The hexagon and the great court beyond, are surrounded with alcoves, most richly decorated, and once including statues, some of which now, no doubt, lie hidden beneath the rubbish. The domed roofs of the alcoves are all richly carved; in one, a head surrounded with a web of scaly wings; in another, a winged dragon straggling over the whole roof. The shattered shafts of granite columns lie before the recesses, and mounds of rubbish cover the floor. A Christian basilica once stood close to the Sun Temple; but its dimensions are dwarfed by the huge columns, which seem to bear witness to the grandeur of the genius of their Roman founder, dwarfing the puny attempts of Byzantine art and intellect. The church is all gone, except the foundations. The great pillars of the Sun Temple have fallen one by one; but six weather-beaten survivors still resist the fury of the winter and the constant eating away of the frost, though their bases have all been sapped by the natives, in seeking for the metal cores run into the joints. The pillars are seventy-five feet high, and seven and a half feet in diameter; the cornice has a weight of nearly four tons to the square foot. As the capitals of some pillars are worn away, and the bases of all six are undermined, they cannot be expected long to remain standing, and any winter may bring the destruction of the most eastern column, and perhaps of the next two. The method of erection of these gigantic masses of masonry remains a mystery. The Egyptian obelisks were monolithic, and could be swung into a vertical position; but the building up of the three great stones in a shaft, the placing of its capital, and the crowning labour of raising the cornice blocks into position, seem to require superhuman power, and the simple explanation of the Arabs, that the sons of the Jann were employed to pile the great masses, seems almost a tempting theory. The most beautiful and perfect building is the smaller Temple of Jupiter, to the south. It is 118 feet long east and west, by sixty-five feet broad in the interior, with a porch twenty-six feet wide in front. The doorway, twenty-one feet broad, was spanned by a lintel in three pieces. The central block, or key-stone, weighing sixty tons, has slipped down, and is supported on a wall built by the Turks. Five attached columns, with fluted shafts, are built against each wall inside, and a rich cornice runs above them, whilst two rows of brackets, with canopies over them, once held statues between the pillars. The carving of the canopies is marvellously bold and intricate; every detail is sharply cut; the rosettes and graceful arabesques stand out almost separated from the stone. The wall across the temple, dividing off the altar part, is covered with graceful undulating figures, unfortunately headless; beneath are great vaults, covered with hard cement.