The rock-cut chamber which I have hitherto described as a speos, and which we at first believed to be a tomb, was in fact neither the one or the other. It was the adytum of a partly built, partly excavated monument coeval in date with the great temple. In certain points of design this monument resembles the contemporary speos of Bayt-el-Welly. It is evident, for instance, that the outer halls of both were originally vaulted; and the much mutilated sculptures over the doorway of the excavated chamber at Abou Simbel are almost identical in subject and treatment with those over the entrance to the excavated parts of Bayt-el-Welly. As regards general conception, the Abou Simbel monument comes under the same head with the contemporary Temples of Derr, Gerf Hossayn, and Wady Sabooah; being in a mixed style which combines excavation with construction. This style seems to have been peculiarly in favor during the reign of Rameses II. Situated at the southeastern angle of the rock, a little way beyond the façade of the great temple, this rock-cut adytum and hall of entrance face southeast by east, and command much the same view that is commanded higher up by the Temple of Hathor. The adytum, or excavated speos, measures twenty-one feet two and one-half inches in breadth by fourteen feet eight inches in length. The height from floor to ceiling is about twelve feet. The doorway measures four feet three and one-half inches in width; and the outer recess for the door-frame, five feet. Two large circle holes, one in the threshold and the other in the lintel, mark the place of the pivot on which the door once swung. It is not very easy to measure the outer hall in its present ruined and encumbered state; but as nearly as we could judge, its dimensions are as follows: Length, twenty-five feet; width, twenty-two and one-half feet; width of principal entrance facing the Nile, six feet; width of two side entrances, four feet and six feet respectively; thickness of crude-brick walls, three feet. Engaged in the brickwork on either side of the principal entrance to this hall are two stone door-jambs; and some six or eight feet in front of these there originally stood two stone hawks on hieroglyphed pedestals. One of these hawks we found _in situ_, the other lay some little distance off, and the painter (suspecting nothing of these after-revelations) had used it as a post to which to tie one of the main ropes of his sketching-tent. A large hieroglyphed slab, which I take to have formed part of the door, lay overturned against the side of the pylon some few yards nearer the river. [Illustration: 1. Wall of pylon. 2. Square landing. 3. Arched doorway and passage leading to vaulted hall. 4. Walls of outer hall or pronaos. 5. Door-jambs. 6. Stone hawks on pedestals. 7. Torus of pylon. 8. Arched entrances in north wall of pronaos. ]