Thus this remarkable place, which in the lapse of 3,500 years had grown from the little sanctuary in the midst of the great temple, into an entire temple-city covering a surface of a quarter of a geographical mile in length, and about 2,000 feet in breadth, is also an almost unbroken thread and an interesting standard for the history of the whole New Egyptian empire, from its commencement in the Old Empire down to its fall under the Roman rule. Almost in the same proportion as the dynasties and kings are portrayed in and about the temple of Karnak, they stand forth or retire in Egyptian history. Up the river from Karnak, where the stream, parted by the fertile island of el Gedîdeh, again unites, a second glorious memorial of the ancient city arises: the temple of Luqsor. One of the mightiest Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty, Amenophis III., who had only built a side temple at Karnak, adding little to the principal structure, here erected a sanctuary, made the more magnificent on account of the little he had done at Karnak, dedicated to Ammon, which the great Ramses enlarged by a second stately court toward Karnak. For, although a good half-hour distant, this temple must yet be looked upon as within the ancient and sacred bounds of the great national sanctuary. That is proved by the otherwise difficult, and inexplicable circumstance, that the entrance of the temple, although hard by the shore, is yet turned away from the river and toward Karnak, with which it was also architecturally placed in direct connection by colonnades, series of rams, and roads. With Luqsor end the ruins on the eastern shore. The monuments of western Thebes offer a still greater variety, because here the subterranean dwellings and places of the dead are added to the superterranean structures for the living. From Qurna there once extended an unbroken series of the most magnificent temples to Medînet Habu, almost filling the narrow desert district between the Nile-steeped fertile land and the foot of the mountains. Immediately behind these temples stretches the vast Necropolis, the tombs of which lying close together like bee-cells, are hewn partly in the rock-soil of the plain, partly in the adjoining hills. Qurna is situated on that spur of the Libyan mountains nearest to the river. In suddenly turning to the west, the mountains form a species of ravine, the outer part of which, where it is separated from the valley by low ranges of hills, is called El Asasîf. Behind it is bounded by high, steep crags, which rear their glorious stone in the noon and morning sun. These sudden precipices of the limestone mountains, so firmly and equally grown, and therefore so eminently calculated for the sculptures in the rock-tombs, seem to have arisen on the clay stratum beneath, which has withdrawn by its gradual disintegration.