Seen from within, the portico shows as a vast hall, fifty feet in height and supported on twenty-four Hathor-headed columns. Six of these, being engaged in the screen, form part of the façade, and are the same upon which we have been looking from without. By degrees, as our eyes become used to the twilight, we see here and there a capital which still preserves the vague likeness of a gigantic female face; while, dimly visible on every wall, pillar, and doorway, a multitude of fantastic forms--hawk-headed, ibis-headed, cow-headed, mitered, plumed, holding aloft strange emblems, seated on thrones, performing mysterious rites--seem to emerge from their places, like things of life. Looking up to the ceiling, now smoke-blackened and defaced, we discover elaborate paintings of scarabæi, winged globes, and zodiacal emblems divided by borders of intricate Greek patterns, the prevailing colors of which are verditer and chocolate. Bands of hieroglyphic inscriptions of royal ovals, of Hathor-heads of mitered hawks, of lion-headed chimeras, of divinities and kings in bas-relief, cover the shafts of the great columns from top to bottom; and even here, every accessible human face, however small, has been laboriously mutilated. Bewildered at first sight of these profuse and mysterious decorations, we wander round and round; going on from the first hall to the second, from the second to the third; and plunging into deeper darkness at every step. We have been reading about these gods and emblems for weeks past--we have studied the plan of the temple beforehand; yet now that we are actually here, our book knowledge goes for nothing, and we feel as hopelessly ignorant as if we had been suddenly landed in a new world. Not till we have got over this first feeling of confusion--not till, resting awhile on the base of one of the columns, we again open out the plan of the building--do we begin to realize the purport of the sculptures by which we are surrounded. The ceremonial of Egyptian worship was essentially processional. Herein we have the central idea of every temple and the key to its construction. It was bound to contain store-chambers in which were kept vestments, instruments, divine emblems, and the like; laboratories for the preparation of perfumes and unguents; treasuries for the safe custody of holy vessels and precious offerings; chambers for the reception and purification of tribute in kind; halls for the assembling and marshaling of priests and functionaries; and, for processional purposes, corridors, staircases, court-yards, cloisters, and vast inclosures planted with avenues of trees and surrounded by walls which hedged in with inviolable secrecy the solemn rites of the priesthood.