the original structure was practically coeval with the original shrine at Karnak-Twelfth Dynasty.

In Amenhotep's day the building was much smaller than at present, and even in that remote age did not approach for magnitude the major temple to the northward. It was then, as it is now, little more than half the size of its enormous fellow. It consisted, as any proper temple must, of a main building designed to inclose the actual sanctuary of the three gods, together with the essential antechambers and robingrooms; and before this a vestibule (pronaos) opening on a large colonnaded court, — which latter, in turn, ended in a pylon. Such it was when Amenhôtep completed his share in it.

Now, at some distance from its ancient front and making a slight angle with the axis of the main temple, there stood a little chapel, also sacred to the three great Gods of Thebes, which Thutmosis III had erected before the time of Amenhôtep. The comprehensive scheme of additions which Rameses II developed in his later age happened to include this aged temple, and rather than disturb it he caused the final colonnaded court which he designed to adapt itself to the different angle - thus producing a sudden bend in the line of the axis at its northern extremity. The effect is unfortunate in that it mars the general unity of the result. His first contribution-the nar

row colonnade which was meant to be the lofty nave of a broad hypostyle-runs straight from the pylon of the older building. But the broad fore-court bends noticeably to the east, in order that its rear wall should not deviate from the line established by the smaller shrine attributed to Thutmosis.

Rameses erected the great entrance pylon which still stands, partly buried in the hill of the modern mosque, and for once we have been spared anything Ptolemaic. This temple belongs almost entirely to the eighteenth and twentieth dynastic periods.

We have as usual been somewhat mazed in the mass of hieroglyphic lore which Raschid has poured forth to us as he pointed to various pictured writings in the different courts. I am beginning to be a little weary of Ammon-Ra, and the Professor has begun to speak of Ammon's consort contemptuously as "Mutt." What pleases us most is to ignore the minutiæ of the sculptured record and give ourselves up to the glory of these massive columns glowing in the evening sunshine and throwing their mighty shadows athwart the courts. The colossi of Rameses, which serve to make this temple rather more humanly appealing than that of Karnak despite its general inferiority of size, are highly interesting. Most of them are of red granite, and beside them is generally represented one wife,-supposedly the favorite queen,

- who is always shown as a miniature figure hardly reaching the king's knee, although standing erect. Several of these colossi are still in situ, standing between the columns, one leg always advanced and the face always wearing the haughty stare of royalty. Likewise there are sitting colossi before the last great pylon outside. Rameses certainly allowed no opportunity to go unutilized for making portraits of himself -and he lived long enough to make very many. He reigned, as I recall it, sixty-seven years, and died leaving Egypt covered with his buildings, his statues, and above all his progeny, for he had seventeen sons and one hundred and thirty-three daughters. He tore down ruthlessly the buildings of his own ancestors when he needed either their space or their material. He chiseled out their cartouches that he might put in his own. And then had the hardihood to carve enduring prayers in the stone that no follower should do like violence to his own memorials.

The walls of Luxor's temple are utilized to relate the king's marvelous feats of arms against the inhabitants of Kadesh, including the inevitable "poem of Pentaura famous ode lauding the exploits of the king, which Rameses was wont to engrave on every temple of the neighborhood. But I gather from the histories that he was really less a fighter than a politician when it came to foreign conquests.