Take it for what it is--a Ptolemaic structure preserved in all its integrity of strength and finish--it is certainly the finest temple in Egypt. It brings before us, with even more completeness than Denderah, the purposes of its various parts and the kind of ceremonial for which it was designed. Every corridor and chamber tells its own story. Even the names of the different chambers are graven upon them in such wise that nothing[190] would be easier than to reconstruct the ground-plan of the whole building in hieroglyphic nomenclature. That neither the Ptolemaic building nor the Ptolemaic mythus can be accepted as strictly representative of either pure Egyptian art or pure Egyptian thought, must of course be conceded. Both are modified by Greek influences, and have so far departed from the Pharaonic model. But then we have no equally perfect specimen of the Pharaonic model. The Ramesseum is but a grand fragment. Karnak and Medinet Hadu are aggregates of many temples and many styles. Abydos is still half-buried. Amid so much that is fragmentary, amid so much that is ruined, the one absolutely perfect structure--Ptolemaic though it be--is of incalculable interest, and equally incalculable value. While we are dreaming over these things, trying to fancy how it all looked when the sacred flotilla came sweeping up the river yonder and the procession of Hor-Hat issued forth to meet the goddess-guest--while we are half-expecting to see the whole brilliant concourse pour out, priests in their robes of panther-skin, priestesses with the tinkling sistrum, singers and harpists, and bearers of gifts and emblems, and high functionaries rearing aloft the sacred boat of the god--in this moment a turbaned Muëddin comes out upon the rickety wooden gallery of the little minaret below, and intones the call to midday prayer. That plaintive cry has hardly died away before we see men here and there among the huts turning toward the east and assuming the first posture of devotion. The women go on cooking and nursing their babies. I have seen Moslem women at prayer in the mosques of Constantinople, but never in Egypt. Meanwhile, some children catch sight of us, and, notwithstanding that we are one hundred and twenty-five feet above their heads, burst into a frantic chorus of “backshîsh!” And now, with a last long look at the temple and the wide landscape beyond, we come down, and go to see a dismal little Mammesi three-parts buried among a wilderness of mounds close by. These mounds, which consist almost entirely of crude-brick debris with imbedded fragments of stone and pottery, are built up like coral-reefs, and represent the dwellings of some sixty generations. When they are cut straight through, as here round about the great temple, the substance of them looks like rich plum-cake. CHAPTER XXI. THEBES.