In the cases where the portico is within the courts, it is sometimes confined to two sides, as at Luxor (Fig. 109); the columns shown at the top of our plan belong to the pronaos and not to the court. In the Temple of Khons it surrounds three sides (Fig. 110), while the fine court added to the temple of Luxor by Rameses II. has a double colonnade all round it (Fig. 111). Both in the interior of the halls and in the external porticos we find an apparently capricious irregularity in spacing the columns. Sometimes intercolumniations vary at points where we should expect uniformity, as in the outer court of Luxor (Fig. 112). On two of the faces the columns are farther apart than on the other two. The difference is not easily seen on the ordinary small plans, but it is conspicuous in the large one of the _Description_.[121] [121] _Description de l'Égypte_, plates, vol. iii. pl. 5. It is easy to understand why the spacing should have been increased in front of a door, an arrangement which exists at Gournah (Fig. 113), and at Luxor (Figs. 109 and 111). [Illustration: FIG. 110.--Portico in the Temple of Khons.] [Illustration: FIG. 111.--Luxor, portico of the first court.] In the hypostyle halls we find columns of different sizes and orders. Six of the great columns which form the central avenue at Karnak cover as much ground, measuring from the first to the sixth, as nine of the smaller pillars. Between supports so arranged and proportioned no constant relation could be established (Fig. 114). The transverse lines passing through the centres of each pair of great columns correspond to the centres neither of the smaller shafts nor of the spaces which divide them. The central aisle and the two lateral groves of stone might have been the creations of separate architects, working without communication with one another and without any desire to make their proportions seem the result of one coherent idea. In the inner hypostyle hall at Abydos the intercolumniations which lead respectively to the seven sanctuaries vary in width (Fig. 115). This variation is not shown by Mariette, from whose work our plan of the temple as a whole was taken, but it is clearly seen in the plan given in the _Description_. These are not the only instances in which those early explorers of Egypt excelled their successors in minute accuracy. [Illustration: FIG. 112.--Part of the portico of the first court, Luxor. From the _Description_, iii. 5.] [Illustration: FIG. 113.--Portico in front of the façade of the temple of Gournah. From the _Description_, ii. 41.] Here and there we find the spaces in a single row of columns increasing progressively from the two ends to the centre (Fig. 105). [Illustration: FIG. 114.--Part of the Hypostyle Hall in the Great Temple at Karnak.]