Upon extensive brick terraces, raised high above the flat banks of the Nile, the Egyptian temple stood, a strictly secluded building. Strong walls, rising in pyramidal form, crowned with an overhanging fluted cornice, gave the mural enclosure a mysterious and stern character. No opening for windows, no colonnade interrupted the monotonous flatness, which is covered, as by one long tapestry, with hieroglyphs, and representations of gods and Pharaohs. The entrance to these buildings, like that of the temple of Edfou, was placed between two tower-like structures called propylæa, the walls of which were decorated with sculptured figures--in three or more rows. Then followed a court, surrounded by pillars, placed at a distance from the walls on both sides, roofed over with stone, and forming a gallery. Thence we reach the pronaos or portico, after which we enter the cell, divided into the naos and adytum. The naos was generally a kind of hypostyle hall, with a flat roof raised in the middle. The pillars and columns had a variety of capitals, but these were generally of one pattern throughout the temple. The quadrilateral Isis-headed capital, as at Denderah, was often used. The monuments of the ‘hundred-gated’ Thebes are the best school for the study of genuine Egyptian art. The temples on the eastern side of the river are symbolical of the dawn of life; on the western side we find tombs, catacombs, and Memnoniums. At Karnac we have one of the grandest constructions of the world in the ruins of the hypostyle hall, with its gigantic stone ceiling supported by 134 columns, of which the twelve middle ones, about 65 feet high and 11 feet in diameter, are larger and taller than the others, supporting a loftier central nave. The width of this hall is 338 feet, the depth 170½ feet, and the area 57,629 feet, or about five times as large as the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. Columns and walls are completely covered with sculptured forms of deities; Osiris predominates. Pylons, propylæa, obelisks, colossal statues of red, grey, and black granite cover the courts; chapel-like apartments, connected and unconnected, are strangely intermingled. Next to the temples we must mention one of the most gorgeous buildings, the _Labyrinth_, containing between three and four thousand chambers in rows, facing inwards the winding alleys, which ascended in a spiral line to the middle, and descended from it in the same way. It has been minutely described by Herodotus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and Ezekiel. The building was to be a strict architectural imitation of the planetary system. The inner 1,500 chambers were divided into twelve courtyards, corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac, six of which were towards the north, and six towards the south.