It is difficult to know where decorative sculpture ends and portraiture begins in a work of this epoch. We cannot even be certain that a portrait was intended; though the introduction of the royal oval in which the name of Cleopatra (Klaupatra) is spelled with its vowel sounds in full, would seem to point that way. If it is a portrait, then large allowance must be made for conventional treatment. The fleshiness of the features and the intolerable simper are common to every head of the Ptolemaic period. The ear, too, is pattern work, and the drawing of the figure is ludicrous. Mannerism apart, however, the face wants for neither individuality nor beauty. Cover the mouth, and you have an almost faultless profile. The chin and throat are also quite lovely; while the whole face, suggestive of cruelty, subtlety, and voluptuousness, carries with it an indefinable impression not only of portraiture, but of likeness. It is not without something like a shock that one first sees the unsightly havoc wrought upon the Hathor-headed columns of the façade at Denderah. The massive folds of the head-gear are there; the ears, erect and pointed like those of a heifer, are there; but of the benignant face of the goddess not a feature remains. Ampère, describing these columns in one of his earliest letters from Egypt, speaks of them as being still “brilliant with colors that time had had no power to efface.” Time, however, must have been unusually busy during the thirty years that have gone by since then; for though we presently found several instances of painted bas-reliefs in the small inner chambers, I do not remember to have observed any remains of color (save here and there a faint trace of yellow ocher) on the external decorations. Without, all was sunshine and splendor; within, all was silence and mystery. A heavy, death-like smell, as of long-imprisoned gases, met us on the threshold. By the half-light that strayed in through the portico we could see vague outlines of a forest of giant columns rising out of the gloom below and vanishing into the gloom above. Beyond these again appeared shadowy vistas of successive halls leading away into depths of impenetrable darkness. It required no great courage to go down those stairs and explore those depths with a party of fellow-travelers; but it would have been a gruesome place to venture into alone.