The Old Empire has also left us the Sphinx, Sphinx temple, and the temple at Meidoum. The most important temples of the New Empire were those of Karnak (the great temple, the southern or temple of Khonsu), of Luxor, Medinet Abou (great temple of Rameses III., lesser temples of Thothmes II. and III. with peripteral sekos; also Pavilion of Rameses III.); of Abydos; of Gournah; of Eilithyia (Amenophis III.); of Soleb and Sesebi in Nubia; of Elephantine (peripteral); the tomb temple of Deir-el-Bahari, the Ramesseum, the Amenopheum; hemispeos at Gherf Hossein; two grotto temples at Ipsamboul. At Meroë are pyramids of the Ethiopic kings of the Decadence. Temples of the Ptolemaic period: Philæ, Denderah. Temples of the Roman period: Koum Ombos, Edfou; Kalabshé, Kardassy and Dandour in Nubia; Esneh. CHAPTER IV. CHALDÆAN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE. BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Reber. Also, Babelon, _Manual of Oriental Antiquities_. Botta and Flandin, _Monuments de Ninive_. Layard, _Discoveries in Nineveh_; _Nineveh and its Remains_. Loftus, _Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana_. Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in Chaldæa and Assyria_. Peters, _Nippur_. Place, _Ninive et l’Assyrie_. +SITUATION; HISTORIC PERIODS.+ The Tigro-Euphrates valley was the seat of a civilization nearly or quite as old as that of the Nile, though inferior in its monumental art. The kingdoms of Chaldæa and Assyria which ruled in this valley, sometimes as rivals and sometimes as subjects one of the other, differed considerably in character and culture. But the scarcity of timber and the lack of good building-stone except in the limestone table-lands and more distant mountains of upper Mesopotamia, the abundance of clay, and the flatness of the country, imposed upon the builders of both nations similar restrictions of conception, form, and material. Both peoples, moreover, were probably, in part at least, of Semitic race.[4] The Chaldæans attained civilization as early as 4000 B.C., and had for centuries maintained fixed institutions and practised the arts and sciences when the Assyrians began their career as a nation of conquerors by reducing Chaldæa to subjection. [Footnote 4: This is denied by some recent writers, so far as the Chaldæans are concerned, and is not intended here to apply to the Accadians and Summerians of primitive Chaldæa.] The history of Chaldæo-Assyrian art may be divided into three main periods, as follows: 1. The EARLY CHALDÆAN, 4000 to 1250 B.C. 2. The ASSYRIAN, 1250 to 606 B.C. 3. The BABYLONIAN, 606 to 538 B.C. In 538 the empire fell before the Persians.