Osiris was to be worshipped in all halls of festival, in all creation, in all places. Temples were erected in honour of the gods, which were approached through avenues of sphinxes. These sphinxes were of six different kinds. 1. The pure lion (symbol of Amn). 2. The lion with the ram’s head (Krio-sphinx--symbol of Khem or Amn). 3. The lion with hawk’s head (symbol of Ra). 4. The lion with a male human head (the symbol of Osiris or Horus). 5. The lion with a female human head (the symbol of Mut or Isis). 6. The lion’s half-body and legs, with female human head and arms, as in the reliefs of Karnack, and on the Campesian obelisk (probably the symbol of Net). The tombs were, more or less deeply, hewn into rocks. They generally begin with a small sanctuary, from which an inclined passage leads down into the sepulchral chamber. The decoration is an imitation of wooden trellis-work in very gay colours. The threshold also distinctly bears the traces of a primitive wood construction; a round, trunk-like beam generally unites the two door-posts, and even the ceilings of the apartments are repeatedly made in imitation of wooden boards fastened together. The pillars are square, and united either by a rectangular architrave or by circular beams. The temples point, by their forms, to a civilisation which took its course from south to north. This bears out the theory that Meroe was once the seat of a colony of priests, who spread religion, and with it science and art, from Upper into Lower Egypt. Thebes appears to have been the most ancient seat of the Egyptian Pharaohs, one of the first of whom was perhaps Osiris, though he has been placed amongst the gods, and was said to have been, like Krishna, an incarnation of the Supreme Being, who revealed himself in love and kindness, and was to put an end to the dominion of Typhon, the Eternal Evil. Might not this myth conceal some historical fact--the advent of a wise hero, who conquers a wild and reckless tyrant? For Osiris had to go through all the sufferings of humanity, and even to suffer death, so as to become the saviour, the deliverer of his people; and then only was he able to turn the earth into a powerful kingdom. By _Earth_, we may assume, Upper Egypt was meant, where the god-man Osiris presided, who, in spite of his having become man, and belonging to the third order of the gods, was placed on an equality with the gods of the first order. The temple or tomb of Ipsambul may be considered the very oldest rock-hewn construction; it has a figure of Osiris twenty feet high over the entrance door. We pass over the remains of Philæ, Elephantine, and Edfou, and come to those of Karnac and Luxor, the venerable Thebes, which, in the fifth century B.C., during the times of Herodotus, were already in a state of dilapidation.