Seen from within, however, the place is not without a kind of gloomy grandeur. Two rows of square columns, three at each side, divide the large hall into a nave and two aisles. This hall is about forty feet square, and the pillars have been left standing in the living rock, like those in the early tombs at Siût. The daylight, half-blocked out by the fallen portico, is pleasantly subdued, and finds its way dimly to the sanctuary at the farther end. The sculptures of the interior, though much damaged, are less defaced than those of the outer court. Walls, pillars, doorways, are covered with bas-reliefs. The king and Ptah, the king and Ra, the king and Amen, stand face to face, hand in hand, on each of the four sides of every column. Scenes of worship, of slaughter, of anointing, cover the walls; and the blank spaces are filled in as usual with hieroglyphic inscriptions. Among these Champollion discovered an imperfect list of the sons and daughters of Rameses II. Four gods once sat enthroned at the upper end of the sanctuary; but they have shared the fate of the colossi outside and only their feet remain. The wall sculptures of this dark little chamber are, however, better preserved, and better worth preservation, than those of the hall. A procession of priests, bearing on their shoulders the bari, or sacred boat, is quite unharmed; and even the color is yet fresh upon a full-length figure of Hathor close by. But more interesting than all these--more interesting because more rare--is a sculptured palm-tree against which the king leans while making an offering to Amen Ra. The trunk is given with elaborate truthfulness; and the branches, though formalized, are correct and graceful in curvature. The tree is but an accessory. It may have been introduced with reference to the date-harvests which are the wealth of the district; but it has no kind of sacred significance, and is noticeable only for the naturalness of the treatment. Such naturalness is unusual in the art of this period, when the conventional persea and the equally conventional lotus are almost the only vegetable forms which appear on the walls of the temples. I can recall, indeed, but one similar instance in the bas-relief sculpture of the new empire--namely, the bent, broken and waving bulrushes in the great lion-hunting scene at Medinet Habu, which are admirably free and studied, apparently, from nature. Coming out, we looked in vain along the court-yard walls for the battle-scene in which Champollion was yet able to trace the famous fighting lion of Rameses II with the legend describing him as “the servant of his majesty rending his foes in pieces.” But that was forty-five years ago. Now it is with difficulty that one detects a few vague outlines of chariot-wheels and horses.