Sety carried out the erection of what is by far the most imposing feature of the hall, the nave, with its double row of gigantic open-flower columns, the largest in existence. Each of the twelve tremendous columns is 69 feet in height and 33 feet in circumference, while the spreading capitals, 11 feet in height, have an area large enough for one hundred men to stand upon. Imagine twelve versions of the Trajan Column at Rome, or the Vendôme Column at Paris, facing one another in two rows and supporting gigantic architraves of sixty to a hundred tons in weight, which in their turn support the great roofing-slabs. These form the central avenue of the great hall. On either side of them the papyrus-bud columns of the two side aisles rise to a height of 42½ feet. The rows nearest to the central avenue on either side bear above their architraves rectangular pillars which make up the difference between the height of the side columns and those of the centre, and which bear the extremities of the roof of the nave with its cornice. On the lower level of the side pillars, the roof of the hall continues over the rest of the area, supported by a forest of one hundred and twenty-two columns. Sety I is responsible for the whole of the northern half of the hall, as well as for the central avenue, so that the southern portion of the building is all that Ramses II can claim as his work, if indeed even this part was not erected by his father, and only sculptured by him. Ramses II, however, had the knack of securing to himself the glory of work which was done by other men, and to most people the great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak is his work, though he had really very little to do with it. The architectural merits of the huge building are undoubted, up to a certain point; but its faults are equally unquestionable. Mere size tells here, as indeed it almost always does, unless its impression is spoilt by sheer incapacity. There can be no question of the impressiveness of the great building. The central avenue, with its soaring columns, and its grated clerestory rising above the roofs of the side-aisles, is the prototype of all subsequent cathedral architecture. But the side-aisles do not add to the dignity of the great chamber. Their forest of squat, shapeless columns, instead of being impressive, is only bewildering. Here, very certainly, you cannot see the wood for the trees, and the spaciousness of the hall is quite destroyed by the multitude of the supports of its roof. “The size that strikes us,” says Professor Petrie, “is not the grandeur of strength, but the bulkiness of disease.”