the Egyptologist, in his snug little study, looked upon it, listening meanwhile to our adventures, his face beamed again; and as sheet after sheet passed in review, the good man's spectacles actually grew dim with his delight, and we felt rewarded for our pains. And thus it came about, I presume, that the Diospolitan Dynasties were finally settled.

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CHAPTER XVI.

KARNAC BY MOONLIGHT.

"Not that same famous temple of Diáne
Whose hight all Ephesus did oversee,

And which all Asia sought with vowes prophane,
One of the world's seven wonders say'd to bee,
Might match with this by many a degree."

WE had intended to sail from Thebes that evening, but the full moon tempted us to linger one more night. We wished to take a flying look at the great Temple of Karnac.

I am not going to burden the reader with any comment on the architecture, style, or relative dimensions of this temple. It would ill become me to attempt it. Besides, are there not whole tomes of the very heaviest character (I mean as to weight) whereat to apply for such details? The temple is, I suppose, incontestably the grandest the world has ever seen-far surpassing the Ephesian marvel-and all measurements of pylons, volutes, pediments, would serve but to confuse.

The temple of Ammon, at Karnac, unlike the Pyramid, was not the work of one Pharaoh, or of one age: successive monarchs made it great. All the splendours of Egypt were wreaked upon it. All that art, wealth, and supreme will could lavish were, during 2000 years, allotted to it. One king added a chapel, another a portico, another a pylon, a dromos of sphinxes, a pillared hall. In its babyhood, before the days of Joseph, it was probably an unpretentious shrine; when Ptolemy, 100 years B.C., put the last touch to it, it was very great.

Imagine a parallel proceeding at home. Say that the prominent monarchs of England, from the days of the Confesssor downwards, had sought each to embody the grandeur of his age and reign in some stupendous addition to an existing sanctuary—that thus all the glories of medieval and later art, multiplied a thousandfold, had clustered about the building. Let us suppose that Westminster Abbey had been thus treated that the Conqueror had lavished his millions upon it, that Henry VI. had joined on to the western portal a group of buildings equal in size to our present Houses of Parliament, that Henry VIII. had added statelier towers, loftier pinnacles, and naves vast and gorgeous as that of St. Peter's of Rome; and, finally, that good Queen Bess had compassed sea and land to outvie in magni

MOORING AT LUXOR.

153

ficence the work of her illustrious father. Thus, until, step by step, you had brought the western front more than half-way to Buckingham Palace. Such would illustrate the order of proceeding at Karnac, and certainly not exaggerate the result. Listen to these two statements:-"From the time of Joseph to the Christian era, through the whole period of the Jewish history and of the ancient world, the splendour of the earth kept pouring into that space for 2000 years." ." In one of its halls, insignificant in point of view of the whole, "the Cathedral of NôtreDame might stand without touching the walls."t

Having, then, come to a decision, we unmoored our dahabeeyah, and rowed it half-a-mile away to the opposite bank. For Great Thebes is now a quartet of villages wide, lonely, and scattered, and the temples adjacent to each take their name from those mud-built centres. We drove in the stake hard by the Temple of Luxor, and leaped on shore in haste, to touch with our hands the lotus-capped pillars of that sanctuary, now barely visible in the dusk. But it was not till after dinner-till eleven, in fact-when the moon was well up, that we started for Karnac.

Haroun shirked the expedition. He had fallen in with boon companions attached to a dahabeeyah moored alongside of our own, and he was anxious to

* Stanley: Sinai and Palestine.' † Trevor: Egypt.'

make a night of it with them. "Arab, guide, he go with you, sare," he cried sententiously. "Bad Bedouin in Karnac-Bedouin no touch guide." So we set out under the wing of a cicerone, by name Osman. Osman was a lank, wiry Arab, with a wizened face, set in a big white turban, beneath whose eaves two glistening eyes peeped out. His nether gar

ments consisted of a pair of 'eeree, or cotton drawers, much too short. A calabash dangled to the leathern strap which girt his white tunic, and, it being night, he had cast over his shoulder a camel-hair blanket for warmth. Saïd and Halil followed, armed with long poles to drive off jackals; and Osman strode on before, in the bright moonlight, grasping a kind of javelin-a staff to help him over the white yielding sands.

66

"He looks like that Sowardee mummy we saw, resuscitated," blurted out Smith, with a shudder. Only look at his shrivelled arms and legs! And did you ever see living man with a lame shadow like that flickering on the sands?"

We were then near the little village of Luxor, which slept peacefully under the clear heaven; a hive of mud huts clustered like parasites round the great pillars of Amunoph's Temple; and the hearty laugh which followed Smith's impertinent observation set all the dogs barking. Dogs are a