I think that Luxor, from its situation, first attracts the notice of the traveller. It is close on the river, and is built on a lofty platform. Its enormous columns are the first specimen of that colossal genius of the Pharaohs which the Ptolemies never attempted to rival. The entrance to this temple is through a magnificent propylon, that is, a portal flanked by massy pyramidal moles. It is two hundred feet in breadth, and rises nearly sixty feet above the soil. This gate is entirely covered with sculpture, commemorating the triumph of Rameses the Great over the supposed Assyrians. On each side of the portal are two colossal statues of red granite, buried in the sand up to their shoulders, but measuring thence, to the top of their crowns, upwards of twenty feet. On each side of them, a little in advance, rise the two most perfect obelisks that remain, also of red granite, and each about eighty feet high. From the propylon you pass into a peristyle court, about two hundred and thirty feet long by one hundred and seventy, the roof of which was once supported by double rows of columns, many of which now remain; and so on through other pyramidal gates and courts and porticoes and chambers which are, in all probability, of a more ancient date than the gates and obelisks and colossi first described, which last were perhaps added by Rameses, who commemorated his triumph by rendering a celebrated building still more famous. From Luxor you proceed to Karnak, the other great division on this side of the river, through an avenue of sphinxes considerably above a mile in extent; and here I should observe that Egyptian sphinxes are either _andro_ or _crio_ sphinxes, the one formed by the union of the lion with the man, and the other of the lion with the ram. Their mystery is at length penetrated. They are male and never female. They are male and they are monarchs. This great avenue, extending from Luxor to Karnak, was raised by the two immediate successors of the great Rameses, and represents their long line of ancestry. All the marvels of the world sink before the first entrance into Karnak. It may vie with the Alps and the Andes. The obelisks of Luxor may be unrivalled, the sculptures of Medcenet Habu more exquisite, the colossus of Memnonion more gigantic, the paintings of the royal tombs more curious and instructive, but criticism ceases before the multifarious wonders of the halls and courts of Karnak and the mind is open only to one general impression of colossal variety.