The comprehension and appreciation of Egyptian architecture has been hindered by the same fact which has delayed the appreciation of the art of the Nile Valley--namely, that the specimens of it which are to-day the most complete, and which command for that reason most attention, belong, not to the days when Egypt was at the summit of her achievement in all respects, but to periods when taste and artistic feeling were decaying along with power. To take, as is often done, such a temple as Medinet Habu as fairly representative of Egyptian architecture, is simply to make adequate appreciation of what Egyptian architecture is a thing impossible. The Egyptian builders had, no doubt, great faults, which have already been touched upon. They were often, indeed almost always, strangely careless about the very factors which should ensure the “eternal duration” which they craved for the works of their hands; they had, generally speaking, comparatively little of that exquisite sense of proportion which makes a fine Greek temple seem a thing inevitable, though sometimes, as at Der el-Bahri, and the little temple of Amenhotep III at Elephantine, now, alas, destroyed, something of this was revealed to them; they sometimes mistook mere mass for greatness, and the multiplication of forms for beauty, as in the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, where a magnificent opportunity was lost because the architect did not know that too much is too much. But with it all they have left us a heritage of which it can safely be said that few of the works of man can surpass it in impressiveness. “It is a part of my intention,” says Mr. Lethaby (_Architecture_, pp. 65, 66), “to try to point out what contributions were made to universal architecture by the several civilisations as they arose and passed away, but to do so of Egypt would be practically to rewrite what has been said; to a large degree Architecture is an Egyptian art.” The nation of which such a statement can be made needs no further witness as to its place among the great master-building nations of the world’s history.