In the outermost corner of the same rock-creek is situated the oldest temple structure of western Thebes, which belongs to the period of the first mighty regeneration of the New Egyptian Empire. A street, above 1,600 feet long, ornamented on both sides by colossal rams and sphinxes, led from the valley in a straight line to a court, then by a flight of steps to another, the front wall of which was adorned with representations, and a colonnade, and at last by a second stair to a well-preserved granite portal, and the last temple court surrounded on both sides by decorated halls and chambers, and ended behind by a broad façade built on to the steep rock-wall. By another granite portal in the middle of this façade, we come at last into the innermost space of the temple, hewn in the rock and vaulted with stone, whence again several little niches and spaces opened to the sides and back. All these places were covered with the most beautiful paintings, gaily coloured on a grey ground, and executed in the most finished style of the period. This grand structure, beside which other now destroyed buildings once stood, seems originally to have been connected with the river by a street traversing the whole valley, and reaching the great temple of Karnak on the other side; and I doubt not that for this behoof the narrow, rock-gate was artificially broken through, by which the temple road leads on its entrance into the valley. It was a Queen Numt Amen, the elder sister of Tuthmosis III., who carried out this daring design of an architectural communication between both the sides of the valley, the same who erected the largest obelisks before the temple of Karnak. She is never represented on her monuments as a woman, but in male attire; the inscriptions alone inform us of her sex. Without doubt it was then against the legitimate rule that a woman should hold the government; for that reason probably her brother, who was still a minor, appears as a co-regent. After her death, all her cartouches were turned into Tuthmosis-cartouches, the feminine expressions of the inscriptions changed, and her name was never mentioned in the later lists of the legitimate kings. Of Tuthmosis III., who completed the work of his royal sister during his long reign, two temples still exist, both erected at the edge of the desert. The northernmost one of these is now only recognisable in its foundations and in the remains of its brick pylones; the southern one, however, near Medînet Habu is yet well preserved, and, to judge from some sculptures, might belong in its first planning to an earlier Tuthmosis, and was only completed by the other. His second successor, Tuthmosis IV., also erected a temple, now almost disappeared.