Accordingly the work of the excavator in connection with the temples of Egypt has not been so much the discovery of the unknown as the recovery of the complete form of what was already partially known, the clearing away of the excrescences which had attached themselves in the course of centuries to the original structures; the preservation of the more delicate work, such as relief-sculpture and painting, from further injury; the re-establishment in a state of security of tottering walls and columns; and, not least, the tracing out of the history of the building of temples which were in general the work of centuries, and of many kings. It has all been work which, from its very nature, can have but little of the nature of romance about it, which has but seldom led to any startling finds, which has involved a colossal amount of sheer hard labour, without any very conspicuous rewards; but which has resulted in the temples becoming intelligible to the ordinary traveller, and safe for his interest for generations to come, and has enabled us to trace, in the case of a great structure like Karnak, the successive stages by which the vast building grew to a finished whole. It is, of course, obviously impossible to attempt to tell, even in the scantiest outline, the story of a work which has extended over the whole length of the land from the Delta to the furthest bounds of Egyptian influence in Nubia, and has been carried on by scores of workers of all nationalities. Perhaps our end will best be served by taking a typical instance of the recovery of a temple, and telling in more or less detail the story of the work which gave it back to present-day knowledge. We take as our example Queen Hatshepsut’s terraced temple at Der el-Bahri, one of the most beautiful, as it is now also one of the most famous, of Egyptian buildings. In all Egypt there is probably no more beautiful or imposing site than that of the “Paradise of Amen,” which the great queen reared to the glory of the Theban god and of her own name. On the western side of the Nile, almost exactly opposite Karnak, the limestone cliffs of the Libyan Range sweep backwards in a great semicircle, forming a bay across whose mouth is drawn the long line of the funerary temples of the Theban kings of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties. Behind them, and behind the innumerable tombs of Sheikh Abd el-Qurneh and the Northern Assassif, there lies, close against the salmon-red cliffs, the building which, of all Egyptian temples, makes the strongest appeal of pure beauty, as distinguished from the impressiveness which comes from sheer scale and mass. [Illustration: 9. HATSHEPSUT’S TEMPLE, DER EL-BAHRI, GENERAL VIEW.]