In addition to the temples above described, which are all more or less complex in plan, and all made up of various independent parts, there exists in Egypt a class of temples called _mammeisi_, dedicated to the mysterious accouchement of the mother of the gods. Small temples of this form are common to all ages, and belong as well to the 18th dynasty as to the time of the Ptolemys. One of them, built by Amenhotep III. at Elephantine, is represented in plan and elevation in the annexed cut. It is of a simple peristylar form, with columns in front and rear, the latter being now built into a wall, and seven square piers on each flank. These temples are all small, and, like the Typhonia, which somewhat resemble them, were used as detached chapels or cells, dependent on the larger temples. What renders them more than usually interesting to us is the fact that they were undoubtedly the originals of the Greek peristylar forms, that people having borrowed nearly every peculiarity of their architecture from the banks of the Nile. We possess tangible evidence of peristylar temples and Proto-Doric pillars erected in Egypt centuries before the oldest known specimen in Greece. We need therefore hardly hesitate to award the palm of invention of these things to the Egyptians, as we should probably be forced to do for most of the arts and sciences of the Greeks if we had only knowledge sufficient to enable us to trace the connecting links which once joined them together, but which are now in most instances lost, or at least difficult to find. TOMBS. Of the first 10 dynasties of Egyptian kings little now remains but their tombs—the everlasting pyramids—and of the people they governed, only the structures and rock-cut excavations which they prepared for their final resting-places. The Theban kings and their subjects erected no pyramids, and none of their tombs are structural—all are excavated from the living rock; and from Beni-Hasan to the Cataract the plain of the Nile is everywhere fringed with these singular monuments, which, if taken in the aggregate, perhaps required a greater amount of labour to excavate and to adorn than did even all the edifices of the plain. Certain it is that there is far more to be learnt of the arts, of the habits, and of the history of Egypt from these tombs than from all the other monuments. No tomb of any Theban king has yet been discovered anterior to the 18th dynasty; but all the tombs of that and of the subsequent dynasty have been found, or are known to exist, in the Valley of Bibán-el-Molook, on the western side of the plain of Thebes.