[125] _Description, Antiquités_, vol. v. pp. 120, 121. In their _Description Générale de Thèbes_ (ch. ix. section 8, § 2), the same writers add: "We are confirmed in our opinion by the discovery on a bas-relief of four lotus stems with their flowers surmounted by hawks and statues, and placed exactly in the same fashion as the columns which we have just described. They are votive columns. We are also confirmed in this opinion by the fact that we find things like them among those amulets which reproduce the various objects in the temples in small." This bas-relief is figured in the third volume of plates of the _Description_, pl. 33, Fig. 1. [126] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 19, pl. 4. _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, pp. 13, 21, 22. [Illustration: Ch. Chipiez del Hibon sc. THEBES PORTICO IN THE TEMPLE OF MEDINET-ABOU (SECOND COURT) Restored by Ch. Chipiez. Imp. Ch. Chardon] [Illustration: FIG. 129.--Anta and column at Medinet-Abou.] [Illustration: FIG. 130.--Column in the court of the Bubastides, at Karnak.] The most probable explanation is that which we have hinted at above.[127] These great columns were erected to give majesty to the approach to the hypostyle hall, and to border the path followed by the great religious processions as they issued from the hall and made for the great doorway in the pylon. They must always have been isolated, and it is possible that formerly each carried upon the cubic die which still surmounts the capital, groups of bronze similar to those which, to all appearance, crowned those stele-like piers which we described in speaking of the work of Thothmes in the same temple (page 94). This was also the opinion of Prisse d'Avennes, who studied the monuments of Egypt, both as an artist and as an archæologist, more closely, perhaps, than any one else.[128] It has been objected that the columns would hide each other, and that the symbolic animals perched upon their summits could not have been seen; but this would only be the case with those who looked at them from certain disadvantageous positions--from between the columns, or exactly on their alignment. From the middle of the avenue, or from one side of it, they would be clearly visible, and the vivid colours of their enamels would produce their full effect. [127] This explanation seems to have been accepted by Prof. EBERS; _Ægypten im Bild und Wort_, vol. ii. p. 331. [128] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, p. 251.