writing to delvers in the field of ancient history, despite an obvious tendency toward fond exaggeration on the part of the various monarchs when it came to setting down their personal share in the conflict. These enormous mural decorations, inscribed on the outer surfaces of the temple wall, we have been over with care in connection with some of the famous battles described in the modern books. It is a quaint form of illustration, but it adds a certain element of reality to the dry chronicle- this hugepicture of the Pharaoh charging in his chariot, the enemy fleeing in rout, the captives in chains. One

head in particular was interesting—an admirably carved face, full of character, and bearing an amazing likeness to the late Mr. Disraeli. As for the cartouches of the monarchs, they are everywhere and are bewildering. But the simple sign-manual of Amenhotep III we have already learned to recognize among ten thousand.

We have seen much-almost a surfeit of the laudation of Ammon-Ra in a host of surviving hieroglyphs. We have ascended to the summit of the loftiest pylon and surveyed the temple and those vacant acres which once were crowded Thebes. We have circumambulated the sacred lake. We have invaded a tiny temple in the outer verges of the sacred precinct in which there resides a black statue of the "pussy-goddess," still enthroned and doubtless looking precisely as she looked to thousands of her worshipers in days long fled. We have inspected, although cavalierly, a small shrine sacred to the remaining member of the Theban triad - the fostering-mother, Mut. But the overpowering memory is of those dark, deep aisles of Karnak's central hall, with their mighty pillars and impressive distances — a memory which cannot fade while reason holds its throne.

In proportion as it is less extensive than Karnak, the temple of Luxor demands less time for its initial

inspection. Moreover, it is so close to the town that one may run in there at any time. It is always just around the corner. And while the encroachments of the modern village have been painstakingly cleared away, there still remains in one end of it a hillock of rubbish, accumulated centuries ago, on which stands a mosque which the impious hands of archæologists have left intact.

Like the temple at Karnak, this at Luxor is the work of several hands. But it differs in the important respect that Rameses, the greatest of all builders, did not complete his projected work, although he added considerably to the original shrine. What we see from our deck-a row of tall papyrus columns (although Professor Budge calls them "lotus") — were meant to form the nave of a noble hypostyle hall which unfortunately was never finished. The result is a temple connected with its fore-court only by a narrow, but very imposing, colonnade.

If Amenhotep III was content with adding only a massive propylon to the temple of Karnak, he spent much more effort in enlarging the temple at Luxor. The main part of the shrine proper is his work. As was the case with the other temple, this building simply inclosed and embellished an older temple on the same spot, dedicated as a matter of course to the great Theban triad, Ammon, Mut, and Khonsu. I suppose